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The word „modern“ might best be framed in quotation marks, because I use it to define not a specific aesthetic (except the constant effort to renew poetic language) or to indicate a particular period, but rather in more or less the same way it was used during the Soviet period, as a concept standing in opposition to the regime's sanctioned forms of poetry. I do so not to revive forgotten disagreements, but to call to mind that great renewal of our poetic language, whose fruits are still evident in our present creative efforts.
For some the world and its literacy reflections will always be modern, new, but in an old world that newness is always conditional. Most often innovators resurrect old and forgotten stylistics, tinting them with their own experience, liberating poetry from the clichés of yesterday, although not changing its essence. The pendulum of their poetic expression does not move in a single line -- from strict formal canons to a complete openness of expression, but rather from the idea of a poem as a „beautiful utterance“ toward something akin to a magical structure; from a drawing-room game or ideological service toward a consideration of fundamental existential questions, from a deliberation of historical-ethical existence and so on. The movements of the pendulums are resonant, and sometimes there is a possibility of naming the prevailing stylistics of one period or another.
The concept of modernism during Soviet times was linked for us not only with newness, but also with poetic value, thanks to which a „new“ work could be identified and acknowledged. In this sense Kristijonas Donelaitis in his time was our poetry's greatest modernist. In the context of European poetry written during the second half of the eighteenth century, the hexametric poem „The Seasons“, which portrayed the life of country peasants, was doubtless not a new phenomenon, but in Lithuanian poetry, which until then was composed principally of folk songs, it was a completely new and naturally linguistic organic poetic reality.
Lithuanian poetry has an ancient and deep tradition of folk song -- the archives of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences contain the texts of about a half million folk songs. These songs make up, principally, the Lithuanian lyric tradition, because songs do not portray reality as much as they render the subject's relationship with it. Donelaitis, delineating the world, is the founder of Lithuanian epic poetry. Or perhaps he is Lithuanian epic poetry's continuer, because epic poetry was written in Lithuania in Latin, and Polish. Maybe, if during the Middle Ages, Grand Dukes were accompanied to battle by bards (Vaidilos) who were obliged to glorify their deeds, there must have been a considerable amount of epic poetry composed which did not survive, or which over time evolved into lyrical song. When „The Seasons“ appeared, it was thus already possible to talk about a double Lithuanian poetic tradition - the lyric and the epic - and about each poet's work as the result of the interaction of both. It is possible to say the same about another continuer of the Donelaitian tradition -- Antanas Baranauskas. His poem, „The Hills of Anykšciai“, written in the latter half of the 19th century as a metaphor for a moribund Lithuania, does not seem new or original, especially to someone who knows Polish poetry. Yet the distinctive and magnificent language of this poem, written using syllabic prosody, lifts it above considerations of originality or novelty. The work of both these poets was influenced by European classical poetry. At the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, the work of the romantic Maironis perhaps most organically fused the Lithuanian folk song tradition with European syllabotonic poetic forms, and for many people Maironis became the general symbol of what it was to be a Lithuanian poet. He completed the evolution of the classical stage of our poetry (classical in the sense of the adaptation of an arsenal of forms).
The concept of modernism is connected to a new artistic current in our century, and we will not be able to avoid that significance as we use the term. Those currents reached Lithuania more or less belatedly. The first modernists, in the contemporary sense of that word, began to express themselves soon after Maironis, in the thirties. They made up the futurist „Four Winds“ group, whose most prominent members were Kazys Binkis, Sigitas Šemerys, and Juozas Tysliava. Alongside them wrote other original poets, who had adopted the traditions of folk songs and of European or Russian symbolism: Jurgis Baltrušaitis, who wrote in Russian and in Lithuanian, Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, Balys Sruoga, Faustas Kirša, later Jonas Kossu-Aleksandravičius (Jonas Aistis), Bernardas Brazdžionis, Salomėja Nėris (who had attached herself to some lesser talented left-wing „Third Front“ writers), Antanas Miškinis, and Henrikas Radauskas. It is difficult to call them modernists, because they held to a post-Maironian Lithuanian poetic tradition. Although they also found inspiration in some European poetry, if not in the most modern.
Another wave of Lithuanian poetry, which can boldly be called modern, was created in the Diaspora, where, escaping Soviet occupation during the Second World War, a large portion of Lithuanian intelligentsia found themselves. First among them are the participants of the „Earth“ (Zeme) anthology: Kazys Bradūnas, Juozas Kėkštas, Vytautas Mačernis (post-humously), Henrikas Nagys, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas. Alongside them actively worked Jonas Aistis, Henrikas Radauskas, Liūnė Sutema, Jonas Mekas, and later Algimantas Mackus, who had named himself a poet of the „generation of unornamented language“. They fused the Lithuanian spirit with the pathos of the modern world's poetic forms and, it can be said, laid the foundation for the modern poetry to be written later in Lithuania, which I would like to speak more broadly about here.
Our modernism is a somewhat different variety of modernism, characteristic to Central Europe. It was born in the countries that remained after the war in the zone of Soviet influence, with enmity toward the official art of the totalitarian regime, which was created according to the methods of so-called „Socialist Realism“. It was not an artistic method, but, more simply, at the very least, a refined ideological compulsion for writers, requiring them to glorify the inhumane regime, to squeeze postulates of blunt ideology into artistic forms. The theorists of Socialist Realism did not manage to circumscribe aesthetics with their doctrine. Formal Socialist Realist poetry remained „it goes without saying“, that is - quantifiable, satisfying some sort of „common“ notion of poetry. During the post-war decade THE SYSTEM had to be glorified through accurate syllabotonic rhyming and shunning of metaphoric ambiguity. Even poetic delight in images of nature or the celebration of human love, friendship, or maternal emotions was labeled as „an escape from reality“ and considered a political offense. (It should be noted that this was not a whim of a few maniacs in the government, but a consistent political regulation of THE SYSTEM, whose aim was to distort a person's nature, to deform his intellect, to transform him into a manipulatable machine.) The years 1946 - 1956 were a time of the most brutal formalism, however, a formalism not supported by any aesthetic principle. (It is interesting that „anti-formalist“ was then the most terrifying word one could use to describe a poet; it defined a sufficient „register of crimes“ which could initiate an author's journey to Siberia.) In attempting to fix such poetry with some kind of earlier stylistic label, I would call it pseudo-classicism using precise forms, demanding clarity, and a dogmatic pro-Soviet mythology.
Enough has already been written about the „emptiness“ of defining the precepts of a stylistic epoch, especially having a specific work in mind. However such precepts entice with their comfortable indeterminacy and make more apparent the pendulum-like changes in literature. It is not difficult to notice that our post-war situation was much like that which gave birth to the romanticism of the 19th century in this part of Europe: the nation, enslaved by a foreign empire, existing under a vast bureaucratic system indifferently managing the fates of people, run by foreign officials and homegrown collaborators, continuing a vast system of coercion, censorship and so on. This experience precisely was a catalyst to crystallize the idea of a nation as an organic unit, and strengthen the feeling of solidarity among those resisting THE SYSTEM. It could not help but have influence on people's mindset. Therefore, in Lithuanian and in emigration, a considerable volume of literature which could justly be called romantic was created. It is characterized by the use of shared concepts: homeland, nation, spirit, earth, bread, and the appeal to shared experiences and aspirations. In that romanticism it is possible to see a specific Lithuanian current that could be called idyllic. It is characterized by that same enjoyment of shared concepts, an insistent lack of conflict and humble ideals. The nation's vital strengths - patience and lyricism were glorified, consistently avoiding (and in fact this was prohibited by censorship) speaking about the desire for freedom, dignity, and higher spiritual aspirations (which is characteristic of romanticism), because at the time the sorry condition of those things would become painfully clear. To practice idyllic romanticism appeared to most poets, even those who distinguished themselves as belonging to such a mind-set, seemed quite simply, dishonest, yet they were kept from any other by censorship. This was one of the forces encouraging poetic renewal.
But let us return to the question of form. In 1956 Eduardas Mieželaitis, with his poem Man posed a difficult question for the censors, not just in Lithuania, but in the entire Soviet Union: if content is ideologically acceptable, than can form consist of whatever the poet desires? After protracted battles, the censors wavered and withdrew, and Mieželaitis was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962. Control of poetry began to loosen up; the empty sounds of words laid out in martial rhythms began to be unraveled by meaning built upon the foundation of metaphor and form.
Eduardas Mieželaitis is an unique figure in the history of modern Lithuanian poetry. He was an innovator, a master of form, a virtuoso of versification, a romantic, symbolist, aesthete, who laid the foundation for others, who were to come after him. Yet he himself slid along the surface much too easily, sinking the pearls of poetry in the torrent of his words. In his romantic discourse beautiful and meaningful worldly words twinkle like goldfish in a fountain, however beneath them one can feel a concrete bottom capped with marble (Rimvydas Šilbajoris's comparison).
Besides Mieželaitis, there were other poets who, according to Dr. V. Kubilius, „were able to dig out the foundations of poetry from beneath the ruins of the cult of personality and the rubbish heap of one-day-old actualities“. These poets were Paulius Širvys, Janina Degutytė, Justinas Marcinkevičius, Algimantas Baltakis, Alfonsas Maldonis, and Aleksys Churginas. They attempted to do this in a more traditional manner, not simply by merely finding new modes of poetic expression, but by „making significant“ existing ones in order to impart the meaning of human experience to poetry impoverished by socialist realist formalism. Some of them, like the later „traditionalists“, widened the furrow of idyllic romanticism.
Most of the younger people of that day, reading poetry published in Lithuania, could form the impression that after 1956 poetry began to appear as if from nowhere. But this was not the case. The writings of some of the classics were published, or sometimes transmitted over radio broadcasts from abroad. An occasional poem by Bernardas Brazdžionis, Henrikas Radauskas, Jonas Aistis, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas, or Henrikas Nagys would reach us, and typewritten or handwritten copies of their books were passed around. The poetic tradition was not ruptured, but rather was transferred underground. In Lithuania then, no less than now, it was known who is who; only one was not permitted to express that knowledge aloud. Since the years just after the war poetry and criticism, which deep in the recesses of the heart opposed the regime, concealed itself with a refined system of signs beneath its socialist realist uniform. This allowed ideas to be communicated to the initiated. In the same cradle of direct speech demanded by the cult of the proletariat, esoteric poetry began to form.
Modern Lithuanian poetry finally came up out of the underground, striking a death blow against Socialist Realism in 1971-1972. It was then that collections of poetry such as Openings by Albinas Žukauskas, Repetitions by Judita Vaičiūnaitė, 26 Hymns of Autumn and Summer by Sigitas Geda, A Blue Wildflower Sealed my Fate by Jonas Juškaitis, By the Dark of the Eyes, and Light of the Heart by Marcelijus Martinaitis, and Speech's Signs by Tomas Venclova appeared. It would be appropriate here to mention several earlier collections as well: From the Silenced Earth by Vytautas Bložė, Footprints by Sigitas Geda, Return of the Sun by Marcelijus Martinaitis, For the Gods Eyes by A. Masionis, and Judita Vaičiūnaitė's earlier books. This group is not made up of a single generation of poets (Geda is 31 years younger than Žukauskas); however, they were united by their efforts to renew our poetic language, purge poetry of lies, and to portray as clearly as possible individual reality. It was not an easy undertaking; people were incarcerated in prison camps for telling the truth; lying was the social norm; the complicated system of coercion and privilege forced and enticed artists to serve Soviet ideology. Poets thus had to create their own reality, in which their creativity could flourish. That reality, which determined individual style, is one or another cultural context, on one hand favorably carrying a poet's meaning past censorship's custom's house, while on the other opening the way for him to reach into the very heart of phenomena. In the search for metaphors that more accurately expressed reality, poetic forms were enhanced, because metaphors not only convey the surface of reality, but its most profound relationships (structures), and that profound plan for the reader of poetry is more significant than the most tangible information presented through direct expression. That is why poetic form, and not one or the other ideology, could effectively oppose creativity killing socialist realism.
That is how efforts to renew poetic language acquired a special moral quality. I say „special“, because Western European modernism also had moral quality, fighting against banal narrow-minded images of the world, and commercial art which propagated those images. However, in the West modernists did not have the solitary alternative of choosing either the camp of truth, or the camp of lies.
I do not want to portray our modernist poets as heroes, martyrs, or champions. More than one of them, contriving to fool the censors, fooled themselves as well, making ideological concessions - because it was all unavoidable if one wanted to publish one's work. Times were hard. The Soviet system held all aspects of life in a tight grip, and the empire that occupied us seemed to be so immovable that few born after the war ever imagined seeing its demise. Poets, even as they tried to express reality conditionally, managed to use the power of their talents to present those conditions, which for the most part were predetermined by the game rules laid down by censorship, as a means toward art. Perhaps that's why, in Lithuania, there was almost no underground (by that I mean self-published) belles lettres. I say „almost“ because some such books, especially of poetry, did appear. Some explain that a poetry underground did not exist because of the special diligence and experience gained while pursuing the publishers of „The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania“, while others say that our community of writers was comparatively small, and so they were able to acquaint one another privately with their newest works, or the works of émigré poets. It seems to me that it is also important to note that the conditions of censorship constantly changed, imparting the hope, especially to poets, of overcoming its bastions through legal means. This was neither a short nor smooth road. It is difficult to explain the sufferings of those authors who had chosen the camp of truth (I have in mind not only the modernists), balancing on the changing border of what was allowed by the censors, beneath which stretched the hell of socialist reality with its Gulag, insane asylums, deadly „unfortunate accidents“, suicides and alcoholic stupor. After Romas Kalanta immolated himself and died in Kaunas in 1972 for political reasons, reactionary pressure returned and the publication of a number of books was postponed at least a decade (for example „Preludes“ by Vytautas Bložė). Yet after the books I mentioned appeared, serious discussion about socialist realism became nothing more than a joke.
In the Sixties and Seventies the modernists were not practicing a single stylistic. Vytautas Bložė is a splendid master of free verse. The rhythmical patterns of his poetry do not rest on any earlier schemes, but are astoundingly harmonious and most often the deliberately encoded thought in his work does not drift far from our grotesque socialist realist reality. Sigitas Geda is an elemental and spontaneous pantheistic poet, passionately singing in the junction of nature and culture. Jonas Juškaitis is a calligrapher and jeweler, polisher of poetic phrase, whose thought is hidden and clarified by complicated, original versification. Marcelijus Martinaitis is a poet close to the folk song tradition, master of style. Judita Vaičiūnaitė is a poet of subtle impressionistic sentiments, ingeniously combining the elements of image and music. Tomas Venclova has described himself as a neoclassicist, though his work reveals the metaphoric intensity of modern poetry. Albinas Žukauskas is a teller of mythical histories, having lifted into poetry the style of folk tales.
Alongside these authors wrote several more traditional poets, whom it is more difficult to call modernists, but whose contributions to Lithuanian poetry are quite notable. They are Ona Baliukonytė, Vladas Baltuškevičius, Henrikas Cigriejus, Janina Degutytė, Stasys Jonauskas, Jonas Strielkūnas, Antanas Verba and others.
The poets who debuted in the Seventies finally demolished the public notion of what a poem's form ought to be. They included Gražina Cieškaitė, Romas Daugirdas (1981), Juozas Erlickas, Almis Grybauskas, Antanas A. Jonynas, Donaldas Kajokas, Vytautas Rubavičius and eventually myself (Kornelijus Platelis). It was a generation which had grown up in a world saturated with Soviet ideology and which therefore did not hold the ideology as its own, neither feeling sentiment for it, nor duty to it. Especially in these poets' first books nihilism, contempt for all things, and a distinctive Central European humor exists. But knowledge reconciles many with the world - one notices that even a system like the Soviet system, no matter how utterly totalitarian, occupies only a small part of the „world“, and can never restrict a free spirit. There is some measure of academic rationalism in this reconciliation.
The poets who debuted in the eighties, belong spiritually to that same generation: Vladas Braziūnas, Nijolė Miliauskaitė, Rolandas Rastauskas, and Markas Zingeris. Some younger colleagues published their first books at this time as well: Eugenijus Ališanka, Valdas Daškevičius, Vaidotas Daunys, Liudvikas Jakimavičius, Edmondas Kelmickas, Julius Keleras, Aidas Marčėnas, Kestutis Navakas, Sigitas Parulskis, Tomas A. Rudokas and others. These younger poets did not change the face of our poetry in essence, though most of them are original poets, who have a strong sense of language, and a good grasp of form. On the whole, the Seventies and Eighties, having in mind the work of both older and younger poets, make up the true renaissance of our poetry. In its sense of beauty, aestheticism, poetic explorations and discoveries, even with its light decadence, this period is reminiscent of the Twenties.
If I have already compared the social situation that existed during the Soviet period to that which, in the nineteenth century, gave birth to European Romanticism, and if I have discerned its reflections in literature, it might be fruitful to find some earlier stylistic equivalent in our modern poetry. Many features of the latter remind me of Baroque literature - the disregard for purity of style, decaying poetic customs as a result of the rejection of canons, language, discipline gone awry, pessimistic and mystical sentiments, sarcasm, interest in the grotesque, polysemanticism. If we add here the relish of some poets to use kitsch, these features would become very similar to those which could be assigned to modernism. However, it seems to me, that the latter current lacks a sufficient sense of the moral and spiritual engagement that characterizes our poetry. Understanding that all of the comparisons in this paragraph are „pulled together“, I want to mention the comparisons made between the Baroque and contemporary Latin American literature, which, by the way, had a substantial influence on our prose. It is possible to consider how much those improvements are the result of the pendulum swings of evolution, or of socio-political dictatorship, but that is not our theme.
According to the principles of formation, it is possible conditionally to note two directions in the evolution of our modern poetry. The first is characterized by a closed structure in which the entire poem, no matter what its metaphoric variety, works as a single metaphor. This is characteristic of the work of Vytautas Bložė, Sigitas Geda, Nijolė Miliauskaitė, Judita Vaičiūnaitė, Tomas Venclova, the later Almis Grybauskas, Antanas A. Jonynas, Jonas Juškaitis, Donaldas Kajokas, Marcelijus Martinaitis and myself. The other direction is the poem of open structure, in which images and metaphors link as if on a string, complimenting the artistic presentation, although the ends of the string are not tied together. That is characteristic of the earlier books of some of the poets I have already mentioned, and also in the work of Gražina Cieškaitė, Romas Daugirdas, Aidas Marčėnas, Kestutis Navakas, Gintaras Patackas, Rolandas Rastauskas, and Vytautas Rubavičius. It is not difficult to distinguish between these two types of poetry, but it is difficult to mention various names in connection with either, because every poet has written poetry of both types. In addition, the open structure is often most characteristic of poems, which are not fully successful, where the author could not fully manage to control the poetic material. The first type of poetry can be linked to figurative, epic, Donelaitian origins; the second to story-telling (narrative technique), the origins of lyric folk song.
Currently our ardor for poetic form has somewhat subsided, and journals are publishing uncontrived poetry about the tragic experiences of Gulag prisoners, exiles, and partisans. Alongside non-negotiable masterpieces (like the work of Bronius Krivickas, who died in the forests fighting the Soviet occupiers, and by Antanas Miškinis, exiled to Siberia) there are weaker works that do not distinguish themselves artistically. The artificial barrier between literature created in Lithuania and in the émigré communities has disappeared, and works by all the major émigré poets have been published in Lithuania. Self-published books are appearing more and more frequently, among them classic examples of graphomania. Lithuanian poetry no longer is dominant in our society's spiritual life and is slowly withdrawing into the same place this art form holds in the Western world.
Kornelijus Platelis was born in 1951 in Šiauliai, in north central Lithuania. He graduated from the Vilnius Building Institute in 1973 and worked until 1988 as an engineer in Druskininkai, a resort town in southern Lithuania along the banks of the Nemunas River, where he now lives with his wife Zita, a high school English teacher, and their two sons. He published his first poems in 1977 and is the author of four collections of verse: „Zodziai ir dienos“(Words and Days; 1980), „Namai ant tilto“ (Home on the Bridge; 1984), „Pinkles vejui“ (Snare for the Wind; 1987), and „Luoto kevalas“ (The Boat Shell; 1990). He published his collected poems, „Prakalbos upei“ (Orations to the River), in 1995. His extended essay on the ecology of culture, „Bustas prie Nemuno“ (Being by the Nemunas), was published in 1989. He has also translated many of the most important American and British poets - among them Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Keats, Cummings, Ted Hughes, Heaney - and has been instrumental in developing commentary for a new Lithuanian edition of the „Bible“. In 1988 Platelis joined the democratic liberation movement Sajudis and after Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union he served in the Lithuanian government of Vytautas Landsbergis as Vice Minister for Culture and Education. In the years 1991-1994 he was elected President of Lithuanian P.E.N., and worked as Director of VAGA Publishers Ltd. in Vilnius. He presently serves as Minister of Education and Science in the government of President Valdas Adamkus. Among his many honors and awards is appointment as Lithuania's Poet Laureate in 1996 and fellowships and grants from Lithuanian, Baltic, and Scandinavian sources. Today Platelis is one of Lithuania's most active poets. He is the initiator and organizer of the annual Druskininkai Autumn poetry conference held in reaction to „official“, state sponsored poetry events. His poetry is noted for its deeply intellectual voice, and inventive use of archetype and myth. It is a mixture of political and declarative styles on the one hand and mystical intensity and metaphysical questioning on the other. Sigitas Parulskis (born 1965) is one of the most interesting, and certainly most popular, young poets writing in Lithuania today. Born in the village of Obeliai, Parulskis has published three collections of poetry, three plays, a children's book, numerous essays and critical reviews. He is editor of the literary insert of Lithuania's most popular daily „Lietuvos Rytas“. Much of Parulskis's material draws from his childhood in rural Lithuania, his experiences as a conscript into the Soviet army, and an archetypal relationship with „the father“. The poems translated here are from Parulskis' award winning collection „Of the Dead“, published in 1994. |
