WHY DID ANDRIC KILL THE WOLF (NARRATIVE EMPATHY IN THE SHORT STORY "ASKA AND THE WOLF" BY IVO ANDRIC)

There are two main objectives of this paper. The first one, more general and partly literary-theoretical, is to show, within the author's wider study of narrative empathy and using Andrit's short story "Aska and the Wolf" as an example, that what is important for this concept is not whether it deals with documentary or fictional stories, but whether the author has and by which means convinced us of the life truthfulness they convey, that is, whether the aesthetic form and the represented experience of his characters have and to what extent activated neurological regions of the readers responsible for empathy. A methodological approach to "the text as world" is equally applicable to both fictional and documentary narration since the worlds are essentially imaginary in both cases. Reality represents a framework for understanding textual universes; likewise the world of fiction can be a telescope for understanding reality. The second objective of this paper is linked to this: to finally ask the question why the shepherds, i.e. why Andric had to kill the wolf. The destiny of the wolf not only in this story-parable where narrative empathy is an excuse for the cruel hand of justice - becomes paradigmatic for one view of the world in which there is no forgiveness and redemption for a murderer. If the writer had allowed art to win over the evil in the wolf, if he had left the wolf alive, the short story would have definitely become multilayered, but it would have betrayed that view of the world and the empathic-altruistic expectations of the victim. But would it betray a "naive reader", who it is meant for? Our answer is that it would not since it turned out that that youngest reader is not as naive as it might seem at first sight and that narrative empathy represents above all and before all a reader's response to the cry for humanity.