„Spauda leista“ ir Jono Biliūno „Liūdna pasaka“
Sites of Traumatic Memory: Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė’s "The  Press Has Been Permitted" and Jonas Biliūnas’ "A Sad Fairy-Tale"

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses theoretical presuppositions for an analysis of traumatic memories in literature. The work, operating the same theoretical concepts that psychoanalysis uses for interpretation of trauma, analyses literature as a site for keeping memories of the traumatic experience from the past. A work of literature builds a communication channel to share a subjective experience of a traumatic event with a community, a circle of readers, or members of a culture or society. In this way, the experience creates cultural representations of collective memory that partially open up the present possibilities for our memory of ourselves. The article sees the stories “The Press Has Been Permitted” („Spauda leista“) by Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė and “A Sad Fairy-Tale” („Liū�dna pasaka“) by �onas Biliū�nas as inter-related by the way in which their authors turn back to the historical past of their country. In their works, the writers present the historical past through individualized life stories of separate persons. There is one more aspect to these texts that relates the two stories with each other and serves as a motivation for comparing them and analyzing them as the site of traumatic memory: both of the stories introduce mentally disordered characters who make other people turn back to the past. Moreover, both Petkevičaitė-Bitė and Biliū�nas took on responsibility to tell their stories due to a less obvious reason: each of them had their own personal experience marked by an injury. This kind of experience, always pushing its way into the consciousness, was constantly reminding the authors of itself and served as another strong impulse for writing. Both of the writers used the possibility of turning back to the historical past in order to perceive their own story in a wider context of a community experience.

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