The Bridge Over the Drina

A favorite book of mine is The Bridge Over the Drina. 

Written by Ivo Andrić during the early years of WWII, it reads not like a novel but a chronicle. It's an epic - the tale of the Yugoslavians, back when they existed, and of the various empires who ruled over them in quick succession (Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, etc) like the ocean's tide. It starts with the building of the titular bridge, connecting two parts of a town separated by a river, and centers the story of the town on this marvel of stone and masonry, unchanging as different types of soldiers come and go over four centuries. 

Andrić served as the Yugoslavian ambassador to Germany from 1939 until his arrest in '41. The Nazis allowed him to return to Belgrade, but only under conditions similar to house arrest (social distancing??). Andrić furiously wrote at least three books, including Drina, by the end of the war. In 1961, Andrić was awarded the Nobel for Literature

Drina is not only a chronicle of the fascinating history of the Balkans and the "Balkan Mindset" (epic laziness, hyper-romanticism, furious passion, extended memory function, constant confusion), but also of time. The bridge is the protagonist, the lead character in each act and every narrative. And as a person who relishes in the neorealism fetishization of public works (finally reading the last 400 pages of Power Broker is at the top of my COVID-19 must do!! list), it fills me with joy. It's the story of how a bridge is built, what the bridge creates and who it connects. We are humbled by these monuments to time, by the symbols of endurance, and how their creation changes everything.

This is one of the easily searchable quotes online, but also give off the typical vibe of the whole book:

"But misfortunes do not last forever (this they have in common with joys) but pass away or are at least diminished and become lost in oblivion. Life on the kapia always renews itself despite everything and the bridge does not change with the years or with the centuries or with the most painful turns in human affairs. All these pass over it, even as the unquiet waters pass beneath its smooth and perfect arches."

Another favorite section is how one resident reacts to the Austro-Hungarians building a train line through the town, which renders the bridge functionally obsolete:

"The packhorse owners, their horses, the covered carts and little old-fashioned fiacres by which men at one time travelled to Sarajevo remained without work. The journey no longer lasted two whole days with a halt for the night at Rogatica, as up till now, but a mere four hours. That was one of those figures which made men stop and think, but they still spoke of them without understanding and with emotion, reckoning up all the gains and savings given to them by speed. They looked with wonder at the first townsmen who went one day to Sarajevo, finished their business, and returned home again the same evening. 

Alihodja, always mistrustful, pig-headed, plain-spoken and apart in that as in all else, was the exception. To those who boasted of the speed with which they could now finish their business and reckoned how much time, money and effort they had saved, he replied ill-humoredly that it was not important how much time a man saved, but what he did with it when he had saved it. If he used it for evil purposed then it have been better he ha never had it. He tried to prove that the main thing was not that a man went swiftly but where he went and for what purpose and that, therefore, speed was not always an advantage.  

'If you are going to hell, then it is better that you should go slowly,' he said curtly to a young merchant. 'You are an imbecile if you think the Schwabes have spent their money and brought their machine here only for you to travel quickly and finish your business more conveniently. All you see is that you can ride , but you do not ask what the machine brings here and takes away other than you yourself and others like you. That you can't get into you head. Ride then, by fine fellow, ride as much as you like, but I greatly fear that all your riding will lead only to a fall one of these fine days. The time will come when the Schwabes will make you ride where you don't want to go and where you never even dreamt of going.' 

Whenever he heard the engine whistle as it rounded the bends on the slope near the Stone Han, Alihodja would frown and his lips would move in incomprehensible murmurs and, looking out slantwise from his shop at the unchanging bridge, he would go on elaborating his former idea; that the greatest buildings are founded by a word and that the peace and existence of whole towns and their inhabitants might depend on a whistle. Or so at least it seemed to this weakened man who remembered so much and had grown suddenly old. "