Kole Casule

Background

Nikola Kole Chashule was born on March 2, 1921 in the town of Prilep, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in the present-day Republic of Macedonia, the son of a teacher.

Education

Kole attended high school in another of Macedonia’s largest cities, Bitola, where he wrote a story for the school’s literary club that used dialogue in his native Macedonian language. The teacher was a Serbian and nearly had Casule expelled for this act of literary rebellion, for in the 1930s Macedonia was then under Serbian royal rule. Casule vowed to himself that from that day forward he would never again write a word of fiction in a language other than Macedonian.

Between 1938 and 1941 he studied medicine at the university in Belgrade, then Serbia’s capital.

Career

In 1941 Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany, and Bulgaria - who had long coveted neighboring Macedonia - was given control of the region. A strong partisan movement arose across much of Yugoslavia, and Casule joined the legions of young leftists and anti-fascists among its ranks.

When Casule took part in an uprising in October of 1941 in his hometown of Prilep, he was jailed and condemned to a life sentence of hard labor. He spent two years in prison in Skopje, the capitol of Macedonia, but escaped and rejoined the partisans. After the war’s end, the partisans became integral to the creation of a socialist republic that united six ethnic republics into what would become known as Yugoslavia, with Macedonia and Serbia among them. Casule was by now a member of the Communist Party and even worked for it for a time. In 1947 he became managing director of Macedonian People’s Theater in Skopje, where he spent the next three years.

In 1950 the Macedonian People’s Theater produced Casule’s first work for the stage, Zadruga (“The Collective Farm”). It is a dramatic account of the process of collectivization which usually occurred by armed force during the early years of most newly communist states; under collectivization laws, farmers - many of whom possessed a few meager acres that had been in their family for generations - were compelled to turn their lands over to a collective agricultural enterprise run by the state in the name of the people. The practice was abandoned in the new Yugoslavia by 1948.

Casule’s first book also appeared in 1950. Prvite dni (“The First Days”) is a collection of stories set during the war and its aftermath. Its heroes are decidedly anti-Bulgarian, with the title story featuring a group of young Macedonian resisters. Other tales recount partisans who refuse to incriminate fellow members, even when tortured by the Fascists. Prvite dni was bound with the first story Casule ever had published, “Denot,” about a mother whose son has died a hero in the Skopje uprising.

Casule served as director for the Vardar Film Company in the early 1950s, and was then named consul to Yugoslavia’s mission in Canada. During his years in Toronto from 1953 to 1955 he learned English and made many observations that he would later mine for tales of immigrant life in subsequent works of fiction and drama. Back in his homeland, Casule, who had founded numerous literary journals and magazines already, served as editor of the periodical Razgledi (“Views”) from 1957 to 1962.

In 1957 his play Vejka net vetrot (“A Twig in the Wind”) was published. Set in the United States, it centers around a Macedonian emigrant man who has a son with an American woman, and later decides to return home to find a Macedonian bride. The conflict between the father, son, and new wife fuel the action, and the bride’s homesickness propels the action to a tragic end. A 1962 drama from Casule, Crnila, would later appear in English translation under the title Darkness. Its plot is based on an actual incident in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia in 1921, when Macedonian exiles felt compelled to murder one of their own who had dissented from the group’s political aims. “By the end of the play it is clear that hatred and fanaticism lead inevitably to more senseless deaths,” wrote Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Eekman. “Again, this play has an ethical thesis and strong national, political, and historical references.”

During the 1960s Casule was sent on another ambassadorial mission, this time to South America, where he spent nearly a decade representing the Yugoslavian government in Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. When he returned once again to Yugoslavia, he settled in Skopje and continued to write. His 1968 work Partitura za eden Miron (“A Musical Score for One Miron”) is a farce with timely relevance to the strained relationship Yugoslavia had with the powerful Soviet Union during the Cold War era. Former partisan leader and longtime Yugoslav premier Josep Broz Tito chose to keep his country out of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the Eastern European military alliance, and instead created for Yugoslavia a “national” form of communism that was surprisingly successful during his tenure.

Partitura za eden Miron features two robot-like characters, Miron and Kiron.

Casule’s first novel, Prostum (“Resistance”), was published in 1970. The hero is Gorcin, whose name means “Bitter One,” and he is an autobiographical character who reappears in several subsequent works by the writer. The novel was described by Eekman as “a cleverly constructed, polyphonic modern novel that is also a historical novel: in Gorcin’s mind pass various episodes from the Macedonian past, which is marked by wars, uprisings, and inhuman actions. These episodes are brought to life in a rich, subtly variegated, sometimes emotional language.”

Recent Macedonian history also provides fertile subject matter for Casule’s second novel, 1977’s Premreze (roughly translated as “Blur” or “Opacity”).

In the early 1980s Casule was again in South America. He wrote his 1982 novel lmela (“Swoon”) in Brazil.

Casule’s 1983 work Gorcila (“Bitter Things”) was less a novel than a string of short prose texts; the reader must advance quite far before discovering the narrative thread inside. This particular work was the first of Casule’s to include mystical themes centered on the Eastern Orthodox belief system. In 1985, he published the trilogy of stories titled Kanadski fragmenti (“Canadian Fragments”), based on his time as an ambassador in Toronto.

Casule’s consular experiences and point of view are evident in another piece of fiction based on this era, Consul's Letters. The novella appeared in his 1990 collected volume Proza; Gorcila; Konzulskipisma, and is told in the form of a dozen letters written by one consul from an unnamed south Slavic nation to his counterpart elsewhere.

During the years following Tito’s death in 1980, Yugoslavia re-examined its politics, common goals, and allegiances to communism and democracy. Casule opposed the desire of other Union members who wished to depoliticize their work. His argument was that literature was by necessity political. He fell somewhat out of favor for this hardline stance inside the literary community in Yugoslavia, but continues to write and publish new works as well as serve as a forthright speaker in public discussions of the tremendous ethnic-related tragedies that took place in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. He has also spoken and written at length on the topic of Macedonia’s problems with neighboring Greece.

Casule also published two works of nonfiction. In 1985’s Zapisi za nacijata i literaturata (“Notes about the Nation and Literature”), he reveals in one essay the profound influence that playwright Eugene O’Neill had upon his own drama. For four years he wrote Novi zapisi (“New Notes”), which contains speeches, articles, journal entries, and much discussion of the circumstances surrounding his resignation from the presidium of the Yugoslav Writers Union.

Kole Chashule died on September 22, 2009, at the age of 88.

Achievements

• Kole is considered one of the founding lights of contemporary Macedonian literature, for during his early career Casule was active in a nationalist movement to create a modern literary tradition in the Macedonian language. Not surprisingly, much of his own writing reflects his strong belief in communism and seeks to give readers a better understanding of the former Yugoslav republic’s ethnic turmoil and political upheavals, often through the use of experimental prose.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Vomjazi

Politics

Kole had a Communist political views.

Membership

Kole was a member of Yugoslav Writers Union.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Thomas Eekman called Casule “a prolific writer who, while maintaining his deep social and political convictions, has evolved from a socialist-realist fiction writer and dramatist to an author who uses modern technical and stylistic devices and methods.”

Connections

Kole was married to a woman named Vandza.

Spouse:

Vandza Casule

References

• Contemporary Authors: Vol 182