La Durée in The Bridge on the Drina
Maha Qahtan Sulaiman
College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.8.12.2.15
Keywords: Bridge, consciousness, Drina, la durée, time, witness
Abstract
The French philosopher Henri Bergson claims that time has two qualities: The objective time; measured by clocks, and la durée that cannot be divided into units—but reflects our inner individual experience. The latter is the main concern of this paper which addresses the subjective concept of time in relation to a stone bridge—the main character in the historical novel The Bridge on the Drina, by the Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andrić. The bridge was constructed across the Drina by the Ottomans in the 16th century. In the novel, the bridge stands as a witness for the lives and fates of the residents of Višegrad for four centuries, till the time of its destruction during the First World War. The paper aims to examine Bergson’s la durée through the inner consciousness of the people who live around the stone bridge, or participate in its construction. The novelist describes people experiencing the swift or slow passage of time according to their circumstances. In both cases, time is linked to consciousness, and it is indivisible.
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