Exhibition Catalogue (pdf) - Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of ...

Exhibition Catalogue

The project is dedicated to represent the Lithuanian Presidency of 

the Council of the European Union 

Initiator of the project Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic 

of Lithuania 

Organizer of the exhibition 

Lithuanian Art Museum National Gallery of Art 

Exhibition Lenders: 

National M.K. Ciurlionis Art Museum 

Modern Art Center, Vilnius 

Department for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of Vilnius 

Municipality 

Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers Kaunas Department 

Photographers and their heirs 

Poets and their heirs 

© Lithuanian Art Museum, 2012 

© Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene, compilation, 2012 

© Lina Bastiene, catalogue design, 2012 

© photographers, poets, authors 2012

UDK 7.038(474.5)(064) 

Po-49 

ISBN 978-609-426-040-7 

Curators of the Exhibition: 

Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene 

Eugenijus Alisanka 

Exhibition Manager: Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene 

Exposition Design: Audrius Novickas 

Catalogue Editor: Ieva Mazuraite-Novickiene 

Translation into English: 

Eugenijus Alisanka (poetry) 

Jurij Dobriakov (texts) 

Ellen Hinsey (poetry) 

Kerry Shawn Keys (poetry) 

Translation into German: 

Claudia Sinnig (poetry) 

Daiva Petereit (texts) 

Copy Editors: 

Joseph Everatt 

Liuda Jakubcioniene 

Catalogue Design: Lina Bastiene 

Curator of the Film Programme: Zivile Eteviciute 

Lenders of Films: 

Deimantas Narkevicius 

Arunas Matelis 

Kinema film studio 

UAB Lietuvos kinas 

UAB Lietuvos kino studija

In 2013, Lithuania will hold the Presidency of the 

Council of the EU, which will be an occasion for the 

country to demonstrate its political and administrative 

capacities, and simultaneously a perfect opportunity to 

showcase its culture, art and identity. This exhibition 

presents work by Lithuanian photographers, writers 

and filmmakers of different generations, which convey 

poetically an aesthetic experience of the world, as well 

as introducing present-day Lithuania and its history. 

With today’s abundance of visual information, it is 

difficult to hold the viewer’s attention with images 

that do not set out to sell or to shock. The collection 

of photographs that has been put together for this 

exhibition, which is dominated by a laconic form 

of monochromatic photography and an unsophisticated 

technical language, would in many cases fail to attract 

viewers’ attention amid the stream of gaudy images. 

But this project has a different aim. The concentrated 

artistic whole, condensed with poetic textual inserts, 

and augmented with a documentary film programme, offers 

a unique experience. The exhibition Poetic Documents 

takes the viewer on a visual and textual tour through 

the history of Lithuanian photography and poetry, full 

of moods and emotions. A mutual aspect links these 

two spheres of art: most of the photographs are rich 

in narrative, relating their stories to the imagery 

of texts, while the poetry has a visual quality, and 

forcefully instils vivid images in the reader’s mind. 

The poetic vision of the world is not necessarily 

lyrical or sentimental; it is sensitive, filled with 

an inner sonority, opening up depths and surpluses of 

meaning that lurk behind works of art. The intensity of 

the experience of poetic images would seem to negate 

their documentary nature, but it does not obfuscate 

allusions to the time and the circumstances of their 

creation. 

The works exhibited span a period of over 80 years 

in the history of Lithuanian photography and poetry. 

Although the exhibition takes the form of a collection 

of important works, the historical context is also 

important in comprehending and reading it. For 

Lithuania, the 20th century was a time of dramatic 

changes, marked by the shift from an agrarian to 

an urban society, a hostile occupation and the 

restoration of independence both experienced in a fairly 

short period of time, totalitarian oppression and 

democracy, mass deportations and emigration, and the 

Holocaust. These historical circumstances gave rise to 

extraordinary human experiences, and posed challenges 

to artists, such as establishing the relevance of 

poetic language in the face of such crises. The authors 

featured in the exhibition, who come from different 

generations and have different artistic viewpoints and 

different backgrounds, each respond to these challenges 

in their own way; but the most important thing is that 

they are united by their everyday life and a creative 

identification with Lithuania. This identification 

cannot be understood in the narrow sense of nationality 

alone; on the contrary, it is an identity that 

expresses itself as an inexhaustible source of creative 

exploration, of the country’s landscapes, cities, the 

people living here, and fundamental notions of time and 

memory. 


7

The discourse of Lithuanian photography presented in 

this exhibition unfolds between two poles, marked by 

notions of nature and culture. Accompanied by poetic 

texts, the images are arranged according to the themes 

of nature, the human being, the city, time, and memory, 

revealing the links, inversions and tensions between 

fields that attract, complement and simultaneously 

negate each other. Nevertheless, none of the thematic 

sections mentioned can be taken in isolation in the 

photographs exhibited; many of the works combine 

several themes instead of just one, and even question 

them. As we travel through these fields of overlapping 

experiences and insights, we can observe how motifs 

from the rural world-view that inspire the artist’s 

imagination are transformed and rethought in the light 

of aesthetic and philosophical considerations and urban 

experience. 

A strong and archaic connection with the land 

characterised 20th-century Lithuanian art. For many 

artists, it served as a foundation for the developing 

tradition, and as a prime source of inspiration. 

Therefore, it is no coincidence that in photography too, 

for a long time, nature motifs were prominent. Still, 

photographers did not view the depiction of nature as 

an object in itself; rather, they used it as a means of 

putting forward their aesthetic agenda. For instance, 

Jonas Kalvelis (1925–1987) considered the natural world 

to be the most important point of departure for his 

artistic explorations, to which he devoted the most 

creative period of his life. For more than 12 years, 

he concentrated on photographing the dunes of the 

Curonian Spit, with great sensitivity and extraordinary 

perception. The photographer’s view of nature is 

aestheticised and infused with visual poetics and 

artistic erudition. Thanks to Kalvelis, the sand dunes 

come to speak in the language of graphic abstraction, 

rhythmic lines, forms, and variations of light and 

shade. The series earned him universal acclaim, and 

established him as one of the most famous photographers 

of the coastal dunes. 

According to Martin Heidegger, life is lived on the 

earth and under the sky. Algimantas Kuncius (b. 1939), 

in his photographic series ‘Distant Images’ (1985–1998), 

endows this profound universal experience with a 

distinctively individual character. Kuncius thinks in 

images, but at the same time his look at the native 

landscape is very concrete. It is remarkable how minute 

details do not escape this all-encompassing look, 

but make the image more refined instead of atomising 

it. This generalised concreteness informs Kuncius’ 

landscapes with a sense of timelessness, liberating 

them from the confines of the instant, and turning them 

into a mediator for the very experience of Lithuania’s 

northern expanses. 

The vision of nature of Alfonsas Budvytis (1949–2003) is 

twofold: on one hand, it has an observant and passive 

nature, and at the same time it penetrates a dense net 

of cultural experiences. The conceptual photographs 

exhibited ‘This is my Eventide / When Dark Thoughts 

Come I–II’ (1992) capture a seemingly impossible 

transformation: the images show loaves of dark bread 

with their crusts being ripped apart by sprouting wheat. 

In the Christian tradition, bread symbolises life; 

yet Budvytis, who lives in the postmodern era, sees 

in it a foreboding of the end, rather than positive 

connotations, which is intensified by the sprouts, 

curling nervously like caterpillars. Resonances of 

human existence in natural motifs are also present in 

the work of Aleksandras Macijauskas, another artist 

featured in the exhibition. He sees a reflection of his 

own old age in charred tree trunks. The death of a tree 

as portrayed by Macijauskas is also painful, because 

in the Lithuanian mind the tree has a deep symbolic 

meaning, associated with vitality and the sacredness of 

life, which comes from pagan times. Thus, the somewhat 

anthropomorphised menhirs of trees that emerge every 

time the water level of the Kaunas Reservoir 1 goes down 

can be read as relics of an encounter between modern 

life and tradition. 

The exhibition presents the human being in photography 

from three different points of view: existential, sociocritical 

and aesthetic. Antanas Sutkus (b. 1939), one 

of the most famous humanists of Lithuanian photography, 

1 With the construction of the Kaunas Hydroelectric Power 

Plant, which started in 1959, the Kaunas Reservoir was created 

by damming the Nemunas, the main river in Lithuania. Forty-five 

settlements (villages, farmsteads, and the town of Rumsiskes, 

including an old church and bell tower) were relocated from the area 

flooded by the reservoir. 

9

egan working on his epic series ‘People of Lithuania’ 

as early as 1959. Sutkus modelled his existential view 

of the human being on Existentialist literature, which 

he admired, and reached the climax of his creative 

maturity when he created a series of photographs that 

documented the visit to Nida by Jean-Paul Sartre in 

1965. The exhibition presents the photographer’s less 

well-known shots, which demonstrate that not only has 

he an eye for a flawless composition and a sense of the 

unique moment, but he also has the gift of being able 

to capture the mood of a situation, and the fragile 

state of an individual, when he experiences harmony with 

himself and the surrounding world. 

The eye of Rimaldas Viksraitis (b. 1954) also follows 

the rural dweller, yet in his photographs the subject 

is tired and worn out. For many years, Viksraitis has 

been conducting a kind of social research, examining 

not so much the daily life of a particular social 

group as the dark side of human nature. He looks at it 

with sadness, bitterness, and simultaneously through 

the straightforward lens of the grotesque. In the 

photographs of Soviet demonstrations by Aleksandras 

Macijauskas (b. 1938), which are deformed by a wideangle 

lens, people also acquire a grotesque character. 

Yet the grotesqueries of Viksraitis and Macijauskas 

do not negate faith in the human being. To paraphrase 

the famous Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, we could 

argue that the grim humour that characterises these 

photographers’ works expresses an almost pagan faith in 

renewal, the possibility for reform, and the cyclical 

aspect of life, rather than debasement and derision. 

Domicele Tarabildiene (1912–1985) was a wellknown 

interwar artist and book illustrator, but 

her photographs have only recently attracted public 

attention. The exhibition presents several selfportraits 

that she created in the 1930s using the 

photomontage technique. What is fascinating is not just 

the artist’s courage in exploring experimental forms of 

expression, but also her decision to be her own model in 

the photographs. Her artistic exploration crossed the 

line of experimentation, and testifies to her interest 

in the avant-garde constructivist ideas of the time, 

as well as her exceptional ability to express herself 

creatively in various art forms. Tarabildiene is 

a symbol of human emancipation; although she was born 

in the countryside, she matured as an artist in the 

town, and used it as a source of creative inspiration. 

Writing about the philosophical paradigm of the notion 

of the city, Leonidas Donskis once stated: ‘The extent 

to which the forms of the city and the urban mentality 

are developed in the life of a society corresponds with 

the extent to which that society partakes in the process 

of its freedom or liberation, in other words, the extent 

to which it emancipates itself historically with regard 

to nature and the natural menta lity.’ 2 

Thus, the city becomes our bridge to culture, another 

pole of artistic self-awareness. Invoking Jean 

Baudrillard’s idea that ‘In order to reveal the secrets 

of cities, we should [...] start from a painting or 

a screen, and from there move towards the city,’ 

the philosopher Nerijus Milerius argues that ‘It is 

photography that turns Vilnius into a city.’ Indeed, 

we would hardly find a Lithuanian photographer with no 

photographs of Vilnius, which serves as confirmation 

that it is an existentially important city, reminding 

us of past glories and past losses. There are no 

fine photographs of the city aimed at tourists in the 

exhibition. Instead, it presents works that reveal 

the city’s character through the authors’ profound 

experience, feelings, vision and thinking. 

The photographic archive of Jan and Janusz Bulhak 

‘Vilnius. 1944’ is an introspective witness of time. The 

famous photographer and his son were commissioned by 

the People’s Commissariat of Municipal Services of the 

Lithuanian SSR to document the aftermath of the bombings 

of Vilnius during the Second World War. Jan Bulhak (1876– 

1950) knew the city well, as he had been photographing 

its churches, streets, interiors and hilly landscapes for 

a number of years, and these works had earned him acclaim 

and respect. He accomplished the task in a precise way, 

and at the same time he did not conceal the profound 

shock he had experienced during the war. The photographic 

inventory of the bomb-damaged city in which he had spent 

his most creative years became a sort of farewell to 

Vilnius, for in 1945 he moved to Warsaw. 

2 Leonidas Donskis, ‘Naujasis Leviatanas’, in: Miestelenai: 

Tauros almanachas, ed. Eugenijus Alisanka, Vilnius: Taura, 1991, p. 170 

Speaking about the work of Vytautas Balcytis (b. 1955), 

it would perhaps make sense first of all to define what 

it does not contain. Balcytis is not interested in 

photography’s traditional relationship with the city’s 

architecture, when the architecture becomes the central 

object of the photographic message. For him, Vilnius 

is a contemplative space where subjective encounters 

(emotional, tactile, historical) with the city’s forms, 

planes and dimensions take place. The witnesses of these 

encounters are black and white photographic prints with 

designated locations and times. In his photographs, the 

city has all of its well-known features: street signs, 

pavements, facades and billboards, and so on; and yet, 

there are no people. It is an empty city, we could 

almost say it is abandoned, which cuts off the ties of 

recognisability and seeks to acquire an unearthly form 

that is independent of time and space. 

In another version of Vilnius by Gintautas Trimakas 

(b. 1958), a charismatic pioneer of the pinhole 

technique, the city’s architectural face loses its 

importance altogether. It is a city that is experienced 

in time and space, rather than visually. Attached to 

a bicycle frame, the pinhole camera travels together 

with the photographer, and captures the bicycle’s 

stopping points with a vertical view from the bottom 

up. The device remains active, that is, it absorbs 

light, until he moves off to another point on his 

route. When the eye detaches itself from the horizon, 

disturbed by the chaos of everyday life, and directs 

its gaze upwards, it meets an empty space, in which it 

experiences the pure flow of time. 

Time and memory are one of the cornerstone categories 

that define the unique nature of the phenomenon of 

photography. Photography’s mesmerising power to 

capture the moment, which would otherwise sink into 

oblivion, challenges artists to negotiate and rethink 

the relationship between time and photography. Three 

photographers represented in the exhibition, 

Algirdas Seskus (b. 1945), Arturas Valiauga (b. 1967) 

and Arunas Kulikauskas (b. 1959), use the capturing 

of the flow of time as an artistic strategy. Although 

we cannot associate the meaning of Seskus’ work only 

with the category of time, the temporal dimension 

is nevertheless very important in these nameless 

and undated puzzles of fragments and excerpts of the 

everyday. His photographs seem to capture time in a 

sort of intermediate state, between flow and stasis. 

This fragile existence resides in the photographs’ mini 

structures, which transmit the temporal and spatial 

poetry of everyday life. 

Arturas Valiauga attempts to show that photography 

can express paradoxically the tensile quality of time 

in his series ‘The Week Has Eight Days’ (2002–2003). 

The eight photographs show simple and unadorned 

rooms that nevertheless radiate a Biedermeier-like 

warmth and domestic harmony. A somewhat casual mess, 

such as clothes drying on a washing line, the figure 

of a child, or a flash like a shadow, fills the 

narrative of the photographs with a mundane monotony. 

Characteristic attributes of domestic life in 

Lithuania, such as patterned tablecloths, curtains, 

bedspreads, Oriental-style wall rugs, furniture, 

household utensils and paintings of saints, create 

an environment in which nobody keeps track of time 

or looks at the clock standing in the corner. These 

images show a world where nothing changes, and the 

week could easily have eight days in it. 

A complex structure of time and space distinguishes 

Arunas Kulikauskas’ series ‘A Waft of the Misty Past’ 

(1989). Kulikauskas accidentally came across a set of 

negatives by an unknown photographer from the interwar 

period, which show carefree holidaymakers having a 

good time by the sea. Kulikauskas develops prints, 

tones them slightly, and exhibits them alongside his 

own work in exhibitions, thus inserting them into the 

artistic context of the early 1990s, where they become 

the axis of a conceptual work. In this way, photographs 

intended for a family album travel in time, losing 

their primary private function, acquiring new meanings, 

and becoming part of the collective memory. 

In August 1989, the ‘Baltic Way’ was held to 

commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Molotov- 

Ribbentrop Pact, which annulled the independence of 

the Baltic States. During this event, a chain of people 

holding hands connected Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn, 

the three capitals. The documentary photographs by 

Romualdas 

Pozerskis (b. 1951) allow the viewer to look at 

this major historical event from very close up. This 

closeness gives a meaning to history through the 

people who created it, providing the collective memory 

11

with a human face and a human identity. The line 

of people that stretched along the Baltic Way also 

unfolds in time, thanks to Pozerskis’ photographs: 

the chronologically shot sequences capture the small 

stories without which the big story would not have 

come to be written. 

The remembrance of time past preserved in photographs 

intensifies and revives the understanding of lived 

experience, as well as mobilising and visually 

structuring memory. Photographers who rush to 

immortalise a significant event in the life of society 

are plenty, but those who rethink historical experience 

and transfer it to the sphere of artistic issues and 

contexts are few. The young photographer Indre Serpytyte 

(b. 1983) is a Lithuanian emigre of recent times. Trying 

to find answers to questions of identity that preoccupy 

her, she engages in an analysis of the historical 

memory. ‘A sense of not belonging here prompts me 

to keep searching for my own roots [...] Through my 

photographs, I try to reconstruct the inherited memory, 

seeking to make it tangible.’ 3 The photographic series 

‘Notebook’, ‘Former NKVD-MVD-MGB-KGB Buildings’ and 

‘Forest Brothers’ form a body of artistic research that 

analyses the object of traumatic experience and ways of 

maintaining oblivion and remembrance. The documentary 

photographs depict buildings in which the repressive 

NKVD, MVD, MGB and KGB structures were housed in Soviet 

times. Most of these buildings are typical, ordinary 

small-town houses that are still in use, in spite of 

the repressive acts that were carried out there by the 

occupying regime. The photographer collects archive 

material and photographic documentation of the buildings 

in her notebooks, and uses it to create a series of 

photographs of wooden models. Reducing these violent 

spatial containers to palm-size models, she gives the 

past the form of a tangible and warm reality, rescuing 

them from oblivion. 

Antanas Sutkus also addresses the problem of the 

cultivation of the historical memory in his series ‘Pro 

memoria’ (1994–1997), which portrays members of the 

3 Indre Serpytyte. Fotografijos paroda ‘1944–1991’, in: 

http://www.photography.lt/lt.php/Parodos?id=453 (accessed on 

28 August 2012) 

Lithuanian Jewish community who survived the Holocaust. 

The close-up look at the portrayed people, accompanied 

by information about when and in which ghetto a person 

was kept, forces the viewer insensibly to think about 

how few Jews there are left in Lithuania today, and 

the fact that they have become virtually invisible. 

It is precisely because of this that the faces of the 

portrayed, just like the accompanying biographical 

notes, seem to take us by surprise. In her book 

‘The Visual Turn: Images-Words-Bodies-Looks’, Erika 

Grigoraviciene refers to this surprise as a sign of an 

image’s ‘vitality’. 4 Thus, portrayal becomes a symbolic 

affirmation of life, and simultaneously a gesture of the 

cultivation of the memory. 

As photographers search for a relationship between their 

subjective world-view and the factual reality, they give 

birth to images, or, as in the case of this exhibition, 

poetic documents. Photographs that find their meaning in 

forceful images become a part of reality, and construct 

it together, influencing our cultural consciousness. 


4 Erika Grigoraviciene, Vaizdinis posukis: vaizdai – zodziai – 

kunai – zvilgsniai, Vilnius: Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, 

2011, p. 270 

13

The Lithuanian language is considered to be almost the 

oldest language in Europe, while Lithuanian literature 

is undoubtedly one of the youngest literatures. The 

reasons for this paradox are many. At the time when 

Europe was undergoing a boom in national literatures, 

together with the rise of the Protestant movement, 

mainly the peasants in Lithuania spoke Lithuanian. Works 

written in the 17th and 18th centuries are considered 

today to be the beginning of Lithuanian literature, and 

yet they were the efforts of individual enthusiasts. 

In the 19th century, the Russian occupation made its 

contribution. After the 1863 uprising against Imperial 

Russian rule, the Lithuanian press in the Latin alphabet 

was prohibited: books could only be published in 

Cyrillic. In this situation, the resistance acquired 

other forms. Books were published in East Prussia 

(now the Kaliningrad region) and secretly brought to 

Lithuania by smugglers who risked their lives and 

their freedom. Most of the books published were of an 

educational nature; only a minority of enlightened 

intellectuals, usually clerics, cultivated the sprouts 

of pure literature. The situation improved after 1904, 

when the ban on publishing in Lithuanian was lifted, 

but a more notable revival in literature would not 

begin until 1918, when the country proclaimed its 

independence. 

Unfortunately, the Soviet occupation of 1940 interrupted 

the literary life that was gathering momentum: around 

70 per cent of writers left the country after the war. 

In Soviet times, literature was censored and crippled. 

Thus, there was little time for its free and natural 

development. The situation began to change after 

Lithuania reclaimed its independence in 1990. 

Lithuania is often called a land of poets, although 

recently this has acquired an increasingly ironic 

undertone. Indeed, poetry has played a very important 

role for a long time. It was a quasi-religion of sorts 

that delivered to its readers more than other art forms 

could. It came to be seen as offering the possibility 

to preserve the nation, the language, and the truth. In 

Soviet times, although it was constrained by censorship 

and ideological oppression, poetry was able to create a 

certain space for freedom. Literary work became freer 

in Brezhnev’s time, and the dominant poetics developed 

in the 1970s and 1980s. The Soviet system’s official 

artistic paradigm was Socialist Realism, but poetry 

managed to craft a modernist aesthetic that functioned 

as a kind of resistance. Among such forms of artistic 

resistance are the poetics of the absurd, the polyphonic 

play of metaphors and aposiopesis, blank verse, the 

omission of punctuation, and cryptic language. Thus, 

after the restoration of independence, poetry underwent 

few changes, and essentially continued the developments 

of the preceding decades. However, the change in 

the public’s relationship with poetry has been more 

substantial. If today Lithuania can be called a land of 

poets, it is only because there are many people writing 

poetry. 

In selecting the authors and texts for this exhibition, 

I did not aim to present an overview, because that 

is what anthologies are for. Instead, I chose poems 

that responded to the questions and themes addressed 

by the exhibition, poems that have the potential to 

create a dialogue with the photographs and the films 

presented, poems that allow the viewer (who in this case 

is also inevitably a reader) to experience some of the 

‘mystery’ of Lithuanian art in collaboration with visual 

art. Poetry that has visual or narrative qualities 

caught my eye. I was even surprised to find that such 

a close affinity between branches of the arts can be 

possible. I do not want to speak about a synthesis of 

the arts, which is increasingly becoming an obligation 

in the post-postmodern world. I would rather call this 

affinity and proximity a dialogue. And it is precisely 

in maintaining a dialogue that truth and wisdom can 

exist, as we know from the times of Socrates and Plato. 

Therefore, let us speak about the Lithuanians, their 

past, present and future. 

The poetry presented here covers almost nine decades, I 

could almost say the whole epoch of modern Lithuanian 

literature. Nevertheless, the majority of the authors 

selected belong to the modern era. The sole author to 

address us from the interwar period is Kazys Binkis 

(1893–1942). As the most notable early 20th-century 

Lithuanian Futurist, who, like most European Futurists, 

glorified youth and flights of the imagination, he 

searched for new possibilities in language, and believed 

in the future, perhaps somewhat naively, at least from 

the point of view of the present century. His optimistic 

look at time and history represents the youth of poetry. 

Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas (b. 1919) belongs to an entirely 

different age. In this exhibition, he represents émigré 

15

Lithuanian literature. As I have already mentioned, 

during the Second World War, most writers moved to the 

West, and later the majority of them settled in the 

USA. Therefore, for several decades, the most important 

literary steps, marked by personal trauma, were taken 

there, on the other side of the Atlantic. The work of 

émigré writers was banned in Lithuania, and yet it still 

reached readers through various illegal channels. Today 

we can boldly claim that émigré poets such as Antanas 

Mackus, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas and Henrikas Radauskas 

were writers of a European standing. Nyka-Niliunas 

looks in the opposite direction to that of Binkis: he 

constantly looks back to the past, where he searches 

for existential support. In his work, the exile turns 

from personal and historical drama to an existential 

impetus for life and creation, much as the banishment 

of Adam from the Garden of Eden began the history of 

mankind. The work of Nyka-Niliunas deals with the 

sensations and insights of an intellectual Prodigal 

Son. He is a poet who explores passionately the 

erosion of existence and the collisions of language 

and reality, and yet at the same time he retains a 

cold and analytical mind. 

Vytautas P. Bloze (b. 1930) is deservedly proclaimed 

to be a reformer of poetry: he established free verse 

in Lithuanian poetry, and still remains one of its 

most influential poets. His poetic world is hard to 

describe, all the more so because it has changed a lot 

over the 50 years of his creative work. By invoking the 

aesthetics of surrealism and the grotesque, modelling 

different contexts, and employing free associations, 

collage and paraphrase, he constructs multi-dimensional 

structures and polyphonies. Bloze is often unable to 

fit everything into one poem, so he writes series, long 

poems and books; there is a strong epic aspect in his 

work. He creates a myth of sorts, which encompasses both 

universal and personal experience. 

For a long time the Lithuanian folklore and ethnographic 

tradition played a prominent role in poetry. The 

most notable member of this movement is Marcelijus 

Martinaitis (b. 1936). By subtly combining folk poetics 

with irony and modern speech, he became known for 

the character of Kukutis, a simple-minded child who 

is also a sage. For several decades, Kukutis was a 

kind of symbol, Martinaitis’ poetic trademark. In his 

later work, he further developed poetics based on the 

principles of narrative, sometimes even the folk tale, 

and employed elements of paradox, the grotesque and 

alogism. 

Another prominent thread in poetry is associated with 

Sigitas Geda (1943–2008), an extremely prolific poet and 

translator. As a translator, he translated many classics, 

starting with the ‘Song of Songs’ and ending with the 

works of Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz. He is by 

far the most elemental 20th-century Lithuanian poet. His 

work is infused with a pantheistic energy, connecting 

natural forces with elements of the world’s cultures. We 

can trace in his poetry the origins of poetic language, 

and its very birth. An archaic (Sumerian, Egyptian, or 

pagan Lithuanian) world-view breaks out in modern poetic 

form. We get the impression that the poem is writing 

itself, rather than being written by the poet. Geda can 

be called the shaman of Lithuanian poetry. 

Tomas Venclova (b. 1937) has perhaps trodden the 

most intellectual path in poetry. Describing himself 

as a Neoclassical poet, he indeed writes formally 

complex poems, in which Classical forms are filled 

with existential, historical and political realities. 

Often his poems require a commentary, which the author 

frequently provides when he reads his own work. His 

poetics are closer to Russian poetics, such as the 

poetics of Joseph Brodsky, who for many years was 

his friend. In 1974, Venclova left for the West as 

a political dissident. At the same time, he is the 

Lithuanian poet who is best known in the world, and 

represents the generation of poets who struggled with 

their poetic words and public stance against the Soviet 

system. Moral and political engagement is an important 

element in his work. 

Kornelijus Platelis (b. 1951) is Lithuania’s Ezra Pound. 

He is also a translator of Pound’s work. Unlike other 

poets, he merges the realities of ancient and modern 

culture, using archetypal and mythical imagery. Platelis 

writes intellectual poetry: as in Plato’s dialogues, 

the spirit of discussion and philosophical discourse 

dominates, while the manner of expression resembles the 

Classical one. But these are not just palimpsests of 

ancient texts; rather, by invoking the wisdom, myths and 

history of ancient cultures, he reveals the meanings and 

the meaninglessness of the modern world. 

Judita Vaiciunaite (1937–2001) is the most notable 

writer of urban poetry. She was the first to advocate 

the rights of the urban reality in Lithuanian poetry, 

which was then dominated by an agrarian mentality. 

To her, the city is not the opposite of the country; 

rather, it is an extension of it, for the most important 

exposures of human existence emerge in the city. The 

architectural details, the dandelions sprouting through 

a pavement, and the history that lies hidden behind 

ruins, are all equally important to her eye. She draws, 

we could even say she photographs, individual details 

of the city in an Impressionist style, which then form 

series and books, creating a multi-dimensional portrait 

of the city. 

The poetry of Donaldas Kajokas (b. 1953) is 

distinguished by the fact that it is modelled upon 

eastern poetics and metaphysics, ancient Japanese and 

Chinese poetry, and Buddhism, Shintoism and other 

philosophies. The literary theorist Donata Mitaite once 

wrote: ‘A prominent part of his poetic output consists 

of short meditative poems, in which he takes a deep look 

into nature, and listens to himself, feeling the unity 

and the harmony of the world, the very joy of looking 

closely at it. The image fractures, leaving space for 

intuition and silent pauses.’ 

Aidas Marcenas (b. 1960) is one of the most subtle 

masters of poetic form, who seems to associate himself 

with the adepts of the tradition. On the other hand, he 

demolishes the towers of elite culture in his work and 

mocks the established notions of ‘beauty’, by employing 

everyday forms of language, paraphrasing other poets 

and their style, and creating a ‘new naivety’. Yet in 

reality, these are merely masks for naivety: for a long 

time, he has been cultivating the theme of the poet as a 

medium and a genius, which has recently been yielding to 

an ironic view of the poet himself. 

Another remarkable figure who has significantly changed 

poetry’s orientation is Sigitas Parulskis (b. 1965). 

By employing what he describes as ‘the aesthetic of 

ugliness’, he prompts the reader to take a look at the 

world from another angle, ‘from the bottom’. In his 

poetry, the world is turned upside-down, things that 

are deemed to be ‘low’ become points of reference. 

Decaying, foul-smelling objects enter into the field 

of his poetic imagery: the poems overflow with slime, 

blood and sewage. There is no naivety; rather, it is 

poetic cruelty, which rejects sweet models of being, 

searching and the longing for sanctity, and yet not in 

an Apollonian Heaven, but on a Dionysian Earth. Death, 

a strong centre of gravity, curves and magnetises the 

lines of Parulskis’ imagination. It becomes the key 

to his poetics, he mentions it frequently, attempting 

to use it to open a door, not to the afterlife, as is 

common for a metaphysically oriented imagination, but to 

this world, trying to identify through it the shapes of 

life. Each of his imagination’s movements ‘from point A 

to point B’ turns into a journey from life to death, or 

vice versa. 

Thus, 25 poetic documents of a whole era are presented 

here. Or, to put it a simpler way, poems. They are 

written by different authors, but united by the same 

concern, the human being’s position in time and history. 

Sigitas Geda once wrote: ‘Now I would like to be 

myself.’ Who wouldn’t? But is this possible? Can these 

documents prove anything? They may demonstrate that the 

world and mankind itself are much poorer and inferior 

without creative work. They are foreign. They might 

simply vanish without creativity. The whole history of 

Lithuania supports this. 

Eugenijus Alisanka 

17

Jonas Kalvelis 

From the series 'Dunes‘, 1973–1985 

From the collection of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers 

Kaunas Department 

From the series 'Dunes', 1973–1985 



23

Aquarelles 

The summer wind rolls on 

Over the forest on balls of wind. 

May morning will soon open 

Its colorful album. 

The woods laden with shadows at dawn. 

Bluish aquarelles mingling 

With bonfires’ palettes of grime. 

Lathed by broken bands 

Hazy pyramids, prismse 

Surprised, and glancing back, thinking 

Is this a forest or Futurism? 

Kazys Binkis 

100 pavasariu ('100 Springs'), 1923 

25

Jonas Kalvelis 

From the series 'Dunes', 1973–1985 



From the series 'Dune's, 1973–1985 



27

Vigil In April 

April, and I wasn’t yet born. 

My mother was lying down, having wounded herself 

In the blade of a scream, in senseless solitude: 

Walls all around. 

The scream turned razor-sharp – so she got up to walk. 

While I listened to how, underfoot, a blue-eyed worm 

And its family were eating the chaste earth, 

How a hooded, nihilist bug chopped 

Regenerating roots 

And an aging unbaptized starwort 

Prayed to the angry gods of home. 

When she walked along the riverbank 

(An inimitable, eternal movement), 

April’s willow branches 

Touched her skin with the fingers 

Of a genial virtuoso, giving back 

The form of her body not yet opened to anybody. 

Baltimore, 1975 

Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas 

Ziemos teologija ('Theology Of Winter'), 1985 

29

Aleksandras Macijauskas 

Leaving Trees. No. 1, 1982 

The author's property 

Leaving Trees. No. 3, 1982 


31

I don’t Mind Culture 

The wild grape strangles 

the unpruned plum 

whose branches will break from the ripe fruit. 

Two small oaks already smother the cherry trees 

in the corner of the garden. Everything grows natura, 

proliferates in me, shooting vines through the body‘s 

holes, enlacing the soul, like a potato tuber 

in the dark cellar becoming 

something else, distorting its own 

simple instincts and physiological needs. 

Cherries grow smaller, more vinegary, fruits and the consequence 

turn sour. Pungent wine 

hurries me into black oblivion. 

July 1998 

Kornelijus Platelis 

Atoslugio juosta ('Tidal Zone'), 2000 

33

Alfonsas Budvytis 

This is my Eventide / When Dark Thoughts Come. I-II, 1992 

From the collection of the Modern Art Center (Vilnius) 

35

tourist booklet 

yes, here’s Lithuania 

here there is nothing, but clouds 

sullen ashy frowning beings 

nobody knows whose creations 

they’ve learned to lounge dimly around, to change 

shapes, hang out in gangs 

or herds, to copiously spawn 

and to rain and rumble and flash 

but otherwise they’re cool dudes 

without them, it’s said, for sure 

there’d be nothing here, well – sometimes – 

double rainbows 

Donaldas Kajokas 

Kurciam asiliukui ('To The Deaf Donkey'), 2011 

37

Algimantas Kuncius 

From the series 'Distant Images', 1985–1998 

The Environs of Kryzkalnis, Raseiniai region, August, 1996 


The Environs of Silenai, Vilnius region, July, 1990 


39

Spring In Buivydiskes 

and again 

the same 

skylark 

comes out 

from the ground 

northern 

spirit 

crouching 

in a greenish 

egg – 

the skylark 

which 

I listened to 

10 thousand 

years 

ago 

not in this 

world 

at all 

the song 

the same 

the same – 

warbles 

harmonizing 

the universe 

Sigitas Geda 

Zalio gintaro veriniai 

('Necklaces Of Green Amber'), 1988 

41

Algimantas Kuncius 

The Environs of Azuozeriai, Anyksciai region, August, 1990 


Kruonis, Kaisiadorys region, September, 1996 


43

20 Confessions 

I decided I had experienced everything. 

I had pretended to be an infant, a little child. 

A little boy. A little girl. 

A little, childlike God---purely Nothing. 

I had pretended to be a bird. 

With a bird’s eye looked at Lithuania, at its sea’s craters. 

Pretended to be a priest, centaur, Strazdas, Jesus 

Christ, Lithuania’s greatest poet, all people and all birds. 

Charon, demiurge, playing with shells in the Baltic. 

A mortal caressing Dido in dark sea-depths with whales. 

Drunken Villon, or Bilhana ravishing the King’s underage daughter. 

Cassandra, prophesying death. 

Picasso, splitting bones. 

Mad Hölderlin, thirsting for silence. 

Li Po with snow-covered pennants in ancient China. 

A white crow picking nettles. 

All the semblances, God, that you told me to take. 

Now I want to be myself. 

Cruel, dark, ruthless. 

Powerless, sick, noble. 

Dying. Resurrecting. In order to live. 

Sigitas Geda 

Mamutu tevyne ('Home Of Mammoths'), 1985 

47

Aleksandras Macijauskas 

Demonstrations in Kaunas. No. 19, 1967 




49





51

Seen Somewhere 

People say that they ate each other up. 

Gingerly when young 

they devoured each other with their eyes, 

especially him: 

her lips, cheeks, breasts. 

Later impassioned 

they fastened lip to lip – 

clear to their brains, 

blending into one body, 

over and over, insatiable. 

It was called love, 

until life befell them: 

suspicion, poverty, discord. 

Old folks 

they gnaw away at each other – until the bone: 

out of habit, loneliness, 

not knowing what to do, 

already deaf. 

While life ebbs away, 

they nag and gnaw from morning till night 

bodies eroded by time – 

like old coats 

shackled together. 

Neither one takes its eyes from the other: 

jabbing blunt dull looks 

already almost past death 

at the gates of the hell. 

Marcelijus Martinaitis 

K.B. Itariamas ('K.B. Suspect'), 2004 

53

Apples 

In trolley number 5 on the back-seat, 

next to a nodding old man from Gerontion, 

a sack of ruddy apples on my lap. Not for Paris, 

not for Alexander, but for my children, my family. 

Unintentionally, the apples of my breasts pulsate with juices. 

A young man at the doorway across from me, 

fastening his gaze on the apples, the juices, the prize, 

selects, it seems, something from the shadows of his soul. 

In his crotch, the root of life begins to grow, 

an ungovernable horn stiffening as he bashfully turns red. 

The old man, seeing this, perks up and starts to chuckle. 

The young man becomes flustered and gets off at the next stop. 

The old man keeps chuckling. My body’s gone numb, 

its juices run wild. I try to get off 

at the next stop, but the forgotten sack 

falls off my lap, the ruddy apples spill out. 

Undelivered prize. The old man sniggers 

and helps to pick up the apples. Not for Alexander, 

not for Paris, but for my children, my family. I get off. 

Beyond the voices of old men, past the faces of Achivi... 

May the Gods send him his soul’s most beautiful woman. 

December 1996 

Kornelijus Platelis 

Atoslugio juosta ('Tidal Zone'), 2000 

55

Antanas Sutkus 

At the Railway Station. Vilnius, 1964 


After the Feast. Giruliai, 1964 


57

The Ferry between Antakalnis and Zirmunai, Vilnius, 1964 


The Morning after the Wedding. Siauliai, 1979 


59

Sunset. Man Near a Haystack 

Blew snot into his palm, 

flung his hand down. 

A.J. 

Walked a bit away from the hay 

and took a “Prima” from his pocket. 

Took a drag. Turned 

casually to the side, 

pissed on a molehill, 

scratched the belly of a foal... 

The sun was going down. Next to the swamp 

a bow-legged girl was chasing a rooster. 

He cracked a smile. Inhaled. 

Never read any poetry. 

Donaldas Kajokas 

Drabuzeliais baltais ('In White Clothes'), 1994 

61

Rimaldas Viksraitis 

Grimaces of the Weary Village. Valakbudis, 1998 


Grimaces of the Weary Village, 1998–2001 


63

A Girl’s World 

While she strolls along, 

Bridges turn more graceful. Riverbanks 

And streets start playing in the midday sun. 

Towers dress up 

In their Sunday best. 

Things suddenly lose their weight. 

Sociology, politics and economy 

Die, and everything becomes 

Eros and theology. 




65

Domicele Tarabildiene 

Photomontage with Lillian Roth’s Skirt, 1932 

From the collection of the National M.K. Ciurlionis Art Museum 

Dragonfly, 1931 

The property of the author family 

67

Kukutis’ Visit to Vilnius 

– How big Vilnius is! 

At one end a stork perched on its leg, 

at the other – one hears rat-a-tat-tatting! 

On one side folks cut rye, 

on the other – 

bound sheaves, 

on one side – 

a child cries, 


wipes his eyes; 

on one – 

somebody sings, 


the accompaniment ... 

How big Vilnius is! 

Like so it spreads over the fields of Lithuania: 

through Dubysa, 

through Luoke, 

through Zematija, 

till it ends up at the sea! 


Kukucio balades ('Ballads of Kukutis'), 1977 

71

Sunflower 

In Vilnius, in the building lot on Totoriu street, 

a sunflower growing there year before last – 

a flower with green Indian blood, 

always looking at the sun, 

a symbol of that summer – 

I still listen to its swish in the wind, 

I still see the golden-leafed huge blossom, 

dusty and fair; 

a flower of green Indian blood, 

as if sprouted from Vilnius baroque, 

swaying its noble head high 

over scattered bricks the drowsy 

heat, over the rubble, 

over excavated foundations, 

over the medieval city – 

my royal summer park 

of breaking glass, play, 

blow, a madrigal over the scrap iron, 

one can hear its echo from the year before last, 

in the heat of the wasteland, in the destitution of that summer 

a flower of the sun, swinging so 

turning its gilded face through clouds of dust. 

1988 

Judita Vaiciunaite 

Pilkas Siaures namas ('The North’s Grey House'), 1994 

73

Jan Bulhak 

Vilnius. The Intersection of Didzioji and Vokieciu St 

DPCH VM album, No. 234, 1944 

From the archive of the Department for the Preservation of the 

Cultural Heritage of Vilnius Municipality 

Vilnius. Traku St. The North Side of the Street. Karpiu (later 

Tyszkiewicz) Estate. DPCH VM album, No. 169, 1944 

From the archive of the Department for the Preservation of the 

Cultural Heritage of Vilnius Municipality 

75

Ghetto 

At six o’clock in the morning, 

when newspaper kiosks, and grocery stores 

are still closed, 

at six o’clock in the morning 

on the side-streets of the Vilnius ghetto dandelions open, 

yellow dusty street blossoms 

like the yellow blossom 

of stars of David 

spew into the cracks from under the cobblestones, 

where there are underworld chambers 

ghastly looking 

arches, dark deep passages, 

the thick stench of garlic and fish still lingers 

from the cellars and rubble of the courtyards 

the golden aureoles of the dandelions open, 

at six o’clock in the morning 

a yellow blaze surges into a dead-end alley 

of a dirty courtyard, 

where the forgotten shadow of a Jew 

maybe prays, maybe whispers a curse. 

1993 

Judita Vaiciunaite 

Pilkas Siaures namas (The North’s Grey House), 1994 

77

Vytautas Balcytis 

Vilnius. Placioji St, 1990 


Vilnius. Sv. Stepono St, 1990 


79

Courtyard in Antakalnis 

Entering here – it’s the same, 

as diving into a dream, 

or waking up. Things 

escape their shape, faded 

balconies, doors, unsprouted 

grass. Everything 

is shrunken and at the same time – 

bigger. Anyhow – 

there’s no place for me. The wheel’s 

turned: the branch 

on which, when I was late for school, 

I’d hang to jump over the fence – 

five meters higher, the tree, 

we’ d climb to play cards – 

now blossoms in Paradise. In it, 

my friends who killed themselves, 

play a card game, the Fool, 

hiding forever from God, 

the same faces worn 

by children, still playing war. 

Aidas Marcenas 

Vargsas Jorikas ('Poor Yorick'), 1998 

81

Vytautas Balcytis 

Vilnius. Lukiskes, 2003 


Vilnius. Naujininkai, 2001 


83

Vilnius. The Library, 1987 


Vilnius. Seskine, 2001 


85

Uzupis 

Under an aproar of lindens, before the stone 

embankment, by a fast current like the Tiber, 

I am drinking Gilbey’s with two bearded men. 

In the twilight – the jingle of glasses, smoke. 

But we have never met. I knew their parents. 

Generations overtake another. The tape-recorder 

warbles and crackles. My two interlocutors 

want to know about questions I once pondered: 

whether there is meaning to suffering and mercy – 

whether art can survive if it obeys no rules. 

I was the same as them, but destiny accorded 

me a strange fate: this, of course, is no better 

than any other. I know evil never disappears, 

but one can at least strive to dispel blindness – 

and poetry is more meaningful than dreams. 

In summertime, I often wake before dawn, 

sensing, without fear, the time is drawing 

close when others will inherit the dictionary, 

along with clouds, ruins, salt and bread. 

And freedom is all that I will be granted. 

Tomas Venclova 

Sankirta ('The Junction'), 2008 

87

Gintautas Trimakas 

From the series 'City. A Different Angle', 2009 




89





91

Moments of coming to oneself 

- - - sitting for such a long time, 

your hands squeezing your sore heavy head, - 

because somewhere in the world my children are wretched 

and – all their misery and pain... 

The closest souls to me! 

And that you will die, my buddy, one day, 

and due to this they’ll undergo – 

even more misery and pain - - - 

- - - and such awareness, if not a plea: 

you’ll be shocked by the Lord, 

blue lightening will bolt through you, 

in August, after the Assumption 

while you’re shitting on stubble 

Sigitas Geda 

Sokratas kalbasi su veju 

('Socrates Talks to the Wind'), 2001 

95

Algirdas Seskus 

From 'The Green Bridge' 




97

Burning of Shoes 

after building a fire I recall 

my son trying on my shoes for size 

as if he tried on me, myself 

shoes, they are a dwelling, home for legs 

retreat for a prodigal son 

time walked away lives in them 

each time we celebrate new shoes 

we believe we will walk on farther than they promise 

son wearing my shoes 

I don’t know, still cannot understand 

if a part of me returned in a home of shoes 

or a part already left, and which part would be better 

and how many shoes are destined for me, how many homes 

where I will never live 

I look at the flames 

where my dead father’s shoes depart 

the shoes in which he will live through the ages 

Sigitas Parulskis 

Pagyvenusio vyro pagundos 

('Temptations of an Elderly Man'), 2009 

99

Algirdas Seskus 





101

The Apprentice 

I am still looking for the key 

To the language of the water-drop, the stone, 

To the silence of birds 

In the alder scrubs of Tartarus, 

To decipher the drab wound 

Of a dead pigeon – 

As once in Cartagena, 

As once in Vilnius. 

I am still exploring 

My own history from a book 

Never written 

Whose pages 

Someone is cynically tearing out 

From the end. 

I have to hurry up, 

Though I won’t get to know everything. 




103

Romualdas Pozerskis 

From the series 'The Baltic Way', 1989 


From the series 'The Baltic Way', 1989 


105

* * * 

Old age falls into line by the writing desk 

And splatters seas of ink 

While the pedigree stock, freezing outside the door, 

Wait their turn, armored with patience, de jure. 

It’s not for us to pander to the mania of the deceased 

And weigh the dead atoms of poetry. 

We throw good-byes to the well-groomed company 

And step forth afresh into the vistas of life. 

Those not yet bored making out with the Muse – 

Go poach your lyrics. 

Whereas for us the world, blossoming with things, 

Shimmers down our heartstrings. 

It’s no art – to twitter like quail 

And to hawk ink on swans and love. 

We take a word – and with a foot, like in football, 

Kick it somewhere into the berm of the sky. 

We go to a Belorussian, a Pole, a German – 

And say, “wanna smell Lithuanian hay?” 

And everyone, regardless how learned and shrewd, 

Gets down to lick us like we were finger food. 

When the earth is decked in verdure 

How can you bookworm yourself at a table? 

We go on forgetful as hell, 

Endlessly happy and well. 

Kazys Binkis 

100 pavasariu ('100 Springs'), 1923 

107

Arunas Kulikauskas 

From the series 'A Waft of the Misty Past', 1989 




109





111

XIV 

you’ve sent our clothes 

by post to another world which 

ends right here and starts 

with us, because there is no past 

as no tomorrow as well while sitting in your own disjunction 

and seeking for a definition of success 

there we will get dressed and sit 

on the cemetery fence, looking out at the field 

from which the townfolks’ cows return, and we return from school 

in our jackets, 

staring, while sitting under the blossoming plum-trees 

on the cemetery fence, where the lindens of dead folks 

sigh over our heads and where their birds 

and their voices chatter about us again 

send my fear too 

and the pencil, I draw cowardly 

bees collecting honey, butterflies 

chased by a bird, horses 

standing in the meadow and emerging 

from memory, until we will jump down and walk away 

across the small town of Seduva, where under the cobblestone road 

the wheels of the dead rumbled so lovely, and where flowers 

blossomed under the windows of our childhood 

12.9.1980 

Vytautas P. Bloze 

Ruduo ('Autumn'), 1996 

113

Arturas Valiauga 

From the series 'The Week Has Eight Days', 1999 




115



Fro the series 'The Week Has Eight Days', 1999 


117

119

K.B.: Trash Angels 

At dusk 

they suddenly appear out of nowhere – 

as if from a painting by Bosch, as if from the beyond, 

or from a world of shadows. 

Surrounding the dumpsters, they go to work, 

their arms sunk in up to their elbows, 

as if looking for signs of life 

above a butchered beast: 

for lungs, the heart, the liver. 

Who is this trash-pickers’ community? 

The Starving? Bums? 

Alcoholics? Former hot-shots? 

They work slowly, concentrating, 

until they’re replaced 

by stray cats 

sitting a bit off to the side. 

They pull things out and stuff them into sacks, 

what’s still usable, what can still be civilized. 

All the rest, they throw back – 

torn family albums a book without a cover 

a canary in a plastic bag ragged 

suede gloves shreds from a ballroom gown 

splinters of cut-glass drafts of poems 

dentures a collection of old postcards 

an invitation to a celebration 

election promises of politicians 

a torn in half wedding photograph – 

everything already anesthetized: 

hopes trust appreciation 

mourning intrigues pride 

turned to garbage... 

As if they were the last judges, 

angels from the world of shadows – 

alongside the dumpsters, furiously sorting 

bringing history to a close. 


K.B. Itariamas ('K.B. “Suspect'), 2004 

121

Now it is time for me 

Now it is time for me 

To go home, but where can I get a new 

Face, a new mask, 

So that 

Your deaf eyes, 

Your blind hand 

Would recognize it. 

I’m returning to my 

Washed-out world, 

Where, killed by words, things 

Lie around, and the blind morning 

Still fights with the phonetics 

And morphology of being. 




123

Indre Serpytyte 

From the series 'Forest Brothers' 


From the series 'Forest Brothers' 


125

From the series 'Former NKVD–MVD–MGB–KGB Buildings' 


From the series 'Former NKVD–MVD–MGB–KGB Buildings' 


127

From the series 'Notebook' 


From the series 'Notebook' 


129

The Hospital Park 

I thought – I’d die sooner or go out 

of my head, thirteen years later I think 

I loved myself too much spent too much time 

looking at flowing water didn’t have 

to understand. I was writing 

poems dabbling, 

wanting to be understood beyond measure 

succeeding 

even when I lied 

pashka was a trumpet-voiced militiaman, didn’t think 

a lot, talked to christ 

at the dzerzhinskis marketplace, at dusk, he had 

problems at his work, had 

to prove to the mayor – he wasn’t stupid, at all costs 

to get a certificate from the madhouse 

methodically he washed and washed his socks, 

sliced his throat 

with a breadknife, silently 

to go crazy – barefoot, 

to Jerusalem - - - - - - - - - - - 

1995 

Aidas Marcenas 

Vargsas Jorikas ('Poor Yorick'), 1998 

131

Antanas Sutkus 

From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Klara Cerniauskiene, Kaunas, 1997 


From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Zinaida Indurskaja, Vilnius, 1994 


133

From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Chaja Korbiene, Kaunas, 1997 


From the series 'Pro Memoria'. Dmitrijus Kopelmanas, Vilnius, 1994 


135

XVIII 

some grizzled old man was looking for me, robed in XVIIIcentury clothes 

long beard (hoary), with long straight hair (white whiteas happens when darkness surrounds the eyes) 

I didn’t understand what he wanted (I hung up his shabby coat) 

I’m a photographer, he was saying, I’d like to take a couple photos of you, as a Kapellmeister of the palace, 

sea in the background, or recollections in the background, he talked on: I was in prison with 

your father (he’s still alive in my photos) for cooking the books 

after the war I stayed for a while in Vorkuta, there I hitched up with a bevy of amateur photographers 

later got divorced again, I often hear omens (and you also) 

they tell a lot about themselves, things I wouldn’t tell, we need 

to talk, all this comes to mind 

from the time when 550 years ago Lithuania started to shrink 

and retreat from sea to sea 

I understood, that he was mad, he handed me an invitation 

to come to see a photo exhibition of the Hindu God, Indra 

in the invitation was his own photo, such a furrowed face, such sad eyes, only tranquil madmen have such eyes 

hiding them inside or under themselves, under their feet, under a cap or gloves 

I confessed to him, that I had also been crazy once, he was very sorry 

that I did not write down everything, what I thought and saw in those days of spiritual freedom 

that I did not take pictures of hallucinations 

he has a whole collection of them 

if you want, I’ll show you, palace mason, he said 

let’s meet tomorrow in the curves of secession art 

at twelve o’clock sharp after death 

in the kingdom of shadows of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, we will talk 

16.9.1980 

Vytautas P. Bloze 

Ruduo ('Autumn'), 1996 

137

Subjective Chronicle 

Everyone is already dead 

César Vallejo 

Julius, the cattle feeder, dead, run through by a bull’s horn, a pissed 

animal, doesn’t hanker to people broke loose from a stall 

Daktariunas – dead, they called him Smoggy, because 

on firing the furnaces he’d get completely black 

Vytautas Norkunas – dead, he lived alone, winter 

summer shod in gumboots 

Lame Liudvikas Trumpa – dead, didn’t want to get drafted 

so pounded a nail into his leg 

Valerka – dead, killed riding a motorbike, you can still 

see footprints on the telephone pole 

Cousin Vidas – dead, he liked fishing, burying him during 

the potato planting, two swans swam across the lake 

Valdas the weightlifter – dead, used to hop the freights 

fell down under 

the wheels 

My friend’s son – dead, he was born dead 

God’s son – dead, he also died dead 

Then there are the dead I never got to know, never greeted 

never even suspected they were alive 

How about the homes and places of worship – dead, seeds and fruits dead 

books, prayers, compassion for folks close to you – dead 

and self-pity 

dead – everything matters 

dead – nothing’s 

Sigitas Parulskis 

Mirusiuju ('Of the Dead'), 1994 

139

The Poetic 

Documents 

film 

programme 

141

143

The film programme accompanying the exhibition ‘Poetic 

Documents’ is an archive of the finest examples of 

Lithuanian cinema, which tell poignant stories through 

moving images. Most of the films shown have become 

classics of Lithuanian cinema, and comprise its 

highlights. The film programme comes in three parts: 

‘Time’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Individual’. 

The most notable feature of the films presented is 

the filmmakers’ focus on the ordinary person, who is 

often invisible, and just a little strange. The first 

documentary films by Robertas Verba started the deheroicisation 

of the protagonist in Lithuanian cinema 

in the mid-1960s. Speaking in poetic imagery, and 

often in cryptic language, the films by Verba had a 

profound influence on the work of several generations 

of Lithuanian directors. An apolitical individual 

who lives on the margins of society brings to the 

films real-life stories and a different perception of 

reality. In Soviet-era documentary films, an alternative 

reality usually unfolds in the daily lives of country 

dwellers. The directors portray with love and respect 

the vanishing patriarchal world of the Lithuanians, 

still pantheistic in nature. The films become a kind of 

vehicle for the collective memory and poetic documents 

of tradition. 

The background to films by directors who made their 

debuts in the late 1980s is the uncertainty and 

loneliness of an individual who is caught up in times of 

change, lingering in the sprawling misery of everyday 

life. The process of observation is important to this 

generation of directors. Their individual look, a search 

for the meaning of life, also focuses on the human 

being, but their films provide no answers. Rather, these 

works themselves are questions that the filmmakers put 

to the viewer. In the latter decade, an emotionally 

more neutral attitude has made its way into Lithuanian 

cinema. The directors seem to be looking back at the 

past without memory, nostalgia or social baggage: in 

other words, with ease. All their energy concentrates on 

attaining a personal goal. 

Despite the multi-thematic nature of the cinematic 

narrative, the films are divided into groups, in order 

to draw viewers’ attention, among other things, to the 

thematic aspects, which serve as important references 

when we watch this film programme in the context of the 

photography and poetry exhibition. 

Zivile Eteviciute 

145

Part I. 

TIme 

(duration 50 min). 

147

Henrikas Sablevicius. A Trip across the Meadows of Mist, 

1973, 10 min, Lithuanian Film Studio. 

This is a light-hearted, idyllic story, the protagonist 

of which is the station master of a narrow-gauge 

railway, who has been working there for 33 years. 

We hear folk music, there are scenes of an Easter 

celebration, and the narrator speaks in the local 

dialect. Threads of nostalgia, a longing for the past, 

and a menacing foreboding of the future run throughout 

the film, while the present is often submerged in 

mist. The film was made in the 1970s, the time of the 

‘stagnation’. 

Henrikas Sablevicius (1930–2004) is the founder of 

the Film and Television Department at the Lithuanian 

Academy of Music and Theatre. He graduated from a 

drama theatre studio, and acted in the theatre for some 

time. Later, he worked as a director’s assistant, and 

wrote screenplays. He made his directorial debut in 

1963. He is considered to be the inheritor of Robertas 

Verba’s tradition of poetic documentary. Sablevicius 

is remembered for his ability to make intimate, warm 

and irony-laden films that revealed a much more complex 

reality in times of strict censorship. He made more than 

50 films. 

Stills from A Trip across the Meadows of Mist 

149

Sarunas Bartas. In Memory of a Day Gone by, 1990, 

40 min, Kinema. 

This is the debut film of the director Sarunas Bartas, 

which instantly won him acclaim. A strange puppeteer 

who continuously enters the frame becomes the anonymous 

protagonist. We do not become tied to him, and do not 

follow the story; his emergence is just as unexpected as 

his disappearance. Long shots, a cold and uncomfortable 

environment, and an individual who is lost in it, are 

the main distinctive traits of Bartas’ films. He is 

interested in the margins of society, and in questions 

that do not and cannot have a single correct answer. The 

question of time is one of them. 

Sarunas Bartas (b. 1964) studied at the Moscow 

Film Institute. He is one of the most prominent 

representatives of the new generation of Lithuanian 

filmmakers, and one of the most acclaimed contemporary 

Lithuanian film directors. Bartas is called a 

philosopher of cinema, and a creator of an idiosyncratic 

cinematic language. He does not pay much attention to 

the borders between film genres, for most of his films 

have traits of both documentary and feature films. His 

films have been screened at festivals in Berlin, Venice 

and Turin. The titles include: Tofolaria (1985), In 

Memory of a Day Gone by (1990), Three Days (1991), The 

Corridor (1994), Few of us (1996), The House (1997), 

Freedom (2000), Seven Invisible Men (2005) and Eastern 

Drift (2010). 

Stills from In Memory of a Day Gone by 

151

Part II. 

The CITy 


153

Almantas Grikevicius. Time Walks through the City, 1966, 

17 min, Lithuanian Film Studio. 

The film Time Walks through the City, which was made 

more than four decades ago, still captures the viewer’s 

attention today with its dynamic mood. It is a film 

about Vilnius as the capital of Soviet Lithuania. 

It presents a modern city: new mass construction, 

fashionably dressed youths who dance the twist, and the 

Old Town’s architecture in the background. It was made 

in the midst of Cold War tensions, and thus it is no 

accident that glimpses of the shadow of menacing war 

cross over into memories of earlier wars and occupations 

that ravaged Vilnius, and finally take the viewer back 

to 1323, the time of the founding of the city. 

Almantas Grikevicius (1935–2011) studied at the Moscow 

Film Institute. The film critic Zivile Pipinyte wrote of 

him: ‘He is one of the great Lithuanian cinema auteurs, 

an auteur par excellence, and the most professional 

director of the 1960s and 1970s. He managed to say much 

more than others did, because he had the ability to tell 

the truth without using words, and a kind of truth that 

perhaps one could not put into words.’ Grikevicius’ 

most important documentary films are Tales of the Sun 

(1964), Three Strokes (1966), Time Walks through the 

City (1966), A Prayer for Lithuania (1991), Notes in 

the Margins of a Lifestyle (2002) and An Attempt to Find 

out (2003); his feature films include Feelings (1968), 

Ave, Vita (1969), Saduto Tuto (1974) and The Time of 

Emptying Farmsteads (1976). 

Stills from Time Walks through the City 

155

Arunas Matelis. Ten Minutes before the Flight of Icarus, 

1990, 10 min, Nominum, Lithuanian Film Studio. 

In an impoverished quarter of Vilnius’ Old Town, the 

mentally challenged and childishly naïve Misha is 

singing his songs. At the same time, the ‘Singing 

Revolution’ is resounding in the streets of the city, 

and Lithuania is proclaiming its independence with songs 

after 50 years of occupation. This film was shot in 

the Uzupis quarter, which was particularly favoured in 

Soviet times by drop-outs and artists, was famous for 

its unique atmosphere, and would soon become one of the 

most prestigious areas of Vilnius. 

Arunas Matelis (b. 1961) studied applied mathematics, 

and went on to study at the Lithuanian Academy of Music 

and Theatre. His films have earned him international 

acclaim, and are screened at prestigious international 

film festivals. He won the Directors Guild of America 

award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. His films 

include Before Flying back to Earth (2005), Sunday. The 

Gospel According to the Lift-Operator Albertas (2003), 

Flight over Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence (2000, 

together with A. Stonys), Diary of Forced Emigration 

(1999), The First Farewell to Paradise (1998), From 

Unfinished Tales of Jerusalem (1996), Self-Portrait 

(1993), Ten Minutes before the Flight of Icarus (1991), 

The Baltic Way (1990, together with A. Stonys) and 

Giants of Pelesa (1989). 

Stills from Ten Minutes before the Flight of Icarus 

157

Deimantas Narkevicius. Ausgetraeumt, 2010, 6 min. 

This short film was shot in the Naujininkai area of 

Vilnius, which is currently perhaps the most down-atheel 

and the most dangerous. As the industrialisation 

of the city gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, 

the mass construction of apartment blocks began in 

Naujininkai, in order to accommodate workers who had 

arrived in the capital. The Dzukija workers’ canteen 

is an example of late modernist architecture, and it is 

here that a performance by young musicians takes place. 

The film takes us back in a peculiar way to the time 

that is portrayed so joyously in Almantas Grikevicius’ 

film Time Walks through the City. Yet the director’s 

perspective here is already different. Memory and 

the drama of the past do not bother him. He looks at 

everything with no concern, much like the easy movement 

of the camera on the road that leads to the airport. 

The search for opportunities is directed onwards, into 

the future. In German, the word Ausgetraeumt refers to 

an intermediate state between sleep and waking, or to 

something that has been dreamt of. 

Deimantas Narkevicius (b. 1964) studied sculpture at 

Vilnius Academy of Art. He is one of the best-known and 

most internationally acclaimed contemporary Lithuanian 

artists. His work has been exhibited at the world’s 

most prestigious galleries and art events. He has 

recently been working mostly in film. Experimenting 

with the structure and visual expression of film, he 

tells private and public stories, positioning himself 

as an integral part of these stories, and creates 

subjectively sensitive and forceful works of art. 

Narkevicius’ films include: Restricted Sensation (2011), 

Ausgetraeumt (2010), Into the Unknown (2009), The Dud 

Effect (2008), The Head (2007), Revisiting Solaris 

(2007), Disappearance of a Tribe (2005), Matrioskos 

(2005), Once in the 20th Century (2004), The Role of a 

Lifetime (2003), Scena (2003), Countryman (2002), Energy 

Lithuania (2000), Legend Coming True (1999) and Hisstory 

(1998), Europa 54 0 54' - 25 0 19' (1997). 

Stills from Ausgetraeumt 

159

Part III. 

The InDIvIDual 


161

Robertas Verba. The Old Man and the Soil, 1965, 20 min, 

Lithuanian Film Studio. 

The debut film by Robertas Verba became a classic of 

Lithuanian cinema almost overnight. The Old Man and the 

Soil began a new stage in the development of Lithuanian 

cinematography. The authentic lives of rural dwellers 

became the dominant theme in Verba’s films, and would go 

on to influence in future work of Lithuanian directors. 

Despite their optimism and vitality, the old people in 

Verba’s films, dwellers of the Lithuanian countryside, 

are the last witnesses of an archaic world, whose 

traditions are disappearing just as they themselves are. 

The 1950s and 1960s were a time when country dwellers 

moved en masse, forcibly or of their own accord, to the 

cities, where before the war less than a third of all 

Lithuanian citizens had resided. 

Robertas Verba (1932–1994) is a documentary filmmaker 

and the founder of the Lithuanian poetic documentary 

tradition. He graduated from the Camerawork Department 

of the Moscow Film Insitute. His films, in which old 

dwellers of traditional Lithuanian villages speak 

about themselves and their lives with great warmth and 

openness, are considered to be highlights of Lithuanian 

documentary cinema: The Old Man and the Soil (1965), 

Ciutyta Ruta (1968), The Thoughts of Hundred-Year-Olds 

(1969) and Sisters (1973). 

Stills from The Old Man and the Soil 

163

Henrikas Sablevicius. The Sorceress, 1975, 10 min, 

Lithuanian Film Studio. 

This is a vivacious narrative about Eugenija Simkunaite 

(1920–1996), a doctor of natural sciences, who, like 

other people, styled herself ‘a witch’. Simkunaite, who 

dedicated all of her life to the study of medicinal 

plants, developed a strong interest in folk medicine: 

spells, magic and rituals. Her friends remember her as 

an extraordinary personality. Simkunaite was sociable, 

and at the same time she had a habit of expressing 

her opinions in a firm and uncompromising way. She 

was convinced that a person should never accept any 

remuneration for helping the sick. Her other passion, 

besides herbalism, was opera. 

Stills from The Sorceress 

165

Audrius Stonys. Earth of the Blind, 1992, 24 min, 

Kinema. 

According to the director, making this film was an 

introduction to the world of cinema and the search for 

freedom, while observing and submitting to intuition. 

It has no words, because we can hear more in silence 

than when speaking. The director himself said: ‘To see 

differently, not in order to satisfy our curiosity, but 

to be able to say that the world doesn’t end here, that 

there are endless horizons stretching beyond the visible 

line that we can see, that finiteness, as the most 

veritable sign of death, does not exist.’ The film won 

the European Film Academy’s Felix award in 1991 as the 

best documentary film of the year. 

Audrius Stonys (b. 1966) studied at the Vilnius State 

Conservatory, and worked as an intern at Jonas Mekas’ 

Anthology Film Archive in New York. He has served on 

the juries of the Leipzig, Neubrandenburg, Siena, Sao 

Paulo and Rio de Janeiro film festivals. He taught 

a course on documentary cinema at the European Film 

College (Denmark) in 2004–2005. His films have won 

awards at 19 international film festivals. The films by 

Stonys include: Ramin (2011), I Walked through Fire, 

You were with Me (2010), Four Steps (2008), The Bell 

(2007), Mist of Mists (2006), The One who is not There 

(2004), The Last Car (2002), Alone (2001), Flight over 

Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence (2000, together 

with Arunas Matelis), Fedya. Three Minutes after the 

Big Bang (1999), The Harbour (1998), Flying over a Blue 

Field (1996), Antigravity (1995), Apostle of Ruins 

(1993), Earth of the Blind (1992), The Baltic Way (1990, 

together with Arunas Matelis) and Open the Door to he 

who is Coming (1989). 

Stills from Earth of the Blind 

167

ISBN 978-609-426-040-7 

9 786094 260407 

Published by LIETUVOS DAILES MUZIEJUS 

Boksto str. 5, 01126, Vilnius 

Printed by UAB „STANDARTU SPAUSTUVE“ 

Dariaus ir Gireno g. 39, 02189 Vilnius 

Paper: 

Inside page Munken Lynx 150 gsm 

Cover Metalprint 280 gsm 

Edition of 2000

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