What else is there to write about Andrić that hasn't already been written - it's human to wonder when you receive an invitation to promote a book The sky over Belgrade - Andrić and the capital, especially since its author, Žaneta Đukić Perišić, was the manager of the Ivo Andrić Endowment for many years, she has already written four books about Andrić's works and who knows how many articles in periodicals, and she edited a dozen of his works.
Žaneta Đukić Perišić "justifies" herself by the fact that she read what was published, researched in the archives and sorted out Andrić's handwritten legacy, correspondence, documents, so "again, it seems to her that the 'Andrić case' is still insufficiently elucidated", especially since "the opus of a great artist as a kind of special universe in which there is always room to discover new constellations, such as Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, Pushkin and other great artist". He remembers that professor Voja Đurić from World Literature "advised his doctoral students about demanding and synthetic topics that required long and persistent effort, telling them that they would be able to 'live' from that work and from the material they collected for the next ten creative years. It was the same with me. While working on my dissertation on Andrić, I collected a huge stock of material, not all of which could fit into an already extensive study. The writer and the story: creative biography of Ivo Andrić. From that 'construction site', from which led numerous branches with only vaguely indicated topics, but with great potential to shine with special brilliance in another context, I slowly began to concentrate and present material related to certain topics."
Book title The sky over Belgrade, says Žaneta Đukić Perišić, is "a phrase that Andrić often used when describing Belgrade", and she chose it "somewhat as a tribute to Peter Handke, the screenwriter, and Wim Wenders, the director of my favorite film The sky over Berlin".
He describes the book as "a story about a city and a writer, about how the writer integrated into the City and how the City influenced the writer's work. It is one of those examples that are so common in world literature, including ours, that writers in their works are creatively tied to one city, telling about different aspects of its existence: Balzac's Paris, Dickens's London, Virginia Woolf's and Crnjansky's, Joyce's Dublin, Bulgakov's Moscow and Petrograd, Pamuk's Istanbul, Oster's New York, Stanković's Vranje Bore, Sremčev Niš, Matavuljev and Kaporov's Belgrade, Pantić's New Belgrade - all these human habitats inhabited by an infinite variety of human destinies tell the story of man's fate on earth. In the case of Belgrade, it seemed important to me to collect in one place and illuminate under a magnifying glass those key points from Andrić's life and works that correspond directly or in a subtle, associative way with the rich, turbulent and seductive history of the capital." (…)
"From the first moment, when he came incognito, as a student of the Sarajevo high school, crossing the Sava river to Belgrade, which for him was a symbol of freedom and integral Yugoslavia, for which a large part of his generation fought, Andrić felt that he was welcome and that he was him, a poor Bosnian Beskolenović, without any connections or acquaintances, but with knowledge, persistence and determination to take advantage of all the advantages of the "promised land" that Belgrade appeared to be after of the First World War, opens up a huge space in which he can unleash his creative powers", says Žaneta Đukić Perišić.
Then he says that Andrić decided to return from Germany "to occupied Belgrade in June 1941, return and spend four painful war years, refusing to participate in any form of public action. During the bombing, he stayed in the apartment and, like Goethe who wrote while Napoleon's cannons roared around him, worked feverishly on his three great novels - Travnica Chronicle, A bridge on the Drina i Miss. Later, when Erich Koš was asked how he could calmly watch the shells exploding near his house without fearing that the bombs would blow up all his manuscripts, decades of his work, Andrić answered him: "I was afraid, of course. But what good is that. It didn't change anything."
Fortunately, both his novels and all his manuscripts survived, because "manuscripts do not burn", as Bulgakov prophetically said. During the troubled times, in occupied Belgrade, Andrić, it seems, quite spontaneously conceived the idea to make a special history of the suffering Belgrade. To pay tribute to the city that accepted and raised him after the First War, and gave him refuge during the Second. It may be that the writer imagined a larger prose within which he would wrap his story about suffering and resistance, about pride, strength and asceticism around the central hero, wartime Belgrade. small people who, like mountaineers, like Isidor Katanić aka Zeko, grow into heroes in turning times."
In an interview for the New Year issue of "Beogradskih Novina" in 1954, Andrić, talking about the turmoil that created Belgrade, says that "it was never a city of peaceful development or easy life. That turmoil continues today and in it, this city is continuously born and comes into being, with its strange mixture of metropolitan, small-town and rural elements, modern and patriarchal life, accidentally spontaneous and well-planned way of working (...) Such, Belgrade is a city of harsh climate and ancient of urban contrasts and hilarity, but a town with high skies and the most beautiful views; a city of mixed population, without sentimentality, but a city of good inspirations and bold decisions in the great moments of its and the world's history."
In fact, says Žaneta Đukić Perišić, "wherever you go in Belgrade, there will be a place that is related to Andrić in one way or another. He changed numerous Belgrade addresses (including the hotel "Excelzior"), until he moved into his first apartment in Ulica Proleterskih Brigada, when he was already 66 years old. Starting with the institutions to which he was connected - SKZ, UKS, SANU, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and walks in the Belgrade parks that he loved very much - Kalemegdan, Dvorski park (today Pionirski), Tašmajdan, Košutnjak, Topčider, and through the summer, enchanting and relaxing stay on the Sava and its banks, on willows, adams, on shacks and boats, to taverns - the Russian Tsar, Writers' Club, Madera, bookstore - Geca Kon, SB Cvijanović - Andrić was fully integrated into the life of the city that he fell in love with as soon as he stepped on its soil: how much Belgrade gave Andrić, how much it provided him in a professional, human, social sense and influenced the direction of his life, the writer reciprocated that much with true devotion and literary works in him and written on him."
A book The sky over Belgrade, Andrić and the capital was recently published by "Vukotić Media".
From "Miss"
Žaneta Đukić Perišić reminds that apart from Belgrade stories, a special place among Andrić's works in which he talks about Belgrade occupies Miss, in which the writer vividly describes the capital immediately after the Great War.
"Life in Belgrade around 1920 was colorful, exuberant, unusually complex and full of contradictions. Innumerable, varied, and great strengths went hand in hand with incomprehensible weaknesses and deficiencies; the old way of working and the strict discipline of the patriarchal life stood next to a colorful mix of new, still unformed customs and all kinds of disorder, carelessness next to exuberance, chastity and every moral beauty next to various vices and ugliness. A heated and reckless race of all kinds of profiteers and speculators developed alongside the brain and imagination games of soft dreamers and bold ideologues. Along the torn-up streets and dilapidated, neglected houses with visible traces of war, a colorful torrent of the world was rolling, which was constantly growing, because hundreds of newcomers were thrown into it every day, headlong, like pearl hunters in the deep sea. Those who wanted to stand out and those who wanted to hide came there. There, those who had to defend property or position, threatened by new opportunities, mingled with those who were driven by the desire to acquire both now. There was a lot of young people from all parts of the country in the making, who expected everything from new opportunities and tomorrow, and a lot of older people who were looking at how to adapt, and were looking for salvation in that torrent, hiding their fear and disgust that she poured them in…” ¶
