| Abstract [eng] |
The dissertation aims at an integral discussion and interpretation of Martinaitis’ heterogeneous cultural practices, by analysing his literary works together with other artistic and social expressions (such as woodworking, folk art skills, and activism in the area of heritage preservation). By applying the interdisciplinary area of literature and anthropology, which enables relating text and action as equivalent cultural gestures, Martinaitis‘s distinctive and dynamic creative attitude is accentuated. It is called by applying the analytical concept of „poetic anthropology“, which is linked to the overall „ethnographic“ (James Clifford) inclination to art, literature, and cultural critique in the 20th c. By observing several different cultural contexts – the archaic way of life of husbandmen and the forms of modernity coinciding with the Soviet times – Martinaitis constructs a distinctive poetic worldview (his „poetic utopia“) which is not a “stagnant” vision of the world but a lively, ever tensed process of perception, enabling practical activity and confronting itself constantly. Martinaitis’ „poetic anthropology“ comes into existence as a reaction to specific historical circumstances (the Soviet-type modernity in Lithuania), but, at the same time, it unfolds as a universal identity reframing model in a situation of a cultural turning-point as well, i.e. as a changeable composition of different self-perception elements: protection, transformation, and cultural critique. |
