Kraujas ir žemė (Nacionalizmo vaizdiniai XX a. pabaigos Lietuvos scenoje)
Blood and earth (Representations of Nationalism in Late Twentieth Century Lithuanian Theatre)

Summary/Abstract: Through theatre (as well as other artistic media) nationalist artists may reconstruct the sights, sounds and images of the nation in all its concrete specificity and with “archeological” verisimilitude. This article explores the strategies and images of cultural nationalism in Lithuanian theatre during the last decades of the Soviet regime. Related yet to the orthodox herderian cosmology, the nationalist images would expose the nation (the virtual subject of the nationalist narratives) as an individual being, thus, granting it the dimensions of the human body. It (the Nation), as it was staged, had thus its personal history: it was born (the images of seed, embryo, “vegetative mysticism”, etc.), it had its childhood years (the pseudopagan images), it was brutalized and martyrized, finally crucified (the romantic Christian images), and it would presently resurrect. It also had its spatial bodily dimensions, partly coming from the imagery of Blut und Boden (natural and seminatural materials and objects: stone, water, sand, wood, iron, linen cloth, oakum, etc., symbolizing the metaphysical relation of the soil and the blood of the nation) and (partly) – from the “metonymic” incarnation into the bodies of the Poets (like Konrad in the Forefathers’ Day by A.Mickiewicz) – the paradigmatic figures of the nation’s history. Therefore, the public could view, hear and even smell the body of the nation, which would perform the universal function of the image: literally – to embody (impersonate) the community and project the steady raison d’etre for the society under the totalitarian regime.

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