Mostar is the city of sun, greenery and flowers, with a mild Mediterranean climate, even fragrances from the sea reaching it. This is the city of contrasts, wide roads, narrow streets, cobblestone pathways and many poets.
Ivo Andrić was a notable novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under Ottoman rule. The city of Mostar had touched his heart and thoughts in a special way and so he called Mostar the “city of lightâ€. These are his poetic lines about Mostar…
“When a man stays overnight in Mostar, it is not the sound that wakes him up but the light. I know this from my own experience. The light welcomed me when I arrived, followed me during my stay from morning to evening, and later, after I had departed, it stayed in me as the main characteristic of my memory of Mostar. It always seemed to me that what shines above your naturally privileged town and what permeates everything in it is some special illumination, exceptional in strength and quality. I have always thought that, with it, love of life, courage and serenity, a sense of proportion and creative work must have entered Mostar man.
I was never able to take my feel of this light although I met it everywhere: in the laughter of your people and the clear vowels of their speech, on the faces of young boys and girls as they strolled early of an evening. It is iridescent like the golden, restless reflection in a glass of Žilavka from Mostar, it lives as through a charged strength and deliciousness in your peaches and cherries. It is hidden in the cool cold water from the Radobolja. It makes the Neretva your brightest river, it gives an elemental magnitude even to the bare Karst of your surrounding hills. It shines through the stories of the people of Mostar relating the struggle for their present freedom and today’s efforts for progress in every direction. I remember Mostar best for this light. “
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