The New Yugoslav Literature
RADITSA, BOGDAN
The New Yugoslav Literature The Bridge on the Drina. By Ivo Andric. Macmillan. 314 pp. $3.50. Bosnian Story. By Ivo Andric. British Book Center. 602 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Bogdan...
...Andric also represents the nationalist generation of intelligentsia who began to write for national and political purposes and who, after the unification of Yugoslavia, turned to dealing with native problems...
...The original title is Travnik Chronicle and the novel is little concerned with Bosnia...
...Andric shows no love for either Moslems or Croats—depicting the former as representative of the sick Ottoman past and the latter as typical of the narrow, Middle-European Catholic present...
...Perhaps they will now be followed by those two most Bosnian works of Andric: The Journey of Alija Djerzeles and The Damned Courtyard...
...The title refers to the river which divides Bosnia and Serbia physically, as religion and culture often divide them politically...
...Andric is not typical of the present generation grown to maturity during the last war and under Communism...
...For him, the Moslems are only an impediment to those who are genuinely devoted to creating an effective bridge over the Drina...
...The latter are caught between their approval of Napoleon's anti-Austrian campaign and their fear of his campaign against Russia, their Orthodox protector against the Turks...
...What makes Andric unique in his treatment of this well-worn subject is his bitter contempt for the Moslems, whom he sees as a roadblock to the further nationalization and Westernization of Yugoslavia...
...Here, as in the earlier book, Andric shows little mercy for the Moslems...
...In this hatred he reflects the traditional attitude of the Serbs, who have long considered Moslems interlopers who must eventually be driven from the country...
...Well translated, these two novels are happy choices in introducing Serbo-Croatian literature to the West...
...Reviewed by Bogdan Raditsa Professor of Modern European History, Fairleigh Dickinson College THE OFFICIAL Yugoslav decision to introduce its literature to the West was sound, and it was wise to choose Ivo Andric's novels as the first modern Serbo-Croatian prose to be translated into English...
...In this process, Andric is not only one of the most important influences, but one of the best examples of the new quality...
...Andric's Bosnian Story, probably the finest piece of modern Yugoslav prose yet produced, is reminiscent of Flaubert's masterly style and language...
...Andric here is dealing with the relations between Bosnia and Serbia, between Christians and Moslems, and he points this up with the device of an unsuccessful love between a Christian boy and a Moslem girl...
...He satirizes the indifferent attitude of the Moslems, but treats sympathetically the ambivalence of the Serbs...
...Its English title is puzzling...
...Pitilessly he follows the official Serbian line, advocating the biological extermination of the Moslems, whether they be ethnically Croat or Serb...
...The story concerns an Austrian and French consul who are sent to Travnik, a provincial town in the Ottoman Empire, at the time Napoleon is preparing his last campaign against Russia...
...Andric pictures both the Moslems and the Croats—who have been forced to side with them—as inhabitants of a world eventually doomed to extinction...
...In addition to delineating this pervading provincialism, Andric describes the disparate reactions of the Serbs and the Bosnian Moslems to the arrival of the diplomats...
...The Bridge on the Drina reflects this concern...
...As a native Bosnian, Andric is intimate with that region's problems, its unique amalgam of East and West, Moslem and Christian, Orthodox and Catholic...
...Andric feels that this division must be eliminated if the Balkan Serbs and the South Slavs are ever to be unified into a viable and powerful political unit...
...It transcends the nationalism of The Bridge on the Drina...
...Born in Bosnia 67 years ago, he is an integrated literary personality free from the contemporary revolutionary restlessness and more influenced by other European writing, most particularly the works of Flaubert and Turgenev...
...Due to the efforts of a few talented individuals, Serbo-Croat literature has been lifted from the ruck of decorative folklore writing and given fresh power and new qualities...
...The book focuses on the lives and loves of the diplomats in Travnik, a town so removed from Western civilization that emptiness and boredom infect their entire lives...
Vol. 43 • March 1960 • No. 10
