Zmienność i trwałość skażonych krajobrazów nadrzecznych w ujęciu geobiograficznym – casus Driny

Abstract

This article attempts to answer the question of how to find oneself in a landscape contaminated by evil and suffering, where, according to Martin Pollack, traces of crime are hidden by nature and victims are doomed to oblivion. Rivers, whose course guarantees changeability and ephemerality, are predestined to hide wickedness. Assuming that landscape is not only a view around us, but also a sphere of life, a spiritual experience, the authors argue that landscape is characterised by changeability, while literature influences the permanence of its perception. An example that serves to verify this assumption is the Drina, whose image, preserved in cultural texts, is mainly shaped by the 1945 novel The Bridge on the Drina by Yugoslav Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andrić, which depicts the history of Višegrad until the end of World War I. In addition to Andrić’s novel, the illustrative material includes Saša Stanišić’s book How a Soldier Repaired the Gramophone (2006) and Ed Vulliamy’s collection of reportages War Is Dead, Long Live War. Bosnia. The Reckonig (2016). The clash between the real and imagined riverside landscape served the authors of the article to formulate the concept of a landscape individually constructed through sensory experiences in places of life, at a specific geobiographical moment.