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Хронотоп в поэтическом творчестве Генрикаса Радаускаса и Бориса Поплавского

Author(s): Silvestras Gaižiūnas / Language(s): Russian Issue: 92/2015

The article treats poetic the creative work of two great poets and emigrants Henrikas Radauskas (1910–1970) and Boris Poplavsky (1903–1935). Radauskas’ creative work is closely related to many known phenomenons of the World Literature and Art in the postwar period. Radauskas like Poplavsky is interested to aesthetics of surrealism at all, he knows the poetry of the Russian emigration, also Poplavsky’s creative work. Both poets in their poems adventurously compares images, various realities. Often incomparable things become close at carnival play. Radauskas ignores law of empiric and prefers a fairy-tale, but Poplavsky – a miracle. For better understanding of parallels and differences of Lithuanian and Russian poets creative work in the article is analysed representation of the time and space. In this relation fundamental attention is paid to angel, Orpheus, the moon, height, abyss and deepness. Orpheus overcomes the time in Radauskas’s creative work and the space in Poplavsky creative work. In the poems of both poets phantasmagoric, surrealistic visions is related to the moon. In the lyric plot of Radauskas uncloses terrestrial and cosmic abyss, which embody the abyss of art too. The motive of abyss refills by the motive of depth and bottom in Poplavsky’s and Radauskas’ creative work. The bottom of Universe is deepest in Poplavsky creative work (29th poem from “The Automatic Poems”). It represents absolute loneliness. The impressive view of bottom opens in Poplavsky’s 166th poem “The Automatic Poems”. Here is represented the carnival, which connect heroes of various period. The parallel for this Poplavsky’s poem is Radauskas’ poem “Čiurlionis”.

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Rytietybiu redagavimas Jono Jaknavičiaus Ewangelie polskie y litewskie 1674 metu leidime

Author(s): Milda Luèinskienë / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 03/2001

Die 1647 in Vilnius verlegten Ewangelie polskie y litewskie von Jonas Jaknavièius gelten als die älteste bis jetzt erhaltene Ausgabe dieser Evangelien. Die Ausgabe vom Jahre 1674 (JE74), so wie diejenige vom Jahre 1647 (JE47), stützt sich auf eine ostlitauische Mundart. Aus einem Vergleich der beiden Ausgaben geht hervor, daß der Text der Ausgabe JE74 gründlich und zielbewußt bearbeitet worden ist. Man beobachtet das Bestreben, die in JE47 verwendeten ostlitauischen Wörter durch allgemein übliche zu ersetzen (vgl. etwa pateisiai ´ uþ tiesà, suversti ´ ataduoti, dangtis ´ stogas, iðkuopti ´ iðkandaþyti), von einigen nebeneinander auftretenden Synonymen nur die westliche Variante stehenzulassen (vgl. ðakelë (aba ataþala) ´ ðakelë, pjûmenis (pjûklë, pjûtis) ´ pjûtis, pasavintinë (aba sukalbëtoji pana) ´ sukalbëtoji pana.

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Bûdvardžiu su priesaga -iškas(-a) posesyvinës reikšmës statusas senuosiuose raštuose

Author(s): Saulius Ambrazas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 04/2002

Most Old Lithuanian texts of the 16th-17th centuries are translations. Their syntax and lexicon were under the heavy influence of the originals. A similar problem with regard to the influence of the originals sometimes occurs in investigations of word formation too. In Old Lithuanian texts adjectives with the suffix -iðkas(-a) usually have a possessive meaning and are encountered side by side with the adnominal genitive, cf. the example from Ewangelie Polskie y Litewskie (1647) by Jonas Jaknavièius: Iey ieºmes (abä iemiá=ºkus) dayktus µaki=ºan iumus / a teãiau ne tikite / kaypog iey µakiãia iumus dungiákus tikieµite 17120-26. Such usage is not characteristic of modern Lithuanian where derivatives of this type usually denote resemblance. Therefore Pranas Skardþius (1943) and some other investigators were inclined to see the influence of the Slavonic languages in the possessive usage of adjectives with the suffixe -iðkas(-a) in Old Lithuanian texts.

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The (Non)Presence of Julian Tuwim in Lithuania

Author(s): Teresa Dalecka / Language(s): English Issue: 6/2016

The reception of Polish literature in Lithuania is a complex phenomenon. For a long time there was a dominant trend of expanding the area of Lithuanian literature by incorporating into it some of the Polish-language authors who maintained contacts with Lithuania. As a result, the horizons of national literature naturally broadened. However, the reception of Julian Tuwim’s writing belongs to a different category. It needs to be remembered that in the Soviet period Polish literature offered Lithuanian intellectuals a passage to the outside world. It was in the work of western poets, Tuwim’s work included, that Lithuanian authors sought ways of expanding their avant-garde forms and dictions. Tuwim’s poetry has been largely read in its original, Polish version; therefore, there are few books collecting his poems. However, the influence of Tuwim’s work is recognized by some experts in translations of his work. However, Tuwim was made publicly known in Lithuania thanks an argument over the naming one of the street in Vilnius after his name. The article analysis public reactions to this argument and shows how this non-literaryevent made Tuwim a public figure in the country.

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Kultûros Kritika Tarpukario Lieuvoje: Julijonas Lindë-Dobilas

Author(s): Almantas Samalavičius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 54/2008

So far writings of Julijonas Lindë-Dobilas, an important writer and critic of the first half of the XXth century, have been analyzed from the viewpoint of literary history and criticism. An author of first Lithuanian psychological novel “Raving,” Julijonas-Lindë Dobilas remains an important figure in the history of Lithuania’s literature. However, his critical writings, collected into one volume one decade ago, represent his going beyond the borders of art or literary criticism. In the present article he is treated as a versatile cultural critic, who developed a rather unique critical discourse in the cultural context of Lithuania’s first half of the XXth century. Being not only a novelist, but also a Catholic priest, Lindë-Dobilas never submitted himself to official viewpoint of the Church nor sought some fashionable ideology of his day. His writings represent a sum of approaches. Influences range from Taine to Walcel and Croce. While in his aesthetics Lindë-Dobilas is a humble follower of Western thinkers of his time, in cultural criticism he developed a broad and interesting approach, his own categories and conceptual tools. His writings on literature, art, psychology of nations, creativity, cultural history are an interesting example how cultural criticism took shape and matured in pre-war Lithuania.

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Укишкасис календорюс 1902 метамс ir Пасака апе жувиника ир жувеле: rengėjo problema

Author(s): Aurelija Tamošiūnaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 13/2011

The article deals with the linguistic and orthographic issues of two 1902 Lithuanian texts in Cyrillic (Укишкасис календорюс 1902 метамс [‘Farmers’ Calendar for 1902’; Ук] and Aleksandr Pushkin’s Пасака апе жувиника ир жувеле [‘Tale of a Fisherman and a Little Fish’; ПаЖЖ ]). Various bibliographical sources refer to Juozas Grabauskas as the author of these two publications. However, contradicting accounts, especially regarding the authorship of Пажж, suggest that there might have been two different authors involved. This hypothesis was tested in the article. Orthographical analysis revealed that the texts were prepared using different models of Lithuanian Cyrillic. This implies that there were two separate individuals who transcribed (prepared) these texts in Lithuanian Cyrillic. Both authors modified the Russian Cyrillic alphabet; the modifications, however, were different: the author of Ук introduced the graphemes <é> for [·] and <j> for [j], while the author of Пажж used graphemes <ў> and <>, and marked the sound [j] with the grapheme <i>. The language of both texts was strongly influenced by the norms of the developing Standard Lithuanian, more specifically by the norms of Литовская грамматика (‘Lithuanian Grammar’; Лг), which was published in Russian in 1891 and was widely used in most of the Suvalkai province schools of the time.

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Pirmasis Simono Daukanto rašybos lūžis (1827–1828): raidė <y>, garsas [ẹ], diakritikai ir geminatos

Author(s): Giedrius Subačius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 16/2014

It is most probable that the earliest surviving Lithuanian lines in Simonas Daukantas’s (1793–1864) hand were inscribed in 1827 in Rīga (Latvia) in his manuscript Excerpts from Books (Išrašai iš knįgų [IK]; Library of the Institute for the Lithuanian Literature and Folklore [LLTIB ], Vilnius: f. 1 – SD 31). Another almost contemporary manuscript titled Lithuanian Songs (Canticula Lithuanica [DaCL]; National Lithuanian Martynas Mažvydas’s Library, Vilnius: f. 110 – 21) originated in about 1827–1828. These two manuscripts contain quite similar orthography that Daukantas was exploiting in Vilnius (until the end of 1825) and later in Rīga (1826–1827). Its salient features were: (1) the letter <y> to denote close vowel [ẹ] of Northwestern Lithuanian Lowland dialect; the digraph <yi> to denote [ẹi]; (2) the grapheme <e‑> in word-initial position both in conjuncture ir ‘and’ and in preposition iš ‘from’ (as well as in the prefix iš‑); (3) the diacritical non-palatal <ł> [l]; (4) the absence of geminates; (5) the avoidance of all diacritics (except for the traditional “Polish” letters <ł>, and <ż>).

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Trisdešimt šeši Aukso altoriaus maldaknygės leidimai (1885-1907): santykis su bendrinės kalbos raida

Author(s): Jurgita Venckienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 07/2005

This article covers thirty six editions of Serafinas Laurynas Kušeliauskas' (1820-1889) Aukso Altorius (a Lithuanian Catholic prayer-book), which were printed in the years 1879 to 1907. The Catholic Church in Lithuania was developing its written standardized variety from the sixteenth century on. Nevertheless at the end of the nineteenth century the language of religious texts was subject to the impact of the norms of the developing "secular" Lithuanian standard. The article raises the question as to why orthographical, phonetic, and certain morphological norms were changing slower in the prayer-books than in some other genres. The oldest surviving edition of the prayer-book Aukso altorius was published in 1885. This edition encompassed certain Lowland Lithuanian and certain Northern West Highland Lithuanian dialectal forms (from the Ðiauliai region). In later editions these forms were gradually substituted for Southern West Highland dialectal equivalents. Traditionally it was believed that the language of various publications (prayer-books among them) was influenced by the prestigious secular periodicals. However, the newspaper Aušra was not necessarily prestigious for the editors of the prayer-books, and their intention to use the Southern West Highland dialect for writing might have occurred relatively independently. Still, those periodicals which were published after Aušra ceased to exist (after 1886) and which used this dialect quite consistently might have impacted to a certain degree the transition of the prayer-books to the more Southern West Highland dialectal forms, especially in the last decade of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth.

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Stanislovo Moravskio lietuvių kalba: 1850-1852

Author(s): Giedrius Subačius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 07/2005

Stanislovas Moravskis (Stanisùaw Morawski, 1802-1853) was the well-known author of Vilnius' memoirs (Several Years from My Young Days in Vilnius, 1818-1825). He wrote predominantly in Polish, but in the rough draft of his "Pieúni" ("Songs"), ca. 1850-1852 (preserved in the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius: f. 165 - 404) Moravskis wrote some Lithuanian texts, phrases, and words (151 Lith. words with a total of 269 occurrences). Moravskis was curious about the meaning and the form of the Lith. words Anksti, Dobiùas and its derivative dobieùelis, Palidnikas, Ratiela. He knew well how to use the velar (nonpalatal) consonant [l] before the e type vocalism (Ùeki 'lëkë; flew'), etc. It might seem that Moravskis had mastered certain characteristics of the Lithuanian language better than a novice. On the other hand, Moravskis was unable to hear the exact phonetics of the words anam, eþeraitis, mergelë, nabagëlis, nedëlia, nematau, Nemunas, penki, subata; he could not identify exactly the ending -o (gen. sg. and praes. 3); he did not clearly differentiate between the diphthong [ie] and the vowels [ë], [e], or between the diphthong [uo] and the vowel [o] (he wrote <o>); he did not perceive precisely the unstressed diphthong [au] (sometimes he wrote it as <ou>) and there are some inaccuracies in his translations from Lithuanian into Polish. These characteristics of Moravskis's texts could suggest the opposite view that Moravskis was far from being a specialist in Lithuanian.

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“If Sweden is a province, what are we?” Map-making and man-making in Marius Ivaškevičius‟s essay series My Scandinavia

Author(s): Lill-Ann Körber / Language(s): English Issue: 34/2023

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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Paprastųjų žodžių terminizavimas Jurgio Ambraziejaus Pabrėžos „Taisliuje Augyminiame‟

Author(s): Albina Auksoriūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 96/2023

The article deals with the names of the genera of flowering plants given by Jurgis Ambraziejus Pabrėža in his 1843 work Taislius augyminis (“The System of Plants”), which Pabrėža coined by way of terminologisation of colloquial words of that time. The article contains analysis of the semantic motivation behind the names of the genera of plants, in which the names for plant genera he had created are compared with the names in Povilas Matulionis’s Žolynas (“Names of plants”), Lietuviškas botanikos žodynas (“A Lithuanian Dictionary of Botany”), Lietuvių kalbos žodynas (“A Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language”), and Botanikos vardų žodynas (“A Dictionary of Plant Names”); also, it lists the names of plant genera in Pabrėža’s work that have taken root in current usage.

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Žemininkai Vilniuje: santykis su daugiataučio miesto erdve

Author(s): Mindaugas Kvietkauskas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2023

The article examines the relationship between the generation of žemininkai (a literary movement; its name can be roughly translated as ‘representatives of land’) and the multi-ethnic Vilnius urban space since 1940, when the young representatives of this generation moved to the regained capital of Lithuania. Previous studies of their work stated that the experience of Vilnius had a significant impact on the cultural consciousness of this generation, but they never analysed the process of development of their ‘Vilnius identity’ and urban discourse, the meanings of the city that it emphasised, and the manifestations of the relationship with the multi-ethnic urban environment and the cultural ‘other’. The article presents socio-cultural analysis of the poetic and ego-documentary texts of four žemininkai authors who reflected on their Vilnius experience – Pranė Aukštikalnytė-Jokimaitienė, Kazys Bradūnas, Vytautas Mačernis, and Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas, as well as the autobiographical testimonies of the literary scholar Vanda Zaborskaitė. Their initial attitudes seem to be similar – ethnocentric and monological, whereas the urban imagination is dominated by the axis of the Lithuanian-European cultural meanings, and the spatial images are distilled from the signs of the local cultural ‘Other’. However, as early as during the war years, and especially in the post-war period, a shift in the individual attitudes of some of the žemininkai is evident. The initial nationalistic schemes are loosened or questioned, and signs of the ‘Other’ are integrated, which is first of all manifested in their poetry and poetic prose about Vilnius.

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Uždaros visuomenės fenomenologija Antano Vienuolio „Paskenduolėje“: antropologiniai profiliai

Author(s): Jūratė Levina / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2023

The inquiry formulates the fundamentals of the hermeneutics of narrative against the background of the history of reception of the work under examination, “The Drowned Girl” by Antanas Vienuolis, and draws on the relevant phenomenological descriptions and resources of structural analysis to foreground the operative mechanisms of closed society. Such mechanisms are foregrounded on three planes: (1)social, of the rules of relationships between people, which in the story constitute a hierarchal system of power relations modelled on the structure of the traditional family of the agricultural holding, (2) significative, comprising sense-making discourses (traditional customs and Christianity) whereby the culture, in this story, configures the world without transcending corporeally perceivable horizons of the actually lived present, and (3) anthropological, where sociocultural praxis and self-perception are grounded in the essentially unhuman nature which the culture tries to assimilate and erase without recognising its essential otherness. This threefold configuration emerges at the crossroad of the (author’s and reader’s) Modern and (the represented) archaic cultural self-conceptions, which produces the conflict of interpretations and facilitates both the cathartic effect and the ongoing process of sense-making. All these configurations are derived from the story’s poetics, simultaneously exposing the discursive operative mechanisms of closed society.

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Trumpoji draminė forma Kosto Ostrausko ir Juozo Erlicko kūryboje

Author(s): Neringa Klišienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2023

Short dramatic forms have become theatrical objects that are not easily identifiable. They act as a symbol of questioning the foundations of the conventional drama and a reflection on the dramatic genre in general. The article focuses on its ambiguous treatment and its actualisation in the context of contemporary Lithuanian dramaturgy. Micro-drama, miniature, one-shot drama, or ‘dramatized’ proverbs and sayings – these are the playwrights’ own denominations indicating a kind of tendency which emerged at the end of the 20th century, or, at least, the search for an original term or word. At the same time, however, this effort also signals the inscription of short-format dramatic texts into a certain mediatic area of literature and theatre, which is primarily seen as a sign of a certain bargain with the reader. The article does not look at short-form texts so much through the prism of theatrical evolution, but rather focuses on the mechanism of short-form writing. The question is whether (and how) such ‘mutations’ of dramatic writing maintain a specific theatrical mode of operation (the plot, the character etc.) when they enter the dynamic field of the short form. It is concluded that its mechanism is related to maximum cost-effectiveness and economy of language, and, through the reduction of the aforementioned dramatic triad, the function of the perceiver and his/her interpretative work are radicalised.

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Adam Mickiewicz in Search of Lithuanian National Identity

Author(s): Aušra Jurgutienė / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Adam Mickiewicz’s multicultural national identity, based on his claim Sum gente lituanus, natione autem polonus, was created over the several centuries that followed the Lithuanian Grand Duchy’s formation of the union with the Polish kingdom. Thus, it is no surprise that his reception in the literatures of these respective countries became so complicated. It was not only the Lithuanians and Poles who strayed into fruitless arguments as to which country could lay more claim to him, but disputes also constantly arose even within the relevant societies: did he belong to their national literature or was he foreign to it? In Lithuania two alternative traditions of reception formed: one faction (Jonas Basanavičius, Jonas Aistis, Faustas Kirša) erased him from Lithuanian culture and national identity, the same way as it treated all of the Polonised Lithuanian nobility; while others (Antanas Baranauskas, Maironis, Motiejus Gustaitis, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, Vincas Krėvė, Stasys Šalkauskis, Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, Julijonas Lindė-Dobilas, Antanas Maceina, Petras Juodelis, Justinas Marcinkevičius, Vytautas Kubilius, etc.), supported a positive reception, honouring him as “a genius of the Lithuanian spirit”. The article will demonstrate the impact of Mickiewicz’s poetry on the conceptions of Lithuanian national identity presented by two Lithuanian cultural philosophers, Šalkauskis and Maceina, and will briefly discuss its more significant variations in Lithuanian romantic and neo-romantic literature. Referencing Mickiewicz’s work reveals qualities of mysticism, syntheticism and Prometheanism in Lithuanian literature and in the concept of national identity itself. The problem of Mickiewicz as foreign to Lithuanians (being foreign in some aspects to Poles as well) and his incompatibility with any notions of ‘purity’ of national identity at this time encourages one to delve into varied regional cultural relationships and the openness and complications of national identity more deeply.

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Humanizmo samprata Vydūno tragedijoje "Pasaulio gaisras"

Author(s): Roma Bončkutë / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 119/2024

The article aims to show that the close connection between culture and humanism, vividly reflected by Vydūnas in his tragedy Pasaulio gaisras („The Fire of the World“) (1922-1928), is a continuation of the tradition of German cultural humanism and not Vedantism. The article begins with a brief discussion of the development of Western humanism, touching on the themes of hospitality, Christian humanism and holiness. The tragedy is remarkable for its parallels with Johann Gottfried Herder's concept of humanism, especially his letters in defense of humanism, Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität (1797). The analysis of the tragedy allows us to say that in the tragedy "Pasaulio gaisras" Vydūnas, similarly to Herder, questions the problem of culture and humanism in the context of war, giving the woman the most important role of educator of humanism and peacemaker. The themes of hospitality, Christian love and cultural missionaryism reflect not only the Western origins of Vydūnas' humanism, but also its critique. Vydūnas shows that highly cultured German officers who graduated from the military academy lacked common sense and empathy. Vydūnas, like Herder, criticises educated but unspiritual people who are detached from practical, everyday "human affairs" and who can only judge a given situation according to the rigid letter of the law and not based on objective, complex reality. Vydūnas shows that a person's detachment from reality inevitably threatens to lead back to barbarism. Vydūnas entrusts the education of future generations to women who, being more closely connected to the domestic environment, are grounded in reality, have preserved their own individuality and are therefore able to appreciate the individuality of others. Vydūnas' humanism is the ability of an individual to learn about the environment and oneself, to develop in cooperation with others, and to be guided by good examples of national and global culture. Only a person who realises oneself and cultivates one's spirit rises to universal human values: wisdom, freedom, justice, virtue. The death of Magė, the protagonist of the tragedy, in her native house, set on fire by the enemy Germans, is like the sacrifice of the first Christian martyrs for the renewal of society.

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Holokausto refleksija Icchoko Mero romane „Lygiosios trunka akimirką“: religinių siužetų ir šachmatų partijos scenarijų perkūrimas

Author(s): Kristina Tutlytė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 81/2024

The article analyses the reflection of the Holocaust situation in Icchokas Meras’ novel “Stalemate”, using the statements of the cognitive poetics scholar Peter Stockwell (the concepts of script and schema). The structural model of this novel is a chess game, the text is supplemented with biblical plots (the motif of a father sacrificing his children; the myth of the creation of the world), and a few additional scripts are built in – certain identities and behavioral patterns assumed by the characters in the novel. By describing the course of a chess game and in parallel depicting the fates, behavior and value choices of the novel’s characters, an allusion is symbolically created that in the ghetto, in fact, each character is forced to play a symbolic game with life and death, and that each decision, action, move affects the others. The text becomes allegorical and the rethinking of the Holocaust situation, based on a rational multi-layered construction, turns into an intriguing intellectual and emotional challenge.

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Liminalumas Jurgos Ivanauskaitės romanuose „Agnijos magija“ ir „Sapnų nublokšti“

Author(s): Eglė Mikulskaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 81/2024

The article explores the liminal, i. e. a transitional stage in the novels „Agnijos magija“ (1995) and „Sapnų nublokšti“ (2000) by Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Liminality, according to anthropologists Arnold Van Gennep, Victor Turner and Bjørn Thomassen, is defined as an in-between, threshold state of separation from stable social / cultural conditions, the loss of previous identity landmarks. The aim is to view these novels against the background of the author’s biographical and Buddhist concepts, considering that Ivanauskaitė’s experiences in the East have had a significant impact on the ideas of the novels that are important to us and how they change. The liminal phase is revealed to have positive features, enabling spiritual development and integration into the world through Buddhism and personal effort („Agnijos magija“). However, the stuckness inherent in this stage can also be highly destructive, paralysing, and shackling to potential becoming („Sapnų nublokšti“). In both novels, the liminality experienced by the characters is marked by suffering, illusions, fanaticism, hostility to the environment and susceptibility to alien influences. Liminality is seen as a phase that should end in integration.

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The Epoch that Did Not Happen. The Poem of the Perished and Its Relationship to History

Author(s): Jūratė Landsbergytė-Becher / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2024

The epoch of socialist realism has never come to Lithuania. In its place, nihilistic horror, war, Soviet and Nazi occupations began. With the return of the Soviets, realism became a warped time that became increasingly difficult to decode. The Overturning of the World is an accurate code of that era with its definitive history. The beginning of a new epoch in Lithuania exposed the tragedy of the occupation, which showed the essence of distorted concepts in its transformations. The realism of war and occupation slashed the romantic idealism of poetry: The obvious Antichrist, the mass-murder of the of nations – the occupant, the monster of anti-civilisation, the leader of the overturned world was named. It is how Lithuania colludes with the red apocalyptic Bolsheviks – Russia, the Western casuistry of stepping back from red lines and the final return to repentance. One poem in Lithuania best illustrates the turning of the world, before which even the author stumbles. In poetry, this era of occupations and the darkness of Sovietism in the 1940s comes as a plainsong with its culminating expression. It is so important to mention that poetry slips out of self-censorship into its highest breakthrough of Shakespearean tragedy, shaking the images of the occupants’ lies with the voice of truth. It is achieved with just one example – an exceptionally majestic phoenix bursting out of the lyric into the space of tragedy – a poem worthy of special researchers’ attention due to its dominant overshadowing of propaganda – the call of the fate of Lithuania – responding to the essence of the occupation. It is the poem “Vivos plango, mortuos voco” (1943-1944) by the writer and poet Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas (1893-1967) (pen name Putinas means Viburnum).

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Literatura non-fiction w Litwie w ostatnich dziesięcioleciach

Author(s): Teresa Dalecka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The main aim of the article is to briefly describe non-fiction literature in Lithuania which is heterogeneous. Pop-ular reading titles are dominated by translations, including a few from Polish. In addition, non-fiction books by Lithuanian authors are published, as well as a small number of works by authors writing in Polish. Each of these phenomena was presented using a descriptive method, with greater attention paid to texts written in Polish. Each of these phenomena was presented using a descriptive method, with greater attention paid to texts written in Polish. Lithuanian non-fiction prose, created in both Lithuanian and Polish, revolves primarily around the theme of loss and transience. It is the result of the authors’ need to preserve on the pages of books the memories of a homeland in danger or lost, family, identity and language. In Polish non-fiction literature, represented mainly by Ryszard Kapuściński, Lithuanian readers are interested in the complex phenomenon of the 20th century – the mechanism of the existence and collapse of totalitarian systems, as well as the related psychological consequences suffered by the collective and individual people, and their transformation in a specific historical social space. Ka-puściński’s observations on how history’s cataclysms change the lives of ordinary people and how the boundaries between attackers and victims blur. The small number of non-fiction prose items allows us to conclude that this literary genre is just making its way in Lithuania. However, its popularity among readers gives it a chance for rapid development in the near future.

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