ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the interweaving of the antinomies embedded in what Kadare calls "the mortar of legend" in the building of three bridges: the Bridge of Arta, the Bridge on the Drina and Kadare's Three-Arched Bridge over the Ujana e Keqe. The power of legend to shape reality and inversely the transformation of observable events into legends are the narrative threads that weave common destinies and forge the wedges of discord that rend them asunder. A traditional practice in Zagori, a region riven with craggy ravines and rushing streams, had its roots in this primal fear of natures renewed violence. The primal story of separation, sacrificial mediation, and provisional integration in the Balkan variants of bridge building is at the heart of Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina. In Balkan folklore people sought the rivers mediation in order to secure earths fertility as well as their own thus ensuring the passage from one generation to the next.
