![Преоткриване: Супрасълски сборник, старобългарски паметник от Х век/ Rediscovery: Bulgarian Codex Suprasliensis of 10th Century](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2012_27081.jpg)
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The purpose of this paper will be to compare the ideas of one highly regarded southeast European writer, Danilo Kiš (1935–1989) of Yugoslavia, with those of some leading writers and thinkers from the Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. My analysis will center on the vague concepts of “identity” and “national culture”. I will explore, by reference to the many essays and interviews of Danilo Kiš, concrete topics such as essentialism and linguistic and ethnic diversity and look for parallels or contrast in the works of some Baltic writers. These thoughts will, I hope, spark a discussion based on sources broader than those that I command about what terms such as identity and national culture actually mean and how they effect the production, or reputation, of writers. It should also be possible to look at some issues relating to cultural translation in Kiš, because he grew up in the contested border area between Hungary and Serbia, was the product of an ethnically and religiously mixed marriage, and translated and taught internationally for much of his life.
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There are four XV–XVIIth century East Slavic manuscripts written in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) that are indirect copies of the XIth century Old Bulgarian Codex Suprasliensis. Recently some scholars have proposed adding to the list another three XV–XVIth century East Slavic Menaion readers (two of which were written outside the GDL). The author demonstrates that these three manuscripts do not stem from the Codex Suprasliensis, but represent an alternative edition of the Menaion reader which contains a number of texts in a quite different textual version. The article presents a list of the distinguishing features which help mutually separate the two structurally similar versions of the Old Church Slavonic Menaion reader for March.
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Review of: Lauryno Ivinskio lenkų-lietuvių kalbų žodynas. Parengė Ona Kažukauskaitė. Vilnius. 2010, Lietuvių kalbos institutas. 2010. 524 p. : faks. + 1 vaizdo diskas (DVD). ISBN 978-609-411-052-8.
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This article examines the ways in which the self-awareness of a feminine identity, the perceived value of women and the self-esteem of a particular author have been evolving from 1904 to the end of the First World War; the author in question is Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė (1886–1958), Lithuanian publicist, writer and educator. During her studies at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków in 1904–1907 (and in Adrian Baraniecki’s High Courses for Women), she decisively chose to study the humanities and became one of the first modern Lithuanian women engaged in literature, literary criticism and the politics of education. This article presents the context of the women’s emancipation movement that at beginning of the 20th century in Kraków, where the increasing possibilities of education for young women had become increasingly available. Right after her return to Lithuania in 1907, Kymantaitė took part in the Lithuanian Women’s Congress in Kaunas and became involved in the preparatory work on the regulations of the Lithuanian Women’s Society. In her collection of articles Lietuvoje: kritikos žvilgsnis į Lietuvos inteligentiją (“In Lithuania: A Critical Look at the Lithuanian Intelligentsia,” 1910), besides a wide scope of issues that were considered, Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė discussed the issue of the relationship between well-educated men and women and questioned the equal value of women in the nascent modern Lithuanian society. In 1910, Čiurlionienė wrote a dramatic dialogue Ateities moteris (“Woman of the Future”, 1910), which highlights the idea that the equality between man and woman rests on shared human values. The dialogue foregrounds the spiritual faithfulness of the woman to the man she had chosen – faithfulness that is upheld despite the distance that greatly separates them, contradictory to the thought that women are incapable of creating ties of friendship with men, as expressed by one of Nietzsche’s literary characters. The main character of Ateities moteris – Johanna – reveals herself as a rebel only when she confronts the antagonist’s patriarchal worldview and his commanding affirmation of women’s lower position and the determinism of biological needs. References to Otto Weininger’s study Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character, 1903), as well as a quote that evokes misogynistic sentiments from Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883), appear in the dramatic dialogue, provoking a polemic with these authors' positions. The dialogue indicates the writer’s interest in the theories of gender struggle. The text reflects Čiurlionienė’s involvement in the preparation of the statute of the Lithuanian Women’s Society as well as the influence of liberal feminist ideas that she had encountered while still in Kraków. Following the Romantic authors’ attempts to reveal female heroism, Čiurlionienė strived to create a distinctive interpretation of the end-of-the-19th-century “Lithuanian Jeanne d’Arc” in her psychological sketch (novelette) Joana Vaidilaitė (1914–1918). Johanna’s worldview is undoubtedly more akin to the ideas of early modernism, whereas Joana Vaidilaitė’s sedentary lifestyle is determined by the young woman’s realia of the 19th-century countryside, and later by her treatment in a psychiatric hospital. The sketch suggests the reality of the protagonist’s mystical motherhood, which others treat as a manifestation of madness. The novelette has never been published. Had Joana Vaidilaitė been published during the first years of Lithuania’s independence, there could have been an opportunity to enrich the history of Lithuanian literature with original efforts to give a sense to motherhood, with the Romantic treatment of madness as a form of clairvoyance and the modernist interpretation of the sea as a fluctuating womb. To conclude, starting with the formulation of the statute of the Lithuanian Women’s Society in 1910, Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė’s attempts to express liberal feminist ideas in literary fiction become more noticeable; in these writings, the author refuses to think of motherhood as a manifestation of the impersonal nature's force (which relates to the views of the misogynists), and she cherishes the idea that conscious motherhood is equated to the creation of an individual capable of enriching cultural resources in the future.
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Hinsey, Ellen and Tomas Venclova. Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova. Rochester (New York), University of Rochester Press, 2017, xvi + 405 pp., ISBN 9781580465861. The reviewer characterizes the publication as a book of confessions and recollections, in which Ellen Hinsey, an independent American researcher, questions Tomas Venclova, a writer, poet, translator, leading Lithuanian intellectual and Professor Emeritus of Slavic languages and literature at the Yale University. In his answers, Venclova summarizes and takes stock of his eighty-year life story, which was primarily associated with political events and the artistic, mainly dissident, community of the former Soviet state. However, the book of interviews also finds room for a more distant Lithuanian history with the country’s complex and equivocal political and ethnic situation, linguistic excursions into the nation’s past, or deliberations over phenomenon of exile. In the last part of the book, Venclova gets the reader acquainted with the life of the Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian diaspore in the United States, and does not evade even controversial issues of the current Lithuanian politics.
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Jankevičiūtė, G., & Geetha, V. (2017). Another history of the children’s picture book: From Soviet Lithuania to India. Chennai: Tara Books. The review article discusses a book by Giedrė Jankevičiūtė and V. Geetha, Another History of the Children’s Picture Book: From Soviet Lithuania to India (2017). It describes the content of the monograph in the context of studies on picture books, especially those of Russia, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union, on the history of childhood and Russian literature. The main merit of the volume, in the opinion of the reviewer, is the choice of Indian and Lithuanian book art for comparison, which is made from the perspectives of the history of literature, art, societies, and understanding of childhood.
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Justas Paleckis: On the sunny Side of the World // Juozas Baltušis: What no Song is singing about // Petras Cvirka: The Seeds of brotherly Solidarity // Antanas Vienuolis: The Secret of Lake Plateliai // Jonas Šimkus: Brave Heart // Jonas Avyžius: Advanced in Years // Myola Sluckis: Childhood Memories // Konstantin Simonow: The Fourth // POEMS: Davydas Judelevičius: Poets about themselves and their Time // Salomėja Nėris: Greetings // Sing life, heart // Antanas Venclova: I was with you / / Eduardas Mieželaitis: Got in the Storm // Justinas Marcinkevičius: Sun // Vladas Šimkus: My Summer // LITERATURE AND REVIEW: Kostas Korsakas: The Lithuanian Soviet Literature // LITERARY PORTRAIT: Mykolas Sluckis: Ieva Simonaitykolaitis // Jonas Lankutis: Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas // Vytautas Kubilius: A Folk Poet // Vytautas Galinis: Writer, Intelligence and People // Sergej Iwanow: Interview with Eduardas Mieželaitis // Michail Zinowjew: Fighting Poetry // ART: Janina Markulan: Young Lithuanian Theatre-Art // Alexej Gastew: Guest of the Lithuanian graphic artists // Sergej Sergejew: Cameraman and Director at the same time // Stasys Budris: Lithuanian Sculpture // OUR CORRESPONDENTS TELLING: Sergej Larin: Encounters in Vilnius // WHAT BRINGS US CLOSER: E. JULINA: Books about German revolutionaries
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In interwar and post-war societies, men were required to show endurance, courage, and emotional stability, but their traumas, caused by the experience of war and the economic, political, and social realities of the post-war period, are just started to be analysed. Algirdas Jeronimas Landsbergis (1924–2004), a playwright, prose writer, editor, literary and theatre critic of the Lithuanian diaspora, conveys these themes in his work. The images of masculinity revealed in the texts help clarify the general experience of the society hidden in the works and understand what kind of masculinity prevailed in society after the world wars changed the lives of women and men. Using K. G. Jung’s theory of analytical psychology, the article analyses A. Landsbergis’ short stories, which literature researchers less studied. Texts are explored as reflections and shapers of society, and in the case of masculinity, it is discussed what is meant by the archetypes of masculinity recorded in the literature. Based on the work of R. L. Moore and D. Gillette and J. C. Campbell, the archetypes of the divine child, the child prodigy, the Oedipus child and the hero and mature masculinity – the king, warrior, magician and lover are distinguished.
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2013. aasta sügisel 8.−10. novembrini toimus Saksamaal Lüneburgis asuvas baltisaksa arhiivis ja kultuurikeskuses, Carl Schirreni Seltsis (Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft – CSG) 25. Balti seminar. Nimetatud seminare hakati veerandsada aastat tagasi korraldama (balti)-saksa, eesti ja läti teadlaste ühise foorumina. Baltisaksa kirjandus on Balti seminaride teemaks olnud ka varem: nii käsitleti 1995. aasta seminaril baltisaksa, eesti ja läti kirjandussuhteid. Viimatisel seminaril keskenduti aga baltisaksa kirjanduse retseptsioonile − nii tagasivaateliselt kui ka tänasel päeval. Põhjuseks asjaolu, et viimasel ajal on täheldatav teatav huvi kasv baltisaksa kirjanduse vastu nii Balti riikides kui ka Saksamaal, millest annavad tunnistust nii teadusüritused, tõlked kui ka üldisem huvi baltisaksa autorite vastu. Kolm päeva kestnud seminaril CSG asupaigas Brömsehaus’is – XIV sajandist pärinevas kaupmehemajas – astusid rohkem kui 60-liikmelise kuulajaskonna ees üles 13 esinejat Saksamaalt, Lätist ja Eestist.
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Lithuanian Tatars’ manuscript tradition is a unique cultural phenomenon, which was born in XVI century, when Lithuanian Tartars lost their Turkic language, and it composed an exclusive heritage feature of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The scientific literature refers to four literary languages recorded in Lithuania Tartars’ manuscripts. These are Chorezm, Chagatai, old Ottoman and Crimean Tatar languages. Over the centuries, Tatars have not lost connection with their compatriots in the East. There is much information about Tartars’ trips to Istanbul, the Balkans and Mecca. However, inaptitude of the liturgical Arabic language and loss of the Turkic language was the reason why Lithuanian Tartars were constrained to change their religious literature into Old Belorussian and later into Polish. In this way, Lithuanian Tartars’ manuscript tradition was born, when Slavic text was written in the Arabic alphabet. One of the peculiarities of these manuscripts is that it is a multilingual monument. In manuscripts, beside the Slavic languages, there are many texts written in Arabic and old Ottoman words. Lithuanian Tartars’ writing tradition, little bit modified and modernized, remained till our days. At the end of XIX century Chamail written in Cyrillic alphabet appeared, whereas Kitab written by printing-machine in the Latin alphabet appeared in 1980s. The oldest Tartars’ manuscripts (kitabs, chamails, tefsirs and tedžvids), written in the old Belorussian and Polish languages in the Arabic alphabet, are dated back in the middle of XVII century. The meaning of the word kitab in the Arabic language is a book. However, kitab refers only to a very large size and scope of a book. Kitabs for Lithuanian Tartars had a great cultural and educational value. It was possible to learn from them about Muslim rituals, traditions, and access to popular hadith – stories about prophet Muhammed and his predecessors. There were also a lot of Eastern stories, folklore, sometimes biblical legends. Chamail (prayer-book) consists of prayer text written in the Arabic and Turkic languages and explanation of the text in old Belorussian and Polish. It is also possible to find knowledge about Muslim chronology, advices how to heal disease by praying, dreams interpretations, lucky and unlucky day predictions. Quran reading rules are stated in tedžvid. Tefsir is the Quran with narration between the lines and comments in Polish. It helps to understand content of the Scripture. All the written forms are equally important and reflect the unique Lithuanian Tartars’ culture and its links with other cultures.
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Volume 8 of the series "Works in Baltic Studies. Language – Literature – Culture" features sixteen articles (in Lithuanian, Latvian, English and Polish) devoted to various aspects of the notion of freedom, analysed from the perspectives of Lithuanian and Latvian linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies.
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John Neubauer’s suggestion to re-evaluate national histories (which he expresses in History of Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries (since 2004) and The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe: A Compendium (2009)) encouraged me to take another look at the new, more-complicated processes of integration and disintegration in histories of national literature during the Cold War (1946–1991). For this reason, the focus of my paper will be dual: on the internal hostility of national literary history and the splitting of national self-images caused by the Cold War, and on the need to preserve national memory and self-awareness. I will discuss the ambivalent identity of the Lithuanian literature: how it was disintegrated during the Cold War with the Bolshevik thesis about the existence of two cultures in each national culture, and how it preserved the basic features of integration. Although my research will be mostly based on examples from the history of Lithuanian literature, I believe it can also be relevant for other cultures that survived the Soviet period and ideological censorship. The goal of this article is to discuss how complicated the processes of “junctures and disjunctures” were in Lithuanian literary history during the Soviet occupation, and how they remain relevant in contemporary historiography.
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During the period of Stagnation the works by Sigitas Geda, Leonardas Gutauskas, and Jonas Juškaitis, with their inclination towards the poetics of visions and a theocentric worldview, notably differed from the prevailing themes in Lithuanian poetry. Due to this shared apperception, plants in their poetry were treated as having an essential characteristic of Being, which grounds metaphysically the related notions of the place and the transcendentality. An address taken from Geda’s poem, “Buvai, o siela” (“You Were There, Oh Soul”), reveals an approach (common to all three poets) that sees the landscape of the homeland as a repository of past and future lives. Concluding my earlier research, this article aims to analyze how a) a spiritualized manifestation of Being, seen in plants and perceived as sacredness expressed by certain colors, b) an apprehension of the world as a perpetual metamorphosis, and, c) the images of harmonious existence, which draw their specific character from the archetypes of ancient Baltic culture, reveal the specific experiences of divinity and sacredness of the native landscape in the poetry of Geda, Gutauskas, and Juškaitis in the 1970–1980s, as well as to disclose the philosophical and theosophical ideas that influenced their thought.
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This article analyzes the changes in poetic meanings in the late Soviet period in Lithuania. The author is looking at the homeland (tėvynė) images which were created by poets and which had become a popular content of the so-called “mass culture” (radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, choral music, poetry readings). There is widespread agreement that, although nationalism and Marxism were ideologically incompatible, Soviet ideology used certain aspects of nationalism to assert Soviet era patriotism. This article considers the significance of poetic images in the context of the political and sociocultural changes in the last decades of the Soviet occupation in Lithuania, raising the question of how national poetic images responded to and opposed Soviet ideology. It is argued, through the application of Juri Lotman’s insights on culture, that poetry during the Soviet era was able to simultaneously address two audiences: one corresponding to the Soviet ideology, the other cherishing the memory of independent Lithuania and the hope of freedom.
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Since the beginning of the Soviet period, the authorities paid particular attention to the control and “education” of the new generation of writers by organizing conventions for beginning authors, establishing literary circles and young writers’ chapters at schools, universities, and editorial departments, and organizing writing competitions and camps for newcomers. One of the most important institutions in Soviet Lithuania for educating the new writing generation formally was Vilnius Young Writers’ Chapter (Vilniaus jaunųjų rašytojų sekcija), a subdivision of the Writers’ Union. It was important in terms of debut and (non)integration into the literary field, as involvement in its activities was almost a necessity if one wished to become a member of the Writers’ Union and to start publishing their books. As the conditions of the field started changing in the 1960s, Vilnius Young Writers’ Chapter eventually began to renounce its initial goals and started focusing on discussions regarding literary aesthetics, criticism, genres, generations, and other issues unrelated to politicized discourse. One of the significant aspects of the Chapter’s activities was its relations with Riga Young Writers’ Association (Rīgas jauno literātu apvienība). Even though such collective connections among the “brotherly republics” were officially promoted by the Soviet regime, young writers could use them to network, widen their perspectives and accumulate social as well as cultural capitals.
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The article aims to explore how the identity of an eating person is expressed and constructed in literary works through certain food choices and various culinary practices. It is assumed that studying food is a handy tool for researching the Soviet era as the historical episode that has most affected the 20th-century Lithuanian and Latvian identity and the epoch of perestroika as an attempt to get rid of the foreign power. Three representative novels are chosen for the study: Mātes piens (Soviet Milk, 2015) by Nora Ikstena, Istaba (Room, 2016) by Laima Kota, and Lizos butas (Lisa’s Apartment, 2020) by Lithuanian author Vaiva Rykštaitė. These are not gastrotexts in the literal sense of the word but are all directly related to the transmission of political, ideological or cultural identity through situations of food acquisition, cooking and consumption (the role of the kitchen as a place of communication, food-related metaphors, etc.). The approach of literary imagology helps to research food by highlighting manifestations of ethnic loyalty as a contrast to the behavioral models imposed by foreign ideology.
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The article reviews the issues investigated in the reports and articles developed from the conference reports of the scientific and practical conferences “Mother Tongue at School” organised at Šiauliai University (since 2021, Šiauliai Academy of Vilnius University) in 2012–2022. The aim of the article is to present the journal “Gimtoji kalba mokykloje” [Mother Tongue at School] using the descriptive-analytical method, to discuss topics, problems, aims of the articles, and to summarise the most relevant issues of Lithuanian studies, Lithuanian language and literature teaching (didactics), variations in the Lithuanian language, changes, standardisation, and the importance of Lithuanian literature in developing a thinking and reading individual, conscious of the importance of the native (Lithuanian) language. The journal “Gimtoji kalba mokykloje” has published 119 articles by 148 authors. Linguistic articles among them are divided into the following thematic blocks: 1) The importance of the influence of linguistic environment and personalities in preserving national identity. Language policy; 2) Public language. Language etiquette; 3) Language in the digital space, computer literacy. Office, administrative language. Language management; 4) Language correctness. Literacy. Spelling and punctuation issues; 5) Language norms and errors; 6) Dialect studies; 7) Stylistic figures. Conceptual metaphors. Associations; 8) Terminology issues; 9) Language didactics. Academic, professional language. The field of topics is broad, discussions include: general language, dialects, language norming, language in the digital space, language didactics, the process of language teaching and learning, and the effects of bilingualism. The articles in the literature section are divided into five thematic blocks: 1) Promotion of reading, professional press for teachers; 2) Lithuanian writers’ works in school, concerns of reading classics; 3) Children’s literature and school; 4) Working with the text to prepare the future reader; 5) Non-traditional literature teaching methods and other problems. Researchers and teachers are interested in current school (and societal) issues, exploring why reading is low and discussing what could encourage reading. The importance of creative, innovative library work and family reading traditions are highlighted. It stresses that the school is also an important player in this field, where the child must become a competent reader. The articles published in the journal encourage a theoretical dialogue between researchers and practical educators, highlight topical issues in teaching Mother Tongue, and invite to jointly search for solutions to problems.
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The article based on the comparative principle seeks to introduce to a wide audience two novels by Lithuanian writers Kęstutis Navakas (Vyno kopija [“The Wine Copy”], 2016) and Marius Ivaškevičius (Tomas Mūras, 2022), whose authors wish to reflect on the status of the artist in the current era of excess and prosperity. The myth of the artist began taking shape in the 19th century and remained at its height throughout the 20th century, even though art itself underwent many changes. Is the artist still the representative of the elite in society in a post-modern age, when the line between art and pop, between personality and promotional image is almost blurred? These are the questions the authors ask and try to answer, joining inevitably those European authors who placed the creative person at the centre of their fictional world over the last two centuries. Anyone who writes on this subject almost inevitably becomes an author of World literature, as we have understood it since Goethe. The study seeks to reveal the diversity of literary associations, sometimes unconsciously touched upon by the authors, and the tradition of the European novel in dealing with questions of art, man, and his meaning on Earth.
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