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ment that a fanatic priest hit his opponent over the head mit dem
heiligen Buche. This unnamed spiritual leader, along with his book,
was carried over in toto to the 1926 novella Mara, milosnica (Hadi
Hafiz Kaukdi). The account books of the Sarajevo Sephardim, the
Pinakes (used in the 1942 novel, Travnika hronika [Bosnian chronicle]), and of the Franciscan monasteries may serve as another example, for Andri employed these sources extensively in his fiction.
(Their use in his dissertation was a point of special commendation
by his two readers in the spring of 1924.) Again, several pages in the
dissertation were devoted to the unimaginable red tape involved in
repairing church buildings. To rebuild Kreevo after it was leveled
to the ground by fire in 176566, for example, required 3,313 groschen for labor and materials and 8,973 for bribes to pay for the
building license. Andri especially loved the pithy, laconic remarks
entered alongside such money items by the monks and quoted them
with relish (Ut obturentur ora leonumto stop up the lions
mouths with a bribe). In 1762 a delegation of two monks undertook
the long, hazardous trip to the Porte to seek permission to repair the
roofs of all three monasteries still standing at that time, Fojnica,
Kreevo, and Sutjeska (p. 28). In his short novel, Prokleta avlija
(Devils yard, 1962), seeking to condense centuries of vicissitudes
into a moment outside time, Andri cancelled the date and obscured
the purpose (owing to some troublesome, ticklish business) while
at the same time naming the emissaries (Fra Tadija Ostroji and Fra
Petar; p. 12, 1963 edition). The decline of the endowments (vakufe)
after the sixteenth century, the origin and destiny of the Viegrad
bridge, the boy-tribute, the teeming swarm of lower officials at the
viziers residence in Travnik who were to reappear in Bosnian Chronicle eighteen years latersuch are the stuff of fiction, the body of
their time, the Verhltnisse, first materializing in the 1924 thesis. Instances could be multiplied.
Andri minced no words:
The Turks could bring no cultural content or sense of higher historic mission, even to those South Slavs who accepted Islam; for
their Christian subjects, their hegemony brutalized custom and
meant a step to the rear in every respect (p. 38).
The venality of Turkish justice demoralized the rayah: Krivo ne
smijem od Boga, a pravo od Bega (For fear of God I mustnt tell
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lies, for fear of the beg I mustnt tell the truth; see p. 37). Here indeed
Andri dealt with the geistigen Lebens of his title in the sense of
the moral and spiritual:
In this long drawn-out and unequal struggle the moral attributes
of the rayah clarified, crystallized and became fixed, changing for
the worse. As a result of Turkish rule the following maxim arose:
Lying is the poor mans stock in trade [la je fukarska sermija]
(p. 38).
If Turkish rule turned the Bosnian peasant into an habitual liar,
it also isolated him. The theme of spiritual isolation, so characteristic
of Andri, repeatedly recurs in his dissertation as a physical, even
topographical motif. Not for nothing does the Franciscan monastery
(samostan) in Bosnia remind one of another noun, usamljenost (solitude). The unconverted peasantry withdrew to the windowless
mountains. The cloister at Tuzla, cramped in its narrow, dark ravine,
looked more like some prison den than a human habitation: candles
had to be kept burning in broad daylight. Thus Andri quotes Fra
Paolo de Rovigno in 1640 (p. 29).
The problem of religious dualism (bogomilstvo) in Andri has
been an aspect of his doctoral work generating conjecture among
Yugoslav scholars.3 Andri referred strictly to the Patarins; the term
Bogomil was not used of the medieval Bosnian church until the
eighteenth century.4 In his discussions of the Patarins, he paid less
attention to their beliefs, beyond listing these, than to their customs
and attitudes. Among the simple rituals of their faith he took care to
mention their abhorrence of bellsDevils trumpets, as he calls
them at one point (Dmonische Posaunen; see p. 14 of the original
typescript). It seems that he was building a case for the easy transfer
of their allegiance to Islam after the conquest of 1463. Andri was
chiefly interested, however, in the consequences for Bosnia of their
struggle with Catholicism for hegemony:
What is most certain and, for us, most important is the fact that
Patarins knew how to adjust to Bosnian conditions; the fact that
their faith thus became the peoples faith; and the fact that insofar
as there did exist a criterion by which the countrys internal organization could be judged or a palladium in Bosnias struggle
against foreign intervention, this faith carried weight. In their un-
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Bosnia enjoyed 150 years of relative care and solicitude by nativeborn viziers and governors. But then the land was left to its own
devices and to the long, ensuing centuries of legalized lawlessness
that Andri described so bitingly.
The bridge as symbol took its origin in the famous scene of
Zemka swinging in Djerzelez na putu (Djerzelez on the road,
1919), section two of Andris first published story, Put Alije Djerzeleza (The journey of Alija Djerzelez). Thence it can be traced
chronologically in a cluster of images which always turns up qua
cluster in story after story. From the swing to the German womans
high wire (orkan i vabica, 1921) to Fra Markos vision of Gods
ship (boja ladja) in U musafirhani (1923) is all one straight development. The ideas associated with this development of the bridge
symbol were, first, rest and repose, then harmony and grace, then
the panoramic vision of the open sea. Imagery and idea in this writer
worked by accretion, not cancellation. All this fed into Most na
epi, and to it was added the new idea of the lost link, Andris
geopolitical (one might say) concept of Bosnia.
In terms of individual character, it is interesting to learn in the
light of these passages what Andri thought of Mehmed Pasha Sokolovi twenty years before the Grand Vizier appeared in The Bridge
on the Drina: profoundly Bosnian becausehe was a typical representative of the Patarins! His proud motto (devise) is quoted:
Nek mi ne sudi Evropa,
jer mogu na tetu njojzi
dignut neprelazan zid
po medji carstva sveg (p. 34).
(Let me not be provoked by Europe / For I can, to her sorrow, /
Raise an insurmountable wall / All down the length of the imperial border.)
Andri was obsessed by walls.
Here Andri relied on the work of Safvet beg Baagi, to which
he usually referred in his dissertation as Poviest Bosne.8 According
to Baagis modern editor, Muhsim Rizvi, it was he who developed
the hypothesis that Bosnian Muslims are descendants of the Patarins
(p. 100, bibliographic note). Discussing in his thesis the Bosnian
Muslims, those heirs of the Patarins, Andri placed Sokolovi
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NOTES
1. For the English translation, see The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia
under the Influence of Turkish Rule, ed. and trans. elimir B. Jurii and John F.
Loud (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 1. Unless otherwise noted, all
citations from the dissertation are taken from this edition.
2. References to Raki numbered five monographs and articles, including
Bogomili i Patareni, from which Andri explicitly took his facts. See page 9,
The Patarin Church, n. 38.
3. See, for example, Branko Milanovi in his dissertation on Andris nonfiction.
4. See John V. A. Fine, Jr., The Bosnian Church (Boulder, 1975).
5. Za njih je nain ivota bio nerazdvojno i bezuslovno vezan sa ivotom
samim (Na Drini uprija [Belgrade, 1963], p. 145; English translation, The Bridge
on the Drina [MacMillan, 1959], p. 136).
6. See the discussion of Pleminita batina, or noble inheritance, on p. 18 of
the translation.
7. My source for all dates of actual writing as opposed to publication is
ultimately Vera Stoji, Andris secretary, whose complete list of pripovetke
(stories) is provided in the 1977 Harvard dissertation on the development of
the Bosnian stories by Vida Taranovski Johnson.
8. Safvet beg Baagi, Kratka uputa u prolost Bosne i Hercegovine (od god.
14631850) (Sarajevo, 1900), p. 40 in Baagi, according to the dissertation
endnote. I was unable to inspect the actual book Andri consulted, however,
*Also cited in this volume as Jelena, the Woman Who Does Not Exist.
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cannot corroborate the accuracy of this important citation, and must rely on
the modern edition edited by Muhsim Rizvi (Sarajevo, 1971).
9. Kod kazana was published in 1930 but written two years earlier. The last
name of this early protagonist, Krneta, kind of trumpet (cornet), may now
be explained in the spirit of nomena qua homina as a Catholic tag. Fra Marko,
cursed with demonic trumpets, was a Franciscan monk growing from Patarin
roots.