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| Translated by Agnieška Leščinska | |
Jurgita Jasponytė. Visata atsisėda netinkamoje vietoje (The Universe Settles in the Wrong Place). Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 2024
Jurgita Jasponytė is a distinguished poet in Lithuanian literature, known for her impactful work and measured cadence of her publications. Her debut poetry collection Šaltupė (the name of a Zarasai street, meaning “cold river”), was released in 2014, followed by her second book, Vartai Auštrieji (The Sharp Gates of Dawn), which was published in 2019. This year, she published her third work, Visata atsisėda netinkamoje vietoje (The Universe Settles in the Wrong Place).
In her third book of poems, the poet sustains her signature calm and reflective tone. Whether contemplating darkness, rain, her loved ones, or pondering death, she seeks to discern the boundary between life and death. She treads the delicate edge of existence and non-existence, confronting the darkness within herself and striving to embrace it with utmost serenity. She connects this with folk songs, with which she enters a clearer state of being.
The lyrical subject forges a close connection to her family, evoking intense experiences and drama. In the poem “Sesės” (Sisters), the lyrical subject, while walking through the Jewish cemetery in Užupis, reassures herself that she must not fall, as she carries the weight of life within her. She sees her daughters glowing; one of them has been sleeping for seven days. The subject checks if she’s breathing and asks her own mother to pray: “so that I don’t run out of milk / so that I don’t run out of strength / so that she doesn’t run out of time” (p. 59). She understands that in carrying life, she also carries death. This caring and profound presence help her navigate the fragile boundary between existence and non-existence, preventing her from slipping beyond it.
The subject feels a profound connection to her ancestors. In the cycle of poems “Atkeliami vartais, keliamieji metai: kol kūnas buvo mano” (“Open Gates, Leap Year: While the Body Was Mine”), she reflects on the intergenerational bond, contemplates her great-grandmothers, and ponders whose body she has inherited. She believes that only photographs preserve the elderly, keeping them from truly dying. She waits for the green dragonfly bridge that spans the stream of souls, yearning to cross it. The stream connects her to her ancestors, though the link is fragile and unstable. The subject delves deeper; in the third poem, she steps through an opened gate, experiencing the leap year that can shift from past to future and be remembered or forgotten. She envisions her grandfather Kanoškas stumbling across Šaltupė Street. To her, the “little gap in the gates / hurts / like a tooth falling out” (p. 64). The subject associates everything with loss and bereavement, creating life by sensing what is no longer there and what has shaped her. As she speaks, she interjects rallying folkloric words. The names of grass and cows become her sustenance, allowing her to endure without explicitly naming her pain. The surrounding elements help her withstand the suffering by becoming part of her.
The lyrical subject develops a close bond with her grandmother, who embodies fortitude. The subject’s grandmother lives in a village and struggles with a limp but perseveres through the pain. The speaker feels the pain in her grandmother’s palms, which caress, feed, and touch; even when she’s in pain, she doesn’t let anyone know. Her grandmother returns to her daily chores, maintaining the cycle of her routine and leaving no room for fragility. Resilience hardens us, enabling one to live a fuller life. To be strong is not about performing extraordinary feats but embracing daily existence and domesticity with unwavering resolve.
The motifs of the Gate and the Šaltupė interweave, creating a dialogue between Jasponytė’s books. The recurring motif of Šaltupė in her latest book symbolizes the origins from which the subject enters the world, seeking to find subjects that resonate with her and to define her world. This motif underlines that it’s important for the poet to return and reflect on everything once again.
The urban imagery and the newly revived Vilnius in Jasponytė’s work connect her with the poet Judita Vaičiūnaitė. In the poem “Pro Aušros vartus” (Through the Gates of Dawn), the subject observes an airplane’s trail in the sky before slowly flowing into the city, which is her river mouth, from which she flows into the world. In the second part of the poem, she remarks that the name of the city is just the clop of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, “the blade of dawn / which repeats it / in its way.” This imagery reminds me of Vaičiūnaitė’s poem “Miesto vartai” (City Gates), where the city gates gleam through sharpening chimneys and bell towers. The linguistic play creates an ambiguity (in Lithuanian the landmark is referred to as the Gates of Dawn, while in Polish it’s known as the Sharp Gates). This also connects to the title of Jasponytė’s second book, Vartai Auštrieji (The Sharp Gates of Dawn, an amalgam of both names). The intricate dialogues between the two poets reveal their shared sentiments for Vilnius and their literary continuity, with Jasponytė reinterpreting these motifs in her own unique way.
The subject searches for herself not only in Vilnius or along the Šaltupė river, but also in Zarasai, which comes to life under her penetrating, slightly ironic gaze. In the poem “Litera,” the speaker observes the old printing house in Zarasai by the lake, with letters pressing into the water. She recalls the newspaper once called Tarybinė žemė (The Soviet Land), the censorship, and the heavy metal letters. For the subject, the town of Zarasai is inseparable from the Soviet era. This connection is not so much a trauma as a persistent gloom and twilight that envelops the subject, who now lives elsewhere. Irony serves as a remedy for this gloom, refreshing memories and helping to reconcile with the past. In the poem “Sala. Zarasai” (Island. Zarasai), the subject watches as a large island transforms into a tourist paradise. She recalls how, during construction, a concrete hand of Stalin emerged from the sunken structure. Now, “the old ladies are picking cranberries there” (p. 20), and are happy that no one shooed them away yet. The irony lies in the Soviet era too, symbolized by the submerged concrete hand, and the present world, where tourism displaces the local population. This juxtaposition of two different absurdities leaves the individual caught in between.
Folk songs and motifs play a crucial role in Jasponytė’s work. In one of her poems, the speaker recalls the words of folk songs as magical incantations. While many Lithuanian poets incorporate folk song motifs, Jasponytė deeply integrates living and revived folklore into her poems. The subject’s lips often echo lines from folk songs, and sometimes these songs serve as epigraphs. The subject transmits folklore and songs through her own experiences, striving to bring them to life, to make them real and resonant, so they reflect her reality in that moment.
The song cleanses and refreshes the subject, offering healing even from death and aiding in coming to terms with it. In the poem “Randas” (Scar), she reflects that the deeper the scar, “the more / the dead take up space in us / no less than the living / and / the closer you get to the exit / the more the dead grow in you” (p. 92). As she contemplates the end, she realizes that there can be no infinite expansion, that cosmic darkness is thickening. Witnessing war and the world’s disintegration, the subject becomes aware of her own scars in others’ bodies. Her universe finds a place in the people who matter to her, whose presence helps her accept the concept of death and experience life more profoundly.
Death and other motifs of darkness and gravity do not overshadow the subject. While the dark elements break through, a calm gaze of self-consciousness seeks to turn everything toward the light, toward pure being. The texts are light, not aiming to prove or change anything, but simply to observe.
Jasponytė’s universe exists in the dark and in the light, where the speaker must cling to the light to avoid sinking into the abyss, finding an escape to comfort and song through quiet observation. The universe of this book occupies a significant place in Lithuanian literature, with a unique voice that narrates the winding vibrations of everyday life, full of perceived presence.
