bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“The Latvian Dream” as a Meeting Space with the Other
Authors: Prusinowska Justyna
Published: November 2022

In Latvian literature, there is a dream (or vision or some other subconscious process) about Latvianness and Latvian national identity, which has repeatedly appeared for more than a few decades. The hero of this dream meets the Other and this confrontation allows him to recognize and understand himself, something that is difficult to achieve in a state of consciousness. The Other is not always a Black Knight in armour reflecting upon the life of an ordinary peasant; he can also be another Latvian, usually an (im) migrant – someone who sees the nation from a very different perspective.This article focuses on several literary works depicting this kind of extraordinary meeting while asleep or unconscious (the space of a dream, a projection, a fairy-tale or a fantasy journey) with a variously understood Other, including Wannem Ymanta (1802) by Garlieb Merkel, the epic Lāčplēsis (The Bear-Slayer, 1888) by Andrejs Pumpurs, Lāčplēsis trimdā (Lāčplēsis in exile, 1958/1986/1990) by Dzintars Sodums and Latviešu sapnis (Latvian dream, 2002) by Agnese Bule. All of these books were very important at key turning-points or difficult moments in Latvia’s history – the process of national awakening and identity-building always involved depicting the other face of the Other.
For There to Be Meaning, There Must Be Fiction
Authors: Jevsejevas Paulius
Published: November 2022

Nijolė Keršytė, Pasakojimo pramanai: Monografija, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2016, 496 p., ISBN 978-609-459-798-5
About the Exact Confluence of Words: Translations and Evaluations of Judita Vaičiūnaitė’s Poetry
Authors: Tūtlytė Rita
Published: November 2022

Gintarė Bernotienė, Apie žodžių sandūros tikslumą: Juditos Vaičiūnaitės lyrikos vertimai ir vertinimai: Monografija, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2016, 257 p. ISBN 978-609-425-185-6
About Maironis: An Anthology of Maironis Reception (1890–2010)
Authors: Šeina Viktorija
Published: November 2022

Apie Maironį: Maironio kritinės recepcijos rinktinė (1890–2010), sudarė Tomas Andriukonis, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2016, 666 p., ISBN 978-609-425-201-3
The Concept of the Demonic in Herkus Kunčius’s Novella A Most Loyal Metaphysical Friend and Marius Ivaškevičius’s Drama The Mistr
Authors: Čiočytė Dalia
Published: November 2022

There are two works of contemporary Lithuanian literature that effectively explore the theme of the demonic: Herkus Kunčius’s novella A Most Loyal Metaphysical Friend (Ištikimiausias metafizinis draugas, 2010) and the play The Mistr (Mistras, 2010), by Marius Ivaškevičius. The author of this article examines how these two works modify the traditional literary concept of the demonic – both works present the demonic not in classical, transcendental terms but as an immanent force. Considering the works from the perspective of literary theology, the author asks whether, and which kind of, theological thinking they develop.Herkus Kunčius’s novella is a postmodern metafiction (a fiction about a fiction): the central character of the narrative is the legendary Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula, the main character in Irish writer Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula (1897). Kunčius’s Dracula is the creation of another character’s unhealthy consciousness – a “creation within a creation.” A parody of horror novels, films, etc. about vampires, the novella also parodies the language of psychiatrists, the characters who develop an idea about the demonic as an untreatable psychiatric illness: in the nihilistic reality of the work there simply is no one to treat it.Marius Ivaškevičius’s drama is a tragi-comical grotesque pasted together from Lithuanian historical and cultural symbols and analyzes the person of Adomas Mickevičius (1798–1855). In religious and cultural history, the prototype for Mistr in the play – Andrzej Towiański (1799–1878), a self-proclaimed prophet, “a mistr called by God” – represents the archetypical figure of the false prophet. The main meaning accorded to the demonic as represented in Ivaškevičius’s play is the demonic nature of political oppression: the work offers an original variation on the entanglement of political aggression and the demonic typically found in Lithuanian literature.
The “Christening” of Ancient Baltic Religion in Kazys Bradūnas’s Poetry
Authors: Čiočytė Dalia
Published: November 2022

Baltic cultural history is marked by deep tensions between ancient religion and Christianity. These tensions are explored in Lithuanian literature, which reveals their drama and tragedy and/or “christens” the old faith by drawing connections between it and Christianity. The most distinct poetic version of this kind of “christening” is the poetry of Kazys Bradūnas (1917–2000); the author of this article discusses Bradūnas’s oeuvre through the lens of literary theology, a discipline which uses theological and aesthetic criteria to study how literature explores questions around transcendence. Bradūnas brings to light non-Christian apostolic manifestations in Baltic culture, in the pillaging and murder that took place under the guise of prostelatizing, and reveals the deep connections between the ancient Baltic and Christian world-views. If, for Bradūnas, a Christian poet, Christianity is a revealedreligion, one that has been given, he sees the old faith – an intuitive quest for the essence of humanity using only human means – as an expression of his people’s distinct character. This determination to articulate the nation’s distinct culture as a form of mentality is the clear intention of Bradūnas’s poetry. In commenting on the distinct nature of Lithuanian and Baltic culture the poet focuses on three aspects: creativity, agrarianism, and statehood.The most artistically important figure to emerge from the dialogue between the old faith and Christianity is the main character from the original mythological story of the grass snake Žilvinas – a betrayed and murdered metaphysical king. The connection between Žilvinas and Christ activates primordial Baltic cultural experience and paves the way for a Lithuanian conception of Christ. Žilvinas is an important figure in Christianity’s inculturation in Lithuania and evidence of how primordial Baltic experience enriched the reception of Christ. In making typological connections between the experience of the Crusades and the aggression of Russian communism, and searching for meaning in suffering, the poet draws on the Christian concept of suffering.
Vytautas Kubilius: The Relevance of Soviet-Era Hermeneutics
Authors: Rubavičius Vytautas
Published: November 2022

The liberation from the Soviet occupation marked a fundamental shift in Lithuanian life and culture, it is essential that a more explicit picture of the experience of life under Soviet rule be developed. The author of this article explores the kinds of issues that arise when attempting to understand one’s own remembered life, why there are differences in versions of the past – especially between the stories of people remembering that past and those recreating it from documents and others’ accounts. The author draws attention to the fact that drawing out and “writing” the past, especially while attempting to “distance” oneself from it, inevitably opens up important ethical questions around remembering and historical narrative in general. The article stresses the importance, when recalling and studying the recent past, of integrating internal, self-analytical, and external hermeneutic perspectives, of paying attention to the complex ethical issues involved in the interpretation of texts and documents when assessing people’s biographies and behaviors and creating general, evaluative “portraits” of them. In his consideration of the insights contained in the journals of the literary scholar Vytautas Kubilius, an important cultural figure of the recent past, the author of this article comes to the conclusion that no socalled scholarly studies of memory can be free of the ethical dimensions of understanding and self-perception. The article also highlights certain unique aspects of monograph texts about Lithuanian authors and stresses the importance of grasping the particularities of life during the Soviet period in any effort to understand its texts and documents. The article draws the conclusion that awareness of the ethical aspect of hermeneutics instills awareness of the moral aspects of one’s interpretation and the necessity of “checking” one’s interpretation, and especially any moral assessments, against the question: how would I have acted in those circumstances, as I have imagined them, or today’s actual ones?
Philology as a General and a Personal Area of Interest
Authors: Daujotytė Viktorija
Published: November 2022

Lietuvos literatūros antologija, 1795–1831: Šviečiamasis klasicizmas, preromantizmas, sudarė Brigita Speičytė; parengė Roma Bončkutė, Liucija Citavičiūtė, Reda Griškaitė, Vita Ivanauskaitė-Šeibutienė, Erika Malažinskaitė, Saulė Matulevičienė, Jurgis Pakerys, Žavinta Sidabraitė, Brigita Speičytė, Aurelija Tamošiūnaitė, Dalius Viliūnas; iš lenkų, prancūzų, vokiečių k. vertė Vytautas P. Bložė, Vladas Braziūnas, Liucija Citavičiūtė, Dalia Čiočytė, Irena Daugirdaitė, Reda Griškaitė, Antanas A. Jonynas, Birutė Jonuškaitė, Algis Kalėda, Viktoras Katilius, Regina Koženiauskienė, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Vincas Laurynaitis, Vilius Litvinavičius, Kornelijus Platelis, Romanas Plečkaitis, Brigita Speičytė, Eugenijus Žmuida, Albinas Žukauskas, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2016, t. 1–2, 760, 534 p. ISBN 978-609-425-173-3 (1 t.), ISBN 978-609-425-174-0 (2 t.)
The Sociability of Janina Degutytė’s Poetry
Authors: Satkauskytė Dalia
Published: November 2022

Janina Degutytė (1929–1990) has gone down the history of Lithuanian literature as a poet who has continued the lyrical and neo-romantic tradition of Salomėja Nėris (1904–1944), whose worldview is dominated by the intimate relationship between the individual and the world, humans and nature, and, in late poetry, the dramatics resulting from her personal life story. The article raises the questions of whether one could consider such personal lyrical poetry as sociable, or whether it is possible to examine for the seal of problems, conflicts, and imagination characteristic of the period when Degutytė created her works – the Soviet era.The stimulus and theoretical basis for this research was Theodor Adorno’s article On Lyric Poetry and Society. Social assumptions for lyrical poetry, as described by Adorno, are considered the first and most abstract layer of sociability. The author discovers the other two layers of sociability of Degutytė’s lyrical poetry by doing sociocritical analysis, where she compares the official Soviet discourse with the poetic text by observing the ways in which poetry reacts to the sociolectic situation of the Soviet era. She considers the second layer of sociability to be the traces of the Soviet discourse in a poem, such as the speaker’s enthusiasm, maximalism, cosmic perspective of the living world, and the contraposition of spirituality and materiality. The third layer is considered to be the very situation of reciting the poetry, whose basis is an intimate appeal to the other. The Soviet reader perceived it as an alternative to Soviet rhetoric.In her late poetry, along with the dramatic reflection on the relationship between mother and daughter, the poet develops the theme of social sensitivity, and intensifies her effort to give voice to the mutes of society.
Value Сhanges in Contemporary Emigrant Literature: To Have or to Be?
Authors: Laurušaitė Laura
Published: November 2022

The author of the article, based on the method of imagological analysis, discusses the competing scenarios of a contemporary person’s existence – to have and to be, which emerge in their especially relevant forms in the contemporary prose by Lithuanian and Latvian emigrants.The prevailing economic causes of emigration determine the predominance of having in the contemporary emigration literature. Consumption as an impetus for happiness is more typical of former societies of lack, who do not yet understand the imagological nature of such happiness – the illusiveness of possessing. In the social structure of the host countries, Lithuanian and Latvian emigrants are usually the disadvantaged class, and therefore their desire to flaunt externally, to demonstrate their superiority by externals, is eminently obvious. They strengthen their symbolic power and self-realization by displaying themselves wearing demonstrative emblems in the form of expensive items, cars, and bright makeup. The article identifies other contemporary changes of values that have emerged in the literature written by emigrants: the shredded concept of freedom, loss of dignity and self-worth for the sake of money, and imperatives of bondage (dog imagotopics). The tendencies of such behavior (distorted conception of power, dominance, prestige, dignity, and freedom) unveil the general common problems of post-Soviet societies, revealing the erosion of existence, the distorted values, and sometimes the reverse of these two social forms, when possessing finds itself in the place of being. The new egoistical ideals of freedom, which contemporary emigrants cling to, testify to endangered social thinking, the weakening of the national mentality, and the entrenching self-centeredness.The model of being, which is alternative to having, is less frequent in the narratives of emigration, and usually manifests itself as a companion of academic emigration. The paradigm of being focuses on cultural rather than material or physical property, as well as on active self-realization and inner personal development.
Technical Objects in the Writing of a Philologist: The Coordinates of Juozas Aputis’s Worldview
Authors: Mačianskaitė Loreta
Published: November 2022

The author of this article explores how the prose of Juozas Aputis differs from Soviet-era works that dealt with similar themes. Recalling Aputis’s interest in technique, she examines its role in his works. The author of the article explores several aspects of Aputis’s prose: parallels between literary techniques and a character’s personal, inner life; shifting perceptions of the world; connections to vehicles; and attitudes toward traditional values and the modernisation of rural life. The unusual view of the world modelled in Aputis’s prose opens up possibilities for reflecting upon Aputis’s unique role in Lithuanian literature as a mediator between the opposing poles of nature and civilisation. The article calls into question the stereotypical view of Aputis as an author of rural life and suggests that his work can also be viewed within the context of Modernist literature – that Aputis can be seen as breaking with tradition not only in terms of ideas but in the figurative and stylistic aspects of his writing. At the end of the study the article raises the question of Aputis’s potential for reaching contemporary readers and recommends that the interpretive concepts of defamiliarisation and mythical narrative be applied to his work.
The Short Novel The Sound of Organs in a Laundry: One Generation’s Attitudes During the Soviet Period
Authors: Sprindytė Jūratė
Published: November 2022

The author of this article calls into question the genre identification of Juozas Aputis’s work Vargonų balsas skalbykloje (The Sound of Organs in a Laundry), which is technically a “short novel,” and analyses the different life paths of the three main characters (a famous organist, a high-ranking official and the latter’s wife) using the productive Soviet Studies concept of “cultural attitude.” Key factors determining attitude are understanding of the situation and the conscious or instinctive choice of career. The publication of the novel in 1989 indicates that, with the collapse of the Soviet regime, Aputis was able to more openly examine questions of collaboration and non-conformism, the significance of individual’s ethical principles which determines diverse relationships to the ideological regime. Equally traumatised by the horrors of the post-war period, the now adult characters represent fundamentally divergent attitudes. At the end of the article the author examines the revisions that Aputis made and considers what determined them when the work was republished in 2010.
On the Road? In the Fog?
Authors: Sventickas Valentinas
Published: November 2022

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Remembering the Writer Juozas Aputis
Authors: Jonuškaitė Birutė
Published: November 2022

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In Search of Juozas Aputis
Authors: Kazlauskas Edmundas
Published: November 2022

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Recognisable Signs of Life and Work
Authors: Šimkus Antanas
Published: November 2022

Valdemaras Kukulas, Pauliaus Širvio gyvenimas ir kūryba: Ženklai ir pražvalgos: Monografija, Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 2013, 361,[1] p., ISBN 978-9986-39-785-4
Vilnius in Jurgis Kunčinas’s Tūla: From Urban Practices towards Textual Strategies
Authors: Bidlauskienė Gintarė
Published: November 2022

A thorough review of studies carried out on the urban aspect of Jurgis Kunčinas’s novel Tūla has revealed a tendency to ignore the temporal aspect. Thus, the article complements existing research with the analysis in geocriticism, urban studies, and intermediality (intertextuality). It focuses on the representation of Vilnius created in Tūla, aiming to reveal the relationship between the textual form of the novel and the image of the city it depicts. The analysis examines the structure of Kunčinas’s city representation, its cartographic accuracy and dominant motifs: the sensory experiences of the city related to the gaze and walking of the main character. These two practices create the spatial logic of the novel: different gazing modes make the urban space visible, and the main character’s walking links objects in space. The junctions that he forms along his paths are also part of the novel’s structure. This way, the depicted city objects become landmarks of the narrative. Finally, the analysis of the representation of Vilnius in Tūla highlights the links between the construction of the fictional urban space and the structure of the city novel. In the novel, different techniques used to capture Vilnius, as well as different ways of experiencing the city are related to text’s content and its narrative form. On the other hand, the analysis enables to consider the intermedial aspects of the image of Vilnius created by Kunčinas, and especially their relation to visual intertexts that have not yet been examined by other researchers
Lost in Memory
Authors: Mostauskis Stasys
Published: November 2022

Odeta Žukauskienė, Žilvinė Gaižutytė-Filipavičienė, Atminties ir žvilgsnio trajektorijos: vaizdo kultūros refleksija, Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas, 2018, 303 p., ISBN 978-609-8231-05-2.
Imagology in Practice
Authors: Cidzikaitė Dalia
Published: November 2022

Imagology Profiles: The Dynamics of National Imagery in Literature, edited by Laura Laurušaitė, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018, 265 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1-5275-1102-6; ISBN-10: 1-5275-1102-2.
Literary Intertextuality of Tomas Venclova‘s Poetry
Authors: Nastopka Kęstutis
Published: November 2022

Borrowing from poetry which belongs to another literary epoch or is written in another language is a constituent part of poetic action. According to Thomas Stearns Eliot, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” In semiotic terms, this can be described as transformation of another poetic language. Algirdas Julius Greimas said: “Meaning is nothing else but transposing one level of language into another level, or one language into another, a different one.” This paper aims to describe the traces of interaction of poets who wrote in different languages and to discuss the direction of transformation of poetic language.The most authoritative teacher of the young Tomas Venclova was Boris Pasternak. The early poems of the Lithuanian poet remind us of Pasternak’s poems from his collection Above the Barriers in their metric variations, rhyming schemes, and alliterative clusters. Two poems by Venclova dedicated to the memory of Pasternak were written in 1960 and 1961. What Venclova ‘steals’ from Osip Mandelstam is mostly semantic figures. In a number of poems, Venclova gets very close to the polyphonic language of this Russian poet. Joseph Brodsky is another constant dialogic partner of Venclova. Sometimes Venclova quotes or paraphrases Lithuanian poetic texts. His poems integrate Lithuanian history of the 20th century, and touch upon the themes of the Holocaust, partisan movement, and the victims of the occupational regime.The values paradigm in Venclova’s poetry is supported by Dante and Shakespeare, as well as a number of 19th and 20th century poets, such as Keats, Baudelaire, Rilke, Apolinnaire or Dylan Thomas. Cyprian Norwid’s “A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem” and Czesław Miłosz’s “Ars Poetica?” are also used as poetic subtext. In his later period, Venclova wrote five poems on Biblical stories.Venclova’s connections with the Lithuanian poetic tradition can be defined as hyponymous relationship of belonging: the language and the historical memory. The poetic meanings created by Venclova are actualisations of subtexts of poetry written in many languages. Therefore we can consider Venclova to be a European poet who writes in the Lithuanian language.
Jealous of Copernicus. Tomas Venclova in Russian: Problems Translating Traditional Verse and Solutions
Authors: Gerasimova Anna
Published: November 2022

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Finding the Measure of Eduardas Mieželaitis‘s Format
Authors: Šidlauskas Marijus
Published: November 2022

Elena Baliutytė-Riliškienė, Eduardas Mieželaitis tarp Rytų ir Vakarų: pasivaikščiojimas su Waltu Whitmanu ir staugsmas su Allenu Ginsbergu: monografija, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2019, 350 p., ISBN 978-609-425-234-1
The Importance of Donatas Sauka‘s Book Apie laiką ir save
Authors: Daujotytė Viktorija
Published: November 2022

Donatas Sauka, Apie laiką ir save, sudarė, įvadą ir komentarus parašė Saulė Matulevičienė, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2019, 294 p., ISBN 978-609-425-248-8
Poetic Discourse in the Early Works of Sigitas Geda
Authors: Jevsejevas Paulius
Published: November 2022

The article examines poetic discourse in the early works of Sigitas Geda— these include Pėdos [Footprints, 1966], Geda’s first published collection of poems, and Strazdas [A Thrush, 1967], a long narrative poem. Poetic discourse is loosely defined in the article as a kind of modelling of meaningful speech in textual practice. The particular literary works selected are read as manifestations of a type of poetic discourse. The article presents an interpretative explication of this particular type and contrasts this approach with established mythopoetic readings of Geda’s oeuvre. In an attempt to examine poetic discourse enunciation, the article describes qualities of the textual fabric, e.g. modes of cohesion, part-towhole relations, collocations, dynamic vectors (such as crescendos), figures of the speaker, object representation, etc.The article singles out and discusses three aspects of the works in question: the particularities of plural enunciation and the way the enunciator projects itself as the ground for the totality of the represented world; the particular cognitive semiotic construct wherein a traditional landscape is represented as a diagrammatic sign that generates signification related to the past, integrating selected modern objects; a micro-plot of ecstatic experience by way of an immediate subjective encounter with the immensity of the past; and epiphanic images of primitive cosmology that emerge in moments of extreme intensity, as attained in the process of enunciation by the selfprojecting imagination.
A Twofold Look: Researching Vaižgantas’s Studies and Epistolary
Authors: Raškevičiūtė Jurgita Žana
Published: November 2022

Aistė Kučinskienė, Kultūrišku keliu: Juozo Tumo-Vaižganto laiškai, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2019. ‒ 256 p., ISBN 978-609-425-284-6
A New Ethnomusicological Monograph: On Tradition in a Contemporary Way, On Community in a Global Way, and On Amateurism in a Professional Way
Authors: Sadauskienė Jurga
Published: November 2022

Aušra Žičkienė, Savaiminė daina: nežymus būvis, tradicinės struktūros, vietinės reikšmės,globali raiška, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2019. ‒ 352 p., ISBN 978-609-425-276-1
Juozas Tumas’ Ministry in the Diocese of Samogitia (Telšiai) in the Late 19th Century
Authors: Žaltkauskaitė Vilma
Published: November 2022

The author of the article analyzes the ministry of the Roman Catholic priest Juozas Tumas in the Diocese of Samogitia (Telšiai) in the late 19th century and discusses his position in the hierarchy of the local Church at that time. The article covers the years that Tumas spent in the Samogitian (Telšiai) Seminary in Kaunas (1888-1893) and his first clerical appointment in Mintauja (Jelgava) (1894-1895). The policy of secular government towards the Roman Catholic clergy is also discussed in the article. The author uses several sources, such as documents of the Roman Catholic Church and secular government, as well as ego-documents. She clarifies certain historiographical details that have been prevalent in the research of Tumas’s biography, and interprets new archival data. In the conclusions, the author of the article argues that from the very first year, Tumas belonged to a subgroup of students who constituted a minority in the seminary. The subgroup was characterized by higher education acquired in gymnasiums and progymnasiums. It also stood out for its social attitudes. Its members were active in the society and had been critical of the ecclesiastical authority and the state which favored the Orthodox Church. In the context of the appointments of other newly ordained priests, Tumas’ work in Mintauja did not stand out.
Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas and the Society for Making Lithuania Beautiful
Authors: Smilingytė-Žeimienė Skirmantė
Published: November 2022

The article presents activities of the Society for Making Lithuania Beautiful established in Lithuania in 1921. The vision and actions of its ideologue and first chairman Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas contributed to a more active process of memorialization in Lithuania, introducing the idea that it was necessary to build monuments as a ‘reward’ to prominent people or historical figures and fill in the vacuum created by the tsarist occupation which banned national monuments in the country. At that time, there was a great shortage of memorials, so the decision to introduce new identification marks in the form of a tree (every year, a tree with an agreed name and memorial function was planted in a special place) or of a monument was timely, as was the attempt to replant the war-torn country and beautify its surroundings. The imperative goal to make Lithuania beautiful turned into actions and traditions, such as annual visits and upkeep of historical objects, especially hill forts, tree planting and bird festivals. Tumas-Vaižgantas and the Society encouraged Lithuanians to nurture the landscape and cultural heritage objects, to create signs significant for the nation, and at the same time, spaces of local memory. In this way, the romanticized concept of statehood was introduced through visuals.
Simonas Daukantas in Interwar Reflections
Authors: Lazauskaitė Rūta
Published: November 2022

The interwar memory of Daukantas is closely connected with teachers. They raised the issue of republishing of his texts, popularized the practice of visiting Daukantas‘s grave, and took care of his monument. Another noninstitutional initiative that provided a momentum for all interwar studies on Daukantas and his works was the publication of his historical work, Būdas senovės lietuvių, kalnėnų ir žemaičių [The Character of Ancient Lithuanians, Highlanders and Samogitians]. Provincial teacher Petras Sūdžius wrote a popular biography about Daukantas and created a network of people who wanted to pre-order the book. In 1935, the third edition of the Būdas was published. The lack of academic biography about Daukantas, which led to amateurism and variety in interpretations, was another trend of that period. Due to the absence of information and research, the noble origin of Daukantas was considered to be fake (falsified). Contrary to the Soviet historiography, the image of Daukantas was not secularized then. A 1936 Juozas Ambrazevičius‘s interpretation of Daukantas stood out in the methodological sense. Using the point of view of the history of ideas, he revealed the significance of Daukantas‘s ideas for the formation of national consciousness and their subsequent acceptance by the society. Ambrazevičius also argued that Daukantas‘s psychologized view was instrumental in the secession of Lithuanians from the tradition of the twonation, Polish and Lithuanian, state as a procedural mental change which was natural and necessary psychologically.
Lithuanian Authors and Topics in the US
Authors: Kelertienė Violeta , Putrius Birutė
Published: November 2022

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One Field, Many Plots of Land
Authors: Šeferis Vaidas
Published: November 2022

The Literary Field under Communist Rule, edited by Aušra Jurgutienė & Dalia Satkauskytė, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018. Series: “Lithuanian Studies without Borders”. ISBN: 9781618119773 (hardcover); ISBN 9781618119780 (electronic); 258 pp.
It Is Worth Returning to Žemaitė
Authors: Bleizgienė Ramunė
Published: November 2022

Viktorija Daujotytė, Žemaitė: gyvenimo gramatika, Vilnius: Odilė, 2019, 373 p., ISBN 978-609-8222-10-4
Mielcke or Milkus, or How to Write Prussian Lithuanian Personal Names of Non-Lithuanian Origin?
Authors: Sidabraitė Žavinta
Published: November 2022

The history of the adaptation of the surname of Christian Gottlieb Mielcke (1733-1807), one of the most important creators of Lithuanian language and literature at the turn of the 19th century, covers the period from the 19th century to the present day. The adaptation of this personal name of non-Lithuanian origin has undergone probably the biggest changes in Lithuanian culture. Today, we count eight different variants of its usage: Mielcke, Mielckė, Mielke, Mielkus, Milkė, Mylkė, Milkus, and Mielcke’ė. In the 20th century, two variants were the most common: Milkė in the interwar period and the first years after the war and Milkus from the mid1960s. Jurgis Lebedys (1913-1970), the most authoritative researcher of old Lithuanian literature and a lecturer at Vilnius University, introduced this form in the Lithuanian language. Adapted following the example of the popular Prussian Lithuanian name (not surname!), the form took root rather quickly and easily not only in Lithuania but also in the diaspora. After Lithuania regained its independence at the end of the 20th century and when the world of the Western culture opened up, two groups of researchers formed. One group advocates the original form Mielcke and implement it in their works, while other group, trying to preserve the connection with the long tradition of Lithuanian research, uses the adapted form, Milkus. As a single drop reflects the entire ocean, so the tradition of the use of the personal name Mielcke’ė and today’s practice reveal the problem of the use of personal names of all famous Lithuanian writers of non-Lithuanian origin. It can only be solved by an extensive scientific discussion.
The problem of Intellectual Lithuanian Literature: The Case of Ramūnas Klimas
Authors: Tutlytė Kristina
Published: November 2022

Using the approach of cognitive poetics, the author of the article analyses Ramūnas Klimas’ story, Gintė ir jos žmogus [Gintė and Her Man]. By employing Peter Stockwell’s concept of cognitive deixis, the technique of deictic transfer and aspects of schema theory in the text, the fundamental mechanisms of the construction of the story have been highlighted, which in turn, lead to the observation that the text provokes the delayed categorization discussed by Reuven Tsur. In the text, the deictic center of the implicit reader is being developed in different temporal and spatial dimensions using deixis of the respective categories. The interpretation is complicated by the highlighting of the textual deixis: several versions of the same story are presented, the process of the narration itself is commented, and the reader is addressed directly, which, according to Stockwell, can be understood as an attempt to destroy the reader’s belief in the truthfulness of the story being told and to put them out. These formal features also determine the depth and multi-layered nature of the text. Looking at the formal elements of the text and the techniques it employs from the point of view of cognitive poetics, the story by Klimas can be viewed as an attempt to criticize the official Soviet discourse and undermine the dangers of trusting blindly the truth proclaimed by one man.
A Literary Gallery of Images of 20th-Century Totalitarianism and 21st-Century (E)migration
Authors: Butkus Vigmantas
Published: November 2022

Zanda Gūtmane, Totalitārisma traumu izpausmes Baltijas prozā, Sērija: Salīdzināmā literatūra (Baltijas literatūra), Rīga: Latvijas Universitātes Literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts, [2019], 591 p., ISBN 978-9984-893-41-9.

Laura Laurušaitė, Literatūra, mobilumas, imago: Lietuvių ir latvių XXI a. (e)migracijos patirtys, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2019, 321 p.,ISBN 978-609-425-257-0
The Mother City of Jewish Public Life: Zalmen Reyzen's Image of Interwar Vilna
Authors: Kassow Samuel D.
Published: November 2022

A specific vision of Vilna as the model of an East European Jewish civil society crystallised in the years during and just after the First World War, and Vilna’s professional elites and journalists played a critical role in the crafting and shaping of this idea. This paper shows how Zalmen Reyzen, a leading Vilna Yiddishist intellectual who edited Vilna’s most important Yiddish daily between the wars, Der tog (1919–1939), tirelessly sought to convince others that Vilna had a special role to play as a model for the entire Jewish Diaspora, as a city uniquely suited to build a Jewish civil society based on a shared language, Yiddish. Reyzen told his readers in articles and editorials that the collapse of the tsarist regime gave Jews an unprecedented chance to build a new secular school system, create a new democratic communal board (kehile), and break the stranglehold of old communal elites.
Speaking for the Shulhoyf: The Vilna Voices of Ayzik-Meyer Dik
Authors: Roskies David G.
Published: November 2022

When the Maskil Ayzik-Meyer Dik (ca. 1807–1893) retooled as a kritiker, a writer of satire, he did so by keeping it local. Most effectively, he exposed the evils and failings of the Jewish body politic by locating his satires in and around the crowded shulhoyf, the Great Synagogue and Courtyard, of his native Vilnius. Endowed with a phenomenal memory and a wicked sense of humour, there was no end to the gallery of schnorrers, shnorrerkes, rogues and misfits whom he could rescue from out of the recent, unenlightened past. But to speak for Jewish Vilna the way that Eugène Sue had spoken for Paris meant learning a new set of skills. To write popular fiction meant to draw upon the dialogical nature of language itself: the way low-lives and charlatans mimicked the speech of the learned class, while uncensored speech betrayed their boorishness, voracious appetites and debauchery; the way the speech of servant girls trafficked in the speech of their mistresses and outperformed them. Who spoke for the shulhoyf was the folksshrayber, the popular writer. Speech was dialogical, because to become a responsible folksshrayber required that one allow others to do the talking. Willy-nilly, and despite his professed ideology, Dik became the first writer to turn Ayalon-Linove-Vilna into the natural habitat of Yiddish.
Death of a Poet. Epitaphs and Dedications to Vytautas Mačernis
Authors: Bernotienė Gintarė
Published: November 2022

The author of the article examines the corpus of dedications to the poet Vytautas Mačernis, written by poets who lived in Soviet and post-Soviet Lithuania after 1966. The group of epitexts (epitaphs, dedications, and literary letters), scattered in collections of poems and periodicals and united by genre, is analyzed as a series of artefacts confirming the status of Mačernis as a literary classic and revealing the reception of the poet in the community of writers and in the cultural memory of the nation. The formation of Mačernis’s image and the legend about him was influenced by his early death. In turn, it led to a mystification of the poet’s figure and to the attribution to him of almost supernatural powers of a prophet and guardian of the nation. The most significant texts dedicated to Mačernis highlight the gradual stages of poet’s establishment as the youngest poet in the canon of Lithuanian literature and the prevailing, almost fixed trend of romanticizing him and presenting his destiny in an exotic way. The poetic forms of the dedications and the intertextual connections testify to the fact that Mačernis’s works have been recognized as an essential part of the canon.
A Monument to a Great Personality
Authors: Bražėnas Petras
Published: November 2022

Profesorius Juozas Girdzijauskas. Atsiminimai, laiškai, pokalbiai, iš archyvų / sudarytojas Eugenijus Žmuida, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2020, 607 p., ISBN 978-609-425-290-7
Foreword
Authors: Ūsaitytė Jurgita
Published: November 2022

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The Ancient Semantic Layers in Wedding Songs and Customs
Authors: Vėlius Norbertas
Published: November 2022

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Alan Dundes: A Brief Appreciation
Authors: Gay David Elton
Published: November 2022

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The Mythologist Offering to Žemyna
Authors: Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė Daiva
Published: November 2022

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Virtual Dialog with Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Examining the Traditional Culture in Terms of Perception
Authors: Šmitienė Giedrė
Published: November 2022

The article stems from a mute and pre-theoretical conviction that an obscure concept of the flesh of the world, introduced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, can be clarified by the traditional rural lifeworld. on the other hand, it is supposed that the concept of the flesh of the world can help revealing the life-style of the folk. The examination of the traditional culture in the article concentrates on the field research carried out in the lithuanian village. one woman’s way of life and her manner of speech are explored in depth till the common structures of the lived tradition are disclosed.

The woman’s relations with plants, animals and things, examined in terms of contents of her speech, but also and even more so – in terms of its style, allow exposing the certain manner of perception that is called in the article diakinaisthetic. in the diakinaisthetic seeing the seer does not objectify what is seen – rather, the seer and the seen come into mutual, reciprocal contact. The perceiver cannot clearly distinguish herself / himself from the perceived as she / he is weaved into the texture of the flesh of the world through the flow of perception. in the field of perception the propensity to mimetism of the traditional rural culture as well as comparisons and parallelisms that abound in the pertinent speech are explained.
The Lopaičiai Landscape from the Historical and Modern Perspective
Authors: Daugirdaitė Vilma
Published: November 2022

Recently, various tendencies of renewal of the cultural landscape can be observed, including purposeful formation of new territorial complexes, incorporation of separate objects into the landscape or simple endowing of landscape with new meanings by imbuing it with different cultural and historical contents. In this article, one such space endowed with new meanings is introduced from the folkloristic perspective, namely, the so-called ethno-mythological complex in Lopaičiai, where a new “Samogitian” version of the pre-Christian Lithuanian history was materialized at the beginning of the 21st century. First, on the Lopaičiai mound a hitherto not localized (although mentioned by some historical sources) castle of Tviremet by an obscure Samogitian duke Vykintas was decided to have stood, and afterwards, theories devoid of any factual background started to spread about a pre-Christian sacral place having allegedly existed nearby the Lopaičiai mound, which was dubbed the Samogitian spiritual center. In this case, actualization of the glorious past is performed by means of the landscape, in order to ground the right of the ethnic Samogitian group to its cultural and political emancipation during the period of political change; this glorious past is also attempted to make use of in development of the cultural tourism by way of adorning this place with deceptive veil of antiquity and assumed sacrality.Such speculative and doubtful theories enjoying considerable spread by mass media not only acquired status of reality in the eyes of various social groups (esoteric, bioenergetic, neo-pagan, etc.), but also inevitably merged into the present life of the local community, including self-reflections of the inhabitants of a nearby township of Tverai and the surrounding villages. The article reveals patterns of reflecting over the new meanings ascribed to the Lopaičiai mound by the local narrator belonging to the elder generation, in whose memory this space had hitherto been affiliated with quite different connotations of the historical past. For the analysis, narratives elucidating the historical paradigm have been selected. This data allows concluding that real or assumed historical facts and storylines actualized by the public communication are accepted not recklessly, but rather by attempting to connect the newly ascribed meanings of the landscape to the past and the individual experience; the latter constituting the borderline that purposefully promoted interpretation of the past is incapable of transgressing. Besides, various texts and contexts originating in the folk culture are attempted to incorporate into the modern narrative by one way or another, also constituting the background (although invalid in this case) for the interpretations failing to reach the scientific standards.
Past and Present of Lopaičiai as Viewed by the Local People
Authors: Daugirdaitė Vilma
Published: November 2022

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Remembering Danutė Krištopaitė
Authors: Kudirkienė Lilija
Published: November 2022

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Freedom Brought up in Captivity
Authors: Kadžytė Gražina
Published: November 2022

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In Search of Memory and Identity of the Lithuanian Borderline Communities
Authors: Kraniauskienė Sigita
Published: November 2022

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Chronicle
Authors: Pakalnas Guntis , Sliužinskas Rimantas , Skujytė-Razmienė Asta , Racėnaitė Radvilė , Ivanauskaitė-Šeibutienė Vita , Žarskienė Rūta , Leparskienė Lina , Jakubynienė Andželika
Published: November 2022

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She Left Quietly... In Memory of Vanda Panavaitė
Authors: Aleksynas Kostas
Published: November 2022

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Local Folk Memory in Literary Fiction: the Case of Pasvalys Region
Authors: Stundžienė Bronė
Published: November 2022

The aim of the article is to examine how and to what extent folk memory is reflected in the Lithuanian literary prose. The search is narrowed regionally: the analysis focuses solely on the texts related to a definite locality – Pasvalys region, the native place of the author. Three pieces of literary fiction by three authors born in this region are selected: their stories also take place in this region or somewhere nearby. The author of the article attempts recognizing the imprints of the folkloric culture left in the literary texts, which may be rather deep or barely visible. Both the local and the more universal nature of the folklore or related cultural phenomena that left these marks are taken into consideration. While reading the books, a rather true-to-life version of the traditional culture existing in the Pasvalys region opens up, along with its historically shaped notion. The attitude adopted by the writers towards the fragments of the folkloric culture that they describe is examined, as well as its contemporary reception by the people recognizing the local culture, particularly those tracing their origins in it. The folkloric landscape transferred into the fictional narrative is discussed against the background of the place legends; and the specific situation of this region, namely, its close proximity to Latvia and certain peculiarities of its landscape are also paid attention to. Interestingly enough, the old customs and beliefs (both the ones typical exclusively to the Pasvalys region and the numerous ones encountered much more broadly) are abundantly reflected in the fiction; quite frequently their modernized variants are incorporated into the texts. These include rituals practiced during the calendar festivals, e.g. sprinkling each other with water at Shrovetide, and other community and family traditions, particularly those involving rather vivid descriptions of the local wedding scenario. The local food tradition (made increasingly relevant nowadays) also earns special attention from the writers. The author of the article particularly considers relics of the worldview inherited from the folk belief legends and the renderings of the local verbal lore. The field of investigation of the folk memory readily incorporates the linguistic code representing the local peculiarities: the dialect, particularly its lexical aspect. The process of individual re-creation of proverbs or old onomatopoeic texts in order to revitalize their tradition is also noted.The analysis of the regionally limited literary discourse allows asserting the possibility of interpreting fiction as still barely utilized source of folk memory, which nevertheless quite often articulates the local folk culture almost as precisely as the registers of traditional culture compiled by specialists as result of detailed scholarly fieldwork.