Ivo Andrić, the Nobel who wrote in a language that now not exists | Culture | EUROtoday
It normally smiles little, not past an overview. It appears to a sullen level. Perhaps every little thing is a matter of the taciturn bile, or of the insomnia, or of understanding or maybe misunderstood between compliments and congratulations. Sometimes, too, he’s seen with gabardina, headded with postwar pet and along with his glasses as an official, tailored to the grey existence. With Gabardina, it normally seems in a traditional inn: subsequent to the well-known Ottoman bridge over the Drina River, the place its most well-known novel develops, A bridge over drina.
In different images, meant, he’s additionally seen along with his palms within the pockets of the gabán. Walk concerning the leaf litter of the Belgrade parks or is sitting in a financial institution beneath the nice and cozy solar. His portrait seems printed on financial institution tickets and has statues that immortalize it in public areas. And there is no such thing as a lack of graffiti and profiles along with his face in murals and partitions, reminiscent of these of Visera, in Bosnia-Herzegovina (once more the place the bridge, the drina and the novel situated within the small metropolis as literary as oppressive).
This is Ivo Andrić (1892-1975), the one who was a diplomat, author and Prize Yugoslav in 1961. On March 13 the fiftieth anniversary of his dying in Belgrade is fulfilled. He was the best creator within the widespread language and the various pair of the southern Slavs, reflection, in brief, of that assemble – web site dissolved – which was referred to as Yugoslavia, the nation that now not exists.

From Bosnian-Croatian mother and father (they lived in Sarajevo), Ivo Andrić was born by random on October 9, 1892 in a misplaced place referred to as Dolac, connected to Travnik, in Bosnia. It was that poor “Catholic suburb” that’s cited a lot in Travnik chronicleone other of its nice novels, set within the Ottoman period beneath the echo and the powder phosphons of the Napoleonic wars. And right here, then, the confluence and probability between dates. 80 years have now been now since in 1945 Andrić printed not solely Travnik chroniclehowever the aforementioned A bridge over drina y The girl. He had written them, of the pull, beneath the darkish night time of the Nazi occupation in Belgrade, the dreadful bombings and the seclusion in a ground of Prizenska road.
Another probability in time leads us to the unlucky and truculent. Similarly, this 2025 is fulfilled 30 years of the top of the struggle in Bosnia (1992-1995). The probability wished on his ominous day that the centenary of the author’s start coincided simply with the start of the taking pictures and the lengthy siege of Sarajevo (some of the atrocious episodes of the struggle actually takes place within the prestile of the bridge over the drina in Viserad).
The jury granted by the Nobel Prize for literature did it “by the epic force with which he has drawn issues and represented human destinations extracted from the history of his country.” Claudio Magris, within the nice gloss that pulls on Utopia and disenchantmenthe says the identical, however in any other case extra poetic and dimensional, suggesting that Andrić is the author of time depth. He manages to hyperlink the archaic previous, a mirrored image of the Ottoman Bosnia (melting pot and Europe), with the sudden modernity that he needed to dwell within the worst of the 20 th century.

The determine of Andrić, performed by the Serbian actor Tihomir Stanić, has not too long ago been taken to a tv collection, Nobel laureateissued by the general public channel of Serbia. One may suppose if Andrić’s character, nearly inarticulate for motion, though environment friendly, full and discreet, provides for a serial hero in aciagos occasions, with two world wars in between and the creation of the Yugoslavia de Tito after the monarchical stage (Andrić served in a number of diplomatic legations on the service of his authorities, together with that of Madrid, on the street of Velázquez, the place he was 1928 to 1929).
Today, at 50 years of his dying, Andrić is the Nobel Prize for the paradox and absence. His nation as such, Yugoslavia, doesn’t exist. Yugoslav By conviction, he by no means paid consideration to nationwide particularism as a declare (if Bosnio by start, if he croatates for household, if he served by private determination). Established in Belgrade since 1941, he believed that Serbia was the closest factor to the concept of a Balkan Piedmont (the simile is Claudio Magris). In his opinion, Serbia meant the spearhead of the Brotherhood and Unity nation, the place Bosnia herself was in itself one other Yugoslavia, however in miniature.
Nationalism, earlier than, throughout and after the struggle, repudiated it typically (not at present) and typically manipulated and exalted it for comfort. If Andrić wrote in a lacking language and that no person needs to acknowledge at present, it’s one thing that lends itself to nuances. Writers and translators reminiscent of Marc Casals, Miguel Roán and Christian Martí-Menzel agree that the Serbocroata (Serbian-Croatian) It is at present not more than an antigualla. He even had difficulties as a typical and official language in Yugoslavia herself. There was at all times discuss based on the territories and with dialectal loans (the dialect Ijekavica extra within the Croats and partly the bosnians, and the ekavica extra within the Serbs).

Since 2017, most posyugoslav authors authorized the decision Declaration on the widespread languagewhich subscribes that “Croats, Bosnians, Serbs and Montenegrinos have a common standard language of the polycentric type.” In skilled translation, as Marc Casals clarifies, the politically right time period used is BCMS (Bosnio-Croata-Montenegrino-Serbio). Polyglot in eight European languages, Andrić himself, Bosnio-Croata, ended up writing in Cyrillic and within the Serbian variant.
Updated with the Nobel Yugoslav
The Canonical Work of Andrić, traditionally translated by Tihomir Pištelek and Luisa Fernanda Garrido, goes by the aforementioned titles Travnik chronicle, A bridge over drina (Historical, oral and legendary fable between the sixteenth and 1914) and The girl (The protagonist girl is heroin and usurera alongside). In these novels it’s mirrored how the historical past and the course of time levitate by fiction, altering the cycle of human existence and giving rise to the Porphia between the novel and the outdated, the progress and the pure marasmus. Bosniety within the atmospheres coves within the landscapes and penetrates stealthy into the blood and psychological irrigation of its individuals.
Andrić is a superb composer of human sorts. The character of his characters is perceived by his bodily options and even by the goodness or abuse of his inside organs. He wrote his informationjust like the fable THE ELEPHANT OF THE VISION y The cursed patio. The first, appeared in Xordic along with Anika’s occasions y Rabbitit will likely be reissued this yr. And the second, additionally by the Aragonese publishing home, will now seem in Casals model.
The remoted home and different tales (Meeting), sort of literary ghost, runs in a home within the Alifakovac neighborhood, in Sarajevo. Cliff printed some Andrić tales in Café Titanic and different tales (It accommodates its controversial piece A 1920 letter). In the identical editorial it appeared Goya (Essay translated by Roan, the results of Andrić’s religious visits to the Prado Museum) and also will be edited the good biography concerning the Nobel Nobel labored by Michael Martens and translated by Martí-Menzel. Sixth ground printed Signs on the streetdiary in time and confidences gav between the creator and his shadows.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2025-03-12/ivo-andric-el-nobel-que-escribia-en-una-lengua-que-ya-no-existe.html