Colloquia is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore. The mission of the journal is to disseminate research into twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary scholarship, theoretical works, and interdisciplinary literary studies in Lithuania and Eastern Central European region.
The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore / Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas
Copyright (c) 2026 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
“Not Just Socialist Realism”: A Nuanced View on the Poet and Poetry in the Soviet System
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Donata Mitaitė 2025, <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Žmogaus balsu: Apie Alfonsą Maldonį ir jo poeziją<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, ISBN 978-609-425-402-4, 371 p.
Ričardas Gavelis’s Prose (Re)construction. The Metaphysician Wrote!
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Jūratė Čerškutė 2025. <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Galvoja fizikas!<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Ričardo Gavelio prozos sistema: <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">monografija, Vilnius: Lapas, 489 p. ISBN 978-609-496-018-5
<p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Janinos Degutytės laiškynas, 2025. Sudarė Giedrė Šmitienė, kn. 1: Nemeilės šešėly: susirašinėjimas su motina Janina Degutiene, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 303 [1] p., ISBN 978-609-425-408-6; <p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">kn. 2: Tveriantis ryšys: susirašinėjimas su Bronislava Jacevičiūte-Jėčiūte, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 384 [1] p., ISBN 978-609-425-410-9; <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">kn. 3: Draugystė laiškais: susirašinėjimas su Lena Rapaliene, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 273 [1] p., ISBN 978-609-425-409-3.
Acceptance Speech upon Receiving the Algis Kalėda Award
A Wreath for the Correspondence of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis.A Few Thoughts on Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn’s Work,the Winner of the 2025 Algis Kalėda Award
The Speech upon Receiving the 2025 Prize of the Most Creative Book
Bonds of Meaning. Laudation for Marius Burokas, Winner of the 2025 Most Creative Book Award
What Women Wrote and What They Didn’t? A Conversation on the Occasion of Viktorija Daujotytė’s Anniversary
(Un)delivered Words in the History of the Libretto: Tracing Down the Report and Its Blank Spaces
The Treatment of History in Anna z Radziwiłłów Mostowska’s Novel Astolda. Between Historical, Gothic, and Sentimental Fiction
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article discusses the treatment of history in Anna z Radziwiłłów Mostowska’s (Ona Radvilaitė-Mostovskienė) historical novel <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Astolda <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">(<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Astolda, Xiężniczka z krwi Palemona, pierwszego Xiążecia litewskiego, czyli nieszczęśliwe skutki namiętności. Powieść oryginalna z historii litewskiej<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">, 1807). Drawing on the theory of the historical novel genre, it examines a distinctive use of Lithuanian history conditioned by the literary landscape of early nineteenth-century Lithuania (Mostowska revives the myth of Palemon, a story about the noble Lithuanian origin from the Romans, depicting the transition from paganism to Christianity), as well as a providentialist view of the flow of history as an eternal cycle in which moments of glory and decline give turn to each other. The characteristics of Mostowska’s authorship as one of the first female writers in Lithuania also become visible: free experimentation with the conventions of the pre-Scott historical novel genre and a desire to meet the expectations placed on female writers and to question women’s status in the society of the time. Elements of the historical, Gothic, and sentimental novel intertwine in Mostowska’s novel <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Astolda<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">. Although the work belongs to the pre-Scott historical novel, the depiction of history is not merely decorative but serves a deeper function: <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Astolda<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> goes beyond the boundaries of the pseudo-historical novel genre.
Anna z Radziwiłłów Mostowska (Ona Radvilaitė-Mostovskienė)
nineteenth-century Lithuanian women’s literature
Postmodern Humour: Parody and Pastiche in the Post-Soviet Prose of Juozas Erlickas
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">In the context of the state of research on postmodern and comic literature in Lithuania, the article examines the expression of parody and pastiche, the relationship between them, and the nature of their connections with hypotexts in the Juozas Erlickas’ prose texts of <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Knyga<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> (1996, second ed. 1998, third ed. 2006) and <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">History of Lithuania<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> (2000). The concepts of parody and pastiche are defined, their relationship is determined based on the works of postmodernist theorists: Linda Hutcheon, Fredric Jameson, Rose A. Margaret, etc. The article examines the nature of the relationship between Erlickas’ texts and works of socialist realism, national Lithuanian, and world literature. The analysis allows to identify that Erlickas’ parody is diffuse, almost in all cases ironic and critical of texts written in the socialist realism method and/or the sociocultural reality of Lithuania. The nature of the relationship with other types of literary hypotexts is usually pastiche. Very often, parody and pastiche intertwine and function on different levels of the same text.
The Problem of the Imagination of Eros. Theoretical Questions and Trajectories of Contemporary Lithuanian Poetry
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">e arch for poetic language and by broader processes in culture, philosophy, and literary history. It raises the following questions: What does the imagination of eros mean? What is the phenomenological validity of the concept? What is distinctive about the representation of the imagination of eros in contemporary Lithuanian poetry? The theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Wolfgang Iser, and other thinkers not only make it possible to delve more deeply into the essence of the phenomena of eros and imagination and substantiate an understanding about the phenomena that are characteristic of poetry, but also to create the conditions for conceptualizing the imagination of eros. The article looks into the poems of Sigitas Geda, Sigitas Parulskis, Gytis Norvilas and other authors, in which the experience of desire, erotic longing, bodily attraction, and physical as well as spiritual yearning is re-created by using a distinctive language of poetic imagery and metaphors. It also shows how this experience emerges through the prism of the imagination of the lyrical subject and the Other.
Juozas Kėkštas’s Cultural Mediation: The Interplay of Journalism, Translation, and Original Creative Work
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article analyzes the cultural mediation of Juozas Kėkštas (1915–1981), who was involved with the circles of interwar Vilnius writers and later, the <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Žemininkai<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> poets. The author of the article argues that Kėkštas’s place in the history of Lithuanian culture, commonly viewed as a “borderland poet,” is best brought to light when all areas of his literary activity – publishing, translations, and original poetry, as well as his publishing strategies – are seen and evaluated as one creative space. It is from this perspective that the interaction between different areas, the significance of specific authors Kėkštas translated, the consistency of his own work, and place in Lithuanian culture are best heightened. The research has shown that for Kėkštas, translation was not a secondary or incidental activity but an essential part of his creative stance, allowing him not only to articulate aesthetic and ideological positions more clearly, but also to intentionally shape the selection of texts, their interpretation, and the horizon of their reception. Kėkštas emerges as an active cultural and intercultural mediator, who linked different literary spaces, while simultaneously forming symbolic and social communities based not on territorial or political grounds, but rather on a shared experience of a catastrophic era, existential attitudes, and loyalty to creative and cultural work. The figure of Czesław Miłosz is particularly visible in this process, as his poetry translations link different periods and contexts of Kėkštas’s agency.
The Voice of the Forest Sisters: (Un)known Experiences in Diana Glemžaitė’s Poetry
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article examines the most mature works of Diana Romualda Glemžaitė (1925–1949) from the last two years of her life, written while she was living in hiding, working as a liaison, and after she had become a partisan. The experiences revealed in the poems are discussed as structures of poetic expression of the partisan war. The article inquires of their authenticity, the semantic boundaries of partisan literary texts, and the codes for reading war literature. The interpretation is grounded in the reciprocal relationship between text and context suggested by literary sociologist Dominique Maingueneau, drawing on his concept of paratopic shifter and employing the principles of semiotic analysis. Glemžaitė’s literary legacy, which has been omitted from the studies of partisan literature, brings up a matter of the significance of female authorship. Adhering to the premise that in partisan literature there is an indisputable connection between the speaker of a poem and the person who wrote it, the author of the article turns to materials that construct a biographical discourse (memoirs, letters, archival creative materials, and historical research). When interpreting the texts, the focus is on experiences related to the problem of perception that emerged in Glemžaitė’s poetry during the period under consideration, which unfolds along two trajectories: as a general question of choosing the partisan path and understanding that choice, and as a specific one – a woman’s choice. In the first case, the experiences of partisan life are revealed through the us vs them divide, wandering, homelessness, a sense of radical transformation, and an active love of the homeland. In the second case, it is manifested through an evaluation specific to women and partisan motherhood. These spatial elements, characters, behavioral patterns, and other features appear in Glemžaitė’s poetry as paratopic shifters.
“A Nice Day, With No Events Whatsoever,” or On a Chronicle Nature of a Partisan Diary
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">A question that emerged while working with the personal diaries of participants in the Lithuanian Guerrilla War (1944–1953) (the headquarter’s diaries are not included in this research) prompted this study. The question, why does a fairly large proportion of their authors, despite unfavorable circumstances, strove to write their diaries daily, as if being aware that this form of diary was a necessity or an obligation, brought the author of the article back to the issue of the experience of time and its recording in a diary. Taking into consideration a method of measuring and perceiving time offered by the modern diary as a specific genre form, and how partisans wrote about their daily life, it became clear that the recording of time in the form of a diary and its thematic reflection at the level of content opened up as a space of tension and negotiation between the diary as a historically created form of fixing a person in time and the specific experience recorded within it. Based on the research of diary history and the analysis of diaries by Jonas Junokas, Balys Vaičėnas, Bronius Vasiliauskas, Andrius Žemaitis, Antanas Žiogas, and other partisans, the study conceptualizes the chronicle nature of a partisan diary, paying attention to the relationship between the day, its calendar sequence and the structure of the entry’s content, as well as the problem of the event that serves as the basis of a narrative.
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> In the history of Lithuanian literature, modernism is primarily associated with the fin de siècle movements of neo-romanticism, symbolism, and the avant-garde. The name of decadent was the most foreign to Lithuanian modernists, although critics, who deemed modernism negatively, used the term most frequently and validated it the most. Only in Bronius Krivickas’s (1919–1952) work “Jonas Aleksandriškis-Aistis’s World of Ideas” (1943), based on academic and aesthetic arguments (Eckart von Sydow’s <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Die Kultur der Dekadanz<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">, 1921), the poetry of Jonas Aistis (1904–1973), Lithuania’s most European modernist, and the magazine <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Pjūvis<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"> that published poet’s lyrics were considered as belonging to the domain of decadent art. Paradoxically, one must acknowledge that in Lithuania the spirit of decadence flashed most brightly in its own way and in its own time as a gloomy prophecy of the downfall of the individual, nation, and Europe. Before and during WWII, a writer viewed the individual as too weak to overcome an unbearably difficult historical period. The aspect of decadence highlighted in Aistis’s poetry and its connection to patriotism allows the author of this article to discuss more broadly the paradoxical nature of Aistis’s poetry – already examined in Lithuanian literary criticism – and to reveal how characteristic the transformation of cosmopolitan decadence can be in individual national literatures.
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Aušra Jurgutienė 2023. Dekonstrukcinių skaitymų užrašai, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 310 p., ISBN 978-609-425-286-0.
Copyright (c) 2025 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Čiurlionis’s “Effect”: Why the Artist’s Oeuvre Still Invites New Interpretations
<p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Antanas Andrijauskas 2023. Čiurlionis: Nesuprasto genijaus tragiškas skrydis: monografija, t. 1, Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas. ISBN 978-609-8231-68-7, 632 p. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Antanas Andrijauskas 2024. Čiurlionis: Nesuprasto genijaus tragiškas skrydis: monografija, t. 2, Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas. ISBN 978-609-8231-83-0, 880 p.
Reading the Correspondence of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn, Nijolė Adomavičienė, Petras Kimbrys 2019. Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. Korespondencija, I tomas: 1892–1906 – Korespondencja, tom I: 1892–1906, teksto ir paaiškinimų parengimas, įvadas Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn, įvado bendraautorystė, pirminis teksto dešifravimas, kalendorius ir laiškų katalogas Nijolė Adomavičienė, lenkiško teksto redagavimas Helena Żytkowicz, vertimas į lietuvių k., paaiškinimų papildymai, rodyklės Petras Kimbrys, laiškų katalogo vertimas, lenkiško teksto korektūra Beata Piasecka, mokslinis redaktorius Tadeusz Bujnicki, lietuviško teksto redagavimas ir korektūra Aurelija Gražina Rukšaitė, konsultacijos Rasutė Andriušytė-Žukienė, Osvaldas Daugelis, Rokas Zubovas, Kaunas: Nacionalinis M. K. Čiurlionio dailės muziejus, 552 p., ISBN 978-9955-471-71-4 ISBN 978-9955-471-72-1 Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn, Nijolė Adomavičienė, Petras Kimbrys 2024. Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. Korespondencija, II tomas: 1907–1910 – Korespondencja, tom II: 1907–1910, teksto ir paaiškinimų parengimas, įvadas Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn, kelių tekstų vertimas į lenkų kalbą Nijolė Adomavičienė, įvado bendraautorystė, pirminis teksto dešifravimas, kalendorius ir laiškų katalogas Petras Kimbrys, vertimas į lietuvių k., paaiškinimų papildymai, rodyklės, dalies tekstų vertimas Audra Kairienė, lenkiško teksto redagavimas Helena Żytkowicz, mokslinė redaktorė Nida Gaidauskienė, lietuviško teksto redagavimas ir korektūra, rodyklės Aurelija Gražina Rukšaitė, lenkiško teksto korektūra, kalendoriaus vertimas Joanna Tabor, Kaunas: Nacionalinis M. K. Čiurlionio dailės muziejus, Uždaroji dizaino ir leidybos AB Kopa, 455 p., ISBN 978-9955-471-71-4 ISBN 978-9955-471-92-9
“Čiurlionis Cannot Be Confined to a Single Formula”: Saulius Vasiliauskas Speaks with Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn
The Speech upon Receiving Vytautas Kubilius Prize
Criticism that Remembers, Reflects and Responds: Laudations for Jūratė Čerškutė, Winner of the 2025 Vytautas Kubilius Prize
Comparative Literature in the Era of Post-Critical Theories: Threat or Opportunity?
Diskusijoje dalyvavo asociacijos narės – jos įkūrėja ir ilgametė pirmininkė prof. Nijolė Kašelionienė, steigėjos: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos instituto vyriausioji mokslo darbuotoja prof. Aušra Jurgutienė ir Vytauto Didžiojo universiteto docentė Žydronė Kolevinskienė. Taip pat Vilniaus universiteto docentė Jūratė Levina. Kalbėjo ir dr. Donata Mitaitė, dr. Laura Laurušaitė, dr. Gintarė Bernotienė, prof. dr. Eglė Kačkutė-Hagan, doc. dr. Audinga Peluritytė-Tikuišienė. Diskusiją užbaigė prof. dr. Viktorija Skrupskelytė, kuriai buvo suteiktas LLLA garbės nario vardas. Ją moderavo dr. Karolina Bagdonė.
Soviet Ideology on a Platter: Food in Lithuanian and Latvian Literature
<p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article investigates how food imagery in contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian literature re-articulates the Soviet period and its ideological imprint. Drawing on imagological and gastropoetic perspectives, the study examines three works by Lithuanian and Latvian authors: Laima Vincė’s non-fiction text Lenin’s Head on a Platter / An American Student’s Diary from the Final Years of the Soviet Union / September 1988 – August 1989 (in Lithuanian and English 2008), Nora Ikstena’s novel Soviet Milk (Mātes piens, 2015; in English 2018) and Dace Rukšāne’s novel Russian Skin (Krieva āda, 2020; reissued in 2025). <p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">These texts demonstrate how culinary motifs illuminate power relations: meat foregrounds the intrusive dictate of Russian imperial masculinity; milk, typically associated with care, acquires a bitter taste shaped by coercive worldviews; vodka reflects the regime’s levelling pressure, while wine signals fleeting moments of inner resistance. Food-related scenes also reveal Soviet social hierarchies structured by scarcity and informal access networks. Gastronomic imagery is a means that allows Baltic authors to show the impact of the Soviet era on local identities and to illuminate the possibilities of their renewal and cultural restoration with the onset of perestroika.
The Intertext of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis in the Late Twentieth-Century Lithuanian Poetry: Ideological and Interpretative Directions
<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">This article analyzes the intertext of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis in Lithuanian poetry of the late twentieth century, focusing on the processes of literary modernization during the Soviet era and raising the question of whether the poets’ fascination with the phenomenon of the Čiurlionis’s work could have contributed to this. The object of the study is poetic texts in which Čiurlionis’s work is made relevant as an intermedial phenomenon, including references to his paintings, ego-documentary, musical compositions, or commonly perceived principles of interaction between the arts. Based on texts published in commemorative anthologies (<em lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Saulėtos vizijos<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> and <em lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Žvaigždynų sonatos<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">), the article discusses two dominant approaches in the interpretation of Čiurlionis’s artistic ideas: turning the motifs of Čiurlionis’s paintings into ideological emblems and artistic interpretations of the paintings, characterized by varied degrees of dramatization and self-reflection. The study has revealed that the political context of the Soviet era had an impact on the content of the interpretations—the stereotypical and romantic reception of Čiurlionis as a cultural figure. However, the interpretation of ekphrasis confirms that the artist’s allegorical work created favorable conditions for the development of ambiguity and encouraged both culturally contextual and more subjective interpretations of themes in Lithuanian poetry.
The Semiotic Take on Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: The Analyses by Jean-Marie Floch and Jacques Fontanille
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">This article presents, compares, and supplements two semiotic analyses of paintings by Lithuanian painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis—his sonatas painted in 1907–1909 (“Sonata of the Spring”, “Sonata of the Summer”, “Sonata of the Sea”, “Sonata of the Serpent”, “Sonata of the Pyramids”, “Sonata of the Sun” and “Sonata of the Stars”) by French semioticians, Jean-Marie Floch (article “The Life of Form. A Look at M. K. Čiurlionis’s Sonatas”, 1985) and Jacques Fontanille (article “Poliscopy in Čiurlionis’s Sonatas”, 1995), the disciples of Algirdas Julien Greimas, a founder of the Paris School of Semiotics. Focusing mainly on the analysis of two paintings from the “Sonata of the Stars” cycle, “Allegro” and “Andante”, the article proposes introducing a transcendental addresser while describing their narrative level. The article analyses significant semiotic expressions and elements of content which form in paintings and realizes the idea of the synthesis of the arts revealing the influence of the musical form of sonata on painting. It also discusses the new meanings that opened in the paintings by Čiurlionis, underlines the European art trends characteristic of Čiurlionis’s painting and its universal cultural dimension.
The Presence of Holiness in Landscape and the Ecstasy of Colours in Lithuanian Poetry of the Second Half of the Twentieth-Century: The Footprint of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article discusses the reception of some ideas and worldview adopted from Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s paintings by poets Sigitas Geda, Leonardas Gutauskas and Jonas Juškaitis, who debuted in the 1960s and were sensitive to the mysticism of nature. Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn’s arguments that the Polish literature, especially Juliusz Słowacki’s poems (the historiosophical poem “Anhelli” and the epic-symbolic poem “The Spirit King,” describing the history of the Polish nation as a series of incarnations of the national spirit) had an influence on Čiurlionis’s art encouraged to look deeper into metaphysical thinking and experiences of holiness discussed more widely in Lithuanian academic texts in the twenty-first century. Evident in the Čiurlionis’s work, they have been manifested in Lithuanian poetry through ecstatic visions of colour, high style rhetoric and hermetic imagery. The comparative method enabled to highlight the overlaps in the perception of Čiurlionis and the aforementioned poets in art and poetry, noting the close relationship between landscape and historical themes. The author of the article considers the influence of Čiurlionis’s apolitical work on the theurgic ethos of poetry and the pathos of the cultural of resistance during the Soviet era, as well as the formation of the image of Čiurlionis as a national genius in poetry after 1990.