Hum (Jan 2012)
BEAUTY FLARE, EVIL STEADINESS About some aspects of short-story writing by Ivo Andric
Abstract
Andrić’s essay Conversation with Goya, an imagined dialogue with the painter, is characterized by the author’s almost complete identification with the painter’s views and reflections on the world, primarily on the power of evil and the artist’s endeavor to correct moral aberrations by exposing acts of evil, horror and low instincts. As Goya’s paintings and copperplates are dominated by dark and gloomy colors, so is Andrić in many of his writings haunted by the obscure energy of evil. The paper provides a close reading of Andrić’s narrative writings focusing on the topics of evil, human destruction, crime, beastly instincts. In these writings Andrić endeavors to explain the roots of evil in a variety of ways, ranging from the doctrine of the original sin, through the understanding of evil as the reflection and expression of man’s free will to St. Augustine’s notion of evil as total depravity, i.e. ultimate lack of the ability to do good. There is a strong asymmetry in the distribution of the principles of good and evil in the world as perceived by Andrić, strikingly in favor of the latter principle, with beauty, forgiveness and compassion occurring only as brief instances of brightness in a senseless world governed by purely materialistic laws.
