Human orientation of Andrić and Koneski
The ethics of both writers, which are subject of this work, beginning from national frames moves towards the world of harmonic unity. With their engagement and creative work, they exit their narrow national frames turning towards wider spaces of the Balkans. Their intellect yearns for broadness to the space, and this fact implies the altruistic determination. They walk on the “difficult, but holy way from the national to the general mankind” as Andrić himself speaks in a short essay published in “Literary south”, alluding on the movements of successors of the Young Bosnian movement. This ascertainment can be freely used also for their determination. Above all, we here point out Andrić’s engagement in the Young Bosnian movement and the struggle he fought for the preservation of the purity of his language. In his numerous works he expresses respect to efforts put by Petar Kochich10F and Young Bosnians for the preservation of their national language as a matter of survival oh his people. Koneski is the creator of the Grammar of the Macedonian Standard Language. He also struggled for the same matter in the years after liberation. Language shows the genesis of a nation, it preserves the essence of one’s cultural identity. They believe that language is the living power connected not only to the culture, but also to the survival of a nation. Therefore, language is to be preserved by all segments in state; they should be guardians and creators of the language. By such an attitude, they expressed their passionate love to their people and land. Although they respected and were fascinated by their national renaissance; Andrić was fascinated by the ideas of Karadjich and Nyegosh while Koneski – by Kliment Ohridski and Misirkov; they were never blinded by their national feelings, and never allowed such feelings to cause sacrificing of the common human good. Despite their national identity, ideas presented in their creative work determine them as cosmopolitans who stand up for the good of people regardless of their nationality or religion. Struggling for their national identity, they did not neglect the rights and values of other nations because they were conscious of the integrity of human community. The struggle of the modern world for the equality of nations, the respect of the spiritual world of small nations, and the respect of humanistic principles –they all are incorporated in the statement of one character in “Travnik Chronicle”, who poses the question: “Why it is as such that my righteous and good thought worths less than the same in Rome or Paris”? The value of human intellect, or the human essence in general, should not be conditioned by national or religious determination, or by any other convention. In Andrić’s humanistic concept, every human being is entitled to the same rights; he follows the way that leads to one common aim. Andrić’s novels and stories have a sense of encyclopaedic analysis of moral evaluations, yet such “encyclopaedicity”, as Miodrag Pavlovich notes11F, “has a special merit because it includes the restless space of the Balkans and its Turkish and Slavic coordinates, where it is difficult do preserve the usual measures and stable judgements of values.”
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10. Andrić, Ivo. A Few Remarks on the Kocic’s Struggle for National Language, Teaching Language and Literature in High School, Beograd, 1951, 1-2, 4.
11. Pavlovic, Miodrag, A View of Andrić’s Work, A Collection of Essays on Ivo Andrić, SANU, Beograd, 1977, 204.