| Abstract [eng] |
The dissertation aims to investigate the reception of Western literature in Lithuanian poetry of the second half of the 20th century. The author seeks to explain the ways how, under the conditions of the Cold War and the occupation of Lithuania by the USSR, its poets (at home and in the diaspora) preserved and developed a European mentality, how they shaped the openness of their cultural identity in order to resist Soviet ideology and the socialist-realist art doctrine. With the application of literary comparativism updated by intertextuality and literary history studies amended by the theory of perceptual aesthetics, the dissertation represents a comprehensive analysis of the works of three prominent modernist poets of their time – Jonas Aistis, Sigitas Geda and Tomas Venclova. The paper discovered that poet activity of named authors was significantly influenced with the post-war and post catastrophism, which is represented in their poetry with their experiences of placelessness. Moreover, they were united by the consciousness of exile, the fate of the same homeland was erased from the maps of Europe, and one of the most important dimensions of European identity was the sense of creative responsibility. The intertexts of their poetry created original links between the national and the European, the intimate and the universal, the ethical and the aesthetic. They interpreted Western literature not only as a universal aesthetic and ethical value inseparable from their work, but also as the most convenient (aesopic) means of resistance to Soviet ideology and the culture it imposed. The study has shown how problematic and complex the relationship between Europeanness and nationality is, as poets strive to reconcile the two, rethinking their own identity through projections or poetic masks of other identities. |
