The Bridge (12 page)

Reading
The Bridge
starts to resemble the genre of video games known as
adventure
. In the imaginary world of the adventure, objects have a special meaning that is based only somewhat on real-world logic, while their
specific
importance arises within the context of the game they are in. Furthermore, this means that there is no intercultural, symbolical meaning, since video games are distributed all over the world and must not contain any specific cultural codes, unless they are pop icons. It is not hard to guess that the adventure starts with the question “and then what happened?” The answer takes the player gradually away from real-world logic towards the logic of the imaginary world of adventure. This substitution is never complete because then the player’s identification with the protagonist would be jeopardized and the player-controlled protagonist would turn into a character from a film that the player could not control, since he or she could never master the rules of such an imaginary world without the mediating role of real-world logic.

The question “and then what happened?” is answered by successfully resolving the tasks/riddles which, with a bit of simplification, can be reduced to transferring an object correctly from one place to another, or from one character to another. Solving these riddles is slow going at first because the specific logic of the imaginary world of adventure is unknown, and then speeds up as the tasks are resolved more rapidly with gradual advancement of the game when this specific logic becomes clearer and more familiar to the player.

The adventure’s progress does not depend on the player’s reflexes, which means that scenes of violence are detached from the player either 
by the time and place of events (the player only sees the results of the violence) or by animating part of the game where the player is unable to act. There is ideological meaning in taking violence out of the playable part of the adventure or putting it beyond the player’s view: it suggests the player’s absolute safety, since violence passes by without touching him or her. Even if the player-controlled protagonist in a game dies as a result of some uncompleted task, this death is only virtual: the player is not on the same ontological plane as the protagonist and numerous mechanisms (e.g. recording positions in the world of adventure) can bring the protagonist back to life. The world of adventure thus proves to be an absolutely safe world.

Equating the fantastic world of adventure with absolute safety is not without consequences, for it contains the idea of a harmless fantastic that over time turns into a welcoming and desirable fantastic. Traditional fantastic sees the irrational as a threat to the rational and Kafka’s fantastic turns rational into threatening irrational. Živković’s
The Bridge
, however, is closer to an understanding of the fantastic in which rationality and humanity become the threat: rationality threatens because it brings cognizance of death and humanity again becomes a synonym for mortal man, a being that cannot resist death. Rescue lies not in the hands of reason or some super-rational solidarity such as might be suggested by the ending of
The Trial
, but in a fantastic that has the form of something
about to be real
.

“Rescue” fantastic appears today in the form of posthumanism that goes beyond humanistic limitations, the first and foremost being man’s short life. In these posthumanist reveries, the fantastic goes from science fiction to fiction science. This hiatal transformation condenses the difference between science fiction and fiction science into a period of time known as “just about”. The posthumanist atmosphere of serenity and optimism is nominally based on science, while its actual roots are in faith in its speed. Here is a symptomatic excerpt from a transhumanist blog that illustrates posthumanist enthusiasm quite well:

“Do you want to live 50,000 years or more? Do you want to be able to build a house from the foundation up, have an IQ of 500, get rid of unwanted character traits and memories? In the not-so-distant future you will be able to do all these things and many, many more.”
¹⁶

It’s no accident that the list of posthumanist improvements starts with a longer life. The posthumanist idea could thus be defined as a leap from human qualities to eternal life, which inevitably includes the need to die like a man. Since this death is now conceived as passing to the almost eternal life offered by fiction science, it’s no accident that this death must happen in a humanistic milieu but without humanistic consequences.

The ultimate merit of Živković’s
The Bridge
is how strikingly it evokes this last act of humanity and first act of posthumanism. This can be seen in the central motif of the bridge. A humanistic “reading” of the bridge motif is not at issue, particularly not in Serbian literature where such an interpretation appears in important works by its great writer Ivo Andrić, not only the novel
Bridge on the Drina
or one of Andrić’s best stories
Bridge on the Žepa
, but also the essay entitled
Bridges
in which such a humanistic reading of bridges is clearly stated.

Andrić found that bridges “belong to everyone and are equally useful to one and all, always built by design.”
¹⁷
It is not hard to see universal humanistic values in this praise of bridges: equality, usefulness, purpose. In order for the bridge to retain these characteristics, however, it had to be conceived as a form bridging specific obstacles, that later, in humanistic discourse, became a predictable metaphor. Andrić: “All around the world, wherever my thoughts wander or settle, they come across faithful and silent bridges like the eternal human desire, eternally insatiable, to link, reconcile and connect everything that appears before our body and soul, lest there be divisions, opposition and partings.”
¹⁸

It is not too difficult to note that Andrić anticipates some other types of bridges here, such as bridgeheads as a military interpretation of the desire for universal integration. Even such a military reading of bridges still sees them in a humanistic form advancing to the other bank.

Andrić provides for another important symbolical potential of the bridge that must remain obscure because it is turned towards death, not progress. This is the bridge visited by suicides. The collective quality of bridges, emphasized by Andrić in the title of his essay (“Bridges” and not “Bridge”!) and the narration on different types and shapes of bridges, on their collective use and collective usefulness, dissipates in the jump of the lonely suicide, since this jump, this perspective of the bridge, clearly points to the hopeless separation of the individual from the collective.

Just as a humanistic reading of the bridge must exclude the lonely, suicidal jump off the bridge in order to retain its pathos, the jump of two people instead of one—suicides—is unimaginable for such a “suicidal” reading of the bridge. If the subterranean thought that orchestrates the suicide is actually the desire to make a distinction between oneself and society, then a double suicide is a farce. For this reason, the jump of two protagonists at the end of Živković’s novel deviates from both the humanistic and the suicidal treatment of the bridge. Unlike the humanistic reading, for Živković hope no longer lies on the other bank, i.e. in the eternal advancement of the humanistic idea that bridges over all obstacles, but in a jump into the unknown. From the humanistic perspective, it is impossible to know where the protagonists will land after they jump! Contrary to the lonely, suicidal reading turned towards death, Živković’s protagonists jump together. Where a suicidal view sees the water awaiting them, the posthumanist view sees a boat where the jumpers will be greeted by merriment—the symbol of postmodern euphoria and posthumanist cheerfulness.

Now, of course, other questions arise: if the humanistic bridge leads to the other bank, where is the posthumanist boat headed? And what kind of a boat is it, anyway? A ferryboat of the dead like Charon’s? A The Bridge 101 boat full of folly like Brant’s
Narrenssciff
? Or is it a new, posthumanist Argo? 

Our children will know the answer.

¹
 
See: Milivoj Solar, “Paradoxes of Interpretation” (“Paradoksi tumačenja”) in 
Myth of the Avant-Garde and Myth of Decadence
 (
Mit o avangardi i mit o dekadenciji
), Nolit, Belgrade, 1985.

 
²
 See: H. I. Borges, “Kafka and His Precursors” (“Kafka i njegove preteče”), 
Prose, Poetry, Essay
 (
Proza, poeziija, esej
), Bratstvo jedinstvo, Novi Sad, 1986.

³
 
Tzvetan Todorov, 
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
 (
Uvod u fantastičnu književnost
), Rad, Belgrade, 1987.

⁴
 Sava Damnjanov, 
Roots of Modern Serbian Literature of the Fantastic
 (
Koreni mod-erne srpske fantastike
), Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1988, p. 35.

⁵
 
Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, 
Dialectic of Enlightenment
 (
Dijalektika prosvetiteljstva
), Veselin Masleša, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1989, p. 17. 

⁶
 See: Gunther Anders,
The Outdatedness of Human Beings
 (
Zastarelost čoveka
), Nolit, Belgrade, 1985.

⁷
 See: Gunther Anders, 
Kafka – pro und contra
, Narodna prosvjeta, Sarajevo, 1955.

⁹
 
As interpreted by Bojana Stojanović Pantović, the scream, along with ectasy and an apocalyptic vision, is a manifestation of the expressionistic longing to overcome anxiety and alienation. See: Bojana Stojanović Pantović, 
Expressionism
 (
Ekspresionizam
), Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1998, p. 28. 

¹⁰
 We should be careful here. The scream that appears at the end of Rastko Petrović’s polyvalent genre text 
People Speak
 (
Ljudi govore
) unites the 
pre-human
 and the human at the moment of birth, when life begins. In this respect, Rastko greatly differs from the expressionistic scream that represents the ultimate stage of alienation and fear. Turned at the same time towards the mystery of birth, Rastko gives evidence of modern skepticism towards the figure of man, because by betting on birth, Rastko is actually betting on some unattained modernity, some eternal future.

¹¹
 Peter Sloterdijk, 
Critique of Cynical Reason
 (
Kritika ciničnog uma
), Globus nakladni zavod, Zagreb, 1992, p. 21. 

¹²
 “His actions are underscored by constant bitterness”, 
ibid
.

¹³
 
Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” (“Postmodernizam ili kulturna logika kasnog kapitalizma”), 
The Postmodern (New Epoch or Misconception)
 (
Postmoderna (nova epoha ili zabluda)
), Belgrade, 1984, p. 134.

¹⁴
 See: F. Jameson, “Magical Narratives” (“Magična pripovedanja”), P
olitically Unaware
(
Političko nesvesno
), translated by Dušan Puhalo, Rad, Belgrade, 1984, p. 134.

¹⁵
 
The fact that no progress is made in our understanding of the Tribunal in Kafka’s 
The Trial
is shown by polemics regarding Max Brod’s ordering of the chapters. Regardless of whether or not these objections are justified, the very fact that they exist indicates the fragmentary structure of 
The Trial
, which, owing to this fragmented state, removes the possibility of any progress in our understanding of the Tribunal. 

¹⁶
 
http://transhumanist.blogspot.com/

¹⁷
 
Ivo Andrić, “Bridges” (“Mostovi”) in 
Paths, People, Landscapes
 (
Staza, lica, predela
), Collected Works Vol. 10, Prosveta, Mladost, Svjetlost, Državna založba Slovenije, Belgrade-Zagreb-Sarajevo-Ljubljana, 1963, p. 199. 

¹⁸
Ibid
, p. 201.

The Bridge

What is the link between red hair, a red bowling ball and a red bikini? Between an overcoat with asymmetrical lapels, a scarf with two blotches and a pair of non-matching sneakers? In this brainteasing trio of stories, Zoran Živković explores the collision of realities: a man encounters an alternate self, a woman out on a shopping trip runs into her dead neighbour and a fourteen-year-old girl chases her seventeenyear-old future son across town. Through absurd predicament, surreal situations and hot pursuit, Živković addresses deep and ultimately poignant questions of fate and chance, the vagaries of human character and the hidden potential which lies within us all.

About the Author

Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. He graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he later received his master’s and doctorate degrees from the same school.

He is the author of
The Fourth Circle
,
The Writer
,
The Book
,
Impossible Stories
,
Hidden Camera
,
Compartments
,
Four Stories Till the End
,
The Reader
,
Twelve Collections & The Teashop
,
Amarcord
,
The Last Book
, and
Escher’s Loops
.

He lives in Belgrade, Serbia, with his wife Mia, their sons Uroš and Andreja, and their four cats.