Esivanemate varandus lõpuks järeltulijate kasutuses
Review of: Ludzas igauņu pasakas. No igauņu valodas tulkojis Guntars Godiņš. Riga: Mansards. 2015. 544 lk.
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Review of: Ludzas igauņu pasakas. No igauņu valodas tulkojis Guntars Godiņš. Riga: Mansards. 2015. 544 lk.
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In this deliberately provocative book the business executive, medical doctor, and gentleman scholar Ignas Staškevičius carries on remarkable conversations with 22 local and international luminaries from various intellectual fields on topics of his and / or their choosing. These include astrophysics, high energy physics, the fundamentals of physics, Tibetan Buddhism, Tantric meditation, Zen Buddhism, Hebrew mysticism, Reformed Christianity, Transpersonal psychology, anthropology, philosophy, music, broadcasting, novel writing, literature in Israel and other countries, forecasting the future, endobiogenic medicine, genetics, molecular biology, neuroeconomics, biochemistry, and reanimatology. The book ends with a lively dispute about whether we can see into the past.
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Review of: Pivoras, Saulius. Virtus Lituana: politinė mintis Simono Daukanto istoriografijoje. Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas, 2022, 174 p
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Interview with Liina Lukas by Vivian Siirman.
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The article analyses the origins of the concept of the žemininkai generation (the so-called Earth generation of Lithuanian literary modernism), in order to assess the validity and suitability of this traditional concept for the research of Lithuanian literature and culture. The notion that the group that published the literary anthology Žemė (Earth, 1951) represents a much wider literary and cultural generation born in the 1920s has been established in Lithuanian literary studies since the 1950s, but it has not been sufficiently critically examined. From a socio-cultural point of view, the question arises as to whether this actually corresponds to an authentic collective phenomenon of generational consciousness of these authors. For this purpose, the development of the concept of the žemininkai generation in the post-war Lithuanian diaspora and post-soviet Lithuania is investigated, the concept of generation formulated in the cultural sociology works of Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias is discussed, and cases of generational identification in the early texts of the žemininkai, written during the Second World War, and in their later ego-documentary texts are analysed. Aspects of critical period experience, generational solidarity, socio-cultural location, intergenerational relations, and literary impact are considered. It is concluded that the expression of a complex generational self-consciousness indeed appears in the texts of the žemininkai group.
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This article is a textual analysis of Vizijos (Visions), a cycle of poems by Vytautas Mačernis (1921–1944). The analysis focuses on enunciative meaning-making. The theory of enunciation (énonciation) originated in lingustics, as an inquiry into the speaking subject which, by an act of enunciation, appropriates the system of language. The introductory part of the article presents enunciative textual analysis as a modification of so-called standard greimasian textual semiotics. As a case in point, a textual analysis, by Algirdas Julien Greimas, of a poem by Marcelijus Martinaitis (“Ašara, dar tau anksti...”) is discussed, highlighting Greimas’ reluctance to discuss enunciative meaning-making. Next follows a brief discussion of an outline for inquiry into the formal apparatus of enunciation as proposed by Émile Benveniste. A model of dimensions of enunciative meaning-making that are relevant to a textual analysis of a lyric text is presented. The first part of the textual analysis is dedicated to the “Įžanga” (“Prelude”) of Visions. It is inferred that in terms of enunciative meaning-making the “Prelude” is distinct from the other parts of the work. It is argued that the “Prelude” does not live up to the standard set by those other parts. In order to demonstrate what that standard is, “Pirmoji” (“The First”) vision and excerpts of other parts are discussed. Throughout the demonstration, it is suggested that an inquiry into enunciative meaning-making leads to a different understanding of Visions than the one proposed in comprehensive studies by Virginija Balsevičiūtė-Šlekienė.
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The article explains what may have led to the appearance of one of the most famous and popular legend in Lithuanian culture about the love of the Queen of the Baltic Sea, Jūratė, and the mortal fisherman Kastytis, and looks at the history of its research. According to most scholars, the legend “Queen of the Baltic Sea” was created by Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius (Ludwik Adam Jucewicz, 1813–1846), a Lithuanian writer, ethnographer, folklorist, historian and translator. The article examines the first reviews of the story and explains how the academic world came to the conclusion that this source is not authentic. It also investigates which sources may have influenced Jucevičius’ story, including mythological plots and the literary works by other authors.
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The publication presents the correspondence between the poets Sigitas Geda (1943–2008) and Kornelijaus Platelis (b. 1951) in letters in 1977–1981. The publication was prepared with letters from that period found in the personal archives of Uršulė Gedaitė and Kornelijus Platelis. The 13 letters from the late 1970s and early 1980s show the moods of the stagnation years, the hesitations of people in culture, and the reflections on the meaning of creation in the atmosphere of Soviet stagnation. Compared to Geda‘s other known letters, those written to Platelis are characterised by a closer and more open relationship with the addressee. They contain the most important and quite intimate reflections on the creative process, as well as frank evaluations of colleagues‘ works, which differ from those we read in published reviews or journalism.
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Review of: Balys Sruoga, Raštai, t. 17: Laiškai Vandai Daugirdaitei, kn. 1: 1919–1924, sudarė Algis Samulionis (1936–1994), Neringa Markevičienė, parengė Neringa Markevičienė, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2021, 541 p.
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This article investigates the variation of the third person subjunctive forms būtų ~ būt and the genitive plural forms mūsų, jūsų ~ mūs, jūs in the poetical works of Christian Donelaitis (1714–1780). Following an introduction into the formal principles of Donelaitis’s poetry delineating the basic prosodic schema and rules of its hexametrical verse, the investigation turns to a detailed prosodic and syntactic survey of the distribution of the variant forms būtų ~ būt and mūsų, jūsų ~ mūs, jūs. The findings of this survey reveal that the distribution of the variant forms essentially relies on the prosodic rules of Donelaitis’ hexametrical verse and the basic rules of Lithuanian grammar (prosody and especially syntax). Observations on the syntactic level allow for the assumption that, in spite of its dependence on the prosody of hexametrical verse, the distribution of the variant forms būtų ~ būt, mūsų, jūsų ~ mūs, jūs in Donelaitis’ poetical works could reflect a more original distribution that not only applied to hexametrical poetry but to Lithuanian in general (be it natural discourse/prose or poetry). This motivates further comparative research that should also take into account the relevant Lithuanian dialect material.
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The paper is devoted to a discussion of Lithuanian elements in lyrics written by Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin (1750–1807), a poet, playwright and translator from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Considered one of the most distinguished poets of the Enlightenment, Kniaźnin occupied himself in the last stage of his work with editing writings he had finished earlier, which he included, together with completely new poems, in a previously unpublished autograph entitled Poezyje Franciszka Dionizego Kniaźnina ręką własną pisane, which constituted his literary swansong. In the lyrics included, there appear various references to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. These are, among others, allusions to contemporary and past events, and to famous historical figures. In the manuscript, the poet also included a poem entitled Do Litwy, as well as writings dedicated to people connected with the Grand Duchy. The aim of the paper is to indicate and discuss these references, and to attempt to determine the literary image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that arises from the manuscript by the poet from Puławy.
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From the beginnings of translation studies to the present day, the theoretical and practical paradigm of translation has come a long way. Although it was closely associated with linguistics and the solution of linguistic problems of translation until the early 1980s, it was the first translation theories that drew attention to the cultural phenomena of texts and the challenges of translation. Translation scholars Susan Bassnett and André Lefevre (1990) wrote that translation's shift to cultural phenomena represented a significant cultural turn. This led to a paradigm shift in translation and a new view that translation is an intercultural act and a dialogue between cultures. Given the importance and relevance of research on cultural meanings in translation, this paper focuses on one type of cultural meanings – culture-specific items that sometimes become a cultural stumbling block for translators. The aim of the research described in the article is to analyse the peculiarities of the use of culture-specific items in Ričardas Gavelis's novel Vilnius Poker, to conduct a comparative study of the translation of culture-specific items from Lithuanian into English and French, and to determine the translation techniques, strategies and trends of cultural transposition used by translators. The methods used to achieve the aim of the study include synthesis of scientific literature, comparative, descriptive and quantitative analysis. The use and translation of culture-specific items does not raise the issue of equivalence and linguistic deficit. Culture-specific items are analysed not as a separate unit of the text, but as part of a holistic whole that is organically integrated into the text and contributes to its meaning. The use of culture-specific items in the research material has led to the identification of four thematic groups: social, political, and historical; folkloric and mythological; domestic; and geographical. The data obtained in the quantitative use of culture-specific items suggest that two-fifths of all the culture-specific items analysed belong to the social, political, and historical thematic group reflecting the social life, deformations, Soviet experiences, and worldview of the people in the Soviet period in Vilnius and Lithuania as a whole, as portrayed by R. Gavelis. In a comparative study of translating culture-specific items from Lithuanian into English and French, based on the translation techniques and strategies described by Andrew Chesterman, nine translation techniques and three strategies were identified: from the semantic translation strategy, synonymy, abstraction change, trope change, and paraphrase were used; from the pragmatic translation strategy, the techniques of translation were: explicitness change and omission; from the syntactic or change of form translation, the translation techniques were: literal translation, loan, and transposition. The evaluation of the different translation techniques chosen by the English and French translators to translate culture-specific items showed that the English translation adopted the tendency of foreignization in order to “bring the reader to the author”, i.e. to provide the readers of the translation with as much systematic cultural information as possible about Soviet and postwar Lithuania. In contrast, French translation showed the opposite tendency toward domestication, i.e. the abandonment, omission, or replacement of certain cultural meanings with French cultural meanings. In this, the translator's cultural transposition was shown to “bring the author to the reader”.
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The woman as the embodiment of desire in the writings of Algirdas Jeronimas Landsbergis (1924–2004) – a Lithuanian expatriate playwright, novelist, editor, and literary and theatre critic – is not an ordinary literary character but symbolises the unique relationship between the rational world of consciousness and the instinctive, primal needs expressed in creative fantasies. The image of the woman-fantasy appears in the author’s short stories. It allows us to explore the inherent egocentricity of desire, the experience of lust that constrains subjectivity. C. G. Jung’s philosophy is used to classify fantasy images and identify their characteristic features, while E. Husserl’s phenomenology of consciousness is applied to the description of the protagonists’ experiences in the process of unique emotional occurrences. Short stories “Duet for Female Voice and Violin in Venice”, “A Long Night”, and “The Second Mountain Range” are analysed as expressions of the experiencing consciousness and the creating unconscious. The desires and fantasies of the protagonists materialise into a woman who is seen as a creation of lust; her body is reified by demonstrating power. However, a phantasmatic metamorphosis of characters is powerless to solve their dilemmas and inner confusion, as lust is based on one-sided, searching, and striving relations with the world in the absence of any answer.
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Successfully profiting from textbook publishing as the typographer at Vilnius University, Józef Zawadzki (1781‒1838) established one of the most important and most successful book publishing, production, and distribution companies of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century in the territories of former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealt. The Zawadzki firm represented the new category of professional publishers. Over the first seventy years of the firm’s existence at the firm’s expense were published 122 Lithuanian books, as well as printed about 50 Lithuanian publications at their authors finances. The attitude of the members of Zawadzki family regarding the publishing of Lithuanian books essentially changed. While the Józef Zawadzki was indifferent towards them, in the middle of the 19th century Adam Zawadzki (1814‒1875) outcompeted other professional book publishers and distributors, and monopolized the publishing of Lithuanian books in the Samogitian Diocese, becoming not only the most important publisher of Lithuanian books, but also their printer and distributor. The successful realization of Adam Zawadzki’s business plans was partly due to his longstanding contacts with the most active figures of Lithuanian written culture, with whom he maintained a new form of cooperation based on authorial royalties, partly due effectively distribution of published matter, using first stationary bookstore in the periphery, located in the west of Lithuania (which served as a retail and wholesale trade enterprise), various ways of non-stationary book trade, services of a commercial library and advertising. Owing to Adam’s efforts, the Zawadzki firm made a significant contribution uniting main forces of authors and publishers of Lithuanian books in 19th century Lithuania, renewing the repertoire of Lithuanian books, as well as giving Lithuanian book publishing, production and distribution features characteristic for a modern business. A model of dealing with censorship through illegal publishing, developed with the publication Apej brostwą błaiwistes arba nusiturieima, was used throughout all the forty years of the press ban and helped raising several generations of literate Lithuanians and bringing Lithuania and Lithuania Minor closer together.
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Review of: Domas Kaunas. Kristijono Donelaičio atminties paveldas: studija. Vilnius: Vilniaus universitetas, VšĮ Akademinė leidyba, 2016.
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The destiny of Lithuanian writers and the state carry intertwined meanings opening their dimensions to a painfully relevant aspect of history. Several compelling fate-fracturing cases emerged when the writer became an anti-hero or even a martyr in history as if being “swallowed by darkness” or possessed by forces hostile to the state. The signs of the literary success sinking into darkness marked the destinies of some Lithuanian writers like Salomėja Nėris (1904–1945), Petras Cvirka (1909–1947), and Kostas Kubilinskas (1923–1962), showing the decisive factor in the dramaturgy of the intersection between the state and the writer. It can be vice versa when the process of writing breaks into the light of historical openness, illuminating and changing the paradigm of literary processes with its fateful rise out of the depths of loss and the darkness of the grave. The fate of doctor Dalia Grinkevičiūtė (1927–1987) in exile can be such a particular case. The literary unfolding and flourishing in the media of Kristina Sabaliauskaitė (*1974) represents the culmination of the contemporary Lithuanian writers’ success on the international level in creative works about statehood. Her books, “Silva rerum” and “Petro Imperatorė” [Peter’s Empress], with their unique expression of the modernisation of the past times, play the role of the renewal of the genesis of the state and the citizen in the present day leading to the dynamics of forgotten statehood. It has a crucial significance for the aesthetic dimension of the writer’s style, its passion for baroque, and the revival of statehood as a yearning for history.
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Light waves change direction – refract - as they pass through different environments. Similarly, Western literary works, even after leaking through the barrier of the Soviet Index Librorum Pro-hibitorum, never reached the USSR reader in their authentic form. The most evident components of the unfavourable environment were the proxy of the Moscow Raduga and Progress publishing houses, ideologically committed literary criticism, the hunt for honorariums, the lack of reference books, and the poverty of printing technology. All these adverse factors together caused the chronic syndrome of texts that seemed authentic but in fact were not. So far, individual agents and effects of textual refraction have been researched, and interesting case studies have been carried out. However, there is a lack of both a systematic classification of the different agents of influence and an assessment of their long-term effects. The methodological study of refraction-affected editions tests the possibility of integrating the concept of textual condition with the assertions of the postcolonial theory regarding secondary cultural colonisation. The paper attempts to raise the hypothesis that the efforts of professional translators and editors to perform their work with the utmost craftsmanship had sometimes paradoxically reinforced the refraction of the overall meaning of major literary works. That resulted from the contrast between a relatively reliable translation and the implications generated by the bibliographic code and metatexts, as well as from the canonisation of translations that had become iconic in the Soviet-era.
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Imprudence que de parler de ce livre avec lequel j’ai vécu trois ans. Je manque de la distanciation nécessaire. Mais à ces lettres qui me sont parvenues du Cantal, des Vosges, du Jura et d’ailleurs, je tenterai de répondre, puisque Baltouchis est mort le 6 février 1991. De dire ce que j’ai appris de lui au long de notre chaleureuse correspondance de trois années.
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This co-written article approaches the influential Lithuanian writer and playwright Marius Ivaškevičius‟s essay series My Scandinavia (2004) from two different vantage points reflecting either side of the former „Iron Curtain‟. Published in the year when Lithuania joined the European Union, the essay series describes the narrator‟s travels and symbolic and ironic conquest of Northern Europe in the wake of the border openings following the collapse of the Soviet Union. First, employing the notions of “temporal” and “spatial nodes” (Ringgard & DuBois 2017), the article addresses how the crossings of the Baltic Sea and journeys through Northern Europe depicted in Ivaškevičius‟s essays represent an awareness of significant shifts in the unfolding of European history and Europe‟s spatial configuration. Second, the article reads My Scandinavia as an example of creative map-making in line with theories of critical cartography. Finally, the article puts the travelling subject in My Scandinavia centre stage, looking at the dialectic ways in which subject and place create each other. Just as Scandinavia has been actively moulding the narrating and, by implication, also the writing subject‟s biography, so has he given Scandinavia shape through his discourse, while also idiosyncratically framing Europe‟s shifting political and mental geography.
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In the drama Close City, first published in 2005, Lithuanian playwright Marius Ivaškevičius focuses on the (im)possible connections between Malmö and Copenhagen. The initially realistic setting of a failing marriage in the spirit of August Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman evolves gradually into an absurd spectacle that explores spatial and intertextual interstices. This article investigates how the drama, as a scenic kaleidoscope, elaborates on the influence of imagined geographies in the Baltic Sea region, discusses (gendered) power relations, and questions Scandinavian exceptionalism.
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