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Excerpt from Ivo Andric's Letter from 1920
To get to the point, Bosnia is a beautiful country, interesting, not in the least ordinary, by its nature and its people. And just as under Bosnian earth there exist many mining riches, so does Bosnian man hides undoubtedly within him many moral values that within his compatriots in other Yugoslavian countries is harder to find. But see, there exists something that people from Bosnia, at least people of your sort, should have to see, to never lose out of sight: Bosnia is a land of hate and terror. Leaving the terror aside as a correlative of that hate, its natural echo, I want to talk about hate. Yes, hate. You too are instinctively shaking and complaining when you hear this word (I saw it that night on the train station), just as all of you refuses to hear, see and realise that. But the point is that it should be seen, established and analysed. Unfortunately, nobody can or is capable of doing that. The fatal characteristics of that hate is that Bosnian man is not aware of the hate that lives in him, is afraid of analysing it and – hates anyone who attempts to try to do so. But, the fact is that in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are more people that are ready in the attacks of unconscious hate, under different reasons and different explanations, kill or be killed, than in other, by population or area, much bigger Slavic and non-Slavic lands.
I know that the hate, just as rage, has its function in the development of the society, because the hate gives strength and rage sparks movement. There are ancient and deeply rooted injustices and misuses that only rivers of hate and rage can uproot and remove. And when those floods fall down, there is only a place for freedom, for creation of better life. The contemporaries see the rage and hate much better, because they suffer from it, but their children will see only the fruits of power and movement. I know that well. But what I’ve seen in Bosnia is something else. It is hate, but not as a moment in a flow of human development and necessary part of the historic process, but a hate that takes stage as an independent force, which finds within itself its own purpose. A hate that gets a man against man and then equally throws them into misery and misfortune or takes underground both opponents; hate as a cancer in organism spends and eats all around itself, so that itself would die in the end, because such hate, as flame, has no permanent face nor own life, it is but a weapon of a drive for destruction or self-destruction, exists only as such and only until it completes its task of complete destruction.
Yes, Bosnia is a land of hate. That is Bosnia. By a funny contrast, which is not so funny, perhaps it could be explained by a more careful analysis, it can be said that there are few countries that have so rigid faith, heightened strength of character, so much gentleness, so much loving passion, so much depth of feeling, connection and unwavering loyalty, so much thirst for justice. But underneath it all within invisible depths are hidden tornados of hate, whole storms of confined, constricted hates, that grow and wait their moment. Between your loves and your hates, the relationship is the same as between your high mountains and thousand times bigger and heavier invisible geological layers that the mountains reside upon. So, you’re destined to live on deep layers of explosive that from time to time gets sparked by the sparks of your loves and your fiery, brutal sensitivity. Perhaps it is your misfortune that you do not realise how much hate is there within your loves, passions, traditions and faiths. Just as the ground we walk on goes, under the influence of the atmospheric humidity and warmth, into our bodies and gives them the colour and shape, determines character and to our way of life and our behaviours – so does powerful, underground and invisible hate on which Bosnian man lives permeates invisibly into all of his, even the best, behaviours. Vices give birth to hate, everywhere in the world, because they spend and not create, destroy, not build, but in lands such as Bosnia, virtues speak and act often with hate. Ascetics do not draw love from their asceticism, but hate for pleasure; non-drinkers hate drunks, drunks have murderous hate at the rest of the world. Those who have faith and love, mortally hate those without faith, or with different faith and love. Unfortunately, often most of their faith and love is spent in that hate. (Most evil and dark faces one can meet around churches, monasteries and tekkies.) Those who exploit economically weak servants, bring hate into that, a hate that makes the exploitation a hundred times worse and uglier, and those who bare the injustices, dream of justice and revenge, but as a vengeful explosion which, if made, have to be so strong that it would take to blow up both parties. You are used to leave full strength of hate for what is close to you. Your loving sacraments are usually behind three hundred rivers and mountains, but the objects of your disgust are right there, next to you, in the same burgh, often behind your yard wall. Your love requires not too many deeds, but your hate acts easily. Your own country, you love to death, but in three-four different ways that mutually cancel each other, hate each other passionately and often conflict.

In a Maupassant story there is a description of spring that ends with words that in those days one should post billboards all around saying: “Citizen of France, it is spring, beware of love!” Perhaps Bosnian man should be warned at every step, in every thought, in every, even highest emotion to beware of hate, inborn, unconscious, endemic hate. Since in that backwards, poor, country where four faiths live side by side, there should be four times more love, mutual understanding and respect than in many other countries. But, in Bosnia, unfortunately, misunderstanding, that sometimes turns to open hate, is usually average characteristics of the inhabitants. Between different faiths, the abysses are so huge that only hate crosses them sometimes. I know that one could answer that in the last time there have been significant improvements and that the ideas of 19th century did some and that everything will go faster and better. I’m afraid it is not so. (I have, I think for these few months, seen true relationships among different faiths in Sarajevo!) It will be printed and spoken often “Every faith is brotherly!” or “do not ask the way I cross, but the way I love” or “respect foreign, be proud of yours” or “integral national unity knows no faith or tribal differences”. But always, in Bosnian bourgeois circles there was a lot of fake bourgeois respect, wise cheating of oneself and others with powerful words and empty ceremonies. That somewhat hides the hate, but does not remove it or stop its growth. I’m afraid that under a roof of all the phrases, in those circles sleep the old passions and Cain style drives and will live until Bosnian society changes completely its material and spiritual life. When will be that time, who will have strength to do it? I believe once it will be, but what I’ve seen, shows that road is not being taken. Quite the opposite.
I was thinking about that, especially in the last months when I was fighting with a decision to leave Bosnia forever. Naturally, a man who has these thoughts does not sleep well. I was lying, next to an open window, in the room I was born, Miljacka [the river] was flowing, whooshing outside, interspersed with a early autumn wind.
Who spends a Sarajevian night awake in bed, can hear the sounds of Sarajevian night. Hard and secure, a cathedral clock kicks the two in the morning. After a bit more than a minute, precisely seventy five seconds, I counted, somewhat weaker, but also strong, the Orthodox church kicked its two o’clock. Bit after, with a raspy, far voice, Beg’s mosque kicked its eleven o’clock, ghostly, Turkish hours, by strange counting of far, foreign places! Jews do not have their own clock, but God only knows what time it is according to their Sephardic, and what time it is according to their Aschenas clocks. So, during the night, while all is sleeping, in counting of the empty hours, while the difference that separates these peoples is awake, peoples who awake can be happy and sad, feast and fast, according to four warring calendars I send all my prayers to the heavens in four different church languages. The difference is, sometimes visible and open, sometimes invisible and lying, always resembling hate, often equal to it.
This, specifically Bosnian hate, should be studied and killed as a dangerous and deeply rooted illness. I believe that foreign scientists would come to Bosnia to study the hate, just as they study the leprosy, if the hate would be accepted, separated and classified subject of study as leprosy is.

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