Exhibition Catalogue - Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the

Transcription

Exhibition Catalogue
The project is dedicated to represent the Lithuanian Presidency of
the Council of the European Union
Initiator of the project Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic
of Lithuania
Organizer of the exhibition
Lithuanian Art Museum National Gallery of Art
Exhibition Lenders:
National M.K. Ciurlionis Art Museum
Modern Art Center, Vilnius
Department for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of Vilnius
Municipality
Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers Kaunas Department
Photographers and their heirs
Poets and their heirs
©
©
©
©
Lithuanian Art Museum, 2012
Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene, compilation, 2012
Lina Bastiene, catalogue design, 2012
photographers, poets, authors 2012
UDK 7.038(474.5)(064)
Po-49
Curators of the Exhibition:
Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene
Eugenijus Alisanka
Exhibition Manager: Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene
Exposition Design: Audrius Novickas
Catalogue Editor: Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene
Translation into English:
Eugenijus Alisanka (poetry)
Jurij Dobriakov (texts)
Ellen Hinsey (poetry)
Kerry Shawn Keys (poetry)
Translation into German:
Claudia Sinnig (poetry)
Daiva Petereit (texts)
Copy Editors:
Joseph Everatt
Liuda Jakubcioniene
Catalogue Design: Lina Bastiene
Curator of the Film Programme: Zivile Eteviciute
ISBN 978-609-426-040-7
Lenders of Films:
Deimantas Narkevicius
Arunas Matelis
Kinema film studio
UAB Lietuvos kinas
UAB Lietuvos kino studija
In 2013, Lithuania will hold the Presidency of the
Council of the EU, which will be an occasion for the
country to demonstrate its political and administrative
capacities, and simultaneously a perfect opportunity to
showcase its culture, art and identity. This exhibition
presents work by Lithuanian photographers, writers
and filmmakers of different generations, which convey
poetically an aesthetic experience of the world, as well
as introducing present-day Lithuania and its history.
With today’s abundance of visual information, it is
difficult to hold the viewer’s attention with images
that do not set out to sell or to shock. The collection
of photographs that has been put together for this
exhibition, which is dominated by a laconic form
of monochromatic photography and an unsophisticated
technical language, would in many cases fail to attract
viewers’ attention amid the stream of gaudy images.
But this project has a different aim. The concentrated
artistic whole, condensed with poetic textual inserts,
and augmented with a documentary film programme, offers
a unique experience. The exhibition Poetic Documents
takes the viewer on a visual and textual tour through
the history of Lithuanian photography and poetry, full
of moods and emotions. A mutual aspect links these
two spheres of art: most of the photographs are rich
in narrative, relating their stories to the imagery
of texts, while the poetry has a visual quality, and
forcefully instils vivid images in the reader’s mind.
The poetic vision of the world is not necessarily
lyrical or sentimental; it is sensitive, filled with
an inner sonority, opening up depths and surpluses of
meaning that lurk behind works of art. The intensity of
the experience of poetic images would seem to negate
their documentary nature, but it does not obfuscate
allusions to the time and the circumstances of their
creation.
democracy, mass deportations and emigration, and the
Holocaust. These historical circumstances gave rise to
extraordinary human experiences, and posed challenges
to artists, such as establishing the relevance of
poetic language in the face of such crises. The authors
featured in the exhibition, who come from different
generations and have different artistic viewpoints and
different backgrounds, each respond to these challenges
in their own way; but the most important thing is that
they are united by their everyday life and a creative
identification with Lithuania. This identification
cannot be understood in the narrow sense of nationality
alone; on the contrary, it is an identity that
expresses itself as an inexhaustible source of creative
exploration, of the country’s landscapes, cities, the
people living here, and fundamental notions of time and
memory.
The works exhibited span a period of over 80 years
in the history of Lithuanian photography and poetry.
Although the exhibition takes the form of a collection
of important works, the historical context is also
important in comprehending and reading it. For
Lithuania, the 20th century was a time of dramatic
changes, marked by the shift from an agrarian to
an urban society, a hostile occupation and the
restoration of independence both experienced in a fairly
short period of time, totalitarian oppression and
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The discourse of Lithuanian photography presented in
this exhibition unfolds between two poles, marked by
notions of nature and culture. Accompanied by poetic
texts, the images are arranged according to the themes
of nature, the human being, the city, time, and memory,
revealing the links, inversions and tensions between
fields that attract, complement and simultaneously
negate each other. Nevertheless, none of the thematic
sections mentioned can be taken in isolation in the
photographs exhibited; many of the works combine
several themes instead of just one, and even question
them. As we travel through these fields of overlapping
experiences and insights, we can observe how motifs
from the rural world-view that inspire the artist’s
imagination are transformed and rethought in the light
of aesthetic and philosophical considerations and urban
experience.
A strong and archaic connection with the land
characterised 20th-century Lithuanian art. For many
artists, it served as a foundation for the developing
tradition, and as a prime source of inspiration.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that in photography too,
for a long time, nature motifs were prominent. Still,
photographers did not view the depiction of nature as
an object in itself; rather, they used it as a means of
putting forward their aesthetic agenda. For instance,
Jonas Kalvelis (1925–1987) considered the natural world
to be the most important point of departure for his
artistic explorations, to which he devoted the most
creative period of his life. For more than 12 years,
he concentrated on photographing the dunes of the
Curonian Spit, with great sensitivity and extraordinary
perception. The photographer’s view of nature is
aestheticised and infused with visual poetics and
artistic erudition. Thanks to Kalvelis, the sand dunes
come to speak in the language of graphic abstraction,
rhythmic lines, forms, and variations of light and
shade. The series earned him universal acclaim, and
established him as one of the most famous photographers
of the coastal dunes.
According to Martin Heidegger, life is lived on the
earth and under the sky. Algimantas Kuncius (b. 1939),
in his photographic series ‘Distant Images’ (1985–1998),
endows this profound universal experience with a
distinctively individual character. Kuncius thinks in
images, but at the same time his look at the native
landscape is very concrete. It is remarkable how minute
details do not escape this all-encompassing look,
but make the image more refined instead of atomising
it. This generalised concreteness informs Kuncius’
landscapes with a sense of timelessness, liberating
them from the confines of the instant, and turning them
into a mediator for the very experience of Lithuania’s
northern expanses.
The vision of nature of Alfonsas Budvytis (1949–2003) is
twofold: on one hand, it has an observant and passive
nature, and at the same time it penetrates a dense net
of cultural experiences. The conceptual photographs
exhibited ‘This is my Eventide / When Dark Thoughts
Come I–II’ (1992) capture a seemingly impossible
transformation: the images show loaves of dark bread
with their crusts being ripped apart by sprouting wheat.
In the Christian tradition, bread symbolises life;
yet Budvytis, who lives in the postmodern era, sees
in it a foreboding of the end, rather than positive
connotations, which is intensified by the sprouts,
curling nervously like caterpillars. Resonances of
human existence in natural motifs are also present in
the work of Aleksandras Macijauskas, another artist
featured in the exhibition. He sees a reflection of his
own old age in charred tree trunks. The death of a tree
as portrayed by Macijauskas is also painful, because
in the Lithuanian mind the tree has a deep symbolic
meaning, associated with vitality and the sacredness of
life, which comes from pagan times. Thus, the somewhat
anthropomorphised menhirs of trees that emerge every
time the water level of the Kaunas Reservoir1 goes down
can be read as relics of an encounter between modern
life and tradition.
The exhibition presents the human being in photography
from three different points of view: existential, sociocritical and aesthetic. Antanas Sutkus (b. 1939), one
of the most famous humanists of Lithuanian photography,
1
With the construction of the Kaunas Hydroelectric Power
Plant, which started in 1959, the Kaunas Reservoir was created
by damming the Nemunas, the main river in Lithuania. Forty-five
settlements (villages, farmsteads, and the town of Rumsiskes,
including an old church and bell tower) were relocated from the area
flooded by the reservoir.
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began working on his epic series ‘People of Lithuania’
as early as 1959. Sutkus modelled his existential view
of the human being on Existentialist literature, which
he admired, and reached the climax of his creative
maturity when he created a series of photographs that
documented the visit to Nida by Jean-Paul Sartre in
1965. The exhibition presents the photographer’s less
well-known shots, which demonstrate that not only has
he an eye for a flawless composition and a sense of the
unique moment, but he also has the gift of being able
to capture the mood of a situation, and the fragile
state of an individual, when he experiences harmony with
himself and the surrounding world.
The eye of Rimaldas Viksraitis (b. 1954) also follows
the rural dweller, yet in his photographs the subject
is tired and worn out. For many years, Viksraitis has
been conducting a kind of social research, examining
not so much the daily life of a particular social
group as the dark side of human nature. He looks at it
with sadness, bitterness, and simultaneously through
the straightforward lens of the grotesque. In the
photographs of Soviet demonstrations by Aleksandras
Macijauskas (b. 1938), which are deformed by a wideangle lens, people also acquire a grotesque character.
Yet the grotesqueries of Viksraitis and Macijauskas
do not negate faith in the human being. To paraphrase
the famous Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, we could
argue that the grim humour that characterises these
photographers’ works expresses an almost pagan faith in
renewal, the possibility for reform, and the cyclical
aspect of life, rather than debasement and derision.
Domicele Tarabildiene (1912–1985) was a wellknown interwar artist and book illustrator, but
her photographs have only recently attracted public
attention. The exhibition presents several selfportraits that she created in the 1930s using the
photomontage technique. What is fascinating is not just
the artist’s courage in exploring experimental forms of
expression, but also her decision to be her own model in
the photographs. Her artistic exploration crossed the
line of experimentation, and testifies to her interest
in the avant-garde constructivist ideas of the time,
as well as her exceptional ability to express herself
creatively in various art forms. Tarabildiene is
a symbol of human emancipation; although she was born
in the countryside, she matured as an artist in the
town, and used it as a source of creative inspiration.
Writing about the philosophical paradigm of the notion
of the city, Leonidas Donskis once stated: ‘The extent
to which the forms of the city and the urban mentality
are developed in the life of a society corresponds with
the extent to which that society partakes in the process
of its freedom or liberation, in other words, the extent
to which it emancipates itself historically with regard
to nature and the natural mentality.’2
Thus, the city becomes our bridge to culture, another
pole of artistic self-awareness. Invoking Jean
Baudrillard’s idea that ‘In order to reveal the secrets
of cities, we should [...] start from a painting or
a screen, and from there move towards the city,’
the philosopher Nerijus Milerius argues that ‘It is
photography that turns Vilnius into a city.’ Indeed,
we would hardly find a Lithuanian photographer with no
photographs of Vilnius, which serves as confirmation
that it is an existentially important city, reminding
us of past glories and past losses. There are no
fine photographs of the city aimed at tourists in the
exhibition. Instead, it presents works that reveal
the city’s character through the authors’ profound
experience, feelings, vision and thinking.
The photographic archive of Jan and Janusz Bulhak
‘Vilnius. 1944’ is an introspective witness of time. The
famous photographer and his son were commissioned by
the People’s Commissariat of Municipal Services of the
Lithuanian SSR to document the aftermath of the bombings
of Vilnius during the Second World War. Jan Bulhak (1876–
1950) knew the city well, as he had been photographing
its churches, streets, interiors and hilly landscapes for
a number of years, and these works had earned him acclaim
and respect. He accomplished the task in a precise way,
and at the same time he did not conceal the profound
shock he had experienced during the war. The photographic
inventory of the bomb-damaged city in which he had spent
his most creative years became a sort of farewell to
Vilnius, for in 1945 he moved to Warsaw.
2
Leonidas Donskis, ‘Naujasis Leviatanas’, in: Miestelenai:
Tauros almanachas, ed. Eugenijus Alisanka, Vilnius: Taura, 1991, p. 170
Speaking about the work of Vytautas Balcytis (b. 1955),
it would perhaps make sense first of all to define what
it does not contain. Balcytis is not interested in
photography’s traditional relationship with the city’s
architecture, when the architecture becomes the central
object of the photographic message. For him, Vilnius
is a contemplative space where subjective encounters
(emotional, tactile, historical) with the city’s forms,
planes and dimensions take place. The witnesses of these
encounters are black and white photographic prints with
designated locations and times. In his photographs, the
city has all of its well-known features: street signs,
pavements, facades and billboards, and so on; and yet,
there are no people. It is an empty city, we could
almost say it is abandoned, which cuts off the ties of
recognisability and seeks to acquire an unearthly form
that is independent of time and space.
In another version of Vilnius by Gintautas Trimakas
(b. 1958), a charismatic pioneer of the pinhole
technique, the city’s architectural face loses its
importance altogether. It is a city that is experienced
in time and space, rather than visually. Attached to
a bicycle frame, the pinhole camera travels together
with the photographer, and captures the bicycle’s
stopping points with a vertical view from the bottom
up. The device remains active, that is, it absorbs
light, until he moves off to another point on his
route. When the eye detaches itself from the horizon,
disturbed by the chaos of everyday life, and directs
its gaze upwards, it meets an empty space, in which it
experiences the pure flow of time.
Time and memory are one of the cornerstone categories
that define the unique nature of the phenomenon of
photography. Photography’s mesmerising power to
capture the moment, which would otherwise sink into
oblivion, challenges artists to negotiate and rethink
the relationship between time and photography. Three
photographers represented in the exhibition,
Algirdas Seskus (b. 1945), Arturas Valiauga (b. 1967)
and Arunas Kulikauskas (b. 1959), use the capturing
of the flow of time as an artistic strategy. Although
we cannot associate the meaning of Seskus’ work only
with the category of time, the temporal dimension
is nevertheless very important in these nameless
and undated puzzles of fragments and excerpts of the
everyday. His photographs seem to capture time in a
sort of intermediate state, between flow and stasis.
This fragile existence resides in the photographs’ mini
structures, which transmit the temporal and spatial
poetry of everyday life.
Arturas Valiauga attempts to show that photography
can express paradoxically the tensile quality of time
in his series ‘The Week Has Eight Days’ (2002–2003).
The eight photographs show simple and unadorned
rooms that nevertheless radiate a Biedermeier-like
warmth and domestic harmony. A somewhat casual mess,
such as clothes drying on a washing line, the figure
of a child, or a flash like a shadow, fills the
narrative of the photographs with a mundane monotony.
Characteristic attributes of domestic life in
Lithuania, such as patterned tablecloths, curtains,
bedspreads, Oriental-style wall rugs, furniture,
household utensils and paintings of saints, create
an environment in which nobody keeps track of time
or looks at the clock standing in the corner. These
images show a world where nothing changes, and the
week could easily have eight days in it.
A complex structure of time and space distinguishes
Arunas Kulikauskas’ series ‘A Waft of the Misty Past’
(1989). Kulikauskas accidentally came across a set of
negatives by an unknown photographer from the interwar
period, which show carefree holidaymakers having a
good time by the sea. Kulikauskas develops prints,
tones them slightly, and exhibits them alongside his
own work in exhibitions, thus inserting them into the
artistic context of the early 1990s, where they become
the axis of a conceptual work. In this way, photographs
intended for a family album travel in time, losing
their primary private function, acquiring new meanings,
and becoming part of the collective memory.
In August 1989, the ‘Baltic Way’ was held to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact, which annulled the independence of
the Baltic States. During this event, a chain of people
holding hands connected Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn,
the three capitals. The documentary photographs by
Romualdas
Pozerskis (b. 1951) allow the viewer to look at
this major historical event from very close up. This
closeness gives a meaning to history through the
people who created it, providing the collective memory
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with a human face and a human identity. The line
of people that stretched along the Baltic Way also
unfolds in time, thanks to Pozerskis’ photographs:
the chronologically shot sequences capture the small
stories without which the big story would not have
come to be written.
The remembrance of time past preserved in photographs
intensifies and revives the understanding of lived
experience, as well as mobilising and visually
structuring memory. Photographers who rush to
immortalise a significant event in the life of society
are plenty, but those who rethink historical experience
and transfer it to the sphere of artistic issues and
contexts are few. The young photographer Indre Serpytyte
(b. 1983) is a Lithuanian emigre of recent times. Trying
to find answers to questions of identity that preoccupy
her, she engages in an analysis of the historical
memory. ‘A sense of not belonging here prompts me
to keep searching for my own roots [...] Through my
photographs, I try to reconstruct the inherited memory,
seeking to make it tangible.’3 The photographic series
‘Notebook’, ‘Former NKVD-MVD-MGB-KGB Buildings’ and
‘Forest Brothers’ form a body of artistic research that
analyses the object of traumatic experience and ways of
maintaining oblivion and remembrance. The documentary
photographs depict buildings in which the repressive
NKVD, MVD, MGB and KGB structures were housed in Soviet
times. Most of these buildings are typical, ordinary
small-town houses that are still in use, in spite of
the repressive acts that were carried out there by the
occupying regime. The photographer collects archive
material and photographic documentation of the buildings
in her notebooks, and uses it to create a series of
photographs of wooden models. Reducing these violent
spatial containers to palm-size models, she gives the
past the form of a tangible and warm reality, rescuing
them from oblivion.
Lithuanian Jewish community who survived the Holocaust.
The close-up look at the portrayed people, accompanied
by information about when and in which ghetto a person
was kept, forces the viewer insensibly to think about
how few Jews there are left in Lithuania today, and
the fact that they have become virtually invisible.
It is precisely because of this that the faces of the
portrayed, just like the accompanying biographical
notes, seem to take us by surprise. In her book
‘The Visual Turn: Images-Words-Bodies-Looks’, Erika
Grigoraviciene refers to this surprise as a sign of an
image’s ‘vitality’.4 Thus, portrayal becomes a symbolic
affirmation of life, and simultaneously a gesture of the
cultivation of the memory.
As photographers search for a relationship between their
subjective world-view and the factual reality, they give
birth to images, or, as in the case of this exhibition,
poetic documents. Photographs that find their meaning in
forceful images become a part of reality, and construct
it together, influencing our cultural consciousness.
Antanas Sutkus also addresses the problem of the
cultivation of the historical memory in his series ‘Pro
memoria’ (1994–1997), which portrays members of the
3Indre Serpytyte. Fotografijos paroda ‘1944–1991’, in:
http://www.photography.lt/lt.php/Parodos?id=453 (accessed on
28 August 2012)
4
Erika Grigoraviciene, Vaizdinis posukis: vaizdai – zodziai –
ku nai – zvilgsniai, Vilnius: Lithuanian Culture Research Institute,
2011, p. 270
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The Lithuanian language is considered to be almost the
oldest language in Europe, while Lithuanian literature
is undoubtedly one of the youngest literatures. The
reasons for this paradox are many. At the time when
Europe was undergoing a boom in national literatures,
together with the rise of the Protestant movement,
mainly the peasants in Lithuania spoke Lithuanian. Works
written in the 17th and 18th centuries are considered
today to be the beginning of Lithuanian literature, and
yet they were the efforts of individual enthusiasts.
In the 19th century, the Russian occupation made its
contribution. After the 1863 uprising against Imperial
Russian rule, the Lithuanian press in the Latin alphabet
was prohibited: books could only be published in
Cyrillic. In this situation, the resistance acquired
other forms. Books were published in East Prussia
(now the Kaliningrad region) and secretly brought to
Lithuania by smugglers who risked their lives and
their freedom. Most of the books published were of an
educational nature; only a minority of enlightened
intellectuals, usually clerics, cultivated the sprouts
of pure literature. The situation improved after 1904,
when the ban on publishing in Lithuanian was lifted,
but a more notable revival in literature would not
begin until 1918, when the country proclaimed its
independence.
Unfortunately, the Soviet occupation of 1940 interrupted
the literary life that was gathering momentum: around
70 per cent of writers left the country after the war.
In Soviet times, literature was censored and crippled.
Thus, there was little time for its free and natural
development. The situation began to change after
Lithuania reclaimed its independence in 1990.
Lithuania is often called a land of poets, although
recently this has acquired an increasingly ironic
undertone. Indeed, poetry has played a very important
role for a long time. It was a quasi-religion of sorts
that delivered to its readers more than other art forms
could. It came to be seen as offering the possibility
to preserve the nation, the language, and the truth. In
Soviet times, although it was constrained by censorship
and ideological oppression, poetry was able to create a
certain space for freedom. Literary work became freer
in Brezhnev’s time, and the dominant poetics developed
in the 1970s and 1980s. The Soviet system’s official
artistic paradigm was Socialist Realism, but poetry
managed to craft a modernist aesthetic that functioned
as a kind of resistance. Among such forms of artistic
resistance are the poetics of the absurd, the polyphonic
play of metaphors and aposiopesis, blank verse, the
omission of punctuation, and cryptic language. Thus,
after the restoration of independence, poetry underwent
few changes, and essentially continued the developments
of the preceding decades. However, the change in
the public’s relationship with poetry has been more
substantial. If today Lithuania can be called a land of
poets, it is only because there are many people writing
poetry.
In selecting the authors and texts for this exhibition,
I did not aim to present an overview, because that
is what anthologies are for. Instead, I chose poems
that responded to the questions and themes addressed
by the exhibition, poems that have the potential to
create a dialogue with the photographs and the films
presented, poems that allow the viewer (who in this case
is also inevitably a reader) to experience some of the
‘mystery’ of Lithuanian art in collaboration with visual
art. Poetry that has visual or narrative qualities
caught my eye. I was even surprised to find that such
a close affinity between branches of the arts can be
possible. I do not want to speak about a synthesis of
the arts, which is increasingly becoming an obligation
in the post-postmodern world. I would rather call this
affinity and proximity a dialogue. And it is precisely
in maintaining a dialogue that truth and wisdom can
exist, as we know from the times of Socrates and Plato.
Therefore, let us speak about the Lithuanians, their
past, present and future.
The poetry presented here covers almost nine decades, I
could almost say the whole epoch of modern Lithuanian
literature. Nevertheless, the majority of the authors
selected belong to the modern era. The sole author to
address us from the interwar period is Kazys Binkis
(1893–1942). As the most notable early 20th-century
Lithuanian Futurist, who, like most European Futurists,
glorified youth and flights of the imagination, he
searched for new possibilities in language, and believed
in the future, perhaps somewhat naively, at least from
the point of view of the present century. His optimistic
look at time and history represents the youth of poetry.
Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas (b. 1919) belongs to an entirely
different age. In this exhibition, he represents émigré
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Lithuanian literature. As I have already mentioned,
during the Second World War, most writers moved to the
West, and later the majority of them settled in the
USA. Therefore, for several decades, the most important
literary steps, marked by personal trauma, were taken
there, on the other side of the Atlantic. The work of
émigré writers was banned in Lithuania, and yet it still
reached readers through various illegal channels. Today
we can boldly claim that émigré poets such as Antanas
Mackus, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas and Henrikas Radauskas
were writers of a European standing. Nyka-Niliunas
looks in the opposite direction to that of Binkis: he
constantly looks back to the past, where he searches
for existential support. In his work, the exile turns
from personal and historical drama to an existential
impetus for life and creation, much as the banishment
of Adam from the Garden of Eden began the history of
mankind. The work of Nyka-Niliunas deals with the
sensations and insights of an intellectual Prodigal
Son. He is a poet who explores passionately the
erosion of existence and the collisions of language
and reality, and yet at the same time he retains a
cold and analytical mind.
Vytautas P. Bloze (b. 1930) is deservedly proclaimed
to be a reformer of poetry: he established free verse
in Lithuanian poetry, and still remains one of its
most influential poets. His poetic world is hard to
describe, all the more so because it has changed a lot
over the 50 years of his creative work. By invoking the
aesthetics of surrealism and the grotesque, modelling
different contexts, and employing free associations,
collage and paraphrase, he constructs multi-dimensional
structures and polyphonies. Bloze is often unable to
fit everything into one poem, so he writes series, long
poems and books; there is a strong epic aspect in his
work. He creates a myth of sorts, which encompasses both
universal and personal experience.
For a long time the Lithuanian folklore and ethnographic
tradition played a prominent role in poetry. The
most notable member of this movement is Marcelijus
Martinaitis (b. 1936). By subtly combining folk poetics
with irony and modern speech, he became known for
the character of Kukutis, a simple-minded child who
is also a sage. For several decades, Kukutis was a
kind of symbol, Martinaitis’ poetic trademark. In his
later work, he further developed poetics based on the
principles of narrative, sometimes even the folk tale,
and employed elements of paradox, the grotesque and
alogism.
Another prominent thread in poetry is associated with
Sigitas Geda (1943–2008), an extremely prolific poet and
translator. As a translator, he translated many classics,
starting with the ‘Song of Songs’ and ending with the
works of Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz. He is by
far the most elemental 20th-century Lithuanian poet. His
work is infused with a pantheistic energy, connecting
natural forces with elements of the world’s cultures. We
can trace in his poetry the origins of poetic language,
and its very birth. An archaic (Sumerian, Egyptian, or
pagan Lithuanian) world-view breaks out in modern poetic
form. We get the impression that the poem is writing
itself, rather than being written by the poet. Geda can
be called the shaman of Lithuanian poetry.
Tomas Venclova (b. 1937) has perhaps trodden the
most intellectual path in poetry. Describing himself
as a Neoclassical poet, he indeed writes formally
complex poems, in which Classical forms are filled
with existential, historical and political realities.
Often his poems require a commentary, which the author
frequently provides when he reads his own work. His
poetics are closer to Russian poetics, such as the
poetics of Joseph Brodsky, who for many years was
his friend. In 1974, Venclova left for the West as
a political dissident. At the same time, he is the
Lithuanian poet who is best known in the world, and
represents the generation of poets who struggled with
their poetic words and public stance against the Soviet
system. Moral and political engagement is an important
element in his work.
Kornelijus Platelis (b. 1951) is Lithuania’s Ezra Pound.
He is also a translator of Pound’s work. Unlike other
poets, he merges the realities of ancient and modern
culture, using archetypal and mythical imagery. Platelis
writes intellectual poetry: as in Plato’s dialogues,
the spirit of discussion and philosophical discourse
dominates, while the manner of expression resembles the
Classical one. But these are not just palimpsests of
ancient texts; rather, by invoking the wisdom, myths and
history of ancient cultures, he reveals the meanings and
the meaninglessness of the modern world.
Judita Vaiciunaite (1937–2001) is the most notable
writer of urban poetry. She was the first to advocate
the rights of the urban reality in Lithuanian poetry,
which was then dominated by an agrarian mentality.
To her, the city is not the opposite of the country;
rather, it is an extension of it, for the most important
exposures of human existence emerge in the city. The
architectural details, the dandelions sprouting through
a pavement, and the history that lies hidden behind
ruins, are all equally important to her eye. She draws,
we could even say she photographs, individual details
of the city in an Impressionist style, which then form
series and books, creating a multi-dimensional portrait
of the city.
The poetry of Donaldas Kajokas (b. 1953) is
distinguished by the fact that it is modelled upon
eastern poetics and metaphysics, ancient Japanese and
Chinese poetry, and Buddhism, Shintoism and other
philosophies. The literary theorist Donata Mitaite once
wrote: ‘A prominent part of his poetic output consists
of short meditative poems, in which he takes a deep look
into nature, and listens to himself, feeling the unity
and the harmony of the world, the very joy of looking
closely at it. The image fractures, leaving space for
intuition and silent pauses.’
Aidas Marcenas (b. 1960) is one of the most subtle
masters of poetic form, who seems to associate himself
with the adepts of the tradition. On the other hand, he
demolishes the towers of elite culture in his work and
mocks the established notions of ‘beauty’, by employing
everyday forms of language, paraphrasing other poets
and their style, and creating a ‘new naivety’. Yet in
reality, these are merely masks for naivety: for a long
time, he has been cultivating the theme of the poet as a
medium and a genius, which has recently been yielding to
an ironic view of the poet himself.
searching and the longing for sanctity, and yet not in
an Apollonian Heaven, but on a Dionysian Earth. Death,
a strong centre of gravity, curves and magnetises the
lines of Parulskis’ imagination. It becomes the key
to his poetics, he mentions it frequently, attempting
to use it to open a door, not to the afterlife, as is
common for a metaphysically oriented imagination, but to
this world, trying to identify through it the shapes of
life. Each of his imagination’s movements ‘from point A
to point B’ turns into a journey from life to death, or
vice versa.
Thus, 25 poetic documents of a whole era are presented
here. Or, to put it a simpler way, poems. They are
written by different authors, but united by the same
concern, the human being’s position in time and history.
Sigitas Geda once wrote: ‘Now I would like to be
myself.’ Who wouldn’t? But is this possible? Can these
documents prove anything? They may demonstrate that the
world and mankind itself are much poorer and inferior
without creative work. They are foreign. They might
simply vanish without creativity. The whole history of
Lithuania supports this.
Eugenijus Alisanka
Another remarkable figure who has significantly changed
poetry’s orientation is Sigitas Parulskis (b. 1965).
By employing what he describes as ‘the aesthetic of
ugliness’, he prompts the reader to take a look at the
world from another angle, ‘from the bottom’. In his
poetry, the world is turned upside-down, things that
are deemed to be ‘low’ become points of reference.
Decaying, foul-smelling objects enter into the field
of his poetic imagery: the poems overflow with slime,
blood and sewage. There is no naivety; rather, it is
poetic cruelty, which rejects sweet models of being,
17
19
21
Jonas Kalvelis
From the series 'Dunes‘, 1973–1985
From the collection of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers
Kaunas Department
From the series 'Dunes', 1973–1985
Kaunas Department
23
Aquarelles
The summer wind rolls on
Over the forest on balls of wind.
May morning will soon open
Its colorful album.
The woods laden with shadows at dawn.
Bluish aquarelles mingling
With bonfires’ palettes of grime.
Lathed by broken bands
Hazy pyramids, prismse
Surprised, and glancing back, thinking
Is this a forest or Futurism?
Kazys Binkis
100 pavasariu ('100 Springs'), 1923
25
Jonas Kalvelis
From the series 'Dunes', 1973–1985
Kaunas Department
From the series 'Dune's, 1973–1985
Kaunas Department
27
Vigil In April
April, and I wasn’t yet born.
My mother was lying down, having wounded herself
In the blade of a scream, in senseless solitude:
Walls all around.
The scream turned razor-sharp – so she got up to walk.
While I listened to how, underfoot, a blue-eyed worm
And its family were eating the chaste earth,
How a hooded, nihilist bug chopped
Regenerating roots
And an aging unbaptized starwort
Prayed to the angry gods of home.
When she walked along the riverbank
(An inimitable, eternal movement),
April’s willow branches
Touched her skin with the fingers
Of a genial virtuoso, giving back
The form of her body not yet opened to anybody.
Baltimore, 1975
Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas
Ziemos teologija ('Theology Of Winter'), 1985
29
Aleksandras Macijauskas
Leaving Trees. No. 1, 1982
The author's property
Leaving Trees. No. 3, 1982
31
I don’t Mind Culture
The wild grape strangles
the unpruned plum
whose branches will break from the ripe fruit.
Two small oaks already smother the cherry trees
in the corner of the garden. Everything grows natura,
proliferates in me, shooting vines through the body‘s
holes, enlacing the soul, like a potato tuber
in the dark cellar becoming
something else, distorting its own
simple instincts and physiological needs.
Cherries grow smaller, more vinegary, fruits and the consequence
turn sour. Pungent wine
hurries me into black oblivion.
July 1998
Kornelijus Platelis
Atoslugio juosta ('Tidal Zone'), 2000
33
Alfonsas Budvytis
This is my Eventide / When Dark Thoughts Come. I-II, 1992
From the collection of the Modern Art Center (Vilnius)
35
tourist booklet
yes, here’s Lithuania
here there is nothing, but clouds
sullen ashy frowning beings
nobody knows whose creations
they’ve learned to lounge dimly around, to change
shapes, hang out in gangs
or herds, to copiously spawn
and to rain and rumble and flash
but otherwise they’re cool dudes
without them, it’s said, for sure
there’d be nothing here, well – sometimes –
double rainbows
Donaldas Kajokas
Kurciam asiliukui ('To The Deaf Donkey'), 2011
37
Algimantas Kuncius
From the series 'Distant Images', 1985–1998
The Environs of Kryzkalnis, Raseiniai region, August, 1996
The Environs of Silenai, Vilnius region, July, 1990
39
Spring In Buivydiskes
and again
the same
skylark
comes out
from the ground
northern
spirit
crouching
in a greenish
egg –
the skylark
which
I listened to
10 thousand
years
ago
not in this
world
at all
the song
the same
the same –
warbles
harmonizing
the universe
Sigitas Geda
Zalio gintaro veriniai
('Necklaces Of Green Amber'), 1988
41
Algimantas Kuncius
The Environs of Azuozeriai, Anyksciai region, August, 1990
Kruonis, Kaisiadorys region, September, 1996
43
45
20 Confessions
I decided I had experienced everything.
I had pretended to be an infant, a little child.
A little boy. A little girl.
A little, childlike God---purely Nothing.
I had pretended to be a bird.
With a bird’s eye looked at Lithuania, at its sea’s craters.
Pretended to be a priest, centaur, Strazdas, Jesus
Christ, Lithuania’s greatest poet, all people and all birds.
Charon, demiurge, playing with shells in the Baltic.
A mortal caressing Dido in dark sea-depths with whales.
Drunken Villon, or Bilhana ravishing the King’s underage daughter.
Cassandra, prophesying death.
Picasso, splitting bones.
Mad Hölderlin, thirsting for silence.
Li Po with snow-covered pennants in ancient China.
A white crow picking nettles.
All the semblances, God, that you told me to take.
Now I want to be myself.
Cruel, dark, ruthless.
Powerless, sick, noble.
Dying. Resurrecting. In order to live.
Sigitas Geda
Mamutu tevyne ('Home Of Mammoths'), 1985
47
Aleksandras Macijauskas
Demonstrations in Kaunas. No. 19, 1967
49
51
Seen Somewhere
People say that they ate each other up.
Gingerly when young
they devoured each other with their eyes,
especially him:
her lips, cheeks, breasts.
Later impassioned
they fastened lip to lip –
clear to their brains,
blending into one body,
over and over, insatiable.
It was called love,
until life befell them:
suspicion, poverty, discord.
Old folks
they gnaw away at each other – until the bone:
out of habit, loneliness,
not knowing what to do,
already deaf.
While life ebbs away,
they nag and gnaw from morning till night
bodies eroded by time –
like old coats
shackled together.
Neither one takes its eyes from the other:
jabbing blunt dull looks
already almost past death
at the gates of the hell.
Marcelijus Martinaitis
K.B. Itariamas ('K.B. Suspect'), 2004
53
Apples
In trolley number 5 on the back-seat,
next to a nodding old man from Gerontion,
a sack of ruddy apples on my lap. Not for Paris,
not for Alexander, but for my children, my family.
Unintentionally, the apples of my breasts pulsate with juices.
A young man at the doorway across from me,
fastening his gaze on the apples, the juices, the prize,
selects, it seems, something from the shadows of his soul.
In his crotch, the root of life begins to grow,
an ungovernable horn stiffening as he bashfully turns red.
The old man, seeing this, perks up and starts to chuckle.
The young man becomes flustered and gets off at the next stop.
The old man keeps chuckling. My body’s gone numb,
its juices run wild. I try to get off
at the next stop, but the forgotten sack
falls off my lap, the ruddy apples spill out.
Undelivered prize. The old man sniggers
and helps to pick up the apples. Not for Alexander,
not for Paris, but for my children, my family. I get off.
Beyond the voices of old men, past the faces of Achivi...
May the Gods send him his soul’s most beautiful woman.
December 1996
Kornelijus Platelis
Atoslugio juosta ('Tidal Zone'), 2000
55
Antanas Sutkus
At the Railway Station. Vilnius, 1964
After the Feast. Giruliai, 1964
57
The Ferry between Antakalnis and Zirmunai, Vilnius, 1964
The Morning after the Wedding. Siauliai, 1979
59
Sunset. Man Near a Haystack
A.J.
Blew snot into his palm,
flung his hand down.
Walked a bit away from the hay
and took a “Prima” from his pocket.
Took a drag. Turned
casually to the side,
pissed on a molehill,
scratched the belly of a foal...
The sun was going down. Next to the swamp
a bow-legged girl was chasing a rooster.
He cracked a smile. Inhaled.
Never read any poetry.
Donaldas Kajokas
Drabuzeliais baltais ('In White Clothes'), 1994
61
Rimaldas Viksraitis
Grimaces of the Weary Village. Valakbudis, 1998
Grimaces of the Weary Village, 1998–2001
63
A Girl’s World
While she strolls along,
Bridges turn more graceful. Riverbanks
And streets start playing in the midday sun.
Towers dress up
In their Sunday best.
Things suddenly lose their weight.
Sociology, politics and economy
Die, and everything becomes
Eros and theology.
Baltimore, 1973
65
Domicele Tarabildiene
Photomontage with Lillian Roth’s Skirt, 1932
From the collection of the National M.K. Ciurlionis Art Museum
Dragonfly, 1931
The property of the author family
67
69
Kukutis’ Visit to Vilnius
– How big Vilnius is!
At one end a stork perched on its leg,
at the other – one hears rat-a-tat-tatting!
On one side folks cut rye,
on the other –
bound sheaves,
on one side –
a child cries,
on the other –
wipes his eyes;
on one –
somebody sings,
on the other –
the accompaniment ...
How big
Like so
through
through
through
till it
Vilnius is!
it spreads over the fields of Lithuania:
Dubysa,
Luoke,
Zematija,
ends up at the sea!
Kukucio balades ('Ballads of Kukutis'), 1977
71
Sunflower
In Vilnius, in the building lot on Totoriu street,
a sunflower growing there year before last –
a flower with green Indian blood,
always looking at the sun,
a symbol of that summer –
I still listen to its swish in the wind,
I still see the golden-leafed huge blossom,
dusty and fair;
a flower of green Indian blood,
as if sprouted from Vilnius baroque,
swaying its noble head high
over scattered bricks the drowsy
heat, over the rubble,
over excavated foundations,
over the medieval city –
my royal summer park
of breaking glass, play,
blow, a madrigal over the scrap iron,
one can hear its echo from the year before last,
in the heat of the wasteland, in the destitution of that summer
a flower of the sun, swinging so
turning its gilded face through clouds of dust.
1988
Judita Vaiciunaite
Pilkas Siaures namas ('The North’s Grey House'), 1994
73
Jan Bulhak
Vilnius. The Intersection of Didzioji and Vokieciu St
DPCH VM album, No. 234, 1944
From the archive of the Department for the Preservation of the
Cultural Heritage of Vilnius Municipality
Vilnius. Traku St. The North Side of the Street. Karpiu (later
Tyszkiewicz) Estate. DPCH VM album, No. 169, 1944
From the archive of the Department for the Preservation of the
Cultural Heritage of Vilnius Municipality
75
Ghetto
At six o’clock in the morning,
when newspaper kiosks, and grocery stores
are still closed,
at six o’clock in the morning
on the side-streets of the Vilnius ghetto dandelions open,
yellow dusty street blossoms
like the yellow blossom
of stars of David
spew into the cracks from under the cobblestones,
where there are underworld chambers
ghastly looking
arches, dark deep passages,
the thick stench of garlic and fish still lingers
from the cellars and rubble of the courtyards
the golden aureoles of the dandelions open,
at six o’clock in the morning
a yellow blaze surges into a dead-end alley
of a dirty courtyard,
where the forgotten shadow of a Jew
maybe prays, maybe whispers a curse.
1993
Judita Vaiciunaite
Pilkas Siaures namas (The North’s Grey House), 1994
77
Vytautas Balcytis
Vilnius. Placioji St, 1990
Vilnius. Sv. Stepono St, 1990
79
Courtyard in Antakalnis
Entering here – it’s the same,
as diving into a dream,
or waking up. Things
escape their shape, faded
balconies, doors, unsprouted
grass. Everything
is shrunken and at the same time –
bigger. Anyhow –
there’s no place for me. The wheel’s
turned: the branch
on which, when I was late for school,
I’d hang to jump over the fence –
five meters higher, the tree,
we’ d climb to play cards –
now blossoms in Paradise. In it,
my friends who killed themselves,
play a card game, the Fool,
hiding forever from God,
the same faces worn
by children, still playing war.
Aidas Marcenas
Vargsas Jorikas ('Poor Yorick'), 1998
81
Vytautas Balcytis
Vilnius. Lukiskes, 2003
Vilnius. Naujininkai, 2001
83
Vilnius. The Library, 1987
Vilnius. Seskine, 2001
85
Uzupis
Under an aproar of lindens, before the stone
embankment, by a fast current like the Tiber,
I am drinking Gilbey’s with two bearded men.
In the twilight – the jingle of glasses, smoke.
But we have never met. I knew their parents.
Generations overtake another. The tape-recorder
warbles and crackles. My two interlocutors
want to know about questions I once pondered:
whether there is meaning to suffering and mercy –
whether art can survive if it obeys no rules.
I was the same as them, but destiny accorded
me a strange fate: this, of course, is no better
than any other. I know evil never disappears,
but one can at least strive to dispel blindness –
and poetry is more meaningful than dreams.
In summertime, I often wake before dawn,
sensing, without fear, the time is drawing
close when others will inherit the dictionary,
along with clouds, ruins, salt and bread.
And freedom is all that I will be granted.
Tomas Venclova
Sankirta ('The Junction'), 2008
87
Gintautas Trimakas
From the series 'City. A Different Angle', 2009
89
91
93
Moments of coming to oneself
- - - sitting for such a long time,
your hands squeezing your sore heavy head, because somewhere in the world my children are wretched
and – all their misery and pain...
The closest souls to me!
And that you will die, my buddy, one day,
and due to this they’ll undergo –
even more misery and pain - - - - - and such awareness, if not a plea:
you’ll be shocked by the Lord,
blue lightening will bolt through you,
in August, after the Assumption
while you’re shitting on stubble
Sigitas Geda
Sokratas kalbasi su veju
('Socrates Talks to the Wind'), 2001
95
Algirdas Seskus
From 'The Green Bridge'
97
Burning of Shoes
after building a fire I recall
my son trying on my shoes for size
as if he tried on me, myself
shoes, they are a dwelling, home for legs
retreat for a prodigal son
time walked away lives in them
each time we celebrate new shoes
we believe we will walk on farther than they promise
son wearing my shoes
I don’t know, still cannot understand
if a part of me returned in a home of shoes
or a part already left, and which part would be better
and how many shoes are destined for me, how many homes
where I will never live
I look at the flames
where my dead father’s shoes depart
the shoes in which he will live through the ages
Sigitas Parulskis
Pagyvenusio vyro pagundos
('Temptations of an Elderly Man'), 2009
99
Algirdas Seskus
101
The Apprentice
I am still looking for the key
To the language of the water-drop, the stone,
To the silence of birds
In the alder scrubs of Tartarus,
To decipher the drab wound
Of a dead pigeon –
As once in Cartagena,
As once in Vilnius.
I am still exploring
My own history from a book
Never written
Whose pages
Someone is cynically tearing out
From the end.
I have to hurry up,
Though I won’t get to know everything.
Baltimore, 1973
103
Romualdas Pozerskis
From the series 'The Baltic Way', 1989
From the series 'The Baltic Way', 1989
105
* * *
Old age falls into line by the writing desk
And splatters seas of ink
While the pedigree stock, freezing outside the door,
Wait their turn, armored with patience, de jure.
It’s not for us to pander to the mania of the deceased
And weigh the dead atoms of poetry.
We throw good-byes to the well-groomed company
And step forth afresh into the vistas of life.
Those not yet bored making out with the Muse –
Go poach your lyrics.
Whereas for us the world, blossoming with things,
Shimmers down our heartstrings.
It’s no art – to twitter like quail
And to hawk ink on swans and love.
We take a word – and with a foot, like in football,
Kick it somewhere into the berm of the sky.
We go to a Belorussian, a Pole, a German –
And say, “wanna smell Lithuanian hay?”
And everyone, regardless how learned and shrewd,
Gets down to lick us like we were finger food.
When the earth is decked in verdure
How can you bookworm yourself at a table?
We go on forgetful as hell,
Endlessly happy and well.
Kazys Binkis
100 pavasariu ('100 Springs'), 1923
107
Arunas Kulikauskas
From the series 'A Waft of the Misty Past', 1989
109
111
XIV
you’ve sent our clothes
by post to another world which
ends right here and starts
with us, because there is no past
as no tomorrow as well while sitting in your own disjunction
and seeking for a definition of success
there we will get dressed and sit
on the cemetery fence, looking out at the field
from which the townfolks’ cows return, and we return from school
in our jackets,
staring, while sitting under the blossoming plum-trees
on the cemetery fence, where the lindens of dead folks
sigh over our heads and where their birds
and their voices chatter about us again
send my fear too
and the pencil, I draw cowardly
bees collecting honey, butterflies
chased by a bird, horses
standing in the meadow and emerging
from memory, until we will jump down and walk away
across the small town of Seduva, where under the cobblestone road
the wheels of the dead rumbled so lovely, and where flowers
blossomed under the windows of our childhood
12.9.1980
Vytautas P. Bloze
Ruduo ('Autumn'), 1996
113
Arturas Valiauga
From the series 'The Week Has Eight Days', 1999
115
Fro the series 'The Week Has Eight Days', 1999
117
119
K.B.: Trash Angels
At dusk
they suddenly appear out of nowhere –
as if from a painting by Bosch, as if from the beyond,
or from a world of shadows.
Surrounding the dumpsters, they go to work,
their arms sunk in up to their elbows,
as if looking for signs of life
above a butchered beast:
for lungs, the heart, the liver.
Who is this trash-pickers’ community?
The Starving? Bums?
Alcoholics? Former hot-shots?
They work slowly, concentrating,
until they’re replaced
by stray cats
sitting a bit off to the side.
They pull things out and stuff them into sacks,
what’s still usable, what can still be civilized.
All the rest, they throw back –
torn family albums a book without a cover
a canary in a plastic bag ragged
suede gloves shreds from a ballroom gown
splinters of cut-glass drafts of poems
dentures a collection of old postcards
an invitation to a celebration
election promises of politicians
a torn in half wedding photograph –
everything already anesthetized:
hopes trust appreciation
mourning intrigues pride
turned to garbage...
As if they were the last judges,
angels from the world of shadows –
alongside the dumpsters, furiously sorting
bringing history to a close.
K.B. Itariamas ('K.B. “Suspect'), 2004
121
Now it is time for me
Now it is time for me
To go home, but where can I get a new
Face, a new mask,
So that
Your deaf eyes,
Your blind hand
Would recognize it.
I’m returning to my
Washed-out world,
Where, killed by words, things
Lie around, and the blind morning
Still fights with the phonetics
And morphology of being.
Baltimore, 1975
123
Indre Serpytyte
From the series 'Forest Brothers'
From the series 'Forest Brothers'
125
From the series 'Former NKVD–MVD–MGB–KGB Buildings'
From the series 'Former NKVD–MVD–MGB–KGB Buildings'
127
From the series 'Notebook'
From the series 'Notebook'
129
The Hospital Park
I thought – I’d die sooner or go out
of my head, thirteen years later I think
I loved myself too much spent too much time
looking at flowing water didn’t have
to understand. I was writing
poems dabbling,
wanting to be understood beyond measure
succeeding
even when I lied
pashka was a trumpet-voiced militiaman, didn’t think
a lot, talked to christ
at the dzerzhinskis marketplace, at dusk, he had
problems at his work, had
to prove to the mayor – he wasn’t stupid, at all costs
to get a certificate from the madhouse
methodically he washed and washed his socks,
sliced his throat
with a breadknife, silently
to go crazy – barefoot,
to Jerusalem - - - - - - - - - - -
1995
Aidas Marcenas
Vargsas Jorikas ('Poor Yorick'), 1998
131
Antanas Sutkus
From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Klara Cerniauskiene, Kaunas, 1997
From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Zinaida Indurskaja, Vilnius, 1994
133
From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Chaja Korbiene, Kaunas, 1997
From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Dmitrijus Kopelmanas, Vilnius, 1994
135
XVIII
some grizzled old man was looking for me, robed in XVIIIcentury clothes
long beard (hoary), with long straight hair (white whiteas happens when darkness surrounds the eyes)
I didn’t understand what he wanted (I hung up his shabby coat)
I’m a photographer, he was saying, I’d like to take a couple photos of you, as a Kapellmeister of the palace,
sea in the background, or recollections in the background, he talked on: I was in prison with
your father (he’s still alive in my photos) for cooking the books
after the war I stayed for a while in Vorkuta, there I hitched up with a bevy of amateur photographers
later got divorced again, I often hear omens (and you also)
they tell a lot about themselves, things I wouldn’t tell, we need
to talk, all this comes to mind
from the time when 550 years ago Lithuania started to shrink
and retreat from sea to sea
I understood, that he was mad, he handed me an invitation
to come to see a photo exhibition of the Hindu God, Indra
in the invitation was his own photo, such a furrowed face, such sad eyes, only tranquil madmen have such eyes
hiding them inside or under themselves, under their feet, under a cap or gloves
I confessed to
that I did not
that I did not
he has a whole
him, that I had also been crazy once, he was very sorry
write down everything, what I thought and saw in those days of spiritual freedom
take pictures of hallucinations
collection of them
if you want, I’ll show you, palace mason, he said
let’s meet tomorrow in the curves of secession art
at twelve o’clock sharp after death
in the kingdom of shadows of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, we will talk
16.9.1980
Vytautas P. Bloze
Ruduo ('Autumn'), 1996
137
Subjective Chronicle
Everyone is already dead
César Vallejo
Julius, the cattle feeder, dead, run through by a bull’s horn, a pissed
animal, doesn’t hanker to people broke loose from a stall
Daktariunas – dead, they called him Smoggy, because
on firing the furnaces he’d get completely black
Vytautas Norkunas – dead, he lived alone, winter
summer shod in gumboots
Lame Liudvikas Trumpa – dead, didn’t want to get drafted
so pounded a nail into his leg
Valerka – dead, killed riding a motorbike, you can still
see footprints on the telephone pole
Cousin Vidas – dead, he liked fishing, burying him during
the potato planting, two swans swam across the lake
Valdas the weightlifter – dead, used to hop the freights
fell down under
the wheels
My friend’s son – dead, he was born dead
God’s son – dead, he also died dead
Then there are the dead I never got to know, never greeted
never even suspected they were alive
How about the homes and places of worship – dead, seeds and fruits dead
books, prayers, compassion for folks close to you – dead
and self-pity
dead – everything matters
dead – nothing’s
Sigitas Parulskis
Mirusiuju ('Of the Dead'), 1994
139
The Poetic
Documents
film
programme
141
143
The film programme accompanying the exhibition ‘Poetic
Documents’ is an archive of the finest examples of
Lithuanian cinema, which tell poignant stories through
moving images. Most of the films shown have become
classics of Lithuanian cinema, and comprise its
highlights. The film programme comes in three parts:
‘Time’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Individual’.
The most notable feature of the films presented is
the filmmakers’ focus on the ordinary person, who is
often invisible, and just a little strange. The first
documentary films by Robertas Verba started the deheroicisation of the protagonist in Lithuanian cinema
in the mid-1960s. Speaking in poetic imagery, and
often in cryptic language, the films by Verba had a
profound influence on the work of several generations
of Lithuanian directors. An apolitical individual
who lives on the margins of society brings to the
films real-life stories and a different perception of
reality. In Soviet-era documentary films, an alternative
reality usually unfolds in the daily lives of country
dwellers. The directors portray with love and respect
the vanishing patriarchal world of the Lithuanians,
still pantheistic in nature. The films become a kind of
vehicle for the collective memory and poetic documents
of tradition.
The background to films by directors who made their
debuts in the late 1980s is the uncertainty and
loneliness of an individual who is caught up in times of
change, lingering in the sprawling misery of everyday
life. The process of observation is important to this
generation of directors. Their individual look, a search
for the meaning of life, also focuses on the human
being, but their films provide no answers. Rather, these
works themselves are questions that the filmmakers put
to the viewer. In the latter decade, an emotionally
more neutral attitude has made its way into Lithuanian
cinema. The directors seem to be looking back at the
past without memory, nostalgia or social baggage: in
other words, with ease. All their energy concentrates on
attaining a personal goal.
Despite the multi-thematic nature of the cinematic
narrative, the films are divided into groups, in order
to draw viewers’ attention, among other things, to the
thematic aspects, which serve as important references
when we watch this film programme in the context of the
photography and poetry exhibition.
Zivile Eteviciute
145
Part I.
Time
(duration 50 min).
147
Henrikas Sablevicius. A Trip across the Meadows of Mist,
1973, 10 min, Lithuanian Film Studio.
This is a light-hearted, idyllic story, the protagonist
of which is the station master of a narrow-gauge
railway, who has been working there for 33 years.
We hear folk music, there are scenes of an Easter
celebration, and the narrator speaks in the local
dialect. Threads of nostalgia, a longing for the past,
and a menacing foreboding of the future run throughout
the film, while the present is often submerged in
mist. The film was made in the 1970s, the time of the
‘stagnation’.
Henrikas Sablevicius (1930–2004) is the founder of
the Film and Television Department at the Lithuanian
Academy of Music and Theatre. He graduated from a
drama theatre studio, and acted in the theatre for some
time. Later, he worked as a director’s assistant, and
wrote screenplays. He made his directorial debut in
1963. He is considered to be the inheritor of Robertas
Verba’s tradition of poetic documentary. Sablevicius
is remembered for his ability to make intimate, warm
and irony-laden films that revealed a much more complex
reality in times of strict censorship. He made more than
50 films.
Stills from A Trip across the Meadows of Mist
149
Sarunas Bartas. In Memory of a Day Gone by, 1990,
40 min, Kinema.
This is the debut film of the director Sarunas Bartas,
which instantly won him acclaim. A strange puppeteer
who continuously enters the frame becomes the anonymous
protagonist. We do not become tied to him, and do not
follow the story; his emergence is just as unexpected as
his disappearance. Long shots, a cold and uncomfortable
environment, and an individual who is lost in it, are
the main distinctive traits of Bartas’ films. He is
interested in the margins of society, and in questions
that do not and cannot have a single correct answer. The
question of time is one of them.
Sarunas Bartas (b. 1964) studied at the Moscow
Film Institute. He is one of the most prominent
representatives of the new generation of Lithuanian
filmmakers, and one of the most acclaimed contemporary
Lithuanian film directors. Bartas is called a
philosopher of cinema, and a creator of an idiosyncratic
cinematic language. He does not pay much attention to
the borders between film genres, for most of his films
have traits of both documentary and feature films. His
films have been screened at festivals in Berlin, Venice
and Turin. The titles include: Tofolaria (1985), In
Memory of a Day Gone by (1990), Three Days (1991), The
Corridor (1994), Few of us (1996), The House (1997),
Freedom (2000), Seven Invisible Men (2005) and Eastern
Drift (2010).
Stills from In Memory of a Day Gone by
151
Part II.
The City
(duration 33 min).
153
Almantas Grikevicius. Time Walks through the City, 1966,
17 min, Lithuanian Film Studio.
The film Time Walks through the City, which was made
more than four decades ago, still captures the viewer’s
attention today with its dynamic mood. It is a film
about Vilnius as the capital of Soviet Lithuania.
It presents a modern city: new mass construction,
fashionably dressed youths who dance the twist, and the
Old Town’s architecture in the background. It was made
in the midst of Cold War tensions, and thus it is no
accident that glimpses of the shadow of menacing war
cross over into memories of earlier wars and occupations
that ravaged Vilnius, and finally take the viewer back
to 1323, the time of the founding of the city.
Almantas Grikevicius (1935–2011) studied at the Moscow
Film Institute. The film critic Zivile Pipinyte wrote of
him: ‘He is one of the great Lithuanian cinema auteurs,
an auteur par excellence, and the most professional
director of the 1960s and 1970s. He managed to say much
more than others did, because he had the ability to tell
the truth without using words, and a kind of truth that
perhaps one could not put into words.’ Grikevicius’
most important documentary films are Tales of the Sun
(1964), Three Strokes (1966), Time Walks through the
City (1966), A Prayer for Lithuania (1991), Notes in
the Margins of a Lifestyle (2002) and An Attempt to Find
out (2003); his feature films include Feelings (1968),
Ave, Vita (1969), Saduto Tuto (1974) and The Time of
Emptying Farmsteads (1976).
Stills from Time Walks through the City
155
Arunas Matelis. Ten Minutes before the Flight of Icarus,
1990, 10 min, Nominum, Lithuanian Film Studio.
In an impoverished quarter of Vilnius’ Old Town, the
mentally challenged and childishly naïve Misha is
singing his songs. At the same time, the ‘Singing
Revolution’ is resounding in the streets of the city,
and Lithuania is proclaiming its independence with songs
after 50 years of occupation. This film was shot in
the Uzupis quarter, which was particularly favoured in
Soviet times by drop-outs and artists, was famous for
its unique atmosphere, and would soon become one of the
most prestigious areas of Vilnius.
Arunas Matelis (b. 1961) studied applied mathematics,
and went on to study at the Lithuanian Academy of Music
and Theatre. His films have earned him international
acclaim, and are screened at prestigious international
film festivals. He won the Directors Guild of America
award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. His films
include Before Flying back to Earth (2005), Sunday. The
Gospel According to the Lift-Operator Albertas (2003),
Flight over Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence (2000,
together with A. Stonys), Diary of Forced Emigration
(1999), The First Farewell to Paradise (1998), From
Unfinished Tales of Jerusalem (1996), Self-Portrait
(1993), Ten Minutes before the Flight of Icarus (1991),
The Baltic Way (1990, together with A. Stonys) and
Giants of Pelesa (1989).
Stills from Ten Minutes before the Flight of Icarus
157
Deimantas Narkevicius. Ausgetraeumt, 2010, 6 min.
This short film was shot in the Naujininkai area of
Vilnius, which is currently perhaps the most down-atheel and the most dangerous. As the industrialisation
of the city gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s,
the mass construction of apartment blocks began in
Naujininkai, in order to accommodate workers who had
arrived in the capital. The Dzukija workers’ canteen
is an example of late modernist architecture, and it is
here that a performance by young musicians takes place.
The film takes us back in a peculiar way to the time
that is portrayed so joyously in Almantas Grikevicius’
film Time Walks through the City. Yet the director’s
perspective here is already different. Memory and
the drama of the past do not bother him. He looks at
everything with no concern, much like the easy movement
of the camera on the road that leads to the airport.
The search for opportunities is directed onwards, into
the future. In German, the word Ausgetraeumt refers to
an intermediate state between sleep and waking, or to
something that has been dreamt of.
Deimantas Narkevicius (b. 1964) studied sculpture at
Vilnius Academy of Art. He is one of the best-known and
most internationally acclaimed contemporary Lithuanian
artists. His work has been exhibited at the world’s
most prestigious galleries and art events. He has
recently been working mostly in film. Experimenting
with the structure and visual expression of film, he
tells private and public stories, positioning himself
as an integral part of these stories, and creates
subjectively sensitive and forceful works of art.
Narkevicius’ films include: Restricted Sensation (2011),
Ausgetraeumt (2010), Into the Unknown (2009), The Dud
Effect (2008), The Head (2007), Revisiting Solaris
(2007), Disappearance of a Tribe (2005), Matrioskos
(2005), Once in the 20th Century (2004), The Role of a
Lifetime (2003), Scena (2003), Countryman (2002), Energy
Lithuania (2000), Legend Coming True (1999) and Hisstory (1998), Europa 540 54' - 250 19' (1997).
Stills from Ausgetraeumt
159
Part III.
The Individual
(duration 74 min).
161
Robertas Verba. The Old Man and the Soil, 1965, 20 min,
Lithuanian Film Studio.
The debut film by Robertas Verba became a classic of
Lithuanian cinema almost overnight. The Old Man and the
Soil began a new stage in the development of Lithuanian
cinematography. The authentic lives of rural dwellers
became the dominant theme in Verba’s films, and would go
on to influence in future work of Lithuanian directors.
Despite their optimism and vitality, the old people in
Verba’s films, dwellers of the Lithuanian countryside,
are the last witnesses of an archaic world, whose
traditions are disappearing just as they themselves are.
The 1950s and 1960s were a time when country dwellers
moved en masse, forcibly or of their own accord, to the
cities, where before the war less than a third of all
Lithuanian citizens had resided.
Robertas Verba (1932–1994) is a documentary filmmaker
and the founder of the Lithuanian poetic documentary
tradition. He graduated from the Camerawork Department
of the Moscow Film Insitute. His films, in which old
dwellers of traditional Lithuanian villages speak
about themselves and their lives with great warmth and
openness, are considered to be highlights of Lithuanian
documentary cinema: The Old Man and the Soil (1965),
Ciutyta Ruta (1968), The Thoughts of Hundred-Year-Olds
(1969) and Sisters (1973).
Stills from The Old Man and the Soil
163
Henrikas Sablevicius. The Sorceress, 1975, 10 min,
Lithuanian Film Studio.
This is a vivacious narrative about Eugenija Simkunaite
(1920–1996), a doctor of natural sciences, who, like
other people, styled herself ‘a witch’. Simkunaite, who
dedicated all of her life to the study of medicinal
plants, developed a strong interest in folk medicine:
spells, magic and rituals. Her friends remember her as
an extraordinary personality. Simkunaite was sociable,
and at the same time she had a habit of expressing
her opinions in a firm and uncompromising way. She
was convinced that a person should never accept any
remuneration for helping the sick. Her other passion,
besides herbalism, was opera.
Stills from The Sorceress
165
Audrius Stonys. Earth of the Blind, 1992, 24 min,
Kinema.
According to the director, making this film was an
introduction to the world of cinema and the search for
freedom, while observing and submitting to intuition.
It has no words, because we can hear more in silence
than when speaking. The director himself said: ‘To see
differently, not in order to satisfy our curiosity, but
to be able to say that the world doesn’t end here, that
there are endless horizons stretching beyond the visible
line that we can see, that finiteness, as the most
veritable sign of death, does not exist.’ The film won
the European Film Academy’s Felix award in 1991 as the
best documentary film of the year.
Audrius Stonys (b. 1966) studied at the Vilnius State
Conservatory, and worked as an intern at Jonas Mekas’
Anthology Film Archive in New York. He has served on
the juries of the Leipzig, Neubrandenburg, Siena, Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro film festivals. He taught
a course on documentary cinema at the European Film
College (Denmark) in 2004–2005. His films have won
awards at 19 international film festivals. The films by
Stonys include: Ramin (2011), I Walked through Fire,
You were with Me (2010), Four Steps (2008), The Bell
(2007), Mist of Mists (2006), The One who is not There
(2004), The Last Car (2002), Alone (2001), Flight over
Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence (2000, together
with Arunas Matelis), Fedya. Three Minutes after the
Big Bang (1999), The Harbour (1998), Flying over a Blue
Field (1996), Antigravity (1995), Apostle of Ruins
(1993), Earth of the Blind (1992), The Baltic Way (1990,
together with Arunas Matelis) and Open the Door to he
who is Coming (1989).
Stills from Earth of the Blind
167
ISBN 978-609-426-040-7
9 786094 260407
Published by Lietuvos DailEs Muziejus
Boksto str. 5, 01126, Vilnius
Printed by UAB „StandartU spaustuvE“
Dariaus ir Gireno g. 39, 02189 Vilnius
Paper:
Inside page Munken Lynx 150 gsm
Cover Metalprint 280 gsm
Edition of 2000

Exhibition Catalogue - Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the

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