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FROM HISTORY TO MEMORY AND BACK
by
Naum Panovski
Images of Macedonian Struggle for Liberation and Independence as Remembered in Darkness by Kole Casule

If one "looks back in anger" in the twentieth century history of Europe, one may say that this boiling period could be remembered mostly for two things: for the most devastating wars fought on its territory, and as a result of these wars, for the continuous redrawing of the nation's borders on its map. From the very beginning to the very end of this century, European nations in the name of "blood and soil" fought, and still fight each other, for new lands and territories. In that war for dominance over the others, mostly over the neighbors, many nations disappeared, the old "empires" were replaced by new ones, and new borders appeared on the fragile, ever-changing European map.

In that merciless process, Macedonia, that forgotten and still not fully recognized country on the Balkan crossroads, in its century long struggle for freedom and independence, and consequently its own place under the sun on the European map, has its own poignant part in Europe's continuously revised history and unreliable collective memory. Without a chance to have an "accurate" history during that period and without receiving serious recognition by majority of the European nations, this struggle for freedom and national and social independence, struggle for life with a human face, became over the years a part of well-nurtured collective memory that moved its field of action within the framework of the arts, especially within the framework of Macedonian drama and literature.

In this painful context, one of the most tragic events in Macedonian struggle for liberation - the assassination of its most prominent political leader, ideologist, and intellectual Djorce Petrov in Sofia, in the Fall of 1922, as re-examined and recaptured in Kole Casule's remarkable play Darkness, is a paradigmatic case of history remembered, recycled, and fixed in art. Based on collective memory, individual artistic imagination, and engaged national consciousness, the play is created as a typical modern tragedy. In so doing, Kole Casule uses the historic event as a central subject matter in the play, and paints a huge social, political, and historic landscape upon which he shows how this flagrant act of terrorism relates and affects our contemporary world. In addition, he openly asks why this acrid curse continuously repeats itself in twentieth century Macedonian history. And more than that, in the light of the most recent events in the Balkans, especially the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, the war and devastating destruction of everything humane in Bosnia, the recent assassination attempt on the Macedonian president, shows that the bitter and caustic past introduced in Darkness has been made present in the most horrible way, while this sordid event in the Macedonian history, the assassination of Djorce Petrov, becomes not only a metaphor for Macedonian darkness and self destruction, but becomes also a metaphor for the European dark spots and quasars.

In Darkness, in fact, the notion of history, appears on several levels.

The first and probably the most recognizable level is the historic event itself. After the tri-partition of Macedonia during and after the two Balkan Wars (1912-1913), and after Versailles' re-mapping of Europe in 1919, Macedonia was, once again, forgotten and left in dark in the waiting room of history. That is, Macedonia was left on the fringes of Europe almost for a half century to wait for its recognition and acceptance in the family of European nations. During that period, from the end of the first world war almost to our days, those, the neighbors, who partitioned her and divided her among themselves, did everything in order to destroy the entire existence of Macedonian nation, even the idea of Macedonia itself.

The Bulgarian extreme nationalists, in cooperation with the Vrhovists, (Vrhovists were members of the extreme terrorist organization made of Macedonian sellouts, traitors, mercenaries, and Bulgarian extreme nationalists, who were introducing themselves as Macedonian revolutionaries, but in fact worked against Macedonia and were the main obstacle to Macedonian liberation) were especially active in that department. In doing so, between 1921 and 1934, the Vrhovists supported by the Bulgarian Crown organized and executed a series of assassinations on the most prominent Macedonian intellectuals and political leaders. The leaders were "Those homeless who are chased on the streets of Sofia like mad dogs" as Casule had described these victims of the Bulgarian terror in his play. The name of Djorce Petrov was on the top of the terrorist's list, and he was their first victim because he was a person of highest integrity, most respected authority, and unquestioned popularity among the Macedonian people, both in Macedonia and among the political emigration in Bulgaria. And they murdered him in the most perfidious way and without any mercy.

This well known and almost mythologized event in Macedonian history is both an initial situation and central subject matter in Casule's dramatic discourse. Actually, Casule transforms this historic event into a global metaphor in Darkness and uses it not as a historic fact, but as a horizon upon which he opens the dialog with the history. That is, digging in Macedonia's painful and poignant past, he transforms it, "the history with capital I" as he calls it with sarcasm, into a dark landscape where the readers and spectators are made witnesses who had remembered the effects of the European history - history which turned out to be a mother for some, and a step-mother for others - for the Macedonians, for example.

Exploring the neuralgic spots in Macedonia's traumatic history and Macedonian resistance and struggle in turbulent times, Casule discovers in the dusty file cabinets of Macedonia's ugly past a paradoxical and a paradigmatic case of self-termination and introduces that Macedonia Curse in Darkness through a miserable group of people, who are imprisoned in their own tragic cul-de-sac and made mercenaries. In that tragic and closed circle they write upon the horizon of European history the Macedonian version of the insanity of political terrorism. "Darkness is a drama about the absurdity of terrorism" writes Dr. Gane Todorovski in his notes on Casule's bitter play and continues, "It seems also that the political crisis in many parts of the world today re-actualizes this problem and makes the idea of the play a relevant message: that is, no one should be allowed to misuse or waste any weapon or energy which has served loyally the ideal of freedom; no one should devastate and spend in vain any revolutionary energy of a certain unhappy nation drawn in the darkness of its own existence; no one should yield to any insane attempt of irrational and bloody brothercide, no one should be allowed to be brought down to the bottom of life in time of crucial importance and historic significance to the people. That is why Darkness is universal in its historic context."

For Casule the theatre of terrorism in his Darkness is a desert framed by four pale walls and everything is there to create an environment in which the author's personal scream about Macedonian darkness becomes a part of collective memory. Within those four pale walls the time, as well as the history, is measured by the loading and unloading of the terrorists' guns, by the silence and the noise that the bullets make when they get in and out of the barrel. Reflecting on his own work Casule said: "In the assassination of Djorce Petrov I saw an arm against my own ideal. His murder committed by a Macedonian hand in service of anti-Macedonian powers became for me a synonyms for Macedonian Darkness in general. And I did not have a peace of mind until this historic event was not artistically reconstructed in Darkness."
Although, Casule tells a story about history, about absurdity of terrorism, about political assassination of a leader in his play, he actually does not bring the main character in the event, Djorce Petrov, in that wasteland. He appears there remembered and told about; Casule rather introduces his executioners, the group of terrorists, those fictional characters, who plan and carry out the assassination, and through their characters and action Casule reveals the fragility of history and historic truth. These people for the dramatist are the personification of the one same fate, a fate of those who have crossed the border and entered the realm of evil, those who have become a paradigm of individual decay in history.
"Darkness is in fact a play about the man's fall into the realm of the destructive forces that destroy and deconstruct everything humane in our existence. It is a play about man's irresponsible yielding to the darkest instincts, about his inability to stop his suppressed aggressive drives in dark times. Lukov, Fezliev, Ivan, Metody, the young idealist Orce, are nothing else but dislocated individuals, people with lost souls."[G. T ]

As the explanation above suggests, history, Macedonian history, appears on another level in Darkness as well. In fact, the history which is, as we already noted, a central point of the play is an element that the characters are completely aware of. Although they themselves are lost in the whirlpool of Macedonian history, they also create that historic whirlpool. In fact they are aware that they are active participants in its creation, and therefore, they are able to distort the history, to shape it in accordance with the given orders, and finally to misuse it on behalf of their masters.

"Mrs. Hristova we are here for a very important reason. We have a duty of historic significance, historic for our cause" says Lukov, one of the terrorists who has intruded into her home and made it a terrorist base for the assassination. At that point at the very beginning of the play, he manipulates her as well as the young revolutionary idealist Orce, who most sincerely believes that he is chosen to fulfill a task of historic importance to his unliberated country and people. Lukov, in fact, reveals that history is only an engine under the destructive terrorist machine and that they do not care about it, "the history", at all. They use it, misuse it, manipulate it, and distort it in order to trap the young and inexperienced revolutionary idealist in their deadly web. As a result, they will be able to make him executioner of the assassination and the someone who will be blamed for the crime. In transforming him into a puppet and a trigger in their bloody hands, they will make him murderer of his ideal in the name of that same ideal. In so doing, they do not only create Macedonian history on their terms, in the image of their evil god, but manipulating or distorting the historic truth, they also create a tragic hero, the young revolutionary Orce, who, in spite of everything, remembers his past and who would like to be remembered in the future for the ideal and historic truth he stood for.

"In this letter", explains Lukov Orce's letter to the unknown reader, written minutes before his, Orce's, suicide, "that young person calls me... a traitor. And he threatens me with the history. He asks her, the history, to hold him in good memories. As if the history is a bride's diary or a teenager's journal. Eh, my dear.. All that may be new in someone else's history, but not in - ours. In our Macedonian history, my dear, there are only traitors, and... nothing else, so far. And you are not telling anything new calling me - a traitor. Who the hell knows. Maybe you are right. But this is not the worst thing. The worst thing in all these is that all this mess around us ends up like a closed circle. Today, as you see, Djorce is dead. And, well, you are dead, too. And no one believes that this is the end. Ivanov, my dear young fellow, is already inventing at this moment a new Djorce for me. He calls him Dimo Hadzi Dimov or who knows what. And he is already prepared to order his murder with the same known threat - if he does not see the head of that new Djorce on his desk, then, mine will be gone immediately. And Ivanov, my dear kiddo, talks like you - for Macedonia. But, Macedonia is dead, long time ago, first of all here in our hearts, and then there, where you are looking for her - in the History."

And of course that is not the end in the poignant Macedonian History. During the years Darkness became not only a new linguistic expression in Macedonian language, but as a metaphor as well for more than one desperate generation of Macedonians who were, on the one hand, misfortunate and lost in the European labyrinths of collective mistreatment and, on the other were trapped in the labyrinths of their own individual misery, and therefore forced to embrace the absurdity of terrorism. As noted prof. Todorovski would say "In that way the brothercide began - the worst of all evils in the world appeared in our home. Consequently, in the chronology of twentieth century terrorism, we as a nation became the first victims of our own bitter curse looking through the eyes of many generations at our own history as if it is a long chain of Darkness"

In Casule's Darkness, conceived some forty years ago, history appears on one more surprising level. In fact, one might say that Darkness can be seen and read as well as a fictional model which anticipated and projected similar horrifying events in current European history. From the brutal assassination of Aldo Moro in late seventies, through the Pope's assassination several years later, to the recent assassination attempt on the Macedonian president Kiro Gligorov, Europe is witnessing again the horror of terrorism, hate, and destruction. European history is made present according to its worst scenario. That is, it appears that life imitates art on all levels, instead of being inspired and enlightened by it. In this horrible process, on the threshold of the new millennia, of the United Europe, and at the end of this turbulent century, we are brought once again back in the age of darkness. Instead of learning from the past in order to open the doors and to pave the roads to hopeful future, we are witnessing how the unleashed nationalist ghosts from the past are made generators of the current hatred, divisions and re-mapping of Balkans. It is clear that in Europe, at least, history does not repeat itself as a farce as Marx had put it, but as a violent act of destruction.

Historia est NOT magistra vitae in Europe. Memory does not exist.