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The Deconstruction of National Identity in Lithuanian Literature: Marius Ivaškevičius’ Plays

Author(s): Aušra Jurgutienė / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

A heating national identity that makes use of romantic myths from the Golden Age of Lithuania creates the necessary “emotional glue” that can bring harmony to a social group. A coherent narrative of national history together with collective memories are inseparable from the ideology of nationalism that flourished in East Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Benedict Anderson). But we also have to emphasize that the impact of patriotism on a society can be compared to the ambivalent deconstructionist idea of the pharmacon, suggesting that medicine used in too great a dose may become poison. Therefore, the deconstructionist’s suspicion of national mythology and static national identity does not weaken national health, as may appear at the first glance, but may actually strengthen it. The two plays by Marius Ivaškevičius, Madagaskaras (Madagascar) and Išvarymas (Expulsion), still find a great resonance with readers and theatre audiences and are the subject of this article. I will consider how the deconstruction of national identity is based on the transformation and rewriting of national myths in Ivaškevičius’ plays. The deconstruction of identity, as I call it, emerges as a result of the interplay between opposing types of static heating and dynamic cooling identities. Having rejected extreme notions of national identity (i.e. these which are overly optimistic or utterly pessimistic) we enter into the field of the intricate semantics of identity, which leads us to the acknowledgement that nothing at all is self-evident and permanent, and everything depends on the perspective of each era. Madagascar (2004) is a symbolic memory text where the author not only rejects the Lithuanian myths concerning national identity but also renews them from the contemporary point of view by adding lots of irony. Mocking the past and the idea to create a “reserve Lithuania” on the island of Madagascar allows him to speak of the ongoing national identity crisis: the old myths are no longer valid in our rapidly changing world and we cannot find a clear-cut answer to the question of who we are. In the next play, Expulsion (2011), the author keeps investigating the same problem of national identity: “From the geographical point of view, London is located on an island. But if we were to abandon geographical thinking, all of us are islanders. Humanity still consists of islands called nations.” (Ivaškevičius) In the postmodernist global world there is no such thing as total isolation and islands are indeed interconnected by the seas rather than remaining isolated entities. This applies equally to postmodernist nations and peoples. The play depicts the dramatic integration of Lithuanian immigrants into an alien culture. Benas, them protagonist of the play, and some other young Lithuanians are brought to London as cheap illegal labour. However, the golden grindstone of the free market crushes them all. In order to survive, they must adapt in an alien culture. But are there limits to how much they are actually able to adapt? The writer describes only the destructive cases of integration and sets very relevant social and moral problems about the integration of poor emigrants from the Eastern Europe into rich Western societies. Critics like to call Ivaškevičius an anthropologist of the nation and writer of relevant political drama (Vaidotas Jauniškis, Ramunė Balevičiūtė, ValdasVasiliauskas, Kristian Lupa). We must not perceive the crisis and deconstruction of the national identity in Ivaškevičius’ plays as merely a rejection (or destruction) of past national creation myths, but rather as their ironic recreation, because, in this time of dynamic globalization, our modern national consciousness and culture needs them.

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ESĖ ŽANRAS KAIP ATSAKAS ŠIUOLAIKINIO SKAITYTOJO POREIKIUS

Author(s): Joanna Tabor / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2015

The article reviews the popularity of essay genre in modern Lithuanian and Polish literature. It tries to answer the question of what essay’s features determine its success, and what is so special about this genre that the most important authors have chosen essay as the most appropriate form to express their creative ideas. Essay’s popularity in Lithuania and Poland at the end of XX, and in the beginning of XXI century is mainly connected with the political and social situation changes, but – even though the breakthrough of this literary form had its place more than twenty years ago – the interest in it is not decreasing. What could be the reason for this situation? Which elements of modern culture create such favorable conditions for essay’s development? We could look for the answer to this question while reflecting on the change of communication methods, on which the new media has a huge impact. The new media and its tools change the ways of communication, and reading habits. The essay genre – with its openness, freedom, flexibility and compactness – is the literary form that can meet the modern communication structure the most adequately.

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DISTOPIJOS ELEMENTŲ RAIŠKA MODERNIOJOJE LIETUVIŲ PROZOJE

Author(s): Lina Buividavičiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 28(33)A/2015

The theoretical problems and practical analysis of utopia and its subgenre dystopia are widely known in the global cultural discourse. Nevertheless, these analyses still remains almost terra incognita in the studies of Lithuanian prose. The aim of this article is to analyse and compare the ambivalent elements in these novels: Vilniaus pokeris (Vilnius Poker) by R. Gavelis, Užkeiktas miestas (The Town under the Spell) by R. Lankauskas, and Anapus rytojaus (Beyond Tomorrow) by J. Jankus. This article is based on the hermeneutical methodology and the context of existentialism. The theoretical part of the article “Dystopian World” describes the main sources, features, and polemical issues of genre. The first practical part “The Social-Historical Subordinated Dystopia in Lithuanian Literature” analyses the concrete historical and cultural features of the dystopian genre. The features of ontological-existential dystopia are described in the second practical part of the paper.

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Luigi Pirandello’s Works in Lithuania: Why the Dialogue Did Not Take Place

Author(s): Gitana Vanagaitė / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) was an Italian modernist writer and playwright who enriched literature with questions of modern identity as it relates to the contradiction between human consciousness and reality. Pirandello pondered questions of art and reality, mask and essence, life and form, and the fragmentation of a personality. In his works, he also foresaw what would later constitute the base of existential philosophy. The reception of Pirandello’s works in Lithuania has been limited, in part because of the small number of his works translated into Lithuanian – only a dozen short stories, two plays, and a novel. The first more or less systematic and thorough introduction to the play wright and his works took place in 1934, when the Italian writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his “bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage.” A few articles on Pirandello’s creative principles appeared in the Lithuanian press. A Lithuanian poet, Kazys Binkis, translated the beginning of Pirandello’s play, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921), and a writer, Kostas Korsakas, edited a book consisting of five novels, Pirmoji naktis (‘First Night’). A Lithuanian translation of his novel, Il fu Mattia Pascal (The Late Mattia Pascal, 1904), and two plays, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore and Enrico IV (Henry IV, 1922), came out during the Soviet period. All translations were accompanied by a foreword containing basic biographical details about and introducing Pirandello’s cultural, literary and creative life. Although Pirandello gets attention in Lithuanian university textbooks, no academic paper about him or his works has been published yet. There have been no translations of Pirandello’s theoretical texts, his thoughts on the cultural situation, literature, and man at the beginning of the 20th century, i.e., a volume of essays Arte e Scienza (Art and Science) written in 1908 or an important long essay, L’umorismo (On Humor), in which author also examines the principles of his own art. On the other hand, the literary reception of Pirandello’s works has been supplemented by theater performances. Five plays of his were mounted and the play, Henry IV, was twice produced on Lithuanian theater stage. The article examines why Pirandello’s artistic ideas, which reached Lithuania during the second decade of the 20th century, remained on the periphery and failed to influence the literary canon.

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LES FORMES DE LA NOSTALGIE DANS LA POÉSIE D’OSCAR MILOSZ ET D’ALFONSAS NYKA-NILIŪNAS

Author(s): Nijolė Vaičiulėnaitė-Kašelionienė / Language(s): French Issue: 4/2017

The article discusses two forms of nostalgia in poetry by two prominent authors of the twentieth century: the French-Lithuanian poet, Oscar Milosz, and Lithuanian poet, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas. Both can be seen as exile poets. In Milosz case, it was a voluntary exile; whereas Nyka-Niliūnas was forced to leave his homeland. Poetic language is also different: only Nyka-Niliūnas displaces nostalgia for his native language, the „real place“ on earth. However, there are more similarities than differences between the two poets. Comparative analysis of poetry shows that the theme of loss and a motif of the return constitute an axis of their creative model. Various modulations of loss introduce a whole range of nuances of nostalgia, foremost related to childhood archetypes. Nostalgia is far from monotonous, dark or misty. On the contrary, it gradually acquires more creative power. Its dynamism asserts itself as the search for a utopian space in the infinity, resisting the environment rooted in specific space and time. Namely nostalgia shifts poetic dream toward metaphysical reality. This reality, unlike the perception by both authors, depends on the historical and social environment (external causes) and on the approach to the faith (the most important internal cause). By inspiring to take not only a physical trip toa concrete country, but also a metaphysical journey in space and time, nostalgia becomes increasingly independent of the situation of exile. The analysis confirms the thesis that „nostalgia has two sides: that of rootedness and uprootedness“ (Barbara Cassin).

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Gendručio Morkūno kūryba vaikams ir jo „Grįžimo istorija“ literatūros teologijos požiūriu

Author(s): Asta Gustaitienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2017

The aim of this article is to investigate children’s literature works by Gendrutis Morkūnas, focusing on the semantics of his problem prose piece Grįžimo istorija (Story of Return) written in 2007. Gendrutis Morkūnas wrote all his five books within a span of a few years at the beginning of the 21st century, and they are included in the list of the 500 best books for children by Lithuanian authors, while the author’s books Iš nuomiško gyvenimo (Bits from a Tenant’s Life), Blusyno pasakojimai (Stories from a Flea Place) and the aforementioned Grįžimo istorija (Story of Return) are among the first hundred entries of said list. What is the importance of the aspect of Catholic theology in Morkūnas’s works? To what extent does it help in revealing the subtlest meaning of his writings? When defining the theology of literature as a literary school of investigation, we mostly refer to the theoretical insights of art historian and religious philosopher Alejandro R. García-Rivera and his concept of the theology of art; the theoretical insights of psychologist Tobin Hart, literature scholars Sharon A. Stinger and Dalia Čiočytė and philosophers Luc Ferry and Arūnas Sverdiolas were also important in defining the problematic field of this article. The children’s literature works of Morkūnas are frugal in disclosing Christian motifs explicitly; however, the Christian underlayer is not to be ignored – the artistic reality of the works is interwoven with well-known biblical metaphors and images. A person’s name as a sign of one’s dignity gains its importance as an outstanding motif that unfolds very much like in John 10:3, the antinomy of the way and the path is recurrent in the works, together with the sometimes very persistent motif of knocking etc. These aspects, characteristic of Morkūnas’s works, manifest themselves in his book Grįžimo istorija (Story of Return). Here the author presents a story about a girl named Vilija – an original character to be memorized – who embodies a power characteristic of a small girl, which, as defined by Hart, brings the child close to experiencing God: she likes to observe, is wise and capable of wondering, prone to look for answers and able to guess what the adults are thinking, to recognize their most profound needs, and she is able see what is not to be seen, what had happened some time ago and what will always remain within linear time.

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„Socialistinio humanizmo“ literatūra: užuojauta kaip ideologinės manipuliacijos atmaina

Author(s): Rita Tūtlytė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2017

In this article, we examine the “socialist humanism” that unfolds in Mykolas Sluckis’s novel Laiptai į dangų (Stairway to the Skies, 1963); we examine the contents, rhetorical means for building the text and the forms of ideological expression of said “socialist humanism.” In deconstructing the text, we put emphasis on the strategies of suggestion. One of such strategies is the following one: an individual wronged by destiny, one in need of care and compassion, is thrown into a whirlwind of political events. In such a way, the conflict of ideologies is transferred into the domestic environment and the psychological realm. A “naked” political argumentation is refused, and emotions are instead utilized for suggestion. The figure of the cripple, which appeared in the works of the “socialist humanism” program, provides the said cripple figure with a dimension of humanity and links it with tradition; on the other hand, it is also manipulated. An idea is being instilled that the only society that can be created on the principles of mutual aid and compassion is the socialist society. We study in the article whether the rhetorical operations of the novel, and especially the novel’s ending, affirm these ideological schemes or demonstrate their ambiguity. Several methods of suggestion employed by the author are observable: an emotional love story is being narrated with the help of inner monologues, the presented characteristics of the story’s characters are tendentious, the ambivalence of aposiopeses and hints is maintained, deliberate comments are inserted, passions relating to pity are being manipulated, and the relationships between parents and children have an undertone resembling Pavlik Morozov, the parents’ traitor. The unfurled paradigm of compassion in Sluckis’s book aids in understanding the reception of “socialist humanism” in the Soviet-era society of Lithuania – to understand why manipulation based on the means of kindness and compassion was being rejected in the underground movements of the Soviet period. What is also observable is that in the 1980s, literature works of the silent modernism gave a new sense to the portrayal of the cripple: the cripple of the last generation, manipulated and devoid of any autonomous value, is opposed by the cripple as a free individual who possesses an independent worldview.

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Absurdo idėjos transformacijos mirusio dievo pasaulyje

Author(s): Marijus Šidlauskas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2017

This article discusses the origins and transformation of the idea of the absurd in the modern secularized world. Submitted for consideration is the Latin locution “credo quia absurdum,” a saying ascribed to Tertullian, and how this locution was implicated in the evolution of the idea of the absurd and reflected in literature and art. Examined in the paper are the modifications caused by existential and social changes as well as the interaction of both objective and subjective factors. Using sociohistorical arguments, the author begins to polemicize with the absurdity-suggestive deduction considering the emptiness of existence and the absence of God as somewhat absolute facts. Regarding the reflection of absurdity in Lithuanian culture, the context of religious existentialism, represented by such works as Jobo drama (The Drama of Job) by A. Maceina and Žmogus be Dievo (Man without God) by J. Girnius, was of significant importance. The abovementioned works stimulated a deeper and more authentic artistic insight into the problem. In the panorama of Lithuanian literature of the 20th century, signs of absurdity can be seen in the works of classical (V. Mykolaitis-Putinas, B. Sruoga, H. Radauskas, M. Martinaitis), avantgarde (P. Morkūnas, S. Šemetys) and postmodern (M. Ivaškevičius, S. Parulskis, G. Grajauskas) authors. The performances of A. Ambrasas, which were staged at the Institute of Art in the late sixties, stand out as a distinguishing and methodically framed phenomenon of the theatre of the absurd.

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„Ir aš nebijau juodos.“ Santykis su motina Janinos Degutytės tekstuose

Author(s): Giedrė Šmitienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2018

This article is intended to describe the relations of the poetess and translator Janina Degutytė (1928–1990) with her mother. The poetry of Degutytė was exceptionally popular in the 1960s and the 1970s; it was read and rewritten by hand. In 1980, literary critic Viktorija Daujotytė was preparing a monograph about Degutytė and asked the poetess to answer some usual questions in written form. The answers from the poetess revealed her tragic childhood due to an alcohol addicted and aggressive mother. These “answers” were not known to the wide audience until they were published in 1996 as a separate publication, together with an “unfinished autobiography,” written during the last months of poetess’s life. This written story about the author’s childhood was the first and, so far, the only Lithuanian text revealing the dark side of motherhood; thus, it became an important text in Lithuanian culture. This article is an attempt to describe and understand the relationship of the poetess Degutytė with her mother. It is based on letters, autobiographical texts and poems. There are two approaches developed in the article: a phenomenological atnhropological approach, which allows us ask what kind of life was lived and how was it lived, and a narratological approach, which helps us understand how the lived life was told in words. The epistolaric material, because of its sheer quantity, is the main part of the texts connected with the mother. They depict the daily relations between the adult daughter and her mother. The letters are much less concentrated texts than poetry pieces or an autobiography, with a lot of extra contexts, such as the realities of the daily life. However, due to them, the daily life acquires its volume and duration and provides a space for concentrated but fragmentary texts of poetry and autobiography. The inclusion of the mother into the autobiographical and poetical texts in this case was not easy and natural. It cost great efforts to the writer but was always pushed by some internal wish to be told. The article summarizes a collection of autobiographical texts encompassing a period of twenty years. We are allowed to observe how slowly and with great difficulty the narration grows about the experiences from childhood, what minimal and concentrated expressions are used. The process of the poetry of Degutytė can be seen as a constant self-opening to the tragic and painful experience. Her poetry becomes more and more explicit and open in tact with the telling about the relation to her mother. This correlation is not a coincidental but is a core fact that organizes the dynamic of the creation.

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Anos Achmatovos kūrybos recepcija Lietuvių egzodo literatūroje (Henrikas Radauskas, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas, Tomas Venclova)

Author(s): Alena-Sofia Ivinskaya / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 2/2018

This article discusses the memoirs, diaries, translations, dedications, poetry and critical works of three Lithuanian exodus poets: Henrikas Radauskas, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas and Tomas Venclova. These Lithuanian poets of the exodus are hardly possible to associate with any kinds of literature movements. Therefore, the reception of Akhmatova’s creative work will be reviewed separately in the context of the creative heritage of the selected authors. Under the new concept of reception, the perception process is not a constant fact – it is a changing, dynamic phenomenon. The theory of reception considers the most important aspect – the accepting side – therefore, it is important to analyze the horizons of the expectations of these Lithuanian poets, their aesthetic perception of art and the way they evaluate poetry. This article takes into account the “horizon of expectation” of the Lithuanian poets, their aesthetic attitudes, perception of art in general and poetry in particular, as well as some features of their poetic creativity.

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French-Lithuanian Universe of Literary Critique by Greimas

Author(s): Loreta Mačianskaitė / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The idea for the present article came from the doubt expressed in the thesis of the world-renowned Algirdas Julius Greimas (1917–1992) that there is an unbridgeable gap between his Lithuanian essays and French semiotics. The analysis of texts written in Lithuanian in 1943–1955, dedicated to Cervantes, Verlaine, and Corneille unveils the most important methods of his analytical work: prioritizing the text over its context; the aim to uncover the author’s authenticity. Greimas used the model of structural similarities between French and Lithuanian literatures for constructing Lithuanian literary history. In his estimation of Lithuanian poets, Greimas aimed at finding authors of the European level; a principle of analogies is fruitfully used for understanding their works. Lithuanian essays show that Greimas also wrote them as a semiotician. Some of Greimas’s contemplations about literature also indicate the limits of his thinking, but the body of his works still reveals a surprising integrity of his personality.

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Lithuanian Literature and Shakespeare: Several Cases of Reception

Author(s): Eglė Keturakienė / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The article is based on the reception theory by Hans Robert Jauss and analyses how Shakespeare’s works were read, evaluated and interpreted in Lithuanian literature in the 19th to 21th centuries. Some traces of Shakespeare’s works might be observed in letters by Povilas Višinskis and Zemaitė where Shakespearean drama is indicated as a canon of writing to be followed. It is interesting to note that Lithuanian exodus drama by Kostas Ostrauskas is based on the correspondence between Višinskis and Zemaitė. The characters of the play introduce the principles of the drama of the absurd. Gell’s concept of distributed personhood offered by S. Greenblatt is very suitable for analysing modern Lithuanian literature that seeks a creative relationship with Shakespeare’s works. The concept maintains that characters of particular dramas can break loose from the defined interpretative framework. Lithuanian exodus drama reinterprets Shakespeare’s works and characters. The plays by Ostrauskas and Algirdas Landsbergis explore the variety of human existence and language, the absurd character of the artist, meaningless human existence and the critique of totalitarianism. Modern Lithuanian poetry interprets Shakespeare‘s works so that they serve as a way to contemplate the theme of modern writing, meaningless human existence, the tragic destiny of an individual and Lithuania, miserable human nature, the playful nature of literature, the clownish mask of the poet, the existential silence of childhood, the topic of life as a theatrical performance, the everyday experience of modern women in theatre. The most frequently interpreted dramas are Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth – Lithuanian literary imagination inscribed them into the field of existentialist and absurd literature.

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20-ųjų metų kartos liudijimai privačiojoje raštijoje: Alberto Dilio (1920–2000) atvejis

Author(s): Ona Dilytė-Čiurinskienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2019

The article employs the egodocumentary approach to examine how the private writings of Albertas Dilys (1920–2000), political prisoner and Lithuanian scholar of the 1920s generation, records and reflects upon his refusal to compromise under the circumstances of the Soviet occupation. Dilys was part of the generation who were born on the eve of the creation of the State of Lithuania – between 1917 and 1922 – and who, having graduated from the schools of the newly independent state, entered university by the end of 1930s with a distinct aim to contribute to the European culture worthy of a free nation. However, the Second World War and the alternating Nazi and Soviet occupations brought an end to these youthful ideals. Because the existential choices made by these young people pulled the generation apart and, in regard to the Soviet oppression, disseminated it both geographically and axiologically, defining its conceptual coherence is somewhat problematic. Yet, reflecting on separate individual choices may help us understand the people’s motivation and the paradigms which bring this generation together on the one hand and break it up on the other. Rather than appraise the decisive generational self-conceptions in the context of 1944, the case of Albertas Dilys enables us to look into the different manifestations of conscious existential resolve, its origins, and consequences. The notion of the 1920s generation here describes the humanities students with literary aspirations who first studied at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas and then at Vilnius University. As high-school pupils, most of them took part in the Ateitis movement, which was a Catholic organisation opposed to the Lithuanian government of the day. At university, they joined Šatrija, a society dedicated to the study of art, literature, and philosophy. At the centre of the present research are documents testifying to Dilys’ personal existential quest and self-realisation in the context of repressions and further oppression: his memories, correspondence, notes, journals. To frame the research material, the article makes partial use of intertextual and sociocritical analysis. Dilys’ egodocumentary accounts are examined in light of historically reliable biographical and background facts. This article aims to discover and highlight in Dilys’ egodocuments his testimonies of self-reflection, personal resolve and its consequences and, by means of comparative analysis, to look for similar premises in the accounts of other contemporaries in order to indicate the epistemological gaps in the research field of the 1920s generation. Dilys’ case is by no means typical; cases like his have been deemed marginal in most sociological and sociocultural research. The history of existential choices and reflection on it, as testified in Dilys’ egodocuments, have a distinct character: emphasis is placed on inner resistance, whose parallels extend into the spiritual maturity derived from youthful ideals, the quest for the meaning of life, and the adoption of an ethical position at the expense of career development and professional life and subjection to ostracism and relative poverty. This egodocumentary research reveals the complexity of uncompromising choices and their consequences in a repressive and oppressive society. Dilys’ egodocuments are strongly oriented toward the past as well as the ideal of youth and the pastoral world of the parental home. Similar utopian undertones and pathos as well as solidarity with the 1920s generation of idealists trapped in a historical downfall – characteristically, this generation is perceived from passéist perspective, in retrospective projection that centers on the youthful past – crop up in the accounts of other former members of Šatrija. The paradigm of Dilys’ existential choices calls for a further inquiry into the life of the 1920s generation.

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Karnavališkumo estetika: Uwes Timmo Johannisnacht ir Herkaus Kunčiaus Lietuvis Vilniuje

Author(s): Violeta Katinienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 4/2019

Carnivalisation in literary prose has been gaining prominence both in Lithuanian and German literature. The present paper compares two novels, namely, Johannisnacht by Uwe Timm (1996) and Lietuvis Vilniuje by Herkus Kunčius (2011), related not merely through their themes of current affairs and reflections of the past, but also through poetics which continues the tradition of Carnivalesque. Although the two authors represent distinctly different cultural and literary backgrounds of two countries (West Germany and Lithuania), the novels transcend to a common intercultural space by their similar narrative strategies and carnivalised worldview.

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History in Contemporary Lithuanian Literature

Author(s): Audinga Peluritytė / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The purpose of this article is to show the evolution of the historical novel that began in the era of independence, to highlight the peculiarities of male and female historical narratives, and to capture critical reactions and tendencies of assessment of that kind of novel. At the beginning of independence, the poetic prose of a minimal story was established in Lithuanian literature, which was created by the most prominent Lithuanian prose writers, and the historical novel made its debut as a complex experience of poetic narration. Poetry and prose focused on archetypal narratives, national consciousness and ethnic semantics and were characterized by an abundance of associations, but not by a clear storyline. Among common variations of the male historical novel, we can observe historical novels written by women, which have won both literary awards and readers’ approval.

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HERKUS MANTAS SOVIETINĖS LIETUVOS KINE IR LITERATŪROJE: SOCIALINĖS PRAKTIKOS IR JŲ TRANSFORMACIJOS MEDIJOSE

Author(s): Saulius Keturakis / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 14 (19)/2008

The article analyses the process of creation and transformation of Herkus Mantas, the leader of Prussian uprising, one of the most prominent characters in the Baltic tribe history and its representation in the tragedy Herkus Mantas by Juozas Gruðas (1957) and the film under the same title by M. Giedrys (1972). The article analyses media structures of Herkus Mantas character providing that visual arts in the Soviet culture were considered to be more massive as compared to verbal, contrary to Western tradition, which does not recognize visual images (“pictures”) as arguments. This aspect of the Soviet theory of public perception may seem confusing, because the word in official Soviet ideology was always “primary”, which means more important, privileged, or primary in development, as well as a base for other more complex systems. If primary means the first or the most important, then secondary in a more common usage would naturally mean the systems that are of lesser importance, rather than the global systems designated by the Soviets. In this use, other types of specialized systems dependent upon language, such as writing as well as myth and religion, would be referred to as secondary. The article also analyses transformations that have occurred in the behavior of the character due to the changed dominant trends in the 1970-ties in the Soviet Lithuania. Some of the tracked changes are dependant on media (text/image) paradigms, which belong to theoretical accounts of “pictorial turn”, “turn to the visual“ or “foregrounding of the visual”. In the article, these accounts are shown as clusters of two groups: stories of the falling between words and images leading to the subordination of images to texts and closely related stories about the rise of images to the role of a new universal medium or, alternatively, to the emergence of a new integration of image, text or visual language. After the analysis of the text and image, it became clear that the character of Herkus Mantas depicted in M. Giedrys film is more active, less reflective which could be related to the general Soviet cultural trends in the 60-ties and 70-ties.

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„Dangui prilenkti prie žemės“, arba apie krikščioniškąjį mąstymą Vaižganto publicistikoje

Author(s): Gitana Vanagaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 40 (45)/2021

Literary theology, which began to form in the second half of the 20th century, opened up new possibilities for linking religion, literature, and personal experience. The journalistic articles of Juozas TumasVaižgantas (1869–1933) show that, on the one hand, he understood the world in a crystcentric way. On the other hand, Vaižgantas’s thought was also shaped by modernity and the time he lived in, which inclined him to reject religion. By analysing Vaižgantas’s journalistic articles and letters to his relatives, this article argues that the writer’s modernity rests on the interaction of the two realities: the eternal reality of God and the temporal reality of man. Having managed to combine these two realities with his human presence, Vaižgantas has opened up to our culture the dynamics of this interaction, in which the Christian self-restraint and modern consciousness, acting as complementary parts, become an act of self-creation founded on rational will, which in turn is associated with self-control, moderation, determination, and renunciation of egoism.

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The Concept of “Thrownness” in Algis Budrys’s Short Story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night”

Author(s): Svetozar Poštić / Language(s): English Issue: 40 (45)/2021

This paper analyses the concept of thrownness and the related notions of immediacy and actuality in a 1961 short science fiction story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night” by Algis Budrys. It first defines the concept of thrownness (Geworfenheit), created and coined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his classic book Being and Time, and it explains how this notion can be employed in literary analysis in general and applied to this work in particular. The article then analyses how certain stylistic devices in the short story, namely similes, change of pace and the presentation of an inner conflict in the main character, contribute to the feeling of authenticity. In other words, it attempts to exhibit the means used in a prose work to make it seem more realistic and immediate. Finally, the work also argues that science fiction is in many ways more real than other fictional works. Although it belongs to the genre that has traditionally been denied serious literary merit, the novel view and interpretation of this story aims to disclose new horizons of artistic expression that illuminate human mental and physical frailty and stimulate a valuable inquiry into the meaning of life.

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Lietuvių literatūra istorinės tiesos paieškose: trys nepriklausomybės dešimtmečiai

Author(s): Audinga Peluritytė-Tikuišienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2021

The article focuses on the beginning of the Singing Revolution in Lithuanian culture and tries to identify the most significant dominant features in order to understand the entirety of the new changes in literature. In the face of political upheaval, such a dominant feature was the question of truth; however, the well-established poetry tradition – romantic, neo-romantic, modern neo-romantic, which coexisted with social realism in Soviet times, and experimental – did not raise such questions of truth but only reflected the nation’s collective expectations. The evolution of Lithuanian literature, which was highly fragmented during all the decades of the Soviet occupation, united the country through the expatriate poet Bernardas Brazdžionis while he was visiting Lithuania in the summer of 1989. Poetic texts predominated during the first demonstrations of Sąjūdis (the Reform Movement), but while trying to understand their position in the general Lithuanian culture and literature discourse, one needs to acknowledge the leading nature of poetry throughout the Soviet times: having its niche in the cultural system, poetry posed a large number of vexed questions, sought philosophical profundity, and was able to constantly address the deepest metaphysical questions even in strict censorship conditions. Lithuanian prose, which evaded the requirement by the doctrine of social realism to portray the world and characters engaged in class struggles, also found support in the poetry system and created a non-linear but coherent narrative where metaphors prevail. Lithuanian prose poetry became a sign of esthetic quality in independent Lithuania too, where the question of truth, which was important for achieving independence, found a way similar to that of poetry – through memoirs and essays to esthetics and little prose. At the beginning of independence, poetry, which had fed Lithuanian prose with its ideas, themes, conception of the world and esthetic solutions, also merged with memoirs and essays, thus being part of the discourse of telling the truth.

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Dekonstrukcijos sklaida lietuvių literatūros kritikoje

Author(s): Aušra Jurgutienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2021

In the article I discuss how deconstruction (Jacques Derrida and other Yale School participants) came to Lithuanian literary criticism and how it changed habits of humanitarian thinking during the three decades after independence. The most unusual and radical deconstruction critique of essentialist metaphysical thinking, new terminology (inter-text, elimination of center, footprint, writing, difference, blinding, labyrinth narrative, guest / enemy, etc.) and new strategies for interpreting texts were very important for Lithuanian humanities liberated from Soviet ideology. Literary critics have noticed and discussed the undoubted connection between postmodernist literature and its deconstructive reading.We can find three tendencies in the deconstructive criticism of Lithuanian literature. The first tendency is the interpretation of general theoretical concepts of deconstruction, second tendency - searching the deconstructive features in literary works and the third tendency of criticism, expanding its own self-criticism and self-irony, is discussing chrestomathic and structuralist interpretations of the literary works or deconstructing icons of Soviet culture. We know very well, that many feminist, postcolonial, historiographic, anthropological, or interdisciplinary researches of literature cannot escape the effects of deconstruction.

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