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
On Literary Translations and Their Ideological Deformations
<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;">Nijolė Maskaliūnienė ir Ingrida Tatolytė (sud.) 2024. Vertimas ir cenzūra sovietinės ideologijos sąlygomis: Lietuva, 1940–1990, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 572 p. ISBN 978-609-07-1118-7.
Copyright (c) 2025 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
What Does the Centennial School Canon of Lithuanian Literature Reveal?
<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;">Viktorija Šeina, Aistė Kučinskienė 2024. Mokyklinis lietuvių literatūros kanonas: šimtmečio raidos rekonstrukcija, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 614 p. ISBN 978-609-425-399-7
<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Rimantas Kmita<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;" data-mce-fragment="1"> <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;" data-mce-fragment="1">(sud.) 2024. <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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Virsmo link. Vėlyvojo sovietmečio literatūros socialumas ir estetinė raiška<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 455 p., ISBN 978-609-425-397-3.
“A Dim Light of Dawn”: Viktorija Jonkutė interviews Finnish researchers Tuomas Tepora and Sinikka Selin
The Intertexts of German Culture in Jurgis Kunčinas’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;">This article examines motifs and intertexts from German culture and literature in the poems of Lithuanian writer and translator Jurgis Kunčinas. It argues that Kunčinas’s personal and professional connections with the German language and culture determined their distinctive reflection in his work. The article demonstrates, through analytical process, alternative interpretations of Kunčinas’s poems that are seemingly established and detached from certain initial assessments. The study addresses three aspects: the preservation of memory, its reactivation, and the search for self-identification across generations, as well as the influence of German writers and artists on Kunčinas’s poetry.
Berankis and Vargalys – Postcolonial Antiheroes? A Comparative Analysis of “Handless” and Vilnius Poker by Ričardas Gavelis
<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">This paper applies postcolonial theory to works by Lithuanian writer Ričardas Gavelis. It presents a comparative analysis of his short story “Handless,” published as part of the collection <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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Nubaustieji<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;" data-mce-fragment="1"> (The Punished, 1987), and his novel <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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Vilnius Poker<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;" data-mce-fragment="1"> (1989). A speech given by Lithuanian poet Sigitas Geda at a 1988 Sąjūdis rally, considered a potent expression of the postcolonial condition, serves as a conceptual reference point for the analysis. Gavelis’s novel and short story are viewed as examples of postcolonial literature, and the postcolonial concepts of liminality and mimicry are applied to these works. The antihero is understood as an inversion used for criticizing the Soviet regime. This paper posits that the antiheroic nature of Gavelis’s protagonists originates in their postcolonial condition.
Charlatanism in Latvian Literature of the 1970s
<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">The article explores charlatanism in the works of two Latvian authors, Marģeris Zariņš’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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Viltotais Fausts<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;" data-mce-fragment="1"> (<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Mock Faustus<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">, 1973) and Miervaldis Birze’s play <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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Bišentropa balzams<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;" data-mce-fragment="1"> (<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Bišentrops’ Balm<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;" data-mce-fragment="1">, 1970). Considering the Soviet emphasis on scientific method, progressivism, rationalism, and atheism, the attitudes of the time towards charlatanism can be best described as disdainful. It was regarded as something laughable, often introduced in veiled forms. By employing charlatanism, the writers made the above-mentioned works more credible—or at least more fascinating and playful—allowing those in power to draw a sharp contrast between the foolishness that charlatanism represented and the great Soviet advances in medicine. These dubious practices were often embraced, reflecting a gap between ideological belief and practical reality. However, the rise of so-called Soviet spirituality also signified a broader shift—from the suppression of religion to a renewed pursuit of spiritual exploration in the USSR. <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;" data-mce-fragment="1">Birze and Zariņš freely navigate several cultural and linguistic strata and folk motifs. They are interested in the mystical, occultism, and the scientifically inexplicable. The works of both authors on charlatanism can be seen as mere instances within the broader, yet episodic, presence of charlatanism in Latvian literature. At the same time, they represent a kind of culmination within the writers’ legacies, especially in Zariņš’s case.
The Last Patron of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s Work: New Touches to the Portrait of Bronisława Wolman
<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 Wolman family played an important role in Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s intellectual growth and his artistic self-realisation. From the end of 1904 until 1907, Bronisława Wolman took care of the artist’s livelihood and encouraged his creative aspirations. The literary salons held in the Wolmans’ apartment were important for the development of Čiurlionis’s worldview. With the support of this family, the artist visited the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Beskids, and saw art collections in five Central European cities. Bronisława Wolman encouraged Čiurlionis to experiment and try himself in new areas, such as literature and photography. The artist expressed his gratitude for the support and encouragement through dedications. The artefacts and letters preserved by the Wolmans have enriched the artist’s oeuvre and his documentary legacy. The article provides additional information about Bronisława Wolman and her family, introduces new details of Čiurlionis’s biography, and delves into the specific circumstances in which democratic patronage took place. The publication is the result of research carried out in five archives outside of Lithuania. It summarizes primary sources using historical reconstruction and interpretive approaches.
“But Someone Has to Shout”: Henrikas Nagys’s Polemical Position in Literatūros Lankai
The article relates to the position of Henrikas Nagys in the formation process of Lithuanian journal Literatūros lankai (Literary Folios, 1952–1959), analysing his impact to the aesthetical preferences of co-authors. In Nagys’ creative imagination, the literary field was constructed as a scene “where the drama of us (and of those who resemble us) had been acted” (Vytautas Kavolis). Nagys declared that the most important features of a good literary work were originality of the author and fidelity to artistic truth. Critical reviews and interviews by Nagys are taken into account, as well as his correspondence with colleagues.
Comparative Literature Studies in Violeta Kelertas’s Literary Criticism
<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 Violeta Kelertas’s comparative research in the context of the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States. After WWII, comparative studies of Lithuanian literature on both sides of the Atlantic continued the tradition of comparative historical studies inherited from the interwar period and were developed as an addition to the history of national literature. However, Kelertas and some other diaspora literary critics methodologically renewed comparative literature more than their counterparts in Lithuania. The fundamental shift in comparative literature in the US—from the French tradition to postmodern comparative literature—was also influenced by its thematic, feminist, and postcolonial comparative studies, which enabled Lithuanian literature to raise new questions and introduce it into the global context of literary studies and connections with new thematic aspects. The article argues that comparative literature studies were carried on in the Lithuanian diaspora. In Kelertas’s case, comparative research in literature was modernized through feminist and postcolonial approaches.
Comparative Literature in a Global Context: Politics, Academic Literature, and the Future of Comparativism
David Damrosch 2020. Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age, Princeton University Press, p. 392, ISBN 978-069-123-455-7
Lithuania in the Mirror of Near Distant Latvia
Viktorija Jonkutė 2024. Tarp praeities ir ateities: Kolektyvinė atmintis XX a. pabaigos Atgimimo laikotarpio lietuvių ir latvių kultūrinėje spaudoje. Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 327 p., ISBN 978-609-425-383-6
Copyright (c) 2024 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Moterų istorijos eskizai: XIX a. antra pusė – XX a. pirma pusė, 2024. Sudarė Birutė Avižinienė ir Ramunė Bleizgienė, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir istorijos institutas, 400 p. ISBN 978-609-425-393-5.
“We Not Only Construct but Also Deconstruct Our Lives with Stories”
Copyright (c) 2026 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Fathom to Measure Literature. Laudation to Jūratė Sprindytė
On the Vital Attachment to Literature: An Acceptance Speech of the Vytautas Kubilius Prize
Independence’s Dependence, Dependence’s Independence
Excerpt from Ona Pleirytė-Puidienė’s “My Life Book”
Organization and Control of Lithuanian Literature Teaching in the Late Soviet Era
Although the debate about the teaching of literature in Lithuanian schools continues to this day, a more detailed and critical discussion as well as reflection on the mechanisms of teaching and controlling literature in Soviet-era Lithuania has been still lacking. In an attempt to partially fill this gap, the article reconstructs the organization of teaching literature during the Soviet era, based on a variety of materials relevant to the research (archives, periodicals, textbooks, school curricula, testimonies by contemporaries, egodocuments, etc.). The article focuses on the period from the Thaw to the end of the Soviet era, when education underwent reforms. The article discusses leading institutions and personalities—the movers and shakers in the organization of literature teaching, the authors of literature textbooks and programs (for the upper grades), the context of the development of materials for school, as well as teachers‘ testimonies about the requirements for literature teaching and the development of materials for it. The aim is to present an extensive overview and systematization of the history of the development of Lithuanian studies content in the late Soviet era.
The Four Winds and The Avant-Garde Apocalypse of War
War and its experience is an important theme in the early twentieth-century avant-garde literature. Among Lithuanian writers, this theme was more prevalent in works by the Four Winds group rather than the Third Front. The theme of war and the avant-garde depictions of war have not been widely researched in Lithuanian literary scholarship, which is the principal goal of this paper. The futurist movement officially began in 1909, when the French daily Le Figaro published the Manifesto del Futurismo (Manifesto of Futurism) by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who glorified “war—the only true hygiene of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of anarchists, the beautiful Ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman.” Italian futurists urged for Italy’s involvement in the First World War, and some even joined the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Motorists. German expressionists eagerly awaited the war, which they believed would oust their self-satisfied government and the materialism it advocated. Meanwhile, Russian futurists called for revolutionary violence. The avant-garde in Lithuania began later as compared to Western Europe—after the First World War and the Lithuanian struggle for independence, at a time when the European avant-garde had entered its second stage and began to be associated with surrealism and dadaism. Because of this, Lithuanian avant-garde writers did not treat war in the same way as European artists did: their work does not contain the enthusiasm one commonly finds in the European prewar avant-garde, instead placing emphasis on disillusionment, the destruction and the horrors of war, like the postwar avant-gardists did. This paper is not concerned with the aesthetic revolution in depicting war by European and Lithuanian avant-gardists, as it has been extensively analyzed in Lithuanian scholarship. This paper considers depictions of the First World War by European avant-garde writers in the early twentieth century as a cultural-literary background important for understanding the relationship between war and the avant-garde, but not necessarily as a direct influence on the works produced by the Lithuanian avant-garde writer collective known as the Four Winds. This background helps us understand the significance that those experiences of war and armed struggle for independence had for the Four Winds, as well as the meaning carried in their aesthetic reflections of those experiences.
Food as a Tool of Grotesque in Contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian Fiction
The article explores the interplay between grotesque and gastropoetics in contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian literature, focusing on Latvian author Guntis Berelis’s short story “Es nekad nerunāju muļķības” (“I Have Never Talked Nonsense,” 2017) and Lithuanian author Ieva Dumbrytė’s novel Šaltienos bistro (Aspic Bistro, 2021). In both texts, grotesque imagery involving food, cannibalism, and bodily transformations plays a significant narrative role and encodes social and political critique. An identified subgenre of the grotesque—gastronomic grotesque (gastrogrotesque)—emerges as a previously unexplored niche of grotesque expression in the Baltic region. Drawing on Bakhtin’s metaphor of grotesque as transformation, it is argued that the symbolism of pig and meat in these texts embodies the extreme dehumanization of individuals, either in labor (Dumbrytė) or within political systems (Berelis). The grotesque serves its conventional function of overturning traditional literary aesthetic norms while also offering a shocking perspective on contemporary issues.
Lithuanian and Latvian contemporary literature
Life Writing: Latvian Poet Veronika Strēlerte
The article addresses the general concept of life writing, which refers to the creation of a text that focuses on the life and life experiences of a writer or another person. It centres on the poet Veronika Strēlerte’s self-reflection in her childhood recollections and on two people’s, who are close to her—her son Pāvils Johansons and the poet Margita Gūtmane, memories. The concepts of memory, experience, and identity offered by American scholars, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, proved instrumental in addressing life writing and its realisation through depictions and memories. The article explores the motivations that prompted Strēlerte to revisit the images of her childhood memories, describes the relationship between the real and the fictional, and the narrative strategies (author’s and protagonist’s voices). In discussing the two memoirs, the commonalities (belonging to the same generation) and differences (a sense of family, motherhood, and home) that define authors’ perspectives on the poet’s personality are examined. Johansons’ memoirs provide an insight into his family: his mother, a poet, and his father Andrejs Johansons, a cultural historian, religious studies scholar, essayist, and their relationship with him. They also vividly describe his parents’ inner circle, the Latvian intelligentsia in exile, and as such are important cultural and historical source. In her memoirs, Gūtmane portrays Strēlerte as a poet and as a “mere mortal,” thus creating a vibrant and versatile account of Strēlerte’s personality. She elaborates on the theme of exile, which was important for both Strēlerte and the memoirist, emphasising the inability of those who ended in exile to take root and find a home. Strēlerte’s childhood memoirs significantly contribute to the autobiographical genre of Latvian literature. It can also be considered a part of Latvian children’s literature. The memoirs about her are not only artistically enjoyable but also a valuable material for the study of writer’s life and poetry.
The Image of Historical Memory Created by Writers: The Battle of Saulė in Latvian Literature
Using memoir studies and literary imagology as the methodological starting points, the article analyses the image of the Battle of Saulė that took place on 22 September 1236 in the works of fiction and poetry by Latvian writers and the place of Lithuanians in it. Texts written in the 1910s–1930s, many of which were inspired by the 700th anniversary of the battle celebrated in 1936, are covered in the analysis. These are verses, poems, novels, and other literary genres written by Vilis Plūdons (real name Vilis Lejnieks, 1874–1940), Kārlis Fimbers (1898–1970), Rihards Ērglis (1881–1950), Jānis Akuraters (1876–1937), Atis Ķeniņš (1874–1961) and other authors. Latvian writers aimed: 1) to give prominence to the role of their countrymen (Semigallians), which is inadequate to objective historical data, 2) to express the idea of affinity and unity of the Balts through the topic of the battle. The first purpose was emphasised more strongly. The image of Lithuanians in the works under analysis is quite featureless, artistically expressionless; moreover, it is historically inaccurate (for instance, the legendary duke Ringaudas has been systematically depicted as a historical personality).
“Reversed” New Historicism and the Latvian Literature: Gundega Repše’s Novels
The article1 offers an interpretation of Latvian writer Gundega Repše’s novels within their historical context by exploring interpretative possibilities of New Historicism. As a literary theory, New Historicism is an open and opaque methodology, inviting a playful engagement with methods, agencies, and interpretative strategies, and encouraging critical thinking within a theoretical discourse. I also propose that Repše’s novels might be read as a literary practice of what might be called “reversed” New Historicism by which I mean a particular method of creative writing that reinforces the correlation between history and literature and rhizomatic thinking. It helps to reveal systems and assumptions of power and comment on them from below, this way shaping new ways of how we think of fiction, history and language. In my interpretation, I demonstrate that “reversed” New Historicism as a method of creative writing encourages to rethink the continuous presence of power structure that still exists in contemporary society. A network of memories, displayed through artistic language, helps to see the present-day situation and the continuity of the past more clearly.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ilze Jansone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Few Thoughts About the New Histories of Polish 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;">Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918 (2018), ed. by Tamara Trojanowska, Joanna Nizynska and Przemysław Czapliński; with the assitance of Agnieszka Polakowska, Toronto Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press, 828 p. ISBN 978-1-4426-5018-3(cloth), ISBN 978-1-4875-2459-3 (paper). <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;">A New History of Latvian Literature: The Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Pauls Daija / Bendikts Kalnačs (2022) [Cross-Roads: Studies in Culture, Literary Theory, and History. Ed. by Ryszard Nycz, vol. 29], Peter Lang GmbH, 276 p. ISBN 978-3-631-86202-5 (Print), E-ISBN 978-3-631-85624-6, (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-87395-3 (EPUB).