Participants
Tihomir Brajović, University of Belgrade
Between Balkanism and Eurocentrism: History as a ‘Distorted Mirror’ of Identities in Ivo Andrić’s Novels
A historiographic vision of Ivo Andrić’s probably best known novels stands in the interpretative center of this paper. Starting from the interface of modernism and traditionalism as a main topic of Andrić’s novelistic imagination, the author of the paper focuses on the conflict between epochal-historic and ahistoric-mythical consciousness in The Bridge on the Drina and The Days of the Consuls. Presenting Bosnian and Balkan geographic and mental space of the 19th and 20th centuries, Ivo Andrić juxtaposes two historically oponent outlooks: the so-called Balkanist, mainly represented by local residents and domestic peoples, and the Eurocentric, usually represented by foreigners (soldiers, architects, diplomats). For all that, suggestiveness of his novelistic artistry arises from his ambivalent narrative procedure, and that means also from the problematisation of each of the two opposed outlooks. As extreme possibilities and temptations, these two standpoints decenter and destort arising etnic, national and regional identities in a way. Thus comprehended, Andrić’s novels present themselves as special imagological panorama of the west Balkans’ cultural and historical controversies which have lasted up to the present day.
