The Damned Yard is Andrić's late work, published in 1954, after his better known novels The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drni ćuprija, 1945) and The Bosnian Chronicles (Trvanička hronika, 1945) were already proclaimed classics of Yugoslav literature. Andrić was best known in the west for his Bridge on the Drina, for which he won a Nobel Prize in literature in 1961. It portrayed four centuries of Ottoman rule in Bosnia through the lens of legends, fables, and myths that became associated with the eponymous bridge in Višegrad. As a student Andrić joined the Young Bosnia Organization, which advocated the unity of South Slavs against the Austro-Hungarian and other dominance in the region. During WWI, which was triggered by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Andrić was arrested by the Austrian authorities for supporting the pro-Yugoslav movement and spent a year in prison for his political and literary activities. In both the first (monarchist, 1918-1941) and second (socialist, 1946-1991) Yugoslavia Andrić enjoyed the highest honors bestowed on the writer by a state. In the first Yugoslavia, he maintained multiple diplomatic posts and in the second, he became the first president of the Writer's Union. In many ways, both in Yugoslavia and in the West, Andrić's literary opus represented the motley of cultures and confessions that made up the mosaic of Yugoslavia, and Bosnia in particular.
This privileged status of a national writer changed with the break-up of Yugoslavia. Andrić's legacy became entangled in the wartime ideology, with some claiming him exclusively as a Serbian (due to ideology and self-identification after '45), and other as a Croatian author (due to parentage and other factors). Among some Bosniak intellectuals, on the other hand, he was seen as an orientalist and anti-muslim bigot, who propagated false and pernicious stereotypes about Bosnian Muslims. He was additionally seen as a tool of greater Serbia ideology in his privileging of the Serbian heroic ethos as personified in the epics of Vuk Karadžić and Petar Petrović Njegoš. In many ways, his legacy is still being negotiated and picked apart, whether in narrowly ethnic or broader literary-aesthetic terms.
I chose to include The Damned Yard in our readings because, to my mind, it goes against the stereotypical image of Andrić as an Orientalist author. Something which we can discuss in more detail. In fact, the novel was written after his 1953 visit to Turkey and it reassesses the Ottoman legacy in a different light from his previous novels. (The image of Andrić as an Orientalist writer in fact originates from his dissertation--The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia Under the Influence of Ottoman Rule--where he blames the Ottoman domination from cutting off Bosnia from the cultural and spiritual development of Europe, of which Bosnia, according to Andrić, was and is an integral part.) The novella also harks back to his years spent in prison, allowing Andrić to reflect on the nature of authority, power, and government. By far his most complex and modernist work, The Damned Yard also contains the meditation on the paradoxes and intricacies of Balkan identity, formed amidst the power struggle of two opposing Christian and Muslim, Oriental and Occidental empires. I think the text really works well with Todorova's more recent analysis of Balkan identity and memory, especially in terms of the continuity and perception of the Ottoman legacy. Of course, the literary text asks universal and not just question pertaining to the Balkan region.
This privileged status of a national writer changed with the break-up of Yugoslavia. Andrić's legacy became entangled in the wartime ideology, with some claiming him exclusively as a Serbian (due to ideology and self-identification after '45), and other as a Croatian author (due to parentage and other factors). Among some Bosniak intellectuals, on the other hand, he was seen as an orientalist and anti-muslim bigot, who propagated false and pernicious stereotypes about Bosnian Muslims. He was additionally seen as a tool of greater Serbia ideology in his privileging of the Serbian heroic ethos as personified in the epics of Vuk Karadžić and Petar Petrović Njegoš. In many ways, his legacy is still being negotiated and picked apart, whether in narrowly ethnic or broader literary-aesthetic terms.
I chose to include The Damned Yard in our readings because, to my mind, it goes against the stereotypical image of Andrić as an Orientalist author. Something which we can discuss in more detail. In fact, the novel was written after his 1953 visit to Turkey and it reassesses the Ottoman legacy in a different light from his previous novels. (The image of Andrić as an Orientalist writer in fact originates from his dissertation--The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia Under the Influence of Ottoman Rule--where he blames the Ottoman domination from cutting off Bosnia from the cultural and spiritual development of Europe, of which Bosnia, according to Andrić, was and is an integral part.) The novella also harks back to his years spent in prison, allowing Andrić to reflect on the nature of authority, power, and government. By far his most complex and modernist work, The Damned Yard also contains the meditation on the paradoxes and intricacies of Balkan identity, formed amidst the power struggle of two opposing Christian and Muslim, Oriental and Occidental empires. I think the text really works well with Todorova's more recent analysis of Balkan identity and memory, especially in terms of the continuity and perception of the Ottoman legacy. Of course, the literary text asks universal and not just question pertaining to the Balkan region.
No comments:
Post a Comment