On this day, thirty eight years ago, the only literature Nobel award winner from Bosnia and Herzegovina has died, leaving a rich legacy of novels.
Ivo Andrić was born in the village of Dolac, near Travnik, in 1892. After spending his youth in his native Bosnia, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he studied philosophy at the Universities of Zagreb, Vienna, and Krakow. After receiving a doctorate in letters from the University of Graz in 1923, he entered the Yugoslav diplomatic service. The last diplomatic post he held was that of Yugoslav minister in Berlin. When Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Andrić returned to Belgrade and lived there in seclusion throughout the Second World War. He has continued to reside in the Yugoslav capital.
Andrić started his literary career as a poet. In 1914 he was one of the contributors to Hrvatska mlada lirika (Young Croatian Lyrics). At the end of the war he published two books of lyrical prose – one of them entitled Nemiri (Anxieties), 1919 – which, written in the form of a diary, reflect Andrić’s experiences of the war and his imprisonment. There followed a long period in which Andrić concentrated on the writing of short stories. His first novella, Put Alije Djerzeleza (The Trip of Alija Djerzelez), published in 1920, early manifests a dominant trait of his creative process. Andrić takes his material from the life of Bosnia, but through this local material he presents universal human problems. In the period between the two world wars Andric published three books of short stories under the same title, Pripovetke (Stories), 1924, 1931, 1936.
During the Second World War, in the leisure imposed on him by the circumstances, Andrić wrote his three large works, all of which were published in 1945: Na Drini cuprija (The Bridge on the Drina), Travnička hronika (Bosnian Story), and Gospodjica (The Woman from Sarajevo).
The first two of these works – both of them chronicles rather than novels in the strict sense – deal, like most of Andrić’s work, with Bosnia and her history. The author describes the life of this region in which East and West have for centuries clashed with their interests and influences, a region whose population is composed of different nationalities and religions. Andrić is at his best when he limits himself to his native Bosnia and her people.
In Gospodjica and Nove pripovetke (New Stories), 1948, Andric presented present-day people and problems. He dealt with the psychology of the wealthy, with the war and postwar periods, and with the formation of a new society. But in Prokleta avilija (Devil’s Yard), 1954, Andric returned to his favorite milieu and described the experiences of a Bosnian Franciscan, Fra Peter, who is put in an Istanbul jail, being wrongly accused of plotting against Ottoman rule. In 1960 Andric published another collection of stories, Lica (Faces). He has also written several essays, prominent among which is Zapisi o Goji, (Notes on Goya), 1961.
In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country”. He donated all of the prize money for the improvement of libraries in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He died on 13 March 1975 in Belgrade where he was buried in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens.
