[In the following essay, Eekman places Andrić's short stories in the context of the South Slavic literary tradition.]

In the United States and Western Europe, Ivo Andrić is considered a representative of Bosnian literature, a painter of historical Bosnian life—and to many people he is even the representative of Yugoslav—i.e., South Slavic—literature and culture. This unique position can in no way be denied him, and his uniqueness has been demonstrated, studied, and corroborated in numerous articles, essays, and books. In this contribution I would like to draw attention to his position within the traditions and trends of South Slavic prose writing—his niche in the literary currents of this part of Europe, especially as far as the short story is concerned.

The short story as a literary form and genre has always been the paramount type of prose among the South Slavs, much more so than the novel or any other genre. The critic Jovan Skerlić (1877-1914) called the short story “the national genre of Serbian literature,” and that could be said of Croatian, Bosnian, Slovene, or Bulgarian literature as well. Only since World War II has the novel made great strides in all the six South Slavic literatures we may distinguish, and Andrić probably contributed a great deal to that development with his novels, which, published immediately after the war, engendered such prestige and publicity.

Andrić wrote a respectable number of short stories in the period between the two world wars and shortly thereafter—106 of them all told in the latest edition of his works. With them he won wide recognition in interwar Yugoslavia among critics and the public alike. But it should be emphasized that in all the South Slavic lands there were good and successful story writers, building on a rich tradition; Andrić was primus inter pares, even though it may be true that, as the Serbian critic Petar Džadžić wrote, Andrić is “perhaps the first poet of human fate in our short story.”

Among Andrić's older contemporaries, still going strong in the 1920s and some in the 1930s—the period when Andrić made his career—were (to mention just a few) Borisav Stanković and Isidora Sekulić in Serbia; Milan Begović and Vladimir Nazor in Croatia; Fran Finžgar and Alojz Kraigher in Slovenia; and Elin Pelin, Iordan Iovkov, and Georgi Raichev in Bulgaria. They all emerged from the nineteenth-century school of prose writing, realistic in style, ethnographic and predominantly rural in its settings and contents. They did not write exclusively “rural” prose; Begovic, for example, was an author from and writing about the city; Stanković and Sekulić depicted mostly small town milieus, and the Bulgarians too would occasionally turn to urban themes. However, the rural setting was still very strongly present in all these literatures. There were rural stories by Pelin, Iovkov, Angel Karaliichev, and other contemporary authors in Bulgarian literature; peasant and small town stories by Finžgar, France Bevk, and Juš Kozak (who was born in the same year as Andrić) in Slovenia; by Slavko Kolar and Dinko Šimunović in Croatia, and by Ivo Ćipiko, who was a Serbianized Dalmatian. Peasant stories have their roots in the earliest beginnings of each of these national literatures and are inspired and nourished by the oral folktale. And Andrić fits very well here: at least ten of his stories entirely and two partly take place in the village among peasant men and women (e.g., “Veletovci” [“The people from Veletovci”], “Olujaci” [“The village Olujaci”], and “Kosa” [“The scythe”] in the former category and “Lov na tetreba” [“Black cock hunting,” which could be characterized as a Chekhovian story] and “Zmija” [“The snake”] in the latter). When we range Andrić among the authors on rural themes, we place him in a long and fruitful tradition that is still alive, as is evidenced by such writers as Ćamil Sijarić, the painter of the Sandžak region and its Muslim peasants, and the popular Bulgarian Nikolai Khaitov.

The rural setting, natural in these traditionally agrarian countries, is only part of the broad stream of realistic literature that has been pouring forth since the 1880s and is still continuing—from Milovan Glišić, Fran Levstik, and Ante Kovačić to Aleksandar Tišma and Slobodan Novak in our time. Ivo Andrić occupies a prominent place among the South Slavic realists, with his novels and with stories like “Ćilim” (“The rug”), “Bife Titanik” (“The bar Titanic”), “Razaranje” (“Destruction”), “Zeko” (“Bunny”), and “Na drugi dan Božića” (“The day after Christmas”). It is not hard to find short stories with different themes and plots but a similar method of description and narration in the works of (for example) Josip Kosor and Josip Kozarac in Croatia or Iovkov and Karaliichev in Bulgaria. The psychological realism in Andrić's stories from an urban, “bourgeois” milieu (like, for example, “Porodična slika” [“Family portrait”], “Zeko,” or even the novel Gospodjica [The Woman from Sarajevo]) can be juxtaposed with stories and novellas by such late nineteenth-century authors as Kozarac, Sima Matavulj, and Todor Vlaikov and contemporaries such as Branimir Ćosić and Vladan Desnica. Andrić's prose has been compared by Bulgarian critics to that of the Bulgarian realist-novelist Emiliian Stanev (1907-79).¹ In this connection I might mention the story “Brak gospodina načelnika” (“The marriage of Mr. Chief”), by another Bosnian, Sead Fatihagić (born 1935), predominantly a short story writer. In it he depicts a “softy,” a henpecked husband dominated by a formidable wife—very much like Andrić's Zeko.

Andrić's fame, nationally and internationally, rests largely upon his stories and novels about old Bosnia, in a sometimes specific, often not specified, period of Bosnian history, usually in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, in a few cases in a more remote past. In this prose he evokes a half oriental and somewhat mysterious, sometimes even sultry atmosphere that is considered typically Andrićian, an ambience in which dark passions bubble under the surface and violence may suddenly erupt. In an essay by Isidora Sekulić in 1923, this oriental character is discussed for the first time.² This Bosnian setting and atmosphere is not exclusively Andrićian. A Bosnian-Hercegovinian literary tradition had developed in the course of the nineteenth century, mainly in centers like Sarajevo and Mostar. (Similar literary activity can be observed at that time in other larger Balkan administrative, economic, and cultural centers.) However, there is no doubt that Andrić was the one who lifted it out of its limited regional confines to an international height.

The first storyteller from Bosnia and about Bosnia was Petar Kočić, whose stories appeared in the first fifteen years of this century (he died in 1916, not yet forty years old). Many of his works were politically inspired, anti-Austrian, and satirical. Yet he focuses, like Andrić, on the warm-blooded, temperamental Bosnian people, their poverty, and the political oppression under which they lived, as well as their life in harmony with nature. Kočić has a series of stories about a Simeun Djak and the tall tales he tells in a monastery yard while he and a few other men—among them the abbot (iguman) of the monastery—are attending the distilling of rakija. The scene reminds us of Andrić's story “Kod kazana” (“By the brandy still”). In both cases, a Turk appears at the fire, only Kočić does not finish his story as dramatically as does Andrić, who lets the Turk kill the main character, Fra Marko. And Kočić's heroine Mrguda (from the eponymous story) with her fiery temperament and stubbornness brings to mind Andrićian female characters like Anika from “Anikina vremena” (“Anika's times”) and the women in “Napast” (“Ill fortune”), “Kod kazana,” and others. However, although some parallels can be drawn and both writers may be designated as realists, there is quite a difference between Kočić and Andrić in the style, “message,” and atmosphere of their works.

Closer to Andrić are two contemporaries from Bosnia, Hamza Humo and Isak Samokovlija. The former, a native of Mostar (Hercegovina) and a Muslim, was—like Andrić—arrested and interned as a young man at the beginning of World War I. He too started his career as a poet, then shifted to short stories, but apart from one short novel, he never ventured out of the short story genre. In most of his works Humo paints the Islamic world of Bosnia-Hercegovina—hadžis and hodžas, muftijas and agas, and the simple people in the kasaba. In his attitude toward the world of Muslim monks and clergy one detects at times a slightly mocking, ironic tone, similar to the tone in Andrić's stories about Catholic monks. (I do not mean a derisive, but a beningly smiling attitude.) Humo writes in a racy, eloquent style. At times he has an epic tone, and he evokes a somewhat sultry, voluptuous, erotic atmosphere similar to that of at least some of Andrić's Bosnian stories. I am referring to stories like “Džigit” (“Horsemanship”), “Sevdalijina ljubav” (“Sevdalija's love”), and “Ašikovanje” (“Courting”). Like Andrić, Humo turned to a more realistic manner of writing and to other, nonregional themes in his later work; also like Andrić, he wrote some pro-partisan stories that came out immediately after World War II.

Samokovlija was the painter of Jewish life in Bosnia (in particular that of the poor Jews), an author of short stories and plays, and a gifted storyteller; realistic, he does not indulge in lyrical or rhetorical expatiations. His first story, “Rafina avlija” (“Rafo's courtyard”), depicts the life and death of a destitute Jew, a beggar, Rafo, who bears some resemblance to Andrić's Ibro Solak in “Snopići” (“Bunches”), but he is even more pitiful. Much later he created a similar hero from the world of the underprivileged in Sarajevo, “Nosačc Samuel” (“The porter Samuel”). One of Samokovlija's best known stories, “Hanka,” is an exception—not about Jews, but about a gypsy girl; it could almost be one of Andrić's tales, relating the tragic life story of a girl in old Bosnia.

Some other writers have also staged their stories mainly in Bosnia. Chronologically the first is Hasan Kikić (1905-42), from an Islamic background in the Posavina in northern Bosnia. In a large part of his oeuvre (consisting of short stories and novels) he displays a somewhat pretentious, expressive, and partly expressionistic style and an inclination toward romantic folklore; thematically much of what he wrote takes place during World War I, and most of it is set among the rural Bosnian Muslim population. As a writer, Kikić is different from Andrić. Closer to him is Novak Simić (1906-81), who during the interwar period was an exponent of the so-called “social literature.” Politically leftist, Simić was from the Catholic segment of the Bosnian population (like Andrić) but later settled in Zagreb and became part of the Croatian literary establishment, whereas Andrić went to Belgrade and opted for the Serbian literary establishment.

Not all of Simić's works (among them several novels) are enacted in Bosnia, but the older and best known works take us back to the author's childhood and youth there. In these largely autobiographical stories we often find an atmosphere and thematic orientation reminiscent of Andrić. Among his heroes there is much unrequited love, a melancholy mood, and an element of oriental fatalism. Most of his writings have erotic undertones or overtones. Simić reminds us of Andrić with his occasional gnomic utterances. For example:

silom prilika; onim nenaslućenim koje nas često navede na nešto što nismo nikako željeli i od čega, evo, na sve moguće načine bježimo i uklanjamo mu se, a to što ga zovemo slučaj ili sudbina postavi nas licem u lice: iznenadnim zavijutkom puta.

(by the force of circumstances; what we call accident or fate, at an unexpected turn of the road, puts us face to face with that unsuspected force that often induces us to do something we had never wanted to do and that we, as a matter of fact, try to avoid and shun at all costs.)³

Simić, like Andrić, started out as a poet, as did Humo and Samokovlija. This poetical start, soon followed by a total dedication to prose, seems to be a fairly common pattern.

An important writer from Bosnia, considered by some second only to Andrić, is Meša Selimović (1910-82). His early prose, published in the 1950s and early 1960s, did not draw very much attention, but he became famous with his 1966 novel Derviš i smrt (The dervish and death). The dervish-hero lives in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century; however, his life and peripeteia are less absorbing than the views he expresses on life and the world, society, and the individual; they are expounded in the form of a personal confession in which, as Jovan Deretić put it, “ancient wisdom is combined with modern unrest of the mind.”⁴ Notably, it is the inevitability of suffering and fear that haunts the dervish, and in that respect we might draw parallels with various personages in Andrić's work: consul Daville in Travnička hronika (Bosnian chronicle); gazda-Jevrem in “Nemirna godina” (“A turbulent year”) and his thoughts about the transitoriness of beauty and human life; Alidede in “Smrt u Sinanovoj tekiji” (“Death in Sinan's Monastery”); and the consul-general in “Na drugi dan Božića,” whom “fear and shuddering do not leave.”⁵ There is also the main character and title hero of “Djordje Djordjević,” in whom “All caution, all considerations and anxieties coalesced into one single big … fear. Fear of changes in the weather, of bacteria, of pickpockets, of burglary, bad encounters, wrong steps or even an incautiously uttered word.”⁶ Zeko, in the story of that name, is also worried: in the tense situation of war and occupation, he feels fear, “not so much of the police and the responsibilities he had taken, but fear because of the unusualness of his actions, of his movements and changes.”⁷ Later, in notes collected in Znakovi pored puta (Signs by the roadside), Andrić wrote:

From conversations with people one can clearly see, or notice shamefully, how much everybody suffers, worries, and is alarmed. Fear is everywhere and insomnia generic. Few people know what they are afraid of, and in most cases the apprehension is unjustified or exaggerated, but nonetheless, people walk around with a haggard look, they choose back streets, at night they tremble before they finally fall asleep.⁸

For the Bosnian writers after Andrić, we point to Ćamil Sijarić, slightly younger than Selimović. Born in 1913—not in Bosnia, but in the Sandzak area—he lived and worked for a large part of his life in Sarajevo and is claimed by the Bosnian literati as one of theirs. Like Humo and Selimović, in a great number of short stories and novels Sijarić mainly painted the Muslim milieu from which he originated. Again, the setting of his works, the general climate, and even the style remind us of Andrić's Bosnian works. His language is, in the words of Slavko Leovac, “stylized à la Andrić.”⁹ Like Andrić, he does not aim at presenting a realistic picture of the world he evokes, but hints at the mysteriousness of that world—an essence that we can only surmise or feel but not fathom. His images, portraits, figures of speech, symbols, comparisons, metaphors, and expressions of gnomic wisdom are at times no less striking than those in Andrić's work. Here and there, Sijarić evokes the sensual, erotic atmosphere that we find in some of Andrić's stories (see, for example, Sijarić's “Kad djevojka spava, to je kao da mirišu jabuke” [“When a girl sleeps, it is as if the apples smell”] and “Udovica” [“The widow”]). The following sentence from a story by Sijarić could have come from Andrić's pen:

It is not important whether what is being told is true, so that it teaches us, or whether it is thought up, so that it amuses us; what is important is that, listening to stories and telling them, we live twice.¹⁰

Branko Ćopić (1915-78) must be left out of consideration here. He is another great Bosnian storyteller, novelist, and dramatist, also a poet initially, extremely productive and popular throughout Yugoslavia in his time. However, being primarily a humorist and satirist, he differs widely from Andrić, with whom he can be compared only in the geographical sense as a painter of the same landscape, dealing with the same nation, and of course writing in the same language.

More similarity to Andrić may be found in the work of Derviš Sušić (born 1925), a Bosnian prose writer and at least as much a dramatist and author of film scenarios. His novels and short stories often deal with World War II, but also with various older periods of Bosnian history. Sušić is a successor to Andrić in his lively and detailed reproduction of the Bosnian past—the distant past in his novel Uhode (Spies), the Austrian period in Hodža Strah (Hodzha Fear), and other works. There are pages in the latter novel which could have come out of Na Drini ćuprija (The bridge on the Drina) or one of Andrić's Bosnian stories. But more often Sušić's style is different, less quiet, less restrained than Andrić's, more ebullient, with a great deal of lively dialogue and stylistic or graphic devices (for example, putting a series of single words [nouns] or short, elliptical sentences each on a separate line). In his impassioned manner Sušić offers detailed descriptions of battles, which Andrić seems to avoid, and cruel, bloody scenes. He is also more crude and unrestrained in his word usage than Andrić.

Thus far we have focused on the younger contemporaries of Ivo Andrić among the Bosnian writers, who to a certain extent followed him in their treatment of Bosnian themes. But similar themes—notably from the Turkish past on the Balkan peninsula—were tackled by some others. Milorad Pavić, for example (born 1929), one of the most prominent Serbian literati, in a short story, “Borba petlova” (“Cock fighting”), deals with the Turkish recapture of Belgrade in 1739 after more than twenty years of “German” (i.e., Habsburg) occupation. The story, replete with old wisdom, old habits, and old ways of thinking, is reminiscent of Andrić's Bosnian works, even though Pavić's story is longer and more detailed than most of Andrić's. In particular, there is a certain similarity to “Most na Žepi” (“The bridge on the Žepa”); not a bridge, but two towers are constructed by order of the Turkish commandant.

When we look across the eastern border, we note that in the 1920s, when Andrić wrote his early Bosnian stories, the Bulgarian Elin Pelin (1878-1949) was at the height of his creative power. Among his stories of this period is “Izkushenie” (“The seduction”), the story of a priest and a sexton. The priest loves to drink, and he has finished all the wine destined for the eucharist; fortunately for him, the sexton manages to find a bottle of wine in the house of one of the villagers; the priest drinks from it during the service. The situation and the characters bring similar stories by Andrić to mind, in particular his monks' stories. In another story, “Napast bozhiia” (“God's punishment”), a Bulgarian village is struck first by a deadly infectious disease, then by drought—one calamity after the other, realistically depicted by Pelin. The priest leads church services and prays but cannot do much more. The local schoolteacher, however, closes the well, which he considers the source of the epidemic; the priest is against it and protests. The struggle between the teacher and the priest ends in favor of the former when the villagers turn away from the church because God has not shown his benevolence. The scene is somewhat reminiscent of episodes in Na Drini ćuprija where people try to sabotage the work on the bridge.

Iordan Iovkov (1880-1937), another foremost Bulgarian storyteller in the early decades of this century, wrote Staroplaninski legendi, a collection of short stories which take place in the times of Turkish domination, of oppression and cruelty, of hajduci and robbers. “Naiviarnata strazha” (“The most faithful guard”) from this collection is about a monastery which is being destroyed by a Tatar sultan (not a Turkish one in this case), Hadzhi Emin. One of the monks, Dragota, is in love with the daughter of the village head and takes her to the ruins of the monastery, where they spend the night. But a fire breaks out in which Dragota perishes. Emin forces the girl to become his bride. The setting, the characters, the events, and even the style—all have much in common with a large part of Andrić's works. In a cycle of stories by Iovkov called Vecheri v Antimovskiia khan (Evenings in the Antimov Tavern), from the same years, a tavern is the central meeting place, the hub of most of the stories. It reminds one of the beginning of Andrić's story “Put Alije Djerzeleza” (“The journey of Alija Djerzelez”), with the subtitle “Djerzelez u hanu” (“Djerzelez in the tavern”).¹¹

A younger Bulgarian prose writer, Angel Karaliichev (1902-72), wrote modernistic stories in his early career that have little in common with Andrić's prose. However, among his later very abundant oeuvre there are village stories in the traditional realistic style (he even produced stories in a socialist-realist vein), as well as fairy tales, fantastic stories, and tales from Bulgaria's past. Among these is, for example, “Khan Tatar” (“The Tatar ruler”), a story that, mutatis mutandis, by replacing the Tatars with Turks, could have been one of Andrić's stories. It tells us about a young woman who escapes with her child from a brutal Tatar; later she drowns herself and the child. (According to the legend, up to this day sometimes during the night a young woman can be seen at the site, carrying a dead child in her arms.) In the works of Karaliichev there are more such points of agreement with the spirit of Andrić's stories. The same is true of those by Nikolai Rainov (1889-1954).

Thus far we have first explored the peasant theme in Andrić's short stories and those of other South Slavic writers. Then we moved to Andrić in the general context of the realistic mainstream in South Slavic prose, with particular reference to urban themes. Then we analyzed the historical and legendary Bosnian component of his work as compared to that of other South Slavic authors. A fourth theme we might pursue is Andrić's depiction of the years of war and occupation (1941-45), comparing it to a number of writers in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. However, so many authors came to prominence in the postwar period and the war theme was so abundantly present in the South Slavic literatures of those years that it would be too extensive a subtheme for this paper. Rather, let us look briefly at two other aspects of Andrić's work in a wider context—namely, the prose poem (or lyrical prose) and the irreal, fantastic element.

When I refer to Andrić's lyrical prose, I mainly have in mind his two early small volumes, Ex Ponto and Nemiri (Unrest). The idea of such contemplative texts, focusing on the author's inner world, lyrical in language and tone, was not completely new when the young Andrić wrote these books—the first while confined to his cell in Maribor (published in 1918), the second published in 1920. It has been pointed out that Kierkegaard (whose book Either/Or was the only one Andrić had with him during the first months of his confinement) inspired and influenced him. However, it seems likely that at least to some extent Antun Gustav Matoš (1873-1914), with his prose texts collected in the volumes Iverje (Shavings, 1899), Novo iverje (New shavings, 1900), and Umorne priče (Tired tales, written between 1902 and 1909), was another source of inspiration. The character and spirit of Matoš's works are not identical with Andrić's, but there are certain similarities. Andrić, under the impact of the bitter lot that had befallen him—and probably of Kierkegaard's writings—is more pessimistic than Matoš, deeply melancholic, complaining about his terrible loneliness, and also writing here for the first time about that fear and anxiety that I mentioned above—that “hair-raising, unreasonable, often totally baseless, but real, deep fear [that is] the main, the only stimulus of human action.”¹² Matoš, the poet, tends to use a more poetical language than Andrič, with alliterations and rhythmical passages, chiasmi, and other rhetorical figures:

O, kako pada melem na mladu mekanu dušu kad čujem … na prozoru zvuke zagrebačkih zvona! Vjetar donosi, vjetar odnosi te sjetne, sretne, suzne zvukove, zvukove zvona zagrebačkih.¹³

Andrić must have been familiar with Matoš, who at that time was a central figure in Croatian cultural life. As a fiction writer, Andrić was not a direct follower of Matoš, but the tone of Matoš's contemplative passages is related to that of Ex Ponto and Nemiri:

O, sve, sve sam ja, sve je puno mene i mojih teških kaosa. Ja sam pitanje svih pitanja. … O, kako je mučno čovjeku bježati od čovjeka! Jer tražim njega, i nema ga. Jer tražim dušu, i nema je. … Jer idem iz mraka, tapam u mraku i umirem u mraku. Mračna staza mraka u mrakove.

(O, I am everything, everything is full of me and my oppressive chaoses. I am the question of all questions. … Oh, how painful it is for a human being to flee from another human being! Because I am searching for him, but he is not there. Because I am searching for a soul, but it is not there. … Because I am walking out of the dark, groping in the dark and dying in the dark. A sinister path of darkness into the dark.)¹⁴

The young Andrić seems also at times to feel hope or, as he writes, “a streak of light … on which my hope is germinating.”¹⁵ Yet overall his text is somber; he complains that he is overcome by despair and even contemplates suicide. There are no meditative texts in the South Slavic literatures known to me that are as despairing and despondent as are these early Andrić books. (In passing, note Matoš's frequent exclamatory “O[hs]!” at the beginning of sentences, which is typical of this kind of lyrical and contemplative writing in the modernist period. It can be found in French and German modernism and was taken over by the Slavs. Andrić exclaims “O” repeatedly in his two books of meditative prose.)

In this genre, there is some similarity with Ivan Cankar's lyrical prose in Slovenia—for example, his prose poem “Večerne sence” (“Evening shadows”) and some of his Vinjete (Vignettes, written in 1897-99), such as “Mrtvi nočejo” (“In the dead of night”), manifesting a mood similar to Andrić's. Whereas it is more than plausible that Andrić knew Matoš's work, it is doubtful that he read Cankar; therefore, a direct influence seems improbable. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the greatest Slovene writer of modern times and the greatest twentieth-century writer in Serbo-Croatian have certain traits in common and have worked in the same genre. In this context, we might also compare the lyrical prose of Isidora Sekulić (1877-1958) in Serbian literature. I will not dwell on her works in detail here, but consider a few individual sketches in her first book, Saputnici (Fellow travelers, 1913): “Samoća” (“Loneliness”), “Nostalgija,” “Umor” (“Tiredness”), “Tuga” (“Sorrow”), “Mučenje” (“Torment”). Even closer to Andrić in age and in the character of his work was Miloš Crnjanski (1893-1977), whose Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću (Diary about Čarnojević), was published in 1920. It is full of “Andrićian” sentences and passages:

Tuga me je rano našla. Niko me nije pitao kud idem i niko me nije dočekivao kad sam se vraćao kući.

(Sorrow came over me at an early age. Nobody asked me where I was going, and nobody ever welcomed me when I came home.)

Niti sam čiji, niti imam koga.

(I am nobody's, nor do I have anybody.)¹⁶

The early writings of Andrić resemble in character and tone not only those of the first South Slavic modernists (Cankar, Matoš, Sekulić), but also another Serbian, Milutin Uskoković (1884-1915) in his Vitae fragmenta and other crtice (sketches). In Bulgaria, Elin Pelin and several other writers of this period also wrote this type of speculative texts. In Slovenian, Srečko Kosovel (1904-26) and Miran Jarc (1900-42) wrote prose poems, but in a more experimental, avant garde form. The later meditative texts by Andrić (Znakovi pored puta, Staze [Paths], Lica [Faces], and the extensive notes collected in his Sveske [Notebooks]) are different, or at least most of them are. After all, Ex Ponto and Nemiri came into being under unusual circumstances: they were the product of special conditions and of a young, impressionable mind and of Andrić's recent readings.

Finally, we turn briefly to a perhaps somewhat unexpected side of Andrić's oeuvre: the fantastic—i.e., tales with a supernatural plot or at least with irreal elements. The question of reality and fantasy in Andrić's prose is complex, and it would be impossible to go into it in depth in this paper. What is the proportion of reality and of the imagined, of the legendary, the fabulous, mythical, fantastic in his Bosnian stories? Sometimes the author indicates openly that he is presenting a legend, like in the introduction to “Priča o vezirovom slonu” (“The story of the vizier's elephant”):

The Bosnian kasabas and towns are full of stories. In those, mostly invented, stories, under the cover of unbelievable happenings and behind the mask of often invented names, is hidden the real and unrecognized history of that area, of living people as well as of generations long dead. Those are the oriental lies of which the Turkish proverb says they are “more true than any truth.”¹⁷

In “Razgovor sa Gojom” (“Conversation with Goya”), Andrić stresses the significance of legends: “In fables lies the real history of mankind,” says Goya.¹⁸ Many of Andrić's stories—including those that form part of Na Drini ćuprija—are legends or are based on legends, and the question of how true or trustworthy they are is of only secondary importance.

Andrić also uses the device of the dream to tell supernatural stories. In the early twentieth century numerous European authors, partly influenced by Sigmund Freud's writings and investigations, turned to the dream. In the works of Andrić's great Croatian contemporary, Miroslav Krleža (1893-1981), for example, it is frequently utilized. Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was another Croatian writer in whose works dreams play a role. Among Andrić's dream stories are “Izlet” (“The outing”), “Ekskurzija” (“The excursion”), and in a way “Panorama.” The title of “San i java pod Grabićem” (“Dreaming and waking under the Grabić”) is eloquent, although the dream occupies only a relatively small part of the story. A dream constitutes the major element of “Na drugi dan Božića” and the short text “San bega Karčića” (“Beg Karčić's dream”). In addition, there are stories that do not reproduce dreams but contain hallucinations—like “Jelena, žena koje nema” (“Jelena, the woman who does not exist”)—or that proceed perfectly normally but have a mysterious, irreal finish—like “Letovanje na jugu” (“A vacation in the south”). A story that definitely belongs to the genre of fantastic literature is one of Andrić's last works, “Kod lekara” (“At the doctor's,” 1964).

This is not a full list of examples in which the irrational or irreal plays a role in Andrić's prose, but it is enough to demonstrate that he belonged among the twentieth-century writers for whom the fantastic is an essential element. Among the South Slavic authors of his time and of a younger generation there were (and are) quite a number of them. Crnjanski, one of the most prominent Serbian prose writers and a staunch realist in most of his works, in his early years wrote the fantastic “Vrt blagoslovenih žena” (“Garden of blessed women,” 1922). Miodrag Bulatović, Dobrica Ćosić, Borislav Pekić, and Filip David are among Andrić's younger contemporaries in Serbian literature who occasionally indulged in supernatural stories, novellas, or even entire novels. In Croatia, Krleža produced such novellas as “Hodorlohomor Veliki” (“Hodorlohomor the Great,” 1919) and “Kako je dr. Gregor prvi put u životu sreo nečastivoga” (“How Dr. Gregor for the first time in his life met the devil,” 1928). Vladan Desnica (1905-67) wrote “Delta,” in which a man suddenly disappears; it has something in common with Andrić's “Letovanje na jugu.” Ranko Marinković, Ivan Raos, Pavao Pavličić, Dubravka Ugrešić, and several other Croatian writers—probably the majority of the better known contemporary prose writers—devoted themselves at least in part to the supernatural story. In the 1960s and 1970s this was something of a wave among the Zagreb writers.

In Bulgaria there have been similar waves: in the 1920s and 1930s the fantastic story was quite popular. Writers like Georgi Raichev, Svetoslav Minkov, Vladimir Polianov, and several others wrote in this so-called “diabolic” genre. It then lost its attraction for several decades, but in the 1960s and 1970s a younger group of Bulgarian prose writers rediscovered the fantasy world and turned to supernatural themes (Pavel Vezhinov, Liuben Dilov, Iordan Radichkov, and others)—sometimes also to science fiction. I do not claim that these works were very close to Andrić's irreal stories, but one can find similarities—after all, the scope of supernatural themes and plots is limited. For example, the hero of Emiliian Stanev's story (or rather legend) “Lazar i Isus” (1977), the half-wit Lazar, has, as a type, much in common with Andrić's Ćorkan, who figures in the story “Ćorkan i Švabica” (“Ćorkan and the German girl”) and in Na Drini ćuprija.

The fairy tale can be considered a subdivision of the fantastic. In particular, see Andrić's “Aska i vuk” (“Aska and the wolf”), his beautiful “Beauty and the Beast” story. That he decided to write and publish a fairy tale (we might also call it an extensive fable; it is, in a way, a rewriting of the Scheherazade motif) is, again, not so unusual, as numerous South Slavic authors of his time went in this direction.¹⁹ I do not include here those authors who were also children's book writers; the fairy tales I have in mind were written in a serious (or sometimes satirical) vein and primarily meant for an adult audience—for example, Crnjanski's “Pustinjak i medenica” (“The hermit and the copper bell”) and other tales in the style and language of old fairy tales or legends. In Bulgaria, where, as I mentioned, the fantastic or semifantastic genre is especially well represented, Nikolai Rainov, Andrić's coeval, wrote legends (the Bogomilski legendi), as well as fairy tales, among them Slcanchevi prikazki (Sun-fairy tales), set in the Middle East. Karaliichev and Minkov are other fairy tale authors from the interwar period. Often these fairy tales had a symbolic, allegorical, sometimes satirical tendency. Partly satirical but partly more philosophical are Georgi Velichkov's Prikazki za men i za vas (Fairy tales for me and for you), mostly on contemporary themes. The survival, or resurgence, of the fairy tale genre can be at least partly explained by the rich and strong Slavic traditions of oral literature.

In conclusion, Ivo Andrić as a writer was a child of his times and the culture in his part of Europe, notwithstanding (and of course without derogation to) his exceptional talents and achievements.²⁰

Notes

1. See Encho Mutafov, “Razkaz i ese vcav vzaimno nabliudenie,” in Slavianskite literaturi v Bcalgariia: Problemi na retseptsiiata (Sofia: Univ. Izd-vo Kliment Okhridski, 1988), p. 336.

2. Isidora Sekulić, “Istok u pripovetkama Iva Andrića,” Srpski književni glasnik 10, 7 (Belgrade, 1923).

3. Novak Simić, “Zakoni i ognjevi,” Nepoznata Bosna i druge pripovijetke; Izabrana djela, I (Zagreb: Mladost-GZH-MH-Znanje, 1978), pp. 93-94. All translations in this contribution are mine.

4. Jovan Deretić, Istorija srpske književnosti (Belgrade: Nolit, 1983), p. 628.

5. Ivo Andrić, Sabrana dela, 2d ed. (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1965), vol. 6, p. 226.

6. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 73.

7. Ibid., vol. 5, p. 311.

8. Ivo Andrić, Znakovi pored puta (Belgrade: Rad, 1980), p. 17.

9. Slavko Leovac, “Introduction to Ćamil Sijarić,” Bihorci, 2d ed. (Titograd: Grafički Zavod, 1966), p. 13.

10. Quoted by Nikola Kovač, Ćamil Sijarić kao pripovjedač (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva, 1983), p. 49.

11. Andrić worked at the Yugoslav embassy in Bucharest from 1921 to 1922, Iovkov at the Bulgarian embassy in the same city from 1920 to 1927; I did not find any documentation that they ever met or knew about each other.

12. Quoted from Marko S. Marković, Tausendundeine Nacht des Ivo Andrić (Munich: Otto Sagner, 1962), p. 56.

13. Antun G. Matoš, Pjesme, pripovijesti, autobiografija (Zagreb: MH-Zora, 1967), p. 215. Series Pet stoljeća hrvatske književnosti.

14. Quoted from S. Vučetić, “Afterword,” in ibid., p. 273.

15. Quoted from Marković, p. 47.

16. Miloš Crnjanski, Sabrana dela, vol. 5: Proza (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1966), pp. 12, 23.

17. Ivo Andrić, Sabrana dela, vol. 5 (1965), p. 41.

18. Ibid., vol. 10, p. 140.

19. On “Aska i vuk,” see Felicity Rosslyn, “The Short Stories of Ivo Andrić: Autobiography and the Chain of Proof,” Slavonic and East European Review 67, 1 (January 1989): 29-41, esp. 39.

20. On Andrić's style, see Dragiša Živković, “Nekoliko stilskih odlika proze Ive Andrića,” Od Vuka do Andrića (Belgrade: Društvo za srpskohrvatski jezik i književnost SR Srbije, 1965), pp. 121-40.