Mindaugas Nastaravičius is a Lithuanian poet, playwright, and journalist whose poetry books set themselves apart. For instance, his second poetry collection Mo includes various poems that are playful and are written with many different structures, for example, three-line poems and sonnets, and some poems are even shorter than the titles themselves. In the third collection, bendratis (infinitive), the tone is calmer, and the poems have no clear line where they begin and end. They become one continuous poem, and the collection itself has a clearer structure. In his most recent book, Antra dalis (Part two), the poems are narrative and cohesive, similar to those in bendratis – free of a defined beginning or end, forming an intense poetic narrative. The collection is presented as a single poem. It can be read either in a continuous flow – a strong current with distinct climaxes – or as a series of individual texts, each unique and self-contained.
The structure of the new collection resembles a script in which images, emotions, and situations speak instead of characters. The poems are narrative, with dynamic action, rich metaphors, and unexpected combinations of imagery as well as the narrator’s sensitivity. The cover design, created by Jurgis Griškevičius, reinforces the impression of a screenplay, with the book’s chapters and page numbers written on it. They suggest the contents, while the design elements are linked by a striking minimalist aesthetic.
The narrator in these poems is simultaneously a director, a lighting designer, and an actor. At times, he also takes on the position of a spectator, observing himself from a distance in space and time. At other times, he leaves the role of observer to the reader. In the opening poem, the narrator constructs the set of a theater – the world – its decorations, its frames, and a space where something happens and which he can feel. He cuts across the boundary between reality and theater, stepping beyond the frame of the script he is creating.
The action takes place in a space between a smoldering meadow – set alight to preserve a sense of mystery – which is both dramatic and slightly ironic. It is as if we are looking through a cracked camera of reality, which is one of the book’s central metaphors. It becomes difficult to distinguish reality from theater. The narrator insists he has never wished to act or direct yet senses that it is inevitable.
In the poems is an attempt to reconstruct what could not be fully lived through – the narrator keeps turning back to the past. It is both healing, as it offers something to hold on to, and unsettling, as the narrator can no longer change it. There are many motifs of struggle for existence, to survive, to endure, to cling on: “the trembling soil of the past, / our crumbling nails, with which even today we try to hold on” (p. 7). This creates a complex relationship with the past and its direction. No matter how hard the speaker tries to create a script for his life, it often resists his control.
The act of observing the past becomes the truest form of action, the one that justifies existence itself. It is often intertwined with darkness, emptiness, desolation, and pressure – when “the drainage of the sky” takes place (p. 21). The narrator keeps returning to a world reimagined in childhood – his own Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates have been replaced by the Peteša and Juodė, rivers in the Vilnius region. To the narrator, the world once created becomes a support for what he was not able to control, a proof that the theater no longer exists – that the play is over and we must step into reality. The association of the village Marijampolis with Mariupol, along with other unexpected images, increases the sense of drama.
Vivid theatrical moments in this collection mirror life itself: the boundary between theater and life dissolves, and everything sinks into mist – “The image was not sharp: we knew nothing / about the contrast, color temperature, saturation.” (p. 11). The narrator continually strives to return to his origins, to understand the meaning of each word, the meaning of his own existence, which is not performative, which includes all of his childhood, youth, vitality, and sorrow. He records how others have changed, how he himself changes, attempting to capture the crucial moments of transformation, the special moments of life in which something significant occurred, when creation ceased and another path was chosen: “In the dead land we dug a trench— / that’s where you stopped creating.” (p. 19). His relationships with others and a strong spiritual bond sustain the performance. The narrator creates a mystery while speaking of what has been lost, always turning back to the past. The mystery itself becomes one of the central driving forces of the poems’ unfolding.
The theatrical, slightly mystical atmosphere is brought to life by frequent everyday motifs and specific details that provide balance to the dreamlike, stage-like world being created. “Nothing significant happened in the second act. It’s spring, we’re kneeling in the cellar sorting potatoes […] and then we’ll be happy, […] because at last we’ll dig our way through.” (p. 31). The narrator realizes that people sort through one another like potatoes – pushing aside those they dislike, keeping those who matter. The years sort them in turn because death decides whom to take and whom to leave behind. These subtle images create tension, life versus death. It is pronounced throughout the book – it is self-evident and always present.
The narrative is strong, dense, and richly layered. Many of the images are familiar yet reimagined, such as gathering stones or kicking an unmoving rock. They blur the boundary between the reader and the narrator, heightening the poems’ emotional impact.
A similar playfulness emerges in the title itself – Part two – which implies that something has already came before: “The body is only the first part.” (p. 39). The second part has a dreamlike quality and is full of death and the seemingly insignificant details that – paradoxically – turn out to be the most meaningful of all.
