Пут ка мору – Андрићеви лиминални простори између Балкана и Јадранског мора
The Road to the Sea – Andrić’s Liminal Spaces between the Balkans and the Adriatic Sea

Summary/Abstract: Taking into consideration Andrić’s prose, his non-fictional texts, as well as his correspondence, interviews, conversations, and the memories of contemporaries who met with our Nobel laureate, we have identified several significant elements that depict the experience of liminal spaces between land and sea in varying ways, depending on the type of text through which they are thematized (autobiographical testimonies, conversations, notes, essays, short stories, novels, etc.). Through the three levels of liminality that we have recognized, a fundamental distinction becomes especially clear when contrasting Andrić’s essayistic texts dealing with transitional zones, on the one hand, and his artistic fiction situated within liminal spaces, on the other. In Andrić’s essays and travelogues that explore liminal spaces, the experience of the world – as constructed through his image of the spatiotemporal setting – is predominantly affirmative, at times even in the context of historical progress. By contrast, in his fictional works, even the seemingly salvific breakthroughs of liminal spaces into the continental darkness, as well as the transitional spaces themselves, ultimately transform into their opposite, allowing the tragedy of a pessimistic cycle (as opposed to historical progress) to prevail decisively. This is clearly visible in stories and chapters in which coastal or Herzegovinian motifs appear within the Bosnian reality of Andrić’s characters, as well as in a series of works where Submediterranean/Mediterranean liminal zones (Herzegovina, Adriatic towns) prove to be deceptive spaces in which continental tragedy continues to lurk and, in the end, triumphs. In other words, in most of Andrić’s fiction, every historical or social framework constitutes an insurmountable obstacle for his characters as they attempt to orient themselves toward any form of meaning that might lift them out of existential hopelessness. And while this condition is absolutely dominant in his continental narratives, in texts set within liminal zones it oscillates when confronted with the soteriological potential of the sea. Nevertheless, a complete immersion of the characters into the meaning provided by the pantheistic peace of the sea–sky expanse is achieved, in Andrić’s fiction, only in those stories in which the protagonists, having severed all ties with the structures of civilization, resolutely move toward meaningful dissolution in the ocean of eternity.

• Details
• Contents