Ivo Andrić between the East and West Cultural draft

Ivo Andrić (Travnik 1892 - Belgrade 1975) was Serbian writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature (“Bridge on the Drina”, 1961). The material for his works was mainly drawn from the history, folklore and culture of his native Bosnia. This region was firstly ruled by the Turks for centuries, afterwards becoming Austro-Hungarian from the second half of the 19th century on. As very yang man, Andrić paid special attention to the history and culture of Balkan, before all Bosnia. In 1924, he defended his PhD dissertation in Graz (Austria), on topic - “The development of spiritual life in Bosnia under the influence of Turkish reign” (“Die Entwicklung des geistigen Lebens in Bosnien unter der türkischen Herrschaft”). Bosnia as a homeland, placed on the civilization border between the East and the West, found a permanent place in Andrić’s literary and scientific works. In his dissertation he described the period when Bosnia was under the Turks as “the five-century flood”, “the separation wall”, which “leads to the loss of customs and to the degradation in every sense”. Here he describes the life of Orthodox Serbs, Catholics and Hebrews in Bosnia, and also the life of the population which had to accept Islam because of the social privileges. These facts which talk about the tragic collisions of different worlds and their cultures will find their places in Andrić’s literary works too. Here he is also preoccupied with historical position of Bosnia, placed on the very border between Turkey and Europe. Andrić pointed at the tragic confrontations of different cultures on the Balkans, which never ceased to exist all these centuries.