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The two fundamental roots of Lithuanian poetry appear lively and vital in the first decade of the 21st century – the rough prose narrative of Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780), founder of Lithuanian belles-lettres, continues its rebirth, and the national Lithuanian poetic style fostered by Maironis (1862–1932), the lyricism of which was honed by the poets of the 20th century, continues often to reflect a practically canonical form of poetic speech. The roots of lyric and epic poetry are being modified and integrated with one another, giving birth to new forms. Accordingly, the panorama of Lithuanian poetry between 2005 and 2008 is varied, multi-vocal, and sensitive to internal currents.
Traditional metered verse and even such canonical forms as the sonnet and sonnet cycles are thriving in Lithuanian poetry, although no poets are confining themselves to such forms. In recent years sonnets have been written by Antanas A. Jonynas (b. 1953) and Aidas Marčėnas (b. 1960). Jonynas’ Last Days in Ithaca (Paskutinės dienos Itakėje, 2007) is practically exemplary of the sonnet cycle, while the book itself, which was published with illustrations by one of the most famous contemporary Lithuanian artists – Mikalojus Vilutis (b. 1944) – itself became a unique and recognised work of book art. Marčėnas’ collections of poetry, Worlds (Pasauliai, 2006) and Dances (Šokiai, 2008), are not entirely of the canonical sonnet style. The poetry in these collections employs an elevated lexicon and words defining the detritus of modernism – that is, slang. The poet ever more actively reflects on the years he has lived and his various experiences, often coding them in the signs of global culture and classical Lithuanian poetry. Marčėnas is also one of the few Lithuanian poets to have written lengthy commentaries on his poems, explaining the situation of his poetry, its difficult realities, and personal experiences hidden beneath them. The commentaries are both serious and a bit flirtatious with the imagined reader. Less canonical are “From the Diary of an Unknown Poet” (“Iš nežinomo poeto dienoraščiio“), the sonnets of Kęstutis Navakas (b. 1964) published in the collection Solved Flutes (Atspėtos fleitos, 2006). Each sonnet is given an unconventional prose introduction, the style of which could be called poetic prose. The poet’s reflection on his poetry, and himself is as important to Jonynas and Marčėnas as it is to Tomas Venclova, Rimvydas Stankevičius, and other poets as they write their verse.
Vladas Braziūnas (b. 1952), who belongs to Jonynas’ generation of poets, likewise orients his work toward rhythmic meter – but Braziūnas is very distinctive poet. His poems, which can be found in the collections Home-Spun Songs (Iš naminio audimo dainos, 2005) and Yesterday is Tomorrow (Vakar yra rytoj, 2007), demonstrate that the heritage of agrarian culture in poetry is more vibrant than critics had given it credit. Its imprint is not lost in Braziūnas’ poetry; rather, it is modified, giving his work a regional colour that reflects the language and mentality of northern Lithuania. Poetic meanings are actively created by the sound of words, giving them historical distance – and sometimes proximity. The poet considers himself a product of the poetry both of his region in Lithuania and of central and eastern Europe. He has already presented to his publisher a collection of poetry written in his native dialect, and phrases in his native dialect appear in poetry he has already published. From this perspective, Braziūnas’ poetry continues an honoured tradition. Recently in Lithuania, books have been published or poetry written in native dialect by Vytautas Rudokas (1928-2006) and Justinas Kubilius (b. 1954); Anna Rancāne (b. 1959) writes in Latvia in her native dialect; in Estonia there are Nikolaj Baturin (b. 1936), Mats Traat (b. 1936), and many others, especially those writing in the Võru dialect as they seek to make it an independent language. Together with the Swiss translator Markus Roduner, Braziūnas himself has translated the book There Goes a Person (Da geht ein Mensch, 2004) by the Swiss poet Kurti Marti, a proponent of dialect poetry in contemporary Europe.
Donaldas Kajokas (b. 1953), who became popular in Lithuania as an essayist and novelist, and Lidija Šimkutė (b. 1943), who lives in Australia and writes poems in English and Lithuanian, both feel the influence of Eastern culture and express poetic thought in a unique and refined miniature form. In truth, Kajokas, author of The Commander Tired of Victory (Karvedys pavargo nugalėti, 2006), is returning to the sphere of Western culture. Šimkutė’s poetry (Mintys ir uola / Thought and Rock, 2008), is especially oriented toward miniature expression, characterised by silent Eastern pauses and the form of minimalist details of truth, although the realities of Western social life sometimes break into her poetry. Gintaras Dabrišius (b. 1950) is somewhat close to them with his minimalist style, although he his fonder of childlike surprise, with which he views simple domestic concrete objects, as in his To Light a Pebble (Sviest akmenuką, 2005) and Long Fish (Ilga žuvis, 2007). He does not imitate Eastern culture in his poems; rather, the Lithuanian environment is important to him – Lithuanian animals and plants are easily recognisable, although the poet notices paradoxes in their familiar surroundings. Independently of this, more than one of the poet’s verses is shortened almost to the point of miniature. Liūnė Sutema (b. 1927), who along with her family was made an emigrant by the Second World War and currently lives in the United States, writes compact free verse, as in Let It Be (Tebūnie, 2006), her collection of poetry. Over the past few decades, she has buried all those closest to her: her husband, the famous Lithuanian prose writer Marius Katališkis (1914-1980), her brother, the famous Lithuanian poet Henrikas Nagys (1920-1996), her son, and her daughter. The poet, who previously preferred paraphrases of fairy tales and myths, currently restricts herself to the words of her dead loved ones, feeling not only her loneliness, but their silent support from the other side: “How good it is to address those who are no longer… / their smiles are calming and they keep you safe.” Sutema’s poetry is as brief as possible, her words are simple and truly unornamented (critics have attributed the “generation of unornamented language”), while the cycles of poems she previously favoured have apparently disappeared. Although perhaps Let It Be as a collection could be considered a kind of expanded cycle of farewell. It reiterates earlier motives and images from the poet’s previous collection, which here take on the colouring of restrained tragedy. No single poem could be a manifestation of endless loneliness. In spite of this, their essential connections – with the living, with the dead, and with homeland—are alive. The world in Let It Be is economical, stoic, forgetful of nothing, and gazes without fear into the absence of being.
The cover of Dalia Jazukevičiūtė’s (b. 1952) collection, Imperial Woman (Imperijos moteris, 2006), declares that her poems “will be pleasing to those don’t try to deceive themselves or others that life is painful, and who know that they really are temporary.” There truly is much open and emotional speech in her poetry about the pains of the spirit of a woman. Jazukevičiūtė points to Marina Tsvetaeva, one of the most famous Russian poets of the twentieth century, as one of her most important poetic authorities, an influence that is heard in the poetry. Like Jazukevičiūtė, Danutė Paulauskaitė (1945-2004) offers her authentic life experience in her poems. In addition to her posthumous collection, At the Southwest Wall (Prie pietvakarių sienos, 2007) are many works written late in her career that remain unpublished. In her poems, which have the jumpiness of ellipses, the poet searches for the home of spirit and body. She died, overcome by disease, shut up alone in her parents’ empty house, isolated by her own will from the colleagues and loved ones who sincerely attempted to help her.
The Yale University professor, poet, essay writer, and translator Tomas Venclova (b. 1937) is often called a hermit – a title that was used to describe him especially in Soviet Lithuania but can still at times be heard. Nonetheless, he was and remains a remarkably civically engaged poet, albeit one who is always hearing eternal music – or more specifically the best voices of world poetry, which he uses like a tuning fork to verify each line, each sound (as in the collection Intersection (Sankirta, 2005)). Venclova’s poems employ narrative or poetic reflection to become an historical personage (for example, the Spanish Conquistador Orellana), works of art and music, the destinies of friends and loved ones, or personal recollections. He senses the breathing of the entire modern world, reflecting on its pain (wars, terrorism, and, in general, the “dirt of history”).
Tomas Venclova is one of the main poetic influences on Arnas Ališauskas (b. 1970), who in 2007 published his second book of poetry, X-Ray Album (Rentgeno nuotraukų albumas), after a ten-year hiatus. Ališauskas is at times called neoclassical (for his attention to form and well-crafted meter) and at others neo-sentimental, because, as he himself has said, the most important thing while writing is “sincerity. Not the sentimental, but the conscientious, honest, and open sense of relationship with the world.”[1] The book’s title demonstrates one of the essential qualities of his poetics. “Photo Album” would be simple, but banal and sentimental. “X-Ray Album” is unexpected – no one puts those types of images in their albums. The same can be found in his poetry. Extinguishing banal speech with irony and skeptical commentary, Ališauskas at times constructs an entire poem in this same way:
The first, awaited by everyone
Literary, heavily diluted by sentiment
According to words, always unexpected
In truth – expected, known
Learned by heart from childhood
The first – still clean, all painted white
But not as sterile as a hospital…
His poems often mention scenes, film, filming, Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, Tarkovsky. Even critics in reviewing X-Ray Album have at times taken up the vocabulary connected with the cinematic world. In truth, there is something between Ališauskas’ poems and the language of classic cinema: images from memories, from the depths of visions, that are further changing, changed, and changeable by dreams – with the speed and mutability of dreams. The book contains much narrative and various plots that are at times spoken from a prison, a boat, or a feeding trough, although the condition and twists of fate of the people who find themselves for some reason in these places comes to light. There are also small poetic portraits of individuals. Rimvydas Stankevičius (b. 1973) imagines an even stranger world – one between reality and vision (or between life and death). Stankevičius has published two collections of poetry in recent years: Units of Measuring Silence (Tylos matavimo vienetai, 2006) and Breaking the Seal (Laužiu antspaudą, 2008).
Viktoras Rudžianskas (b. 1957), laureate of the 2008 Poetry Spring , appears in his collection FROM do TO do (NUO do IKI do, 2007) as a sensual wanderer, constantly somewhere between Montmartre, Tokyo, and the tundra, evaluating life through sensory organs (fingertips, skin, and taste and scent receptors). Exotic reality loses a part of its exoticism in his poems, becoming more common – simply one of many places visited by the lyrical subject:
the wanderer had a bear pelt and a deerskin
made from soft bread
he had some sheep tallow he used to flavour tea
when we sat down to talk about the times
when we lost our milk teeth
we both didn’t know that language
we almost didn’t know those times
he started to cry out in a throaty voice and stomp
he moved the deerskins made from soft bread
he pulled the shade like a covered sleigh
where we drank tea
the north wind blew and my teeth chattered
the wanderer covered me with the bear pelt
The recollection of love, present and future love – in short, the riddle that remains between a man and a woman – is one of the constant themes of FROM do TO do, to date Rudžianskas’ best book of poetry. According to the critic Nida Gaidauskienė, the very title of the book “places a musical key in the hand of the reader;” “there are exactly seventy poems in the book and eight octaves. According to physics, human hearing encompasses this entire range.”[2] Gaidauskienė finds many correlations grounded in the octave. Thus in talking about Rudžianskas’ FROM do TO do it can be said that it is not poetry collections but poetry books that in recent years have appeared more often in Lithuanian poetry. These books are written as a single work undivided into sections (Rudžianskas does not divide his poems into sections; even if he had done so, the book still would remain a unified whole) or even into separate poems.
Gasparas Aleksa (b. 1946) – a doctor, poet, prose writer, and playwright – weaves together the splintered fates of people from Lithuania’s recent past and present with images of a surrealistically run down, unhappy, and suffering world. The lines of the lengthy and austere-sounding poems in his collection, Singing Toad (Giedantis rupūžys, 2007), are at times narrated in a language almost like prose (“I accidentally hit the car horn, I saw a hawk in a wild pear / but a black-spotted cat was crusted with snow / Bronelė’s only daughter, feeble and helmeted / there is no public road to the farm, just illegible writings left by rabbits, deer, and crows”). His poems are full of associations and literary allusions (“let’s dance! the musician from who-knows-where is playing, his eyes are the colour of red filth-- / Margarita wandered between the wheels, between multi-coloured stockings and shoes / sparkling advertisements in the medley, fastened with a belt of grenades // her face was extinguished, just the Lamb in a stony embrace / sings with bleating”).
When Liudvikas Jakimavičius (b. 1959), an active essayist and social critic, was asked about the place of the writer in today’s world, he said that “it is left to poetry to witness to the human soul and values and ultimately to the situation in which a person finds himself with his values. Keep and defend them, give them up or sell them? For how much, and what is their price? The abode of true values is most often silence, in which the meanings and riddles of poetic images are submerged.”[3] He characterises the genre of his book, Elis’s (Elio, 2007), as a short story of poems, although the genre – as clearly conditional as it may be – itself points to the tendency of this poetry toward prose. The title of the book is the possessive form of the main character’s name. The registers of style in the book frequently alternate. For example, Elis decides to enter the army after experiencing a failure in love even though he knows that there is a war in Afghanistan. He “wanted to be / the hero of an absurd war / he wanted to be splattered / on mountain caves / by a Muslim’s grenade”. Unfortunately, after this “heroic plot” (the clearly ironic title of the poem quoted here) comes “the grotesque smile of God”: “it was written in the commissar’s hand / godien k nie strojevoj”, which means that Elis “in the boundlessness of the Uzbek steppe / mixes swill for swine in vats / two hundred buckets / five times a day for two years”. At times the poem condenses into a painful miniature: “silently silently / weeping in the corner of the room / and it seems the silence itself is weeping”. Many things enter Jakimavičius’ poem even though they are not directly connected to Elis’ story. For example, the hysteria over bird flu a few years ago is considered ironically to be the wisdom of idiocy, and stories of helplessly dying villages are summarised in a few meaningful details (“Lionė was left alone in her hut / on her plot of land / from spring until autumn / begging that the arthritis / would stop tying her in knots / that lady was a tough one / but she couldn’t hold back the tears / when she carried her dog to bury him under the birch tree / the last animal in the village”), a form of statement depicting human fate. Although it is not clear what brings his life to an end, as the hero’s life (the entirety of which is included in the book) approaches its final hour, he forebodingly recalls that a person can end his life himself. This depth of social commentary is characteristic not only of Jakimavičius, but of the greater portion of today’s Lithuanian poetry.
Gintaras Grajauskas (b. 1966), a native of Klaipėda, has experimented with many literary genres. His poetry book, Poems in Their Own Skin (Eilėraščiai savo kailiu, 2008) follows the contours of narrative, but not quite as forcefully. Grajauskas claims in an interview that “there are no ultimate discoveries, no ultimate truths; nothing guarantees that you will not be thrown back into the oceans of chaos after a few moments. And when the faded smile is unmasked, the only thing left is the snout of a drowning cat, twisted in horror.” The “snout” of the poet’s new book is just as ironic and melancholy. He reflects not on cultural or historical plots or authoritative quotations, but on the banality of the average city-dweller, most often insulting the everyday. Construed as quasi-dialogues in which the speaker allows for replicas of his assumed conversational partner (for example, in the poem “And It Rains and Rains and Rains” (“Kai lyja ir lyja ir lyja”)), the poems appear to be monologues of solitude, although they could also be halves of banal conversations hiding loneliness:
Well, hi. What are you doing that you haven’t
gotten back to me in so long. Aha. Well, is it interesting?
Good for you. Me?... Nothing much
and that’s about it. And you? Great
to hear it…
All of the poets mentioned above have found their unique voices and poetic styles long ago. They no longer need to provoke, shock, or surprise the reader in order to bring attention to themselves or get recognised. However, just as in every literature, modern Lithuanian poetry has its trouble makers. Aušra Kaziliūnaitė’s (b. 1987) poetry collection, The First Lithuanian Book (Pirmoji lietuviška knyga, 2007), is perhaps the most impressive poetic debut in recent years. The title of the book, obviously, witnesses to the natural impudence of the author’s youth and her desire to provoke. However, her fresh viewpoint, language containing hidden opportunities for feeling and emotion, courage, and sense of humour are all obvious in the book. Exactly what this sense of humour is like is expressed in the final section of Kaziliūnaitė’s book, “A Supplement for the Dear Reader – the Telephone Book” (“Priedas Maloniajam skaitytojui – telefonų knyga”), in which a string of numbers are written in stanzas, sometimes rhymed (according to the last number of a line) and sometimes not. The titles of these “number” poems are witty: “Everything about Love” (“Viskas apie meilę”), “A Story about Chipmunks” (“Pasakojimas apie burundukus”), etc.
Dainius Gintalas (b. 1973), whose Boa (Boa, 2007) is an unexpectedly dark collection, belongs to a group of conditional provocateurs different from Kaziliūnaitė. Gintalas says in an interview published in the cultural weekly Literatūra ir menas that he is more interested in the dark side of the human being. Aside from this, the poet has organised four exhibitions of conceptual photography called “Philosophy Booths: WC” (“Filosofinės būdelės: išvietės”). The booths make it possible to look both at the person and at the “facilities”. Where Kaziliūnaitė’s poems are more playful, Gintalas’ are darkly subconscious.
Mantas Gimžauskas’ book Shaman™ (Šamanas™, 2007) is destined to take up a unique place in Lithuanian poetry. Gimžauskas, along with Remigijus Audiejaitis (1972-2007), a blind singer, flutist, and photographer who found temporary shelter in Gimžauskas’ flat, was popular and beloved within the Vilnius artistic community. Both men died when they jumped from the sixth storey of a Vilnius high-rise building as they attempted to rescue themselves from a fire. Their fate has been memorialised in poems found in Marčėnas’ Dances and Stankevičius’ Breaking the Seal. Gimžauskas was marked by death, which is perhaps why many of his poems, which are critical of the general direction of consumer society, appear more dramatic than the author most likely intended. Shaman™ was released after the poet’s death; it was compiled by Tomas S. Butkus (b. 1975), a poet and publisher of original books – he is the creator of the book’s visual half, which is impressive. The book is eclectic: it contains finished poems, computer games, computer graphics, and documentary texts, among other things.
Benediktas Januševičius (b. 1973) is able to play in an inspired way with unique poem-object forms in his collection, 0+6 (2006), which he created using computer graphics and his own poetic texts. Yet he was also able to write Pickled in Blood (Raugintu krauju, 2007) a collection of more or less traditional poems. The literary critic Virginijus Gasiliūnas situates 0+6 within the avant garde of Lithuanian literature, which for historical reasons is lacking in breadth. Januševičus’ poems are sometimes written by a form (for example, a television tower), sometimes – and in some places more interestingly than the figurative poems – an authentic matchbox label, packet of salt, or mass transit coupon are recreated by means of computer graphics; fragments of his poetry are written on these objects in place of standard texts. And voila: both the artworks and the texts are suffused with a completely new and novel meaning. Gytis Norvilas (b. 1976), whose second collection of poetry, Locust Breakfast (Skėrių pusryčiai), was published in 2006, has a slightly different take on the avant garde. Norvilas also draws and writes, but he pays more attention to the word, which is vital, often eroticised, and sheds light on the experiences of exotic and archaic cultures.
Such are the main highways of Lithuanian poetry in the past several years, along with its smaller, albeit colourful, footpaths.
[1] Arnas Ališauskas. Per pusmetrį nuo realybės, http://www.bernardinai.lt/index.php?url=articles/64862
[2] Nida Gaidauskienė. Ištekėti savo išskaidytą buvimą tarp…, http://test.svs.lt/?Nemunas;Number(218);Articles(5316);
[3] Liudvikas Jakimavičius. Nekelti triukšmo, nedauginti tuštumos ir sumaišties, http://www.rasyk.lt/index.php/fuseaction,articlesView.view;id,1647;pn,cat Translated by Steven Paulikas |
