Dragan NEDELJKOVIC

PROPHETIC PREMONITION OF IVO ANDRIC OR ON THE DRAMA OF CIVILIZATIONS IN THE BALKANS

Meetings of Civilizations in the Balkans were often unfortunate. However the Balkans are the origin of the entire European culture, the home of Plato and Aristotle, of Pericles and Phidias, of Homer and the Greek tragedians. The relations became dramatics especially after the division of the Roman Catholic Empire, the great schism of churches and the intrusion of Islam. Beside the religious confrontation, a new burden is, in modern times, caused by national, liberation and eventually separatist movements, i.e., the ideological and political differences.

These differences, unfortunate encounters, conflicts, but also the inevitable interlacing of civilizations in spite of deep mutual distrust - are constantly the subject of works of Andric and his doctoral thesis as well, whose subject is: the evolution of spiritual life in Bosnia under the influence of the Turkish rule". If Crnjanski depicted the great migrations of the Serbian people from the Balkans to Central Europe and even to Russia, Andric has described the most dramatic, endless migration which is continuing from the arrival of Serbs in the Balkans and in the Central Europe: this is the migration of blood, i.e., melting of Orthodox Serbs into Muslims and Catholics, therefore into other nationalities etc.

By the universal character of his work No Andric represents more than a Serbian writer, he is a Balkan, even an Euro-Asian writer. His intention was to make a symphony about the cruel fate of his people which sounds tragically like the Fifth Beethoven's, so that this drama rises into paroxysm, into highest levels of hopelessness, despair and pain, and in the finale light of hope is discerned, something of a catharsis. Through suffering, we arrive, or so it seems, to a certain joy, to the promise of a nevertheless happy ending of the tragedy. However, recent history has shattered all hope and put the Balkans back into chaos and hell.

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