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The article studies the genesis of poems by one of the most famous Lithuanian poets of the Soviet era Alfonsas Maldonis (1929–2007). It follows the methodology of genetic criticism and compares versions of manuscripts and texts of poems that have already been published. The main attention is given to poems “Awakening from Sleep”, “White Mountains”, “Morning Wind”. The poet’s first manuscripts are usually more ordinary, containing everyday realities and even open critique of Soviet life. While editing the manuscripts, the author sometimes only deletes or replaces some words with neutral ones (names of religious holidays, realities reminiscent of Soviet repression), but more often, the image is fundamentally redesigned, the particulars are replaced with abstract images, creating a multifaceted reading. The original ideas do not disappear but seem to be taken into the poem’s underground layer. The manuscripts’ analysis reveals how Maldonis created his distinctive poem and how an internal censor is involved in the process, suggesting which words would never be printed in a book published by an official publisher. Rarely, but there are also opposite cases where Soviet symbols are inserted into an ideologically neutral text. Maldonis’s poetry, however, contains signs similar to what Czesław Miłosz called the “captive mind”. It is difficult to say whether those few sovietisms stem from internal conviction or external ideological pressure to write bright, optimistic texts.

The article employs Pierre Nora’s concept “a site of memory.” Using the term in the least strict sense, Nora’s metaphorical writing gives way to free interpretations. Tomas Venclova has realized that he lives in post-Auschwitz and post-Gulag time, and that totalitarianism has not yet been defeated. Therefore the poem must become a place to fight off the totalitarianism and a memory site of poet’s generation which disobeyed the system. The latest poetry by Venclova can be characterized by a diverse strategy of securing memory space. Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak are important because of their poetics and resistance to the totalitarian system. The untold events that took place in the Soviet Union, names and destinies, as well as poet’s personal history are important in Venclova’s poetry. Author’s comments enhance a poem as a site of memory. Located at the bottom of the poem, they provide more detailed context.In comments, epigraphs, and dedications, Venclova names true or fictitious people of his generation. The article emphasizes that the history in Venclova’s poetry is illuminated by metaphysical questions.

Critics ranked poem “Pabudimas is miego” (Waking Up from Sleep) as one of the best Alfonsas Maldonis’s poems in his collection Rytas vakaras (Morning Evening) (1978). The first manuscript of the poem written in 1970 can be found in poet’s archive. Poem’s text and the exact date of the document indicate that the poem was inspired by the death of a famous Lithuanian linguist Jonas Kazlauskas. It is believed that the Soviet KGB which persecuted Kazlauskas is to blame for the linguist’s death. By comparing the manuscript and the printed version of the poem, we can see how the poet eliminates the details of a particular event from the text. However, the foreboding of danger and violence that is very strongly felt from the very beginning remains in the final version. The inner turmoil of the lyric subject also stays. The subject is trying but is unable to understand what kind of behavior would be suitable in that specific situation. It can be assumed that Maldonis had two goals when editing the manuscript. First, he wanted the poem to be published. The poet knew that censors would have removed the poem from the book because of the references to Kazlauskas’s death. Second, Maldonis’s aim was to write a poem which would have carried a universal meaning. From the poet’s manuscripts one can conclude that it is precisely the move from the mundanely concrete to the more general image is characteristic to the genesis of Maldonis’s poems. Keywords: Alfonsas Maldonis, archive, manuscript, versions of the poem, genesis of the poem. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15823/zz.2018.5

Mindaugas Tamošaitis, Mes esam Šiaurės krašto.... Poetui Eugenijui Matuzevičiui (1917–1994) – 100 metų, Vilnius: Sofoklis, 2017, 383 p., ISBN 978-609-444-237-7

Solveiga Daugirdaitė, Švystelėjo kaip meteoras: 1965-ieji su Simone de Beauvoir ir Jeanu Pauliu Sartre’u, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2015, 271 p., ISBN 978-609-425-154-2

Archival material and oral history texts reveal the nuances of choices made and convictions held by a generation of poets who made their debut in the 1960s: postwar psychological trauma, self-preservation and a poetic ambition to be recognized in the society in which they lived. Having made a decision to work, write, and publish in the official press, the writers had no choice but to conform. Poetic works which began as completely conformist writing eventually became less restrained showing a gradual self-determination and an ironic evaluation of the poet’s life and choices. The thirties poets have written poems that must be treated as poetic works and not as illustrations of ideological schemas. That part of their creative corpus is relevant to today’s readers. To researchers of Soviet literature and culture, the texts and contexts, demonstrating complicity and attempts to circumvent ideological requirements, are no less important.

Viktorija Daujotytė, Boružė, ropojanti plentu: Prigimtinės kultūros kasinėjimai Marcelijaus Martinaičio kūryboje, Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 2013, 376 p., ISBN 978-9986-39-768-7