Examining the Concept of Space in Soviet Lithuanian Poetry
Examining the Concept of Space in Soviet Lithuanian Poetry

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes an aspect of the conception of space – its openness or isolation. This aspect is analyzed as it appears in the works of three Lithuanian poets that belong to different generations and who were involved differently in Soviet life: Alfonsas Maldonis, Judita Vaičiūnaite, and Antanas A. Jonynas. The analyzed poetry was written when the dogmatic censorship in Soviet literature was already less strict and its protectors less vigilant. In the poems by Maldonis the isolation of a space can save lives, which corresponds to the views of a poet who has agreed to collaborate with Soviet authorities. He sympathizes with people that seek freedom, but he wishes that they safely survive in their currently hopeless situation (referring to the 1968 Prague events). Vaičiūnaitė perfectly expresses the oppressive isolation and lies of the Soviet world in her poem “Atsisveikinimas” (Farewell) of 1977: it is only possible to be honest and to remain faithful to oneself in a madhouse. In the poetry of Jonynas, resignation and despair stop a musical phrase; he expresses the closeness of the world with the image of a cage, a directionless railway, and a break-up in human relations. This article also refers to poems that were important for these Lithuanian poets and were written by Russian poets Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova who never attuned themselves to the totalitarian regime. It is possible to assume that the conception of space in the analyzed poems is not always related to the structure of the society in which the poets lived; however, that relation is quite essential.

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