Говор као одсуство разговора: у прилог проучавању Андрићеве концепције књижевног јунака
Speech as the Absence of Dialogue: Towards an Addition to the Studies of Andrić’s Concept of a Literary Hero

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the conceptualization of the literary character’s speech as one of the essential narrating strategies in Ivo Andrić’s fictional works, as well as the ways in which his characters establish and locate themselves within the discourses of power and the fictional time and space. The paper argues that Andrić deploys the theme of the avoidance of genuine verbal communication between a literary hero and their interlocutor. The lack of a general understanding, intimacy, exchanging ideas or speaking one’s mind in a live conversation between the characters, represents one of Andrić’s strongest literary obsessions, exploring the general isolation between the people within their historical and geographic context. The paper relies on the method of identifying and analyzing the elements of this literary strategy within a group of stories published in various periods of Andrić’s work and especially, his novel Gospođica [The Woman from Sarajevo], where the lack of communication and verbal exchange between people is shown as the ultimate sign of human isolation and tragic existence. One of the major conclusions in this paper also states that Andrić shapes his characters not as predominantly moral or immoral people, but rather as imperfect, insufficient, vulnerable and, paradoxically, slightly out of the main focus of the narration in his stories. By doing so, he is building their literary value and aesthetic beauty by picturing them as a part of the broader, wild and unpredictable context of human history.

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