The writer and his language. The case of Ivo Andrić

Abstract

A complex biography of Ivo Andrić (1892-1975) was shaped in a wide net of identity references: ethnocultural, religious, political, and linguistic. He was born to a Croatian Catholic family in Bosnia, he was a convinced supporter of Yugoslavism and a writer of the language defined as Croato-Serbian / Serbo-Croatian diasystem. In the period of his links with the cultural environment of Zagreb (1912-1919), he was writing according to the Croatian standard, later basically, in Serbian, but using environmental and stylistic diversity of the diasystem in order to stress its cognitive and artistic potential. Currently, when four national language standards are developing on the basis of the diasystem: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, reading Andrić in accordance with post-Yugoslav linguistic ideas, that is with the awareness and conviction about the „break-up” of the Serbo-Croatian language, would necessarily lead to an absurd conclusion that the writer created his works using the content of various languages. Literary heritage of the great writer of Serbo-Croatian language, which remains a sociocultural fact, has been used not only by Serbian culture and language, but also by global culture - thanks to translations of the works of this Nobel laureate into numerous world languages.