“Great men die twice,
once when they leave this world and a second time when their life work disappears.”
In this video, I discuss one of the greatest novels written by a Nobel
Prize winning author from Bosnia. On the surface, it is quite unassuming novel,
but when you read it, it grips you. It’s so powerful and what’s surprising is that
I had never heard of the novel or the author until a few weeks ago.
Bridges are the symbol of unity, connection, and free movement but Yugoslavia, the setting
of this novel has seen so much division, bloodshed, and hatred in recent centuries.
A bridge built by the Ottoman Turks 350 years ago tells the story of a small town in Bosnia, but it
actually tells the story of the entire Balkan region and the Europe as a whole. Or humanity
for that matter. How can a bridge tell stories? But most crucially how can a Bosnian Serb tell the
story of so many different ethnic and religious groups while keeping his own biases aside?
Born in Bosnia in 1892, then part of Yugoslavia, Ivo Andrić worked as Yugoslavia’s ambassador
in Germany just before WW2 began. During the War he returned to Belgrade to live a somewhat
quiet life but he managed to write his novels. He wrote in Serbian-Croat language using the
Cyrillic alphabet. Some Bosnians and Croats accuse him to be too Serbian in his writings.
It’s obvious when reading this novel as you can see his sympathies are the
peasant Serbs throughout the novel as they were mistreated by the occupying forces in the region.
Today he is considered a Bosnian writer but it is always tricky to assign nationality to
someone posthumously. Ivo Andrić was a citizen of Yugoslavia and won the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1961. He died in 1975. Yugoslavia spilt into 6 countries in 1992. Bosnia as an independent
country is only 30 years old, so quite young. The country is 50% Muslim Bonsiaks, 30%
Orthodox Serbs and 15% Catholic Croats. It has three somewhat similar languages, Bosnian,
Croatian and Serbian, all branches of south Slavic language family. A country of 3 million people it
also has three presidents. I think all countries should have a president for every million people.
The Bridge on the Drina is Andrić’s most famous novel. It was published
in 1945 just as the dust of WW2 was settling.
The first thing to know about the novel is that it doesn't appear like a novel. It doesn't have
any protagonists, which makes difficult to characterise this book. Some parts read like
history, other parts read like a series of short stories about individuals and communities but at
the heart of the novel is a very important stone bridge, hence the title and also the bridge seems
to be the main character. To understand the novel we have to go back into the history of Bosnia,
first during the Ottoman Empire, later during the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then Yugoslavia.
Our story starts with the Ottoman Turks who had a practice of kidnapping young children and raising
them as Muslims and educating or training them to be part of an elite army called janissaries.
The novel concerns with one particular Serbian boy called Mehmed-pasha Sokolović.
He converts to Islam and grows up to become the highest ranked vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
A man of great power and prestige, he never forgets his hometown of Višegrad. In the year
1566 he orders the construction of one of the most impressive bridges in the world in
his hometown. After 11 years with plenty of setbacks, sabotages, bad working practices,
finally the bridge is completed in 1577. Today the bridge is in Bosnia and still standing and
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The novel details all the hopeful expectations and excitement of the
people, the troubles of the construction, the bad working condition for the peasants and a terrible
execution of a worker and the inter-racial problems that go on around the bridge.
Then halfway through the novel, the narratives shifts to the arrival of the Austro-Hungarians
in the area that promises modernity. The bridge is the scene of a new regime in charge. Now
there are more people of mixed backgrounds roaming around the area. Before there were Bosnians,
Turks, Serbs, Jews and Romans but now we also have Austrians, Hungarians, Poles,
Czechs and many more people in the mix. A century later, the Serbs starts fighting for independence.
This causes more tension in the region, during which the bridge is party damaged and partly due
to neglect of the Austro-Hungarians. Then comes the railway which further pushes the
bridge to background as it is logistically less important for transporting goods. Then
people start moving aboard to the bigger cities like Vienna and Prague for education and work,
and when they return they bring new customs and lifestyle but most crucially the idea
of independence and nationalism. The area around the bridge is constantly changing
but the bridge remains standing for 350 years, simply because it was so well-built.
With any beautiful monuments in the world, many lives were perished in making them.
In 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo which
is not far from the bridge, it sparks WW1 so the bridge again becomes an important transit as the
fight between the Austro-Hungarian on the one hand and Serbia on the other bring the actions
close to the region again. The Serbs defeat the Ottoman Turks and then the Austro-Hungarians and
as a result part of the bridge is destroyed. Here ends the novel on a rather pessimistic tone. It’s
heart-breaking to see that such a beautiful monument, a silent witness was destroyed.
The bridge made of stone, breaks your heart, such is the power of the novel. Andric was writing in
1940s, he was unaware that the bridge would be still standing today and would become the scene
of a horrific massacre of Muslims by the Serbs who themselves suffered throughout history.
Themes
Now I will tell you some of the theme in the novel. The Bridge on the Drina
is like a window into a world I knew very little about and as result of reading it I got to know
a great deal about the history of the region and different ethnic and religious mix and how they
negotiated with each other. I think reading this novel can give you a greater understanding of the
context of the Balkan history and its complex ethno-religious dynamic. For me one of the most
beautiful scene is when you see priests from different religions hang out together like pals,
and at the time of disasters and flooding, they provide emotional support for the local people.
Then there is the horrific execution of Radisav, a worker impaled from the bridge. Again the suicide
of Fata a girl refusing to marry a man she doesn't love by throwing herself from the parapet of the
bridge. Those horror scenes are repeated on that bridge many centuries later. Even in 1990s the
bridge was the scene of a massacre of thousands of Muslims. The novel gives you an emotional history
of the region seen by a solid stone bridge. It has so much depth that history books will not offer.
I thought the use of the bridge as a main character was really clever. A bridge is more like
a stage where the play takes place, where actors gather to tell stories. It’s a witness to so many
events throughout its 350-year history. It doesn’t move, it doesn't walk so it somehow forces all the
events to come nearby. A bridge is a necessity. The bridge also symbolises the region sandwiched
between the Turks and the Austrians, between east and west, north and south. But I think the
main reason Andrić chose the bridge to anchor his novel is that Yugoslavia was a such a mixed bag of
different peoples, languages, and religions that only a stone bridge could connect them
all. I think that decision was genius that made the novel timeless and artistically beautiful.
A bridge is a paradox if you think about. It connects people but also allows easy access for
invaders to cross rivers, nature’s borders and fortification. The author by making the bridge
the focus of his novel, he highlights its role in wars. Castles and fortresses defend people from
invasion but bridges welcome them. In fact every time there is a major war, the bridge suddenly
becomes important in the novel. During the time of peace, it remains more obscure. Another
paradox is that bridges symbolise progress but also an artifact from the deeper past,
the Ottoman period. In a sense it’s timeless. It’s new and also old at the same time.
Writing and storytelling:
One of the most enduring aspect of this novel is its masterful writing. Despite
the lack of clear plot or main characters, the writing keeps you hooked to read on.
Written in Belgrade, while under the German occupation, it is a reflection
on his country’s past, swept by the tides of empires shifting this way and that.
But I should also point out that it’s not focused on the elite or men of power,
instead the novel tells the stories of ordinary people, the everyday people.
It’s like your grandma telling you stories and legends of the people in the village,
of centuries past, the alcoholics, the gambler, the idlers, stories of people having fun,
their joys and laughter, legends of people falling in love, disappearing and then re-appearing,
tragedies, stories that are forgotten and stories nobody can forget. In some way it reminded me of
One Hundred Years of Solitude. The book condenses 350 years of solitude and many generations into
a single volume. The passage of time evokes a great sadness to see people come and go, yet the
bridge stays on to witness them all, just like Ursula, the grandma, in Gabriel Garcia’s novel.
A bridge is like a perspective on how short human life is, yet despite our short lives,
we tear each other apart from time to time. Next time you feel angry, go and watch a bridge.
To give you some examples of the beauty of Andrić’s writing,
I will read a few short passages:
"Here, where the Drina flows with the whole force of its green and foaming waters from
the apparently closed mass of the dark, steep mountains, stands a great clean-cut stone bridge
with eleven wide sweeping arches. From this bridge spreads fanlike the whole rolling valley
with the little oriental town of Viśegrad and all its surroundings, with hamlets nestling in
the folds of the hills, covered with meadows, pastures, and plum-orchards, and crisscrossed
with walls and fences and dotted with shaws and occasional clumps of evergreens. Looked at from
a distance through the broad arches of the white bridge it seems as if one can see not only the
green Drina but all that fertile and cultivated countryside and the southern sky above."
Here is another passage: “But the bridge still stood,
the same as it had always been, with the eternal youth of a perfect conception,
one of the great and good works of man, which do not know what it means to change and grow old
and which, or so it seemed, do not share the fate of the transient things in the world.”
Here is another one:
“Every human generation has its own illusions with regard to civilization; some believe that they are
taking part in an upsurge, others that they are witnessing its extinction. In fact, it always both
flames up and smoulders and is extinguished, according to the place and the angle of view.”
And finally:
“There are three things which cannot be hidden,”
say the Osmanlis, “and these are: love, a cough, and poverty.”
Final words: The novel’s main plot is that a bridge that
never moves can tell amazing stories. That’s the plot. But those on the bridge move. You don't read
it for the plot. You read it for its beauty and short stories of its people. One criticism that
is levelled against the book is that it doesn't mention Bosniak Muslims and instead refer to
all Muslims as Turks. Some Bosnians and Croats criticised him for being too Serb-centric in his
writings. The novel however doesn't caricature any particular people. There are good and bad Turks
and the same about all other nationalities. From what I hear the book has been hijacked by some
Serb nationalists for it depicts the harsh lives of the poor Serbs under foreign occupations to
justify their acts of revenge so to speak. I don't think Andrić had foreseen it, but rather he wanted
to highlight history from the perspective of those people whose voices weren’t heard.
It’s a gem of a novel and unfortunately very few have heard of it in the Anglophone world.
I had no idea who Andrić was until a few weeks ago. But while reading the novel,
I fell in love with his writing. I loved how the novel moved between individual and group,
between small and big, between mundane and epic, between ordinary and extraordinary,
between individuals of no power and those with power, between joys and tragedies, and between
time and place. It’s a novel that bridges them all. No wonder it is about a bridge
but the novel is a bridge itself, between the past generations and the present generations.
Reading it made me visit the bridge and the town. Unsurprisingly,
the bridge has become a tourist attraction among readers of this novel.
I read the translation by Lovett Edwards. The translation is really beautifully done.
Some of the local words are from many different languages, like Turkish,
Serbian, Persian and Arabic. It was quite interesting to see how so many languages
were spoken in the area or certain words had travelled in the region.
Before I forget another great Bosnian novel is Death and The Dervish by Mehmed "Meša"
Selimović that is somewhat similar to Kafka’s novel The Trial about a man’s
futile fight against authorities, set in 18th century Sarajevo under the Ottoman
rule. But it also has elements of Dostoevsky, especially Crime and Punishment as well as Notes
from the Underground as the novel somewhat ironically argues that to succeed under a
repressive regime one has to deceive others. Honesty is not the best policy so to speak.
The very idea of social success hides many deceptions. In Death and The Dervish the
protagonist starts to fight for justice for his brother at the beginning but it goes nowhere,
so he instead changes tactic and becomes part of the system and succeeds in becoming an official.
In the same vain as in Faust that you sell your soul in order to succeed in this world.
My suggestion is to read The Bridge on The Drina first as it is shorter and faster and
the writing is more beautiful. And if you want to read more Bosnian, then Death and
The Dervish is a great novel to deepen you knowledge of Bosnia literature and people.
Thank you for watching.