Ivo Andrić’s Travel Writing (Stylistic Techniques, Expressiveness, and Vividness in the Travel Texts From Bled to Sarajevo)

Renowned novelists’ travel literature is often sidelined in literary studies since it is typically overshadowed by the works that brought them worldwide fame. Ivo Andrić's travelogues certainly cannot surpass his novels The Bridge on the Drina, Bosnian Chronicle, and The Woman from Sarajevo; yet, they are undoubtedly representative of specific places and their inhabitants, to whom the writer gave particular prominence. This article deals with selected travelogues by Ivo Andrić (A Summer in Slovenia, A View of Sarajevo, The Folks in Old Sarajevo, At the Old Jewish Cemetery, and selected texts about Slovenia from the book Signs by the Roadside). We will base the genre classification on texts written in Slovenia and, in part, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, primarily in Sarajevo and its surroundings. We will analyze Andrić's way of presenting the inhabitants of these two countries within the context of historical, geographical, and cultural trends that impacted the mentality of the people he described. In selected Andrić’s travelogues, we will present the writer's analysis of cultures that are the result of historical events. We will observe his impressions of described locations and his inner feelings such as Hollander’s “search for the unusual, the exotic or the exciting,” which “for centuries has been part of the tradition of travel, especially as practiced by members of the upper class, adventurers, artists, and intellectuals – categories that often overlap” (Hollander). In the research, we will focus on identifying the key reasons behind Andrić's emotional return to Bled and Sarajevo, while emphasizing his emotions toward these geographical locations.