The Bridge on the Drina

The common people remember and tell of what they are able to grasp and what they are able to transform into legend. Anything else passes them by without deeper trace, with the dumb indifference of nameless natural phenomena, which do not touch the imagination or remain in the memory. This hard and long building process was for them a foreign task undertaken at another's expense. Only when, as the fruit of this effort, the great bridge arose, men began to remember details and to embroider the creation of a real, skilfully built and lasting bridge with fabulous tales which they well knew how to weave and to remember.

Two buttresses had been built on each side of the central pier which had been splayed out towards the top, so that to right and left of the roadway there were two terraces daringly and harmoniously projecting outwards from the straight line of the bridge over the noisy green waters far below. The two terraces were about five paces long and the same in width and were bordered, as was the whole length of the bridge, by a stone parapet. Otherwise, they were open and uncovered. That on the right as one came from the town was called the sofa. It was raised by two steps and bordered by benches for which the parapet served as a back; steps, benches and parapet were all made of the same shining stone. That on the left, opposite the sola, was similar but without benches. In the middle of the parapet, the stone rose higher than a man and in it, near the top, was inserted a plaque of white marble with a rich Turkish inscription, a tarih, with a carved chronogram which told in thirteen verses the name of the man who built the bridge and the year in which it was built. Near the foot of this stone was a fountain, a thin stream of water flowing from the mouth of a stone snake. On this part of the terrace a coffee-maker had installed himself with his copper vessels and Turkish cups and ever-lighted charcoal brazier, and an apprentice who took the coffee over the way to the guests on the sofa. Such was the kapia.
On the bridge and its kapia, about it or in connection with it, flowed and developed, as we shall see, the life of the townsmen. In all tales about personal, family or public events the words ‘on the bridge’ could always be heard. Indeed on the bridge over the Drina were the first steps of childhood and the first games of boyhood.

…it would have been hard to find two worse negotiators or more unsuited contestants. Nothing more could have been expected of them than increasing general anxiety and the creation of one quarrel the more. That was to be regretted, but there was nothing to be done about it, for such moments of social upset and great inevitable change usually throw up just such men, unbalanced and incomplete, to turn things inside out or lead them astray. That is one of the signs of times of disorder.

“…en el puente del Drina tienen lugar los primeros paseos infantiles y los primeros juegos de los muchachos… nacen los primeros sueños de amor, las primeras ojeadas lanzadas al pasar, las reflexiones y los cuchicheos. También nacen aquí los primeros negocios, las querellas y los acuerdos, las citas y las esperas… y es aquí, por fin, donde hasta 1878 se ahorcaba y se empalaban las cabezas de todos aquellos, que, por cualquier razón, hubiesen sido ejecutados... las generaciones se sucedían junto al puente, pero el puente sacudía, como si fuese una mota de polvo, todas las huellas que habían dejado en él los caprichos o las necesidades de los hombres, y continuaba idéntico e inalterable.”

“Los extranjeros no estaban nunca tranquilos ni permitían que nadie lo estuviese; se habría dicho que con su red invisible, pero cada vez más definida, de leyes, de reglamentos y de ordenanzas, estaban decididos a abarcar toda la vida, las gentes, los animales y las casas, y a cambiar todo, a desplazar cuanto les rodeaba: el aspecto exterior de la ciudad, las costumbres que regían la existencia desde la cuna a la sepultura… Sólo algunos individuos excepcionales sentían verdaderamente el drama profundo de la lucha entre lo antiguo y lo moderno. Para ellos, el modo de vida estaba ligado de manera íntima e incondicional a la vida misma.”

“Todos estaban en su sitio y había un sitio para todos. Y por encima de la sociedad reinaba un orden y una ley: un orden bien establecido y una ley severa… Pero ahora todo había cambiado de lugar y las cosas se habían puesto al revés. Las gentes se dividían y se separaban según les parecía, sin ton ni son.”

این که زندگی شگفتی ایست درک ناپذیر که بی وقفه می گذرد و از میان می رود و توامان دوام پیدا می کند و تاب می آورد ، درست مانند پلی بر فراز رودخانه درینا .

"The wealth and variety of its fictional elements carry it so far beyond the confines of a straightforward novel, it cannot be limited to such a description. It puts one in mind of a collection of tales, but no collection of tales (not even A Thousand and One Nights or Washington Irving's stories) ever possessed such a unity and continuity of theme."