Here, where the Drina flows ·with the whole force of its green and foaming waters , from the apparently closed mass of the dark steep mountains, stands a great clean-cut bridge with eleven wide sweeping arches. From this bridge spreads fanlike the whole rolling valley with the little oriental town of Visegrad and all its surround­ings, with hamlets nestling in the folds of the hill, covered with meadows, pastures and plum-orchards, and criss­crossed with walls and fences and dotted with shaws and occasional clumps of evergreens. Looked at from a distance through the broad arches of the white bridge it seems as if one can see not only the green Drina, but all that fertile and cultivated coun­tryside and the southern sky above.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Thus the bridge links the town with

its surrounding villages. Actually, to say «links» is just as true as to say that the sun rises in the morning so that men may see around them and finish their daily tasks, and sets in the evening that they may qe able to sleep and rest from the labours of the day.

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Nobel Prize 1961:

IVO ANDRIC

The town gr if from an i "In time the houses crowded together and the s.ettlements multiplied at both ends of the bridge. The town owes its existence to the bridge and grew out of it as if from an imperishable root." These words were written by the great Yugoslav author, lvo Andric, Nobel Prize 1961, in his book "The Bridge on the Drina"*. The photo essay published by World Health is based on this work, which tells how the bridge, ever since it was built in the 16th century across a

out of the bridge as perishable root

fast-flowing river of Serbia, has contributed to the growth and life of the town of Visegrad. The theme of Jean Mohr's photographs and of the quotations from lvo Andric is urba­nization. Behind this word: the growth of towns, suburbs swallowed into city centres, the disappearance of green calm. Urbanization today calls for closer collaboration of town planners, architects, doctors, .educators, politicians and of the people themselves who are principally concerned.

• Translated from the Serbo-Croot by Lovett F. Edwards and published by George Al/en and Unwin Ltd, the Macmillan Company, and the New American library .

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •••

Here also in time the houses crowded together and the settlements multi­plied at both ends of the bridge. The town owes its existence to the bridge and grew out of.it as if from an imper­ishable root.

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The bridge on the Drina

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The bridge is about two hundred and fifty paces long and about ten paces wide save in the middle where it widens out into two completely equal terraces placed symmetrically ·on either side of the roadway and making it twice its normal width. This is the part of the bridge known as the kapia. Two buttresses are built on each side of the central pier which is splayed out towards the top, so that to right and left ot the roadway there are two terraces daringly and harmoniously proje~ting outwards from the straight line of the bridge over the noisy green waters . far below. The two terraces are about five paces long and the same in width and are bordered, as is the whole length of the bridge, by a stone parapet. Otherwise, they are open and uncovered. That on the right as one comes from the town is called the sofa. It is raised by two steps and bordered by benches for which the parapet serves as a back; steps, benches and parapet are all made of the same shining stone.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

From their very earliest years, the children's eyes grew accustomed to the lovely lines of this great stone structure built of shining porous stone, regularly and faultlessly cut. They knew all the bosses and concavities of the masons, as well as · all the tales and legends associated with the exist­ence and building of the bridge, in which reality and imagination, waking and dream, were wonderfully and. inextricably mingled. They had always known these things as if they had come into the world with them, even as they knew their prayers, but could not remember from whom they had learnt them nor when they had first heard them. They knew that the bridge was built by Rade the Mason, who must have lived for hundreds of y~ars to have been able to build all that was lovely and lasting in Serbia .

. . . . . . . . . . . •.• ...

Between the life of the townsmen and that bridg~, there exists a centuries­old bond. Their fates are so intertwined that they cannot be imagined separately and cannot be told separately. There­fore the story of the foundation and destiny of the bridge is at the same time the story of the life of the town and of its people, from generation to generation, even as through all the tales about the town stretches the line of the stone bridge with its eleven arches and the kapia in the middle, like a crown.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The nine day's wonder became a part of their everyday life and they crossed the bridge hurriedly, indiffer­ently, anxiously, absent-mindedly as the tumultuous waters that flowed beneath it, as if it were only one of the countless roads that they and their beasts trod beneath their feet. And the plaque with the inscription became as silent as any other stone.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Its shining line in the composition of the town did not change, any more than the outlines of the mountains against the sky. It remained as unchan­ged as the waters that flowed beneath it. It too grew old, naturally, but on a scale of time that was much greater than the span of human existence. Its life, though mortal, resembled eternity, for its end could not be perceived.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 27

The bridge on the Drina

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During all those early days, the people crossed the bridge count­less times from one bank to the other. The children rushed across while their elders walked slowly, deep in conver­sation or watching from every point the new views open to them from the bridge. The helpless, the lame and the sick were brought on litters, for no one wanted to be left out or renounce their share in this wonder. Even the least of the townsmen felt as if his powers were suddenly multiplied, as if some wonderful, superhuman exploit was brought within the measure of his powers and within the limits of . everyday life, as if besides the well­known elements of earth, water and sky, one more were open to him, as if by each one of them could suddenly realize one of his dearest desires, that ancient dream of man-to go over the water and be master of space.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The outward aspect of the town altered visibly and rapidly. Those same people, who in their own homes maintained the old order in every detail and did not even dream of changing anything, became for the most part easily reconciled to the changes in the town and after a longer or shorter period of wonder and grumbling ac­cepted them. Naturally here, as always and everywhere in similar circumstan­ces, the new life meant in actual fact a mingling of the old and the new. Old ideas and old values clashed with the new ones, merged with them or existed side by side, as if waiting to see which would outlive which.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Left .an~ right of the kapia in both directions, the stone parapet of the bridge had long become smooth and somewhat darker than the rest. For hundreds of years the peasants had rested their burdens on it when crossing the bridge, or idlers had leant shoulders and elbows upon it in conversation while waiting for others or when, solitary and leaning on their elbows, they looked in the depths below them at the water as it went foaming swiftly past, always new and yet always the same.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • The fine buildings on the Drina

began to exercise their influence on trade and communications, on the

. town of Visegrad and the whole country around, and they went on doing so without regard for the living or the dead, for those who were rising or those who were falling. The town soon began to move downwards from the hillside to the water's edge and expand and develop more and more.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 29

The bridge on the Drina

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/

At and around the kapia were the :first stirrings of love, the :first passing glances, flirtations and whisper­ings. There too were the first deals and bargains, quarrels and reconcilia­tions, meetings and waitings .

• • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • The kapia was a real boon for great

and small. Every citizen could, at any time of day or night, go out to the kapia and sit on the sofa, or hang about it on business or in conversation. Suspended some fifteen metres above . the green boisterous waters, this stone sofa floated in space over the water, with dark green hills in three sides, the heavens, filled with clouds or stars above, and the open view down river like a , narrow amphitheatre bounded by the dark blue mountains behind.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

There too the · elders of the town often sat to discuss public matters and common troubles, but even more often young men who only knew how to sing and joke.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • In the darkness, above the boister­

ous river, echoed their songs, jests, noisy conversation and endless argu­ments, new, bold, naive, sincere and unselfconscious.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • So, on the kapia, between the skies,

the river and the hills, generation after generation learnt not to moU1;n overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away. They entered there into the unconscious philosophy of the town that life was an incompre­hensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent; yet it lasted and endured 'like the bridge on the Drina' . . . . . . . . , ........ .

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