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A review by jpegben
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
5.0
It is with great joy and not a little trepidation that I come to reviewing a book I genuinely cherish: Ivo Andrić's The Bridge on the Drina. Today, Andrić is little discussed compared to the mid-20th century where his work met near universal acclaim. As an author, he possessed not only perspicacity and a startlingly beautiful style of prose, but a sweeping sense of history and chilling prophetic power.
Born in present-day Bosnia and a Yugoslav citizen for most of his life, today he is primarily associated with Serbian culture and literature. However, his own complex biography - born to Catholic Croat parents in Eastern Bosnia, but coming to identify with Serbia and reside in Belgrade - reflects the status of the Balkans as an ethno-cultural melting pot. Andrić himself is a fascinating character. He was the only Nobel laureate and perhaps the only man to be personally acquainted with both Gavrilo Princip and Adolf Hitler. In the interwar period, he became a diplomat of international standing who negotiated treaties at the highest level, winning the esteem of both Hermann Goering and future Yugoslav leader Josef Broz Tito. The story of the book's conception is itself remarkable as Andrić wrote it while locked in his house in the centre of Belgrade as war raged around him and the city was subjected to constant bombing raids. He emerged with three manuscripts all of which are superb. Of these, however, The Bridge on the Drina stood apart as his magnum opus.
The Bridge on the Drina is a work that defies easy categorisation. It is not a novel in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a chronicle of sorts. A succession of loosely connected vignettes unified by a single golden thread: the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge which crosses the River Drina at the town of Višegrad. Andrić eschews the typical conventions and form of the novel and opts for something else entirely. He weaves a sort of vast, incohate tapestry which taps into the very rhythms of life in Višegrad over the centuries. The result is something subterranean, something which taps into the very channels of history itself, as civilisations rise and fall yet life, when stripped down to its bare essence, remains much the same. Ever the discerning observer, Andrić's prose has a certain gravitas about it, infused with the wisdom of myth and legend and a thousand lives well-lived.
At the centre of all this sits the Bridge: a structure of striking beauty which is as close a thing to a protagonist as the book has. The early chapters detail its construction as a bequest of Mehmed Paša who was taken from Višegrad as a boy to serve the Ottoman Empire and climbed to the very highest echelons of power. Constructing the Bridge is a Herculean task, but one which transforms the fate of a community. It will become a Bridge on which "destiny is woven". Višegrad will become a centre of commerce. It will bring great opportunity, but also great change:
Even the least of the townsman felt as if his powers were suddenly multiplied, as if some wonderful, superhuman exploit was brought within the measure of his powers and within the limits of everyday life, as if besides the well-known elements of earth, water, and sky, one more were open to him, as if by some beneficent effort each one of them could suddenly realise one of his dearest desires, the ancient dream of man - to go over water and to be master of space.
Of course, on a symbolic level the Bridge itself is a metonym for Yugoslavia: the bridge between East and West. Both figuratively and literally, the Bridge is a meeting place, a cauldron of cultural exchange. It's construction ties a community together and its destruction will rip it apart. The centre of the bridge is the site of passionate assignation, bitter confrontation, zealous debate, and grim execution. The Bridge bears witness to changing habits and customs, to receding Ottoman power and growing Habsburg might. It seems to be the one fixed point, the concrete symbol of certitude that life will go on. But perhaps even that is illusory. After all, Andrić was a grim prophet and foresaw the tragic fate which would befall Bosnia in 1990s. Modernity, to him, was a double-edged sword. With material gains, came intangible losses and a growing sense of jeopardy. Alihodja, Andrić's most astute observer, offers readers a chilling observation following the arrival of rail services: "the time will come when the Schwabes will make you ride where you don't want to go and where you never even dreamt of going". This is Andrić at his most formidable, tapping into the very currents of history.
However, The Bridge on the Drina is not pessmistic, it is a work of great joy. Andrić paints portraits of us at our most human. Our fits of irrationality aren't derisively ridiculed, but empathetically acknowledged. Seemingly insignificant individuals such as One-Eyed Ćorkan the "dishevelled" drunk and Radislav of Užice who is impaled by the Ottomans for resisting the Bridge's construction enter the town's mytholgical canon. Andrić redeems them and makes the ordinary extraordinary. This is a book about the hazy and intense realm of human passions against the backdrop of history's slow grind. The struggles of generations and even time itself seems to merge at various points. In doing so, Andrić offers us ambiguity, but of a satisfying sort. Much changes, but stays the same. We will always have our foibles, our behaviour, after all, will remain very human and very flawed:
This generation was richer only in illusions; in every other way it was similar to any other. It had the feeling of both lighting the fires of a new civilization and extinguishing the last flickers of another. Everything appeared as an exciting new game on that ancient bridge, which shone in the moonlight of those July nights, clean, young and unalterable, strong and lovely in its perfection, stronger than all that time might bring and man imagine or do.
Above all, this book is a meditation on change and history. It tries to make sense of the theme on which Andrić was most hung-up: the sense of misery and loss which is inherent in the passing of time. Change brings with it anxiety and uncertainty. We have an "eternal desire" to "forsee the action of natural forces", "to avoid or surmount them". This is our instinct, but it is also a curse. It means we must know our history. To understand ourselves, to have an identity, we must know what came before us. For Andrić, to know history is to overcome. Events have a certain cyclicality. Here, he brings to mind a remark made by Eugene O'Neill: "there is no present or future, only the past happening over and over again - now". Though it is a story much inspired by centuries old tales, Andrić is asking an urgent question: how much have we really changed?
Stylistically, this work is masterful and extremely distinctive, evoking the delicately balanced nature of Conradian prose. His capacity for describing the natural world is of the highest calibre and he conjures up images of an exotic town surrounded by verdant forests and craggy mountains with markets full of the humdrum of commerce, the scent of cinnamon and cardamom, and the smouldering glow of the languid afternoon sun. His is lyricism distilled, echanting prose which hits you at your very core as shown below:
Always the same black pain which cut into his breast with that special childhood pang which was clearly distinguishable from all of the other pains that life had brought him. In one of those moments, he thought that he might be able to free himself from this discomfort if he could do away with that ferry on the distant Drina and bridge the steep banks and evil water between them, join the two ends of the road which was broken by the Drina and thus link safely and forever Bosnia and the East, the place of his origin & the places of his life. Thus, it was he who first, in a single moment behind closed eyelids, saw the graceful silhouette of the great stone bridge which was to be built there.
This book is, in the words of one critic, a work of "broad experience, rare intution, and philosophical breadth". In my humble, opinion it is an unmissable literary odyssey. Hopefully, some of you will jump aboard.
Born in present-day Bosnia and a Yugoslav citizen for most of his life, today he is primarily associated with Serbian culture and literature. However, his own complex biography - born to Catholic Croat parents in Eastern Bosnia, but coming to identify with Serbia and reside in Belgrade - reflects the status of the Balkans as an ethno-cultural melting pot. Andrić himself is a fascinating character. He was the only Nobel laureate and perhaps the only man to be personally acquainted with both Gavrilo Princip and Adolf Hitler. In the interwar period, he became a diplomat of international standing who negotiated treaties at the highest level, winning the esteem of both Hermann Goering and future Yugoslav leader Josef Broz Tito. The story of the book's conception is itself remarkable as Andrić wrote it while locked in his house in the centre of Belgrade as war raged around him and the city was subjected to constant bombing raids. He emerged with three manuscripts all of which are superb. Of these, however, The Bridge on the Drina stood apart as his magnum opus.
The Bridge on the Drina is a work that defies easy categorisation. It is not a novel in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a chronicle of sorts. A succession of loosely connected vignettes unified by a single golden thread: the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge which crosses the River Drina at the town of Višegrad. Andrić eschews the typical conventions and form of the novel and opts for something else entirely. He weaves a sort of vast, incohate tapestry which taps into the very rhythms of life in Višegrad over the centuries. The result is something subterranean, something which taps into the very channels of history itself, as civilisations rise and fall yet life, when stripped down to its bare essence, remains much the same. Ever the discerning observer, Andrić's prose has a certain gravitas about it, infused with the wisdom of myth and legend and a thousand lives well-lived.
At the centre of all this sits the Bridge: a structure of striking beauty which is as close a thing to a protagonist as the book has. The early chapters detail its construction as a bequest of Mehmed Paša who was taken from Višegrad as a boy to serve the Ottoman Empire and climbed to the very highest echelons of power. Constructing the Bridge is a Herculean task, but one which transforms the fate of a community. It will become a Bridge on which "destiny is woven". Višegrad will become a centre of commerce. It will bring great opportunity, but also great change:
Even the least of the townsman felt as if his powers were suddenly multiplied, as if some wonderful, superhuman exploit was brought within the measure of his powers and within the limits of everyday life, as if besides the well-known elements of earth, water, and sky, one more were open to him, as if by some beneficent effort each one of them could suddenly realise one of his dearest desires, the ancient dream of man - to go over water and to be master of space.
Of course, on a symbolic level the Bridge itself is a metonym for Yugoslavia: the bridge between East and West. Both figuratively and literally, the Bridge is a meeting place, a cauldron of cultural exchange. It's construction ties a community together and its destruction will rip it apart. The centre of the bridge is the site of passionate assignation, bitter confrontation, zealous debate, and grim execution. The Bridge bears witness to changing habits and customs, to receding Ottoman power and growing Habsburg might. It seems to be the one fixed point, the concrete symbol of certitude that life will go on. But perhaps even that is illusory. After all, Andrić was a grim prophet and foresaw the tragic fate which would befall Bosnia in 1990s. Modernity, to him, was a double-edged sword. With material gains, came intangible losses and a growing sense of jeopardy. Alihodja, Andrić's most astute observer, offers readers a chilling observation following the arrival of rail services: "the time will come when the Schwabes will make you ride where you don't want to go and where you never even dreamt of going". This is Andrić at his most formidable, tapping into the very currents of history.
However, The Bridge on the Drina is not pessmistic, it is a work of great joy. Andrić paints portraits of us at our most human. Our fits of irrationality aren't derisively ridiculed, but empathetically acknowledged. Seemingly insignificant individuals such as One-Eyed Ćorkan the "dishevelled" drunk and Radislav of Užice who is impaled by the Ottomans for resisting the Bridge's construction enter the town's mytholgical canon. Andrić redeems them and makes the ordinary extraordinary. This is a book about the hazy and intense realm of human passions against the backdrop of history's slow grind. The struggles of generations and even time itself seems to merge at various points. In doing so, Andrić offers us ambiguity, but of a satisfying sort. Much changes, but stays the same. We will always have our foibles, our behaviour, after all, will remain very human and very flawed:
This generation was richer only in illusions; in every other way it was similar to any other. It had the feeling of both lighting the fires of a new civilization and extinguishing the last flickers of another. Everything appeared as an exciting new game on that ancient bridge, which shone in the moonlight of those July nights, clean, young and unalterable, strong and lovely in its perfection, stronger than all that time might bring and man imagine or do.
Above all, this book is a meditation on change and history. It tries to make sense of the theme on which Andrić was most hung-up: the sense of misery and loss which is inherent in the passing of time. Change brings with it anxiety and uncertainty. We have an "eternal desire" to "forsee the action of natural forces", "to avoid or surmount them". This is our instinct, but it is also a curse. It means we must know our history. To understand ourselves, to have an identity, we must know what came before us. For Andrić, to know history is to overcome. Events have a certain cyclicality. Here, he brings to mind a remark made by Eugene O'Neill: "there is no present or future, only the past happening over and over again - now". Though it is a story much inspired by centuries old tales, Andrić is asking an urgent question: how much have we really changed?
Stylistically, this work is masterful and extremely distinctive, evoking the delicately balanced nature of Conradian prose. His capacity for describing the natural world is of the highest calibre and he conjures up images of an exotic town surrounded by verdant forests and craggy mountains with markets full of the humdrum of commerce, the scent of cinnamon and cardamom, and the smouldering glow of the languid afternoon sun. His is lyricism distilled, echanting prose which hits you at your very core as shown below:
Always the same black pain which cut into his breast with that special childhood pang which was clearly distinguishable from all of the other pains that life had brought him. In one of those moments, he thought that he might be able to free himself from this discomfort if he could do away with that ferry on the distant Drina and bridge the steep banks and evil water between them, join the two ends of the road which was broken by the Drina and thus link safely and forever Bosnia and the East, the place of his origin & the places of his life. Thus, it was he who first, in a single moment behind closed eyelids, saw the graceful silhouette of the great stone bridge which was to be built there.
This book is, in the words of one critic, a work of "broad experience, rare intution, and philosophical breadth". In my humble, opinion it is an unmissable literary odyssey. Hopefully, some of you will jump aboard.