SOURCE: Matejic, Mateja. “Elements of Folklore in Andrić's Na Drini ćuprija.” Canadian Slavonic Papers: An Inter-Disciplinary Quarterly Devoted to the Soviet Union 20 (1978): 348-57.

[In the following essay, Matejic finds that Andrić's use of elements of folklore in his works goes beyond adaptation and is instead a full-fledged “literarization” of traditional folk stories.]

If the presence of folklore elements in the prose of two of the greatest Serbian writers, Petar Petrović-Njegoš and Ivo Andrić, is no more than a coincidence, it is a very interesting one. A close study of their works, however, reveals that the presence of folklore in them is not incidental and that, in fact, there is a definite correlation between their use of folklore and the high artistry of their works.

The folklore elements in Andrić's works are so clearly evident that they cannot be overlooked even by the common reader, let alone students of literature. A number of literary critics noticed and mentioned their presence, yet a more detailed study on this subject has not yet been done. This is the aim and purpose of this paper.

In the works of Andrić, as well as in the works of Njegoš and some other great authors who utilized folklore elements in their art, one does not find a mere imitation of folk poetry and prose, but an artistic adaptation, a literarization of folklore. A successful artistic adaptation of these elements never aims at the adaptation of the entire folklore system as such. In other words, as Maximilian Braun stated,

The problem of literary adaptation, [of] “literarization” of folk poetry is a question of transfer of a poetic idea from an independent system into another. … Individual means of expression from folk poetics can be can be successfully utilized in literary poetry, but this poetic as such, as an artistic system, cannot be transferred into some other atmosphere, into another system of thought and emotion.¹

Braun's statement concerning folk poetry does apply to folklore in general and an evidence of it is Andrić's adaptation of folklore elements in his literary works.

Adaptation or literarization of folklore material in the works of Andrić is achieved with a degree of perfection never before achieved in Serbian and Yugoslav prose. This is probably why Dragiša Živković claims that

Ivo Andrić is an outstanding epic writer [epičar]. In fact, he is neither a novelist nor a story-teller [pripovedač], but an epic poet, a rapsodist who tells us about our past, about the people and destinies from our land who have an importance for us as well as for man in general.²

Andrić's manner of narration is unmistakably the one in which the storytellers of folktales and stories narrate. This was noted by Isidora Sekulić as early as 1923 when Andrić had just begun to attract the attention of literary critics. She observed that “the first of oriental characteristics of Andrić's story lies in the manner of presentation of the content, which reminds one of oral narration.”³

What Sekulić refers to as “oriental” can be identified with folklore. In fact, literary critics who comment on Andrić's art seldom fail to point out that his manner of narration is similar to that used in folklore narratives. One of them, Dragiša Živković, elaborated on this subject.

As for the manner and tone of narration, Andrić undoubtedly followed the folk storyteller. That fine characteristic of the folk storyteller who ‘ornaments and embroiders,’ who narrates interestingly and convincingly, himself firmly believing in that which he narrates, Andrić inherited from his Bosnian predecessors, famous for their story telling and art of conversation [eglen]. Almost unnoticeably, in the manner of the folk storyteller, he knows how to spread temporal and spatial frames of his story and to lead you ‘across nine mountains and nine seas,’ as far as a different country, a different kingdom. …⁴

Petar Džadžić, an excellent connoisseur of Andrić's art, also commented at some length on this subject.

Abiding by the spirit of popular traditions, Andrić also abides by their linguistic suitability; he ‘tells’ the story without apparent desire to prejudice anything either by artistry or by a more contemporary narrative technique. Emotions and thoughts have the same festive attire of words hewed from the natural speech of the oral folk storyteller, and they never change it. Each of Andrić's narrative visions of a mythical past derives from the clear and simple forms of popular tradition and its persuasiveness is conceived in an absolute purity, a purity which does not know of that simulation which wants to sustain the spark of a deep meaning by rubbing one choice word against another choice word.⁵

In addition to narrative methods, Andrić's prose also adapts stylistic characteristics of oral narration. Živković devoted considerable attention to the analysis of Andrić's sentence structure and came to the conclusion that it was “close to the sentence structure of our folk stories as told in Vuk's [Karadžić] manner of narrating. That closeness is reflected primarily in the length of his sentence. A compound sentence of Andrić is usually composed of two to five simple-extended clauses and this adds to his sentence clarity and transparency, characteristic of our folk narratives.”⁶

Some of the lexical material characteristic of oral narration and, particularly, of epic poetry, is also adopted in Andrić's prose. An illustration of this is his use of Turkish loan words,⁷ folk expressions and dialecticisms.

Reality in Andrić's prose is composed of a perfect blending of the legendary, the mythical, and the realistic, which is also often the case in oral narration and epic poetry. The truth in Andrić's works is not factual, yet, to use a paradox, it is somehow more true than the factual truth. It is appropriate to state that although not always adhering absolutely to historical facts, both the folk epic and Andrić's art adhere absolutely to a higher truth. In folklore one finds historical persons and factual events adapted to express a Weltanschauung rather than to present these persons and events for their own sake. In other words, folk art and Andrić's prose are not the mere records of real and imaginary events, but the poetic and prophetic visions which reveal a deeper meaning of these events and disclose the very essence of reality of which these events are but the instruments. The inclusion of mythical and legendary events in the structure of Andrić's art does not weaken it but, on the contrary, reinforces its realism. Both folklore and Andrić's art disregard the chronology of events, historical periods, characteristic features, biographical data and actual names of historical persons; but they do not violate the final truth concerning the values and ideals they represent. Neither folklore nor Andrić are afraid to use myths and legends in proclaiming the truths of life.

Andrić's predisposition toward the use of legendary material in his prose has been noted by several literary critics. Džadžić observed:

In accordance with his deep passion for reviving legends and to manifest in their monstrous atmosphere, through sufferers and despairing [characters] of bygone times, his personal but transformed, ex-Ponto-like disturbances, Andrić attached himself to the myths of popular traditions and within their framework he looked for a place for his poetry; a fruit, a hybrid of personal vision and folk myth, whose ancient wisdom is elevated to the level of poetic truth, it [Andrić's poetry] has the taste of a dream, extraordinary and odd, an atmosphere of oriental legends, but a realistic psychological basis as well, which, no matter how essential it may be, is apparently subdued by the bizarre legendary-poetic forms.⁸

In fewer words, Živković expressed a view similar to Džadžić's: “Undoubtedly Andrić found in the epic form of the legendary or mythical content that type of artistic narration in which his artistic potential will be realized most completely and most objectively.”⁹

All the aforementioned views on the nature of the art of Ivo Andrić, true as they are, require some support of intrinsic evidence; otherwise they may appear to be no more than arbitrary generalizations. This evidence can be found in almost every work of his, yet Na Drini ćuprija [The Bridge on the Drina] being the work which contains most evidently and most extensively folklore elements, will be analyzed here with the purpose of providing illustrations of Andrić's use of folklore.

In Serbian folk epic the building of churches and monasteries is a frequent motif. The names of churches and monasteries are usually real, though they sometimes appear in a corrupted form (e.g., Vilandar or Vilindar for Hilandar). The details of the building of these edifices, however, is often described in terms of myths and legends. Andrić chose the building of a bridge and its history as the subject of his novel.

In the novel, the details concerning the actual identity and existence, time of construction, location, and physical description of the bridge, as well as the name of the person who ordered and financed its erection, are factual. The description of the building of the bridge, however, is a combination of historical facts, folk legends, and Andrić's personal artistic vision. In this respect there is a great similarity between folk epic songs describing the building of churches and monasteries and Andrić's novel.

From the scant historical records concerning the bridge on the Drina and its construction, one learns only that it was built at the request and with the financial support of Mehmed Paša Sokolović and that its builder was Kodža Mimar Sinan. Erection began in 1571 and was completed in 1576. Nihadi, a poet from Sarajevo, marked the beginning with a poem, and its completion with another. Tarih, the poem commemorating the completion of the bridge, has been preserved in historical records and in the novel. However, the text of Tarih and the one quoted in the novel are not identical, and the name of the poet is given in the novel as Badi.

The actual building of the bridge, of which there are no historical records, has been depicted in many details in the novel. Folk legends and Andrić's artistic imagination provided details for that depiction. In some cases the author, through the narrator, forewarns readers that the descriptive details are derived from legends; in other cases he creates the impression that these details are actual facts, where in actuality, he is presenting his own artistic “legend.”

In the first chapter Andrić introduces legendary material concerning the construction of the bridge via a reference to the children who “passed … the main part of their childhood on or around the bridge.”¹⁰ The narrator then mentions that “they knew all the bosses and concavities of the masons, as well as all the tales and legends associated with the existence and building of the bridge, in which reality and imagination, waking and dreaming, were wonderfully and inextricably mingled” (p. 15). In the novel, too, the scenes of the erection of the bridge are created artistically through a depiction in which “reality and imagination, waking and dreaming, were wonderfully and inextricably mingled.” First the narrator retells the legends “known to the children” and, later, presents the “actual facts” of the building which provide an explanation and indicate the sources for the legends. According to these legends, as well as to the historical records, “the bridge had been built by the Grand Vezir, Mehmed Pasha …” (p. 15). Its builder, according to the legends, “known to the children” was Rade Neimar (Rade the Mason), a legendary character from the folk epic.

In presenting legend as an integral part of his novel, Andrić uses a method in which the narrator retells the legends including his comments in narration. For example, “It was built by Rade the Mason, who must have lived for hundreds of years to have been able to build all that was lovely and lasting in the Serbian lands, that legendary and in fact nameless master whom all the people desire and dream of, since they do not want to have to remember or be indebted to too many, even in memory (pp. 15-16).

The italicized portion of the quote (italics are mine), indicates the narrator's comment and is typical of Andrić's method of narration in which he incorporates legendary and folklore material in his narrative. In a similar manner he includes tales about the vila who hinders the building of the bridge by “destroying by night what had been built by day” (p. 16). Here the motif from the folk poem “Zidanje Skadra na Bojani” [Building of Skadar on the Bojana] is easily recognizable. Whereas in that poem the hostile vila is placated and the continuation of the building is secured by sacrificing the young wife of Gojko Mrnjavčević (who was walled into the foundations of the edifice, except for her breasts so that she could continue to nurse her infant son Jovo), in the novel two children, twin brother and sister Ostoja and Stoja, “were walled into the pier, for it could not be otherwise, but Rade, they say, had pity on them and left openings in the pier through which the unhappy mother could feed her sacrificed children” (p. 16).

Unlike folklore tales, legends and epic songs, which never attempt to offer rational explanations for mythical and fantastic material they contain, Andrić usually provides rational though fictional explanations. In the third chapter he offers such an explanation for the legend about Ostoja and Stoja. After describing the sabotage of the bridge, organized by the peasant Radisav and his accomplices, the narrator relates:

The common people easily make up fables and spread them quickly, wherein reality is strangely and inextricably mixed and interwoven with legend. The peasants who listened at night to the gusle player said that the vila who was destroying the bridge had told Abidaga that she would not cease her work of destruction until twin children, Stoja and Ostoja by name, should be walled into the foundations. Many swore that they have seen the guards who were searching for such a pair of children in the villages (the guards were indeed going around the villages but they were not looking for children but listening for rumours and interrogating the people in order to try and find out who were those unknown persons who were destroying the bridge).

(p. 36)

The origin of the legend of Stoja and Ostoja is further clarified by the story of crazy Ilinka, “a poor stuttering half-witted girl” (p. 36), from a village near Višegrad. She somehow became pregnant and gave birth to twins, both stillborn.

The women from the village who helped her at the birth, which was exceptionally difficult, at once buried the children in a plum orchard. But on the third day after, the unfortunate mother got up and began to look for her children everywhere in the village. In vain they explained to her that the children had been born dead and had been buried. Finally, in order to be rid of her incessant questionings, they told her, or rather explained to her by gestures, that her children had been taken away to the town, down there where the Turks were building the bridge.

(p. 36)

The unfortunate mother went to the site never ceasing her search for her two children. “She went on living there, a harmless idiot, by the construction works. And because of her the story remained that the Turks had walled her children into the bridge. Some believed it and others not, but nonetheless it was repeated all the more and noised afar” (p. 37). By his own legend about the unfortunate mother, Andrić supplied a rational explanation for other legends of unfortunate mothers and children, and immortalized their sufferings. Andrić also provides a rational, yet imaginary, explanation of the legend about the “Crni Arapin” (“Black Arab”). The character of the “Black Arab,” frequently mentioned in folk epic songs, appears in the novel as a “real Negro,” the favourite assistant of Maestro Antonio. The Arab lost his life during the building of the bridge through a freak accident, yet his memory was immortalized in the legends about the “Black Arab” who lives in the structure of the bridge.

As for Mehmed Paša Sokolović, founder of the bridge on the Drina, history has preserved very few records about his life and, in particular, about his childhood and youth. Furthermore it is not easy to determine which of the preserved records are truly historical and which are legendary. Radovan Samardžić observed in his excellent book, Mehmed Sokolović, that “Sokolović's past has been, probably, lost forever, yet, in spite of it, the debt has been paid to him. … The debt has been paid in full by the tradition.”¹¹

In his novel, Andrić also paid homage to this historical person who had fascinated the imaginations of folk artists with his glorious and tragic life. In chapter two, Andrić introduces Mehmed's biographical data. Once more Andrić blends historical and legendary details with artistic imagery. The narrator relates that “The first idea of the bridge, which was destined to be realized, flashed, at first naturally confused and foggy, across the imagination of a ten year old boy from the nearby village of Sokolovići, one morning in 1516 when he was being taken along the road from his village to far-off, shining and terrible Stambul” (p. 22).

The novel corresponds to a certain degree with historical fact. It is true that Baja, or Bajica Sokolović, the future Grand Vezir Mehmed Paša Sokolović, was born in a village near Višegrad around 1505. In 1523, and not in 1516, he and some forty other boys and young men were seized by the Turks as “tribute in blood” and taken to Jedrene (Odrin), the Sultan's court. Only later was Mehmed Sokolović taken to Stambul. After several years his parents, two brothers and one cousin were also taken to Stambul and converted to Islam. Andrić utilized a detail concerning the abduction of Mehmed's cousin in his depiction of the abduction of Mehmed and the boys with him. In the novel, the narrator tells of “the chosen children [who] were laden on to little Bosnian horses in a long convoy. On each horse were two plaited panniers, like those for fruit, one on each side, and in every pannier was put a child, each with a small bundle and a round cake, the last thing they were to take from their parents' home” (p. 24).

Mehmed, who was eighteen years old when abducted by the Turks, could not have possibly travelled in this manner. It is known, however, that his cousin, who was named Mustafa after he had been converted to Islam, “was too small to be able to sit on the horse, so he was put in a large plaited pannier and taken to Carigrad [Stambul].”¹² In the manner of the folk singer, Andrić changes factual details whenever it serves his artistic purpose, without actually deviating from a higher truth of life.

“Tribute in blood” is a motif frequently present in folklore epic songs and narratives, yet they do not provide a detailed description of the scenes of abduction of the children. Combining scant historical information with his artistic imagination, Andrić provided some details concerning the “tribute in blood.” The narrator first tells of a November day when “the aga of the janissaries, with armed escort, was returning to Stambul after collecting from the villages of eastern Bosnia the appointed number of Christian children for the blood tribute” (p. 23).

After that he provides historically true information on what the parents usually did in order to save their children from being taken by the Turks: “the necessary number of healthy, bright and good-looking lads between ten and fifteen years old had been found without difficulty, even though many parents had hidden their children in the forests, taught them how to appear half-witted, clothed them in rags and let them get filthy, to avoid the aga's choice. Some went so far as to maim their own children, cutting off one of their fingers with an axe” (p. 24).

The plight of the parents of the abducted children, of the mothers in particular, is also recreated in the novel in this moving scene:

The mothers were especially persistent and hard to restrain. Some would rush forward not looking where they were going, with bare breasts, and dishevelled hair, forgetting everything about them, wailing and lamenting as at the burial, while others almost out of their minds moaned as if their wombs were torn by birth pangs, and blinded with tears ran right on to the horsemen's whips. … ‘Rade, my son, don't forget your mother. …’ ‘Ilija, Ilija, Ilija!’ screamed another woman, searching desperately with her glances for the dear well-known head and repeating this incessantly as if she wished to carve into the child's memory that name which would in a day or two be taken from him forever.

(pp. 24-25)

Such scenes, such artistic details cannot be found in oral poetry and narrative. However, they preserved the memory of the “blood tribute” and provided the artist with inspiration to use his imagination to recreate these details of the pathetic scenes of abduction of Christian children.

Aside from Mehmed Paša Sokolović, several other persons known in oral poetry or prose are mentioned in the novel. Among them are Kraljević Marko, Djerzelez Alija, and Karadjordje.

Unknown to folklore yet modeled upon the image of hajduks as depicted in folklore is the character of Radisav who opposed the building of the bridge or, more exactly, the oppressive power of the Turks and the injustice of forced labour (kuluk). Radisav's courage, endurance, and disconcern for own life in the struggle for his ideals is reminiscent of the epic figure of Stari Vujadin (The Old Vujadin) and other hajduks. The depiction of Radisav's impaling, one of the most powerful scenes not only in Andrić's novel but, eventually, in world literature, is an excellent adaptation of the folk-epic depictions of the tortures to which the Turks subjected the hajduks and raja.

In the novel, Radisav and other peasants, forced by the Turks to leave their homes and work free on the building site, are moved to resistance by the singing of epic songs by a Montenegrin. He sings of past Serbian glory and thereby reminds them of their human dignity and inspires them to rebel against their inhuman treatment. The impact his singing had on the peasants is described in the following passage.

The peasants pressed closer and closer around the singer but without making the slightest noise; their very breathing could be heard. They half closed their eyes, carried away with wonder. Thrills ran up and down their spines, their backs straightened up, their breasts expanded, their eyes shone, their fingers opened and shut and their jaw muscles tightened. The Montenegrin developed his melody more and more rapidly, even more beautiful and bolder, while the wet and sleepless workmen, carried away and insensible to all else, followed the tale as if it were their own more beautiful and more glorious destiny.

(p. 34)

The scene in which the narrator describes the gusle, the man who plays it, the guslar, the chanting itself, guslanje, the poem sung by the guslar and the manner in which he did it, as well as the impact his singing made on the peasants, is an integral part of the action in the novel. However, it is at the same time the author's tribute to the historical role of guslars who, by singing about past Serbian glory at the time of the Turkish occupation of Serbian lands, preserved Serbian nationalism and kindled the people's hope and faith in liberation. Furthermore, speaking figuratively, the chanting of the guslar inspired Andrić. He assumed the role of guslar, but instead of singing about the past suffering and glory of the Serbian people, he narrated it in his novel. One may also notice that the two central themes of epic songs, the Turkish occupation of Serbia and liberation of the Serbs from the yoke of slavery, are also the two central themes in Andrić's novel. Even as far as chronology is concerned, the Serbian epic and Andrić's novel cover an almost identical period. In the cycle of so-called “historical songs,” which are the most numerous of epic songs, events from a period of six centuries, from the rise of the Nemanjić dynasty, and particularly from the battle of Kosovo until the liberation of Serbia and Montenegro are narrated. On the other hand, Andrić's novel begins at the outset of the sixteenth century and ends with the first decades of the twentieth. It covers events from the post-Kosovo period to the First World War. Events from the era between the liberation of Serbia and Montenegro, last to be chanted about in the Serbian epic, and those of the First World War, which do not figure in the epic songs, are related in the final chapters of Andrić's novel. One may say therefore, that the novel, or at least its final portion, can be considered as a continuation and updating of “folklore history.” In this respect, guslars' tradition of keeping records of the most significant events of Serbian history and upholding national and spiritual values of Serbian people was continued by Andrić. Thus, one may conclude, that folklore, the art of peasants, provided Andrić with material and inspiration for his monumental epic novel, Na Drini ćuprija.

Notes

1. M. Braun, “Gorski vijenac kao primer književne obrade narodne poezije,” Rad X-og kongresa Saveza folklorista Jugoslavije na Cetinju, 1963 godine (Cetinje, 1964), p. 39.

2. D. Živković, Od Vuka do Andrića (Belgrade, 1965), p. 174 (emphasis in the original).

3. I. Sekulić, Iz domaćih književnosti, I (Novi Sad, 1964), 128.

4. Živković, p. 154.

5. P. Džadžić, “Andrić kao pripovedač,” in Svetlana Velmar-Janković (ed.), Književnost izmedu dva rata, I (Srpska književnost u književnoj kritici, VII) (Belgrade, 1965), 173.

6. Živković, p. 122 (emphasis in the original).

7. See J. Kragalott, “The Turkish Loan Words in Ivo Andrić's Na Drini ćuprija” (unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Ohio State University, 1969).

8. Džadžić, p. 170.

9. Živković, p. 146.

10. Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina (New York, 1959), p. 15 (all subsequent quotes from this novel will be indicated in parentheses in the text).

11. R. Samardžić, Mehmed Sokolvić (Belgrade, 1971), p. 12.

12. Ibid., p. 33.