In memoriam L. C. The First: on teachers and students, on ecological niches and being yourself Forging unites metals, a purpose unites beasts and birds, fear and greed unite fools, a view unites honest people I always wanted to write you letters. In this tumultuous time, as everyone chatters over another, failing to listen to
Ričardas Gavelis (1950–2002), a prose writer, playwright, and columnist, is often named one of the most prominent writers of his generation. He outstandingly depicted the Soviet system, was its harshest critic in Lithuanian literature, and chronicled Vilnius in the early years of the independence. Without him, neither the map of Lithuanian prose of the late
Ričardas Gavelis and His Memoirs: Exposing Life in Soviet Phantasmagoria Read More »
The Lithuanian literary essay is a genre in which a fragmentary short text combines certain traces of a historical time, the symbols of the writer’s own and other cultures, and original autobiographical writing. Unlike in the Western tradition of this genre, the Lithuanian literary essay does not deal with the themes frequently found in journalistic
The Lithuanian Contemporary Literary Essay Read More »
What would a Horatio Alger story look like if it were written by a Lithuanian communist who had never been to the United States and who was determined to sling satire in all directions? Frank Kruk by Petras Cvirka, ably translated by Elizabeth Novickas, would be the answer. In the space of this novel, the eponymous hero
Vitalija Pilipauskaitė-Butkienė, a litterateur and literary critic, a graduate from and a doctoral student at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, was born in the 1980s. She chose women’s literature as the subject of her doctoral dissertation and was pushed towards women’s experiences, motherhood, attachment parenting, and the work of doulas by factors in
Honey and Wormwood: A New Book on Women’s Experiences Read More »
land of glass into the pocket of her well-washed robe she’d shove seeds, dandelion fluff, a feather, a fist, pressed stone-hard nails writing into the tissue of her palm – firmly, drops of blood settling into the life line’s arch, dust, all sorts of nothings, choking on tears when she read, tossed fire-wood into the
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Giedrė Kazlauskaitė is not among those whose faces flicker in the public space, whose insights are published in the country’s periodical press, or whose voice speaks to you from the radio. She is the chief editor of the cultural publication Šiaurės Atėnai. Before that, she used to work as a book reviewer for national television
A Text as a Mundane Song, a Piece of Sewing, and Thinking Read More »
*** Anna Lee Fisher, the first mother in space – In flight, I contemplated her photograph, black and white. Dressed in a spacesuit, an icon: beautiful, famous, a woman. Maybe, in some sense, I could launch myself as well? Maybe gravity is not so universal as it seems? Apparently, one can leave one’s children on
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Rhododendron ferrugineum 1. A good decade ago, Ambassador V. invited me to join him for lunch at the Alpenrose, a Swiss restaurant in Riga’s old town. Its blue façade was festooned with images of white blossoms and grazing brown heifers wearing cowbells around their necks. Early in the day, the refrigerator was stocked with little
Rolandas Rastauskas Read More »
Rolandas Rastauskas (b. 1954) is an essayist, poet, playwright, translator, a participant in numerous international cultural projects, and a consultant to art festivals. He is a columnist for a number of Lithuanian and foreign dailies and magazines: he wrote for Atgimimas in 1989–1990, for the Lietuvos rytas from 1993 to 2003, for Akiračiai (Chicago) in 2003–2004, and from 2005 he has
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