In Search of a “Perfect” Storyteller: Prokleta avlija as Andrić’s Narratological Guidebook

Abstract

Prokleta avlija should be considered both as one of the most successful Ivo Andrić`s texts and also as his testamentary and lifework. This paper analyses a possibility of interpretation of Prokleta avlija from the perspective of its implied metanarrative configuration. The novel is interpreted, beyond its thematic and semantic levels, as a “catalogue” of different narrative models that are coordinated within themselves. The position of the central narrative part of the novel - “Ćamil`s story” - is considered not only as thematic and compositional heart of the text but also as the culmination and resolving point of the reader`s search for a very specific narrative technique. During spontaneous reader`s “journey” through the various narrative voices to the central story of Prokleta avlija, the reader is the one that becomes a metanarrative character of the novel. Giving the homodiegetical narration the most prominent position among different narrative models, Andrić suggests his own deep insights about this issue. The final segment of Prokleta avlija implies a symbolic entrance of “the perfect” narrator in the story, the one for whom the narration is more important than himself. Only for him, and not for any other narrator in the novel, storytelling is a matter of life - or death. Gradually lining up different narrative techniques, Andrić puts homodiegetic narration on the very top of the list as the most demanding and, in context of his own story, the most uncompromising mode of telling. The paper indicates that the destiny of the writers of the famous Serbian homodiegetic novels, Vladan Desnica, Meša Selimović, Danilo Kiš, Dragoslav Mihailović, Borislav Pekić, somehow repeats the pattern of destiny of “the perfect” narrator of Andrić`s novel. That fact confirms his surprising and timeless artistic vision.