Jelena, the women who exist : the Krakow biography of Ivo Andrić

Bibliogr. s. 195-209. Indeks. Tekst w jęz. serbskim w alf. łac. Nazwisko autorki w j. serbskim: Novak-Bajcar, Silvija.

The starting point for the considerations presented in the book is "Jelena, the Woman Who Is Not", a short story triptych whose title, by invoking the idea of presence and absence, symbolically determines the paradox of the mode of existence of its author, the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić (1892-1975), within the space of the former Yugoslav literatures. Despite the clearly delineated need for finding biographical and psychological interpretations for this text, which may be evidenced by publications focusing on the women in Andrić’s life, what has remained a mystery to researchers is the person who became the Nobel Prize-winning author’s muse, and whom he met during the time he spent in Krakow, as a student at the Jagiellonian University, just before the outbreak of World War I. That person – considered by many the one on whom the eponymous Jelena (Helen) in Andrić’s stories was based, and by some his great unfulfilled love – became the actual ‘Helen who is not’, and yet one who doubtlessly did exist. Solving the mystery of Andrić’s jealously-guarded biographical secret and deciphering the phenomenon of his lasting fascination with that woman leads to the conclusion that the problem of Helen’s presence in the writer’s work cannot be reduced to a mere biographical episode and a fascinating mystery. It acquires that rank of an experience which left a clear mark on the artist’s life and achievement. The reconstruction of Andrić’s Krakow experience, ranging from encounters with the circle of his friends from Bosnia and Herzegovina to contacts with the city’s outstanding scholars, opens up to the reader the world of the young artist’s artistic, philosophical and political exultations and disappointments. It is also a contribution to the consideration of the influence of Krakow’s genius loci on the intellectual formation of the celebrated Yugoslav author. By focusing on the writer’s choices made just before the outbreak of World War I, manifested both in gestures of rejection and gestures of affirmation, I intend to show the role played in the formation of the artist’s identity by his encounter with the Polish culture of the early 20th century