The Bridge on the Drina, written by Ivo Andric, uses a series of short anecdotes to tell the story of Visegrad over a four hundred year span. The bridge crosses the Drina River, a natural border between present day Bosnia and Serbia, and serves as a border between cultures and religions. However, both sides of the river were once united by this bridge, and in a way built their history around it. The stories Andric tells were passed down along the bridge for centuries, like the story of the twin infants built into the bridge to keep it strong. The bridge then, represents this unifying of culture and people, but it is also significant of some of the nationalist sentiments that it created, leading to the causes of the first world war.
One of the first stories Andric tells is that of Mehmed Pasha, a Christian boy who was separated from his mother in his early childhood. Andric reminds the reader that this is common practice, Christian boys are often taken away and converted to Islam. He hones in on the fact that their mothers chase after the boys up until they have reached the river. There, the pursuit ends as the mothers realize they have no means of crossing the river.This created a sense of hopelessness, this point is described as “…that place where the road broke off, where desolation and despair were extinguished and remained on the stony banks of the river, across which the passage was so difficult, so expensive and so unsafe” (25).
The lack of being able to cross the river separated and devastated so many families. For a moment, it seems as though Mehmed Pasha has decided to build the bridge to reunite with his mother, but that is not the case. Mehmed feels as though the lack of a bridge has stolen more than just his childhood, but his culture and and homeland as well. Here, the reader sees the bridge being representative as a reunion with culture and people. At the close of the second chapter Andric writes “ Only when, as the fruit of this effort, the great bridge arose, men began to remember details and to embroider the creation of a real, skillfully built and lasting bridge with fabulous tales which they all knew how to weave together” (27). People could now pass their stories and their cultures down as a community, unified by the bridge.
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The bridge does more than just unify the people within the community though. Because the bridge crosses over the river it has the ability to unify people of many different communities. Through times of conflict, it seemed as though the bridge was above that, and on it people could find commonalities that allowed them to bond. Andric refers to the bridge as like a gateway for people to meet and discuss. Despite the cultural differences, people are able to come to the bridge to talk and tell their stories. Andric writes, “The two fine buildings on the Drina had already begun to exercise their influence on trade and communications, on the town of Visegrad and the whole country around…” (70). The bridge is seen as the thing that unifies and betters these communities because it provides a common space for things like trade and communication to flourish and it connects these communities that would have otherwise never been familiar with one another. In a way, it helps to break down some of the stereotypes people had in their head and helps to create a kind of peace and tranquility between peoples.
While the bridge did create a stronger sense of unity and community between the people, especially in its early years, it was also representative of a strong sense of nationalism. The bridge was something the Serbians became very proud of, in a large part for ts unifying qualities. Just as well, through Ottoman and Austrian rules, as well as floods and droughts alike, the bridge had stood strong. This became symbolic of the Serbs, the idea that perhaps the could withstand anything. This led to a strong sense of nationalism that played a large role in the events leading up to World War One. The destruction of the bridge was a devastating event for the morale and national identity of the Serbs. Andric says, “They had begun to attack even the strongest and most lasting of things, to take things away even from God… Even the Vizier’s bridge had begun to crumble away like a necklace; and once it begun no one could hold it back” (337). The destruction of the bridge was in a way like the destruction of the culture that had been built up over four centuries.
Andric masterfully tells the stories of the town of Visegrad, using the bridge as a focal point in all of them to illustrate its importance. Visegrad built a lot of their history around this bridge. Andric, then, uses the bridge to signify they unity it created as well as the nationalist sentiments it helped to brew.
