The Bridge on the Drina chronicles a town & its focal point. The town is Višegrad in eastern Bosnia, near the Serbian border. It traces its history from the 16th century to WWI, its bridge binding individual chapters & stories together. Emphasis is on the evolution of a common mentality, deriving from common experience & a common heritage of legend & anecdote. The population is mixed, but Andrić stresses the coherence of the whole. This is achieved partly by timescale, but also by his basic intention to contrast the transience & insignificance of individual life with the broader perspective of life as itself as an enduring ebb & flow. The bridge provides both structural & symbolic links. Each chapter or anecdote relates to the bridge. Important events occur on or near it. Such a structural function contributes to the work's main direction which depicts a common heritage's growth from a series of disparate events.
Movement thru four centuries described is unsteady. The 1st event of major importance to Višegrad, bridge construction in the mid-16th century, is detailed over three chapters; the 17th & 18th centuries, without important historical events, pass by in a chapter; the 19th century covers ten chapters, & 1900-14, the remainder of the work, nine. This allows the author to describe main events affecting town life in detail & also suggest an awareness of history as never uniformly well-known or related. The static nature of centuries of Ottoman rule is highlighted by the changes which take place during the 19th century & increase in speed & scope with Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina at century's end. The clearest implication of the broad timescale is the predictable one in Andrić’s work: thru these events & changes, nothing significant alters.
The Bridge on the Drina is a portrait of history itself. History is made as much by individual personalities as by mass movements & the upheavals created by the rise & fall of empires.
Il Dottor Živago
