The damn yard

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The Damned Court ( Serbian Проклета авлија / Prokleta avlija ) is a short story by the Yugoslav Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić , published in Novi Sad in 1954 by Matica Sprska . The German translation comes from Milo Dor and Reinhard Federmann and was published by Suhrkamp in 1957 .

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A young monk sits in his Bosnian monastery and looks out over the snow-covered grave of his late brother Petar. He remembers his stories from earlier times.

Many years ago, Brother Petar traveled to Istanbul on behalf of the monastery and was innocently arrested there as a supposed spy. He was taken to the remand prison, a whole little town populated by inmates and guards that was just called the Damned Court . Criminals and political prisoners lived here, guilty and wrongly accused, morons and lost or simply mistakenly arrested, people from Istanbul and from all over the country . The prison was laid out in such a way that you couldn't see the city or the harbor anywhere and that the inmates had the feeling that they were on some Devil's Island . Especially when the south wind was blowing, the madness was like a plague .

Brother Petar liked to describe the people he had met while waiting inactive. There was the counterfeiter Zaim, who told an incredible number of women’s stories, a delightful life that stood in stark contrast to his hopeless situation in prison. Then there were two silent Bulgarians who were held as political hostages for an anti-Turkish revolt, whose proximity Petar sought precisely because of their quietness and, unlike the criminals, because of their pleasant manner. The Jew Chaim from Smyrna, on the other hand, was almost morbidly suspicious and paranoid; he observed and explored all that was going on around him with great precision and then described it to Brother Petar as if he had been there himself. In this way, Petar also learned the story of Djamil Efendi, a young man who had settled near Petar and was pleasantly noticed by him because of his many books. Djamil was given his own cell after a short time, as he was a noble prisoner. He was the son of a Turkish pasha and a Greek woman from Smyrna who, because of an unhappy love, had withdrawn more and more into his studies and books. There he came across the story of Djems , the brother of Sultan Bajezid , who had been defeated in the battle for the throne and had sought asylum with the Hospitallers on Rhodes . There he was held like a prisoner, and he became the plaything of great power interests between the Ottoman Empire and the West. He died in exile. Because Djamil studied the fate of this challenger to the incumbent sultan with such devotion, the news of it reached the governor of Smyrna, who had him arrested. In a climate of constant suspicion, people suspected that Djamil was studying this historical case on behalf of some conspiratorial party who wanted to overthrow the ruling sultan. But it soon turns out that Djamil identified with the unfortunate Jem in such a way that he believed himself to be Jem. During a nightly interrogation in the Damned Court , Djamil attacked his guards and then disappeared - nobody knew where. Either he was dead or he was taken to a madhouse. And then there was the prison director Latif Aga, who everyone called Karadjos (after the grotesque figure of the Turkish shadow play). At a young age he liked to socialize with criminals until he was torn out there, but as a police officer, now on the other side, remained true to his preferred environment. Knowing so well the mentality and mindset of these people, he became an excellent cop and eventually the director of the damned court. He ruled there with strange and unorthodox methods, was feared by everyone, played his game with the prisoners and always elicited a confession from them. But it could also happen that he surprisingly released an unfortunate person. Karadjos lived for the damned court and no one could imagine that he would not be the director there.

After Djamil, Petar's friend, with whom he had had his intimate conversations every day, disappeared, Petar became visibly lonely. He was soon transported into exile in Akra, where he had to spend eight months before he was released. Back in Bosnia, Brother Petar preferred to work as a watchmaker, armorer and mechanic, and told the younger brothers, often incoherently and erratically, about his former experiences, especially about his friend Djamil. Now, many years later, he is underground and the friars are counting his estate of tools.

About the book

The damned court is one of the longest stories by Ivo Andrić. It is typical of him insofar as the plot takes place historically precisely in the Bosnian past, while the motif of human forlornness is timeless. Andrić artistically uses the technique of frame narration and the alternation of first-person and narrator in order to repeatedly distance himself from what is happening. Depending on the thematic level and the point of view of the narrator, he changes the key. The focus is on the story of Dschem, around which the plot is set in three concentric circles. Andrić's language is, as always, traditional, even conservative. Behind the realistic portrayal of the prison yard and its colorful hustle and bustle, where everyone is considered to be guilty in the Kafkaesque sense, is the metaphorical image of a universal human threat. This expresses the author's humanistic ethos very clearly. The reader can easily draw a parallel between the historical past described and the time the story was written, the Cold War era .

The only German translation so far comes from Milo Dor and Reinhard Federmann. It was authorized by Andrić, who spoke German very well . In an exchange of letters written by Andrić in German, typewritten and with handwritten notes, the author explained to the translators some of the difficult-to-understand Turzisms of the original. As Ivan Ivanji , Andrić's secretary at the time, explained, Andrić always left his handwritten additions so that at least something personal was preserved in the letters.

expenditure

  • Ivo Andrić: Prokleta avlija . Novi Sad 1954.
  • Ivo Andrić: The damn court . Translation by Milo Dor and Reinhard Federmann. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1957 (new edition with a new afterword 2002, ISBN 3-518-22349-6 ).

Film adaptations

  • Prokleta avlija . TV movie, 73 minutes, Yugoslavia 1984. Director: Milenko Maricic. Actors: Petar Kralj, Dubravko Jovanovic, Zoran Radmilovic and others

literature