Review article
EXISTENTIAL ANGST OF FATIMA OSMANAGIC
Elbisa Ustamujić
; Univerzitet„Džemal Bijedić“ u Mostaru
Abstract
Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina gives concluding remarks and it synthesizes
the genesis of the legend and legendary figures of Bosnian past, from its first
story of the epic hero Alija Djerzelez to a balladesque fate of wise and beautiful
Fatima Osmanagic. Structurally, a beauty of a woman is set as the counterpart
of the bridge; on one hand, it is a solid stone edifice that is a symbol of permanent
beauty, on the other hand, it is a fragile beauty of a woman, which has its time
and duration only in art. Literary criticism interprets that a girl in her defiance
throws herself into the river. However, the “pride is a key motive for the girl’s tragedy,
which is understandable in the patriarchal culture and aesthetic sensibility
of the closed Muslim family and the ballad genre. Her tragic guilt is in that she
has some inner reason to tempt fate by rejecting a young man to whom she will be
given as a bride with her father’s approval and thus found herself in a stalemate
of a tragic situation. She will resolve the existential bloody knot by jumping off the
bridge on her wedding way after the ceremony and, therefore, she will redeem her
father’s promise, but proud beauty will also keep her own word. Fate on a wedding
way evokes a ballad in which a beautiful girl cannot go through her whole
wedding day because her destiny will be fulfilled on that day. According to a balladesque
matrix, inevitability of fate has to be accepted without a word or regret.
In solitude, while watching the starry sky, in pantheistic experience of union of its
own pulse and the rhythm of cosmic space of big world, peaceful and callous for
chest pain and human suffering, becomes peaceful at the point of union of life and
death. At the end, the romance of the story undermines the harsh reality, corpse of
a drowned woman, Baudelairian end of earthly beauty.
Keywords
patriarchal culture; legend; beauty; pride; ballad matrix; intertextuality; existential drama
Hrčak ID:
229162
URI
Publication date:
10.7.2012.
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