The Bridges that Dont Connect: The Exorcism of the Balkans by Ismail Kadare and Ivo Andric

This paper approaches the poetic structure of the "bridge" in the novels “The Bridge on the Drina” and "The Three Arched Bridge" from the point of view of today's Albanian readers or Albanian language readers, and its possible transformation into "meaning". Respectively, we aimed the comparison between the cultural roots of the phenomenon, of the bridge as a chronotope and as a heterotopia, and its materialization in the text. During the research we noticed traces of another structure, hidden in the dialectics of the relationship between temporal and spatial states of the bridge, which is able to determine the poetic identity of Albanian and Slavic versions of it, the respective structural rhythm and the consequence in reading. In different volumes and with different characteristics, “The Bridge on the Drina” and "The Three Arched Bridge" are consequences of the same poetic component that conditions reading as an attempt to overcome the same mythical state of history, like a post-identity transition, discrepancy and a conflict between different civilization projects. It is about a kind of of exorcism, something like “a denial of the Balkans”, at its point of Ottoman conception, cultural appropriation of history, but also rejection of the type of the identity derivated from it, from the "bridge". Both novels are two "formula of exorcism" of “The Other”, in the the Slavic and Albanian way. The "bridge" does not connect, does not unite. On the contrary, it is the poetic state of the "impossible" or "denied" structure. Received: 22 July 2025 / Accepted: 7 September 2025 / Published: 04 October 2025