Andric’s bridge as dialectics of short time and longevity

Abstract

This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of the relationship between the typology of historical time from the perspective of the French historian Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) and the context of understanding historical and symbolic purpose of the image of bridge by Serbian author Ivo Andric (1892-1975). A comparison of a functional narrative (Andric) to a historiographic one is legitimised by the claim made by Paul Ricoeur’s (1913-2005), who argues that Braudel, due to the impossibility of taking a position vis-à-vis “the event” had to create a quasi-culmination out of temporal planes of the theory by means of poetic configuration, and that it was precisely the criticism of the event that prevented him from developing a typology within a single storyline. The metaphysical idea of history as a culmination itself, enacted by the characters of the story, has an advantage over a historiographic analysis. Andric’s narrative continues where Braudel left off, showing that it is possible to simultaneously abandon a short duration and look back on unique events. Andric’s bridge will be seen in terms of a symbolic bond as depicted in the author’s poetics as well as a constituent of short, subjective time, as thematised in Braudel’s epistemology of history. Apart from the theoretical similarity and compatibility of Braudel’s and Andric’s ideas, a similar existential experience as a foundational factor of the creation of their individual philosophies of history will be identified.