The Bridge on the Drina

Product Information

One of my favorite stories of this section was Lotte’s. She was seen as running a popular tavern. In truth she was quite wealthy and had not only invested all over Europe, but was supporting her Jewish relatives all over Europe and the Balkans. She could see and recognize the changes that were coming. She knew resistance was futile. When a distant relative wants to marry a wealthy and good man the marriage is about to founder because he is a Christian. Lotte decides the future on pragmatic grounds to save the family: In Visegrad, an elderly Bosniak stands at the highest point on the bridge, a favoured spot for executions down the centuries. He said he had four bullets in his hip from the war. Seventeen years after it ended, he was still living in communal accommodation, because his house was damaged in the conflict and he had never had the money to rebuild it. The universal value of the bridge at Višegrad is unquestionable for all the historical reasons and in view of the architectural values it has. It represents a major stage in the history of civil engineering and bridge architecture, erected by one of the most celebrated builders of the Ottoman Empire.

The town was only an hour’s march from the Serbian frontier. At the beginning of the 19th century there was a revolt in Serbia against the Turks. The Bosnian Turks asked for men for the army. Eventually peace came again but: The dreadful events occurring in Sarajevo over the past several months turn my mind to a remarkable historical novel from the land we used to call Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric’s The Bridge on the Drina."—John M. Mohan, Des Moines Sunday Register Despite these historical events, authenticity has generally been maintained through the course of the bridge's successive restorations. It remains fragile, its foundations being particularly threatened by the use of the two hydro-electric power stations, one in Bosnia and one in Serbia, that affect the water levels of the river.Ramadanović, Petar (2000). "Ivo Andrić 1892–1975: Bosnian Novelist and Short-Story Writer". In Classe, Olive (ed.). Encyclopedia of Literary Translation Into English: A-L. Vol.1. London, England: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-884964-36-7. Only an insignificant minority, accursed and preordained, continued on that road forever choosing alcohol instead of life, the shortest and most deceptive illusion in this short and deceptive life; they lived for alcohol and were consumed by it.” The 179.5-meter-long (589ft) bridge is a representative masterpiece of Mimar Sinan, one of the greatest architects and engineers of the classical Ottoman period and a contemporary of the Italian Renaissance, with which his work can be compared. The UNESCO summary states: The unique elegance of proportion and monumental nobility of the property as a whole bear witness to the greatness of this style of architecture. [2] History [ edit ] The center pile of the bridge

Wachtel, Andrew Baruch (1998). Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3181-2. The central historical outcome of Visegrad is changed with the Austrians and most especially with the coming of the railroad. The railroad came into Visegrad from the west, but didn’t cross the bridge, rather it then veered south and continued its easterly route much to the south. Thus there was no longer much reason to cross the bridge except to get from one section of Visegrad to the other. For hundreds of years it had been an extremely important route between Bosnia and Serbia and on toward Turkey (to the southeast). Now there was no reason to use this famous Bridge on the Drina except to get into the tiny and relatively uninteresting east Visegrad section of town.However the novel then takes a major turn in 1878. The Austrians took control of Sarajevo and began a move toward Visegrad. This invasion and occupation with eventual annexation would change life in Visegrad forever.

These influences, along with the very specific language of his Bosnian homeland and Serbian and Croatian literary traditions, are evident throughout his writing. In some of the close descriptive passages in The Bridge on the Drina there are echoes of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, a writer whom Andrić admired hugely. But he succeeds in blending these European traditions effortlessly with the cadences and vocabulary of the Bosnian language’s mixed heritage. Nikolić, Dragan (2016). "Echo of Silence: Memory, Politics and Heritage in Višegrad". In Törnquist-Plewa, Barbara (ed.). Whose Memory? Which Future?: Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe. New York City: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78533-123-7. Merima Čustović (5 September 2021). "Andrić je tražio da se njegov rukopis Na Drini ćuprija čuva u Sarajevu". www.faktor.ba (in Bosnian) . Retrieved 17 December 2021.

Preview Book

After some four years of occupation the people begin a sort of passive resistance. They see the nature of life in the world is changing and they don’t like it. But, not knowing what else to do they begin to react. They give false information to the officials, trash signs and other “improvements” and the like. But unlike periods of Turkish occupation, in the main the Austrians just turn a blind eye to the “resistance,” and just keep on slowly making the town over in their own manner. Criterion (iv): The Višegrad bridge is a remarkable architectural testimony to the apogee of the classical age of the Ottoman Empire, whose values and achievements mark an important stage in the history of humankind. In the old house the doors are small, and so very low that you can enter the house only by bowing your head. Inside it is dark. The house has no windows; instead of floor only beaten earth. To the left from the door is a stone bench on which a wooden barrel for water was standing … Smoke went through a badza, a hole in the roof above the open fireplace. The only light in the house came through it. 2 Hayden, Robert (2012). From Yugoslavia to the Western Balkans: Studies of a European Disunion, 1991–2011. Leiden, Netherlands: BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-24191-6. The spirit of the young intellectuals, now studying at universities all over the Austrian empire was:

Epic saga of a Balkan river town, which receives a strong and beautiful bridge at the height of Ottoman power in the 1500s. The novel follows the town and bridge for almost four centuries. I recommend looking at this bridge when you read the book. It is easy to find pictures on the web of this beautiful eleven-arched stone bridge. How what happened became myth is fascinating. The Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Turkish cultures and their respective religious constraints are described through the history fo this bridge, the bridge over the Drina at Visegrad in Bosnia. Banac, Ivo (1984). The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-9493-2.

A vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I, The Bridge on the Drina earned Andric the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. With this movement comes change. Mainly the old retain their world to the end, but the young begin to change and to see life not as Visegard, but as the Austrian Empire. The Bridge on the Drina remains Andrić's most famous novel and has received the most scholarly attention of all his works. Most scholars interpret the eponymous bridge as a metonym for Yugoslavia, which was itself a bridge between East and West during the Cold War, "partaking of both but being neither". However, at the time of writing, the country did not enjoy the reputation of an inter-civilizational mediator, which was fostered by Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito only after his split with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1948. Thus, the novel can be seen as having contributed to the formation of this national self-image. [32] Andrić suggests that the building of roads and bridges by Great Powers is rarely done as a gesture of friendship towards local populations, but rather as a means of facilitating conquest. Thus, the bridge is both a symbol of unification and division. It is a symbol of unification in that it allows the inhabitants of Višegrad to cross from one bank to the other and in that the kapija serves as a popular meeting place. On the other hand, it divides the town's inhabitants by acting as a constant reminder of the Ottoman conquest. [33] Little by little the changes made by the Austrians bring a relative prosperity and peace, at least “in the Franz-Joseph manner.” This was a period of great hope and nearly a utopian enthusiasm in Europe and the Austrians were bringing this world to Visegrad.