Herceg Novi is the only city in the world where Ivo Andrić built a house. At the time of the writer's greatest fame, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1961, Andrić found an environment in the city that has a special aura that ennobles the idea, sharpens the thought and strengthens the noble intention, which was the main motive for Vladimir Roganović to write the book "Andrić in Herceg Novi - Novi trails, faces and landscapes".
He points out that Herceg Novi was the city and place of the writer's kind of refuge, a family harbor and a mise-en-scène of true peace and contentment, where he lived the peaceful happiness of his restless life.
"Andrić's house on Topla, which I entered for the first time as a preschooler, was and remains for me the locus of childhood reflections on the world around us. Even before I entered it, I knew about Andrić and Njegoš: editions of their books surrounded me from the shelves of my home library, and my father's fascination with the work of genius writers encouraged me to reach for those volumes even then. I remained enraptured by that work to this day... And wondered: what prompted the genius artist, the prose builder of 'On the Drina bridge', 'Cursed courtyard', 'The bridge on Žepi', to build a house on this very spot among all the places on earth to our piece of the Mediterranean? Sun and light, the natural environment of the city that has been inspiring artists for centuries? Or - love? I tried in this book to provide some answers to those questions. Not only because of Andrić and not only because of Novi - but also because of new readers and the desire to discover the layers of Andrić's worlds in Borges's 'half-dark pigeons'.
Who influenced Andrić's decision to move to Herceg Novi?
Love. Love has decided. First of all, love for his wife Milica Babić, whose impaired health was benefited by the new aria, the healing mud of the spa in Igalo, and the sun that the Creator generously gives to Herceg Novi, Bok, and Montenegro. Also Andrić's deep fascination with the sea and its (meta)physical expanse, which is a constant deeply rooted in Andrić's creative personality. At the same time, Andrić's desire to, in his later years, when he acquired a family, find his sea "ban" and an oasis where he can be quiet, reflect on the sum of his life's wisdom and fragments of reflection on man and the world that surrounds him, chisels into the all-time "Signs on the Road" and late stories. At the entrance to Boka, Andrić created harmony and harmony that favored his intention. That's why in 1965, thinking from Bled about the house in Novi, in 1965 he wrote to Milica Babić at the address in Topal: "When I'm far away among other people, all the worries and difficulties there seem smaller, and our house is paradise."
About the Nov period of Andrić's life and work, Roganović found information in the archives of SANU and the Museum of the City of Belgrade, in the Endowment of Ivo Andrić, in the Archives of Herzegnov, private archives, in the notes and memories of Andrić's contemporaries. Memories of Andrić in Novi are still alive and flowing along this coast.
I had the great pleasure of talking with Andrić's friends from Herzegnov during the research, especially with the writer Bosiljka Pušić and the painter Voj Stanić. They fondly remembered the days spent in Andrić's company, conversations, walks, silence. Mrs. Pušić sent me a copy of the letter in which Andrić encouraged him to continue his literary work. I spoke with Voj Stanić several times in Škver, that magical place not only of Herzegovinian art and culture. We talked about art, not only about Andrić. On those occasions, we touched on other important personalities, phenomena and events that modeled our culture from the sixties to the eighties of the last century. Andrić still emerged from all memories as a quiet, modest and withdrawn man, with interesting people and events staring at him. These were everyday people: fishermen, porters, unrealized poets... a gallery of characters that the writer observed with eyes that saw a lot. The starting point of those conversations, which the reader can find in the book, are my later archival searches for every known line connecting the conceptual pair Andrić - Herceg Novi. The central chapter in the book "Faces, Nova" is dedicated to the "faces" that "called" Andrić to Nova, well-known and lesser-known, Andrić's contemporaries and predecessors...
Who did he hang out with in Novi?
With Branko Lazarević, Mihailo Lalić, Gun Bergman, Branko Ćopić, Voja and Nada Stanić, Bosiljka and Ilija Pušić, Zuko Džumhur, Stevan Raičković... With neighbors and guests of the famous "Nuclear Center". With our artists Aco Prijić, Bata Pravilović, Luka Tomanović, Mitko Bulajić, Dušan Mašović... On occasion, with the guests of our city: Desanka Maksimović, Danilo Kiša, Mako Dizdar, Arsen Dedić, Miodrag Bulatović and many others. Most often - with my Milica Babić and with my own imagination. That's why it is written in one place in Znakovi: "When I sit in front of the house, I have a view in front of me that looks as if it was chosen by a lover of natural beauty and not by chance." I see the wide opening of the Boka and along its entire length the sharp edge of the sea, like a taut rope of dark sapphire color, from Cape Luštica to Punta ostra, on which my imagination always performs its invisible and silent games and tricks".
It is a common opinion that Andrić did not like Herceg Novi and that he could not write there.
Perhaps the real question is when does the writer write? Is it only when he is sitting at his desk with a pen in his hand? No... The creator also creates when he walks, while looking at the sea or the stars, when he rests, when he talks to people or simply listens to them. Andrić created in Novi. And he created more than he wrote. He was stunned by the beauty of Herceg Novi, its paths and landscapes. He once told Stevan Raičković that there is little writing in Novi and added: "You see, everything is so beautiful here... That there is nothing to add... And it would be a sin to take anything away."
Andrić knew how to listen. And to look and to see. I belong to researchers who deeply believe that among all the places where the writer lived, it was precisely at the point between the three roads on Topla that he lived the peaceful happiness of his restless life. This is what I tried to argue in this book.
You have been writing this book for a long time, over ten years...
There are two reasons. The first, deeply personal, scientific and creative, was the feeling of the deepest respect and responsibility towards the writer whose work shaped me to a good extent - humanly and creatively. That's why this book, which brings a part of my research on Andrić's years in Herzegovina, was long in the making. And hard. Because as much as I wrote about the topic I wanted to cover, I deleted twice as much. I wanted to "bring out" Andrić and Novi to the scene of the play, whose mise-en-scène is the house on Topla, and to "relegate" the author to the background. That's why, among other things, I added four Mediterranean, solar and "sunny" short stories by Andrić to the book, which, indirectly but deeply, bear witness to that relationship. Another reason is the scarce material available to the researcher in those years. Archival traces, of course, exist, many memories of Andrić in Novi are still alive. Alive, but not always reliable. They are like a folk tale to which everyone adds something: the way it was or the way it could have been. Still, I thought: if not now - when?
The Nobel laureate was often written to by "ordinary" Novians
In Ivo Andrić's personal fund, Dr. Roganović found several letters, greeting cards, postcards, and telegrams sent by Andrić's residents, both to the Novi and Belgrade addresses.
"Andrić, in a sea of similar ones that came from all over the world, carefully preserved them and added his own notes on some of them. He used to answer them. They were sent by representatives of the Municipality, artists, but often also, "everyday people". One could conclude that they are all equally dear to him. The house of the Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić is a wonderful place and I would like it if all those letters were stored in it, as a memorial and as a symbol of Andrić and Herceg Novi", he points out.
Interpreter of the cultural and historical past of Novi and Boka Kotorska
Dr. Vladimir Roganović, literary historian, lexicographer and culturologist, was born in Dubrovnik in 1975. He finished elementary school and high school in Herceg Novi. He graduated, master's and doctorate at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. He is an editor in the Lexicographic editorial office of the Official Gazette. He is a scientific associate and member of the Board of Directors of the Ethnographic Institute SANU.
Dr. Roganović's scientific activity takes place in several thematic circles. In the sphere of literary theoretical and cultural historical methodological research, the focus is, on the one hand, on studies of the influence that foreign literature and culture had on Serbian and South Slavic literature, culture and scientific thought in the period between the two world wars, and on the analysis of those influences in the given cultural and historical relations. On the other hand, it explores and interprets the literary, cultural and historical past of Herceg Novi, Boka Kotorska and Montenegro. Special importance is given to scientific periodicals, which are not only understood as valuable archival sources, but are themselves the subject of thorough research. His scientific interests include the literature of Boka Kotorska and Montenegro from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century.
On the level of lexicography and encyclopedism, it works theoretically and practically. In the theoretical field, he is oriented towards the analysis of the content, conception and value of contemporary lexicographic works, and in lexicographic practice towards the conception and editing of lexicographic projects and works (editor of the Lexicon of National Parks of Serbia edition in five volumes: Đerdap, Kopaonik, Tara, Fruška gora and Šar- mountain; editor of the edition Small Lexicons of Serbian Culture, etc.). He is the author of the book Bok in the traces of disappeared times (2016); Herceg Novi: Pictorial lexicon; Herceg Novi - Imagery Lexicon (2018).
Bonus video:
