The real-life story of the bridge across the Drina after the publication of the novel (that in 1961 won the Nobel prize for literature) has bizarre and brutal twists worthy of the darker moments of Andric’s imagination. The three arches destroyed in the First World War were repaired, as were the five subsequently destroyed in the Second World War and by the 1990s the bridge was regarded as a major historic and architectural monument of Yugoslavia. Then descended the dark and ancient shadow of hatred and cruelty. There was division, fragmentation, a return to religious war, the imposition of the ghastly mechanisms of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and land appropriation by the most violent means imaginable. In 1992 a large group of local Muslims were herded to the centre of the bridge – to the place of creative and convivial gatherings in Andric’s vision of the history of the bridge – and then flung off ‘and shot at for sport by Serbs as they fell’.7 The bridge, now again a place of calm and beauty but more than ever haunted, currently belongs to the Republic of Serbia. Few visit it: the suffering it has seen is too great for most to bear.
One bridge nearby, with a comparable history and story, I have explored in detail. The bridge at Mostar was completed in 1566 and with a single and elegant stone arch spanning 29 metres and rising 19 metres above the water, is one of the great engineering marvels of the Ottoman empire – a testimony to the taste, culture and scientific skills of the Muslim world that created it. The construction technique was ingenious – the limestone blocks were finely cut and their joints strengthened by the use of wrought iron pins, set in lead to prevent them rusting, expanding and cracking the stone. As in Andric’s story of the bridge at Drina, the bridge at Mostar – with what many at the time believed was the longest stone-built arched span in the world – became a great source of local pride and brought prosperity and distinction to the town. It also became the focus of customs and rituals – notably offering young Mostar males of all persuasions the opportunity to publicly demonstrate their virility to all who might be interested by leaping from the crown of the bridge into the generally shallow water below.
The history, beauty and technical excellence of this bridge proved its undoing. The same vicious conflict following the break-up of Yugoslavia that led to the deaths on the bridge across the Drina also engulfed Mostar. The town had a complex and mixed community – Orthodox Christian Bosnian Serbs, Slavic Muslims and Roman Catholic Croats – and in mid 1992 this long stable but potentially volatile community fragmented. Fighting flared on opposite sides of the bridge, each the territory of neighbours now in conflict. Outside forces arrived and the bridge became a target – this was culture very much in the firing line. The bridge was obviously of military and strategic significance in the fighting – but it was also a symbol, an emblem of Muslim presence, of Islamic culture. As such some of the fighting factions found it intolerable. Despite attacks, the bridge managed to survive until November 1993 when Croat forces finally shelled it to destruction.
When the fighting gradually died down, and Mostar found itself stabilized as part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was resolved that this cultural wonder must be rebuilt. This was not only to reclaim lost beauty and history, but was to be an act of reconciliation that would give Mostar back its heart, its identity and its role as a trading centre. The European Union got involved, money was made available by various states and an exemplary reconstruction took place utilizing as many of the old stones as possible and using traditional building materials and techniques. By July 2004 the great wrong had been put right and the noble bridge rebuilt. I saw it a few months later. It looked superb, as if the last ten years had never been. Mostar has its wonderful bridge back, the ancient trade routes are reconnected, and customs revived. Even while I was there muscular young men were gaily tossing themselves off the top of the arch to splash into the water far below. But near the bridge I spied a stone standing against a wall, and on the stone was written, ‘Don’t forget’. The stark and powerful words provoked memories of ancient, prophetic texts, especially those touching on mortality and transience. I looked up the famous lines from the eleventh century Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: ‘The moving finger writes: and, having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line. Nor all your tears wash out a word of it’.8 Yes indeed, we are ‘weighed in the balance, and…found wanting’ (Daniel, 5:27). A bridge, for all its engineering wonder and potential symbolism, is in many ways just a bridge, a physical fact. The sign near the bridge at Mostar, I suppose, is saying that some things when lost cannot be found, that it is easier to mend a broken bridge than it is a broken heart.
Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in November 2004. The beautiful mid-sixteenth century bridge had recently been reconstructed after its destruction in 1993, but the words written on a stone nearby – ‘Don’t Forget’ – were a reminder that the intense emotions that had been aroused by the destruction of the bridge (a symbol of Muslim culture as well as a military target) – had not been fully pacified by its rebuilding.
The bridges at Višegrad and Mostar have, by turn, been symbols of identity, despair, death and redemption. Other bridges have not had such emotional, roller coaster rides but, nevertheless, have still enjoyed extraordinary existences that have made them central to the life of their city or nation and so much more than just routes of communication or means of crossing a great divide. The Széchenyi chain bridge in Budapest, stretching 375 meters across the Danube and completed in 1849, launched the fortunes of the city and has become a symbol of Hungarian pride and liberty (see page 245). Similarly, although for differing reasons, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York (see page 284), the Sydney Harbour Bridge (see page 218), and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (see page 228) have all become the much-loved emblems of the cities in which they stand. These were all, in their time and in their different ways, bold technical pioneers and creations of epic scale and ambition. But earlier ages have also produced bridges with comparable emotional punch. There were the paradise bridges of Persia (see page 118), the great pious works of medieval France, such as the bridges at Avignon and Orléans (see pages 92 and 82), and of central Europe.
THE ALCHEMICAL BRIDGE
The Charles Bridge in Prague, the Czech Republic, is perhaps the best-known man-made object in a city packed with architectural wonders. The bridge has an extraordinary life and history, and a great importance. When completed in the very early fifteenth century the 516-metre-long, stone-built, sixteen-arch bridge not only connected the two halves of the city in spectacular style (an earlier ramshackle affair had been swept away in the 1340s) but also, as the only route across the mighty river Moldau (Vltava) formed a vital trade route that – almost literally – connected Europe to the east. It was – in fact as well as fancy – a bridge between worlds, with both its ends secured by robust guard towers.
The importance of the bridge was recognized from the moment construction started. The foundation stone was laid in 1357 with, it is alleged, the Emperor Charles IV insisting that the event take place at 5.31 am on 9 July. Royal astronomers, mathematicians and those learned men consulted had, apparently, ordained that this moment was auspicious because it enshrined