FAMOUS CROATS - Jure Kaštelan

Even though he successfully tried his hand at all literary forms (short stories, plays, essays, translations and criticism), Jure Kaštelan is above all an incredibly important poet, an author who demonstrated a particular lyrical sensibility and original imagination in all his works, while several collections of his poems marked key periods in Croatian literature. Jure Kaštelan's work is synonymous with a free spirit and vital energy; it is a prolific outcome of authentic embeddedness in the deep layers of the Mediterranean atmosphere and regional lore, which also shows a mature openness towards the important heritage of modernist provocation and the European contemporaneity. Born on 18 December 1919 in Zakučac near Omiš, Kaštelan graduated from the Classical Gymnasium high school in Split and enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1938. He entered the field of literature in 1940, publishing a collection of poems entitled Crveni konj (Red Horse), which garnered a significant amount of attention and immediately provoked traditionalist opposition thanks to a particular synthesis of folklore originality and surrealist daring. After participating in the liberation movement in the Second World War, during the post-war era, Kaštelan made a decisive contribution to the break with socialist realism and the promotion of brand new creative movements. The titles of his books (Pijetao na krovu (Rooster on the Roof), Čudo i smrt (A Miracle and Death), Malo kamena i puno snova (A Bit of Stone and a Lot of Dreams) and Divlje oko (A Wild Eye)) attest to a strong existentialist motivation and an original inspiration stemming from the light and darkness of his birth region, to which he was forever bound. As an editor and a university professor, as an interpreter and as an advocate of certain values, Kaštelan also made significant contributions to Croatian culture by publishing important works and leading vital initiatives in the fields of literature and fine arts. In his work on Matoš, Ujević and Šimić, he traced his own binding path, and his support for abstract tendencies (Murtić's and the EXAT's) in the early 1950s forever focused Croatian creative thinking on the difficult requirements of questioning the medium and innovation. He died in Zagreb, on 24 February 1990. Tonko Maroević, Member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts