GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS

CEREMONIES

A few decades ago, while waiting in the gymnasium hall for the ceremonies of a never-ending celebration, a writer-goldsmith casually asked: – Who, in your view, is the greatest here? – Mačernis, – we both said. – Mačernis, – and fell silent.

VYTAUTAS STULPINAS – POET OF STEADY FLOW

When, in winter, I would turn from Luokės Street into Vilniaus Street in Telšiai, a small light was always burning on the fourth floor of one apartment building. I knew – Vytautas Telšietis was now in his fertile season. It is in such spaces that the freest texts are born. In the cage of Justinaičiai, in the hut of Sapiegiai, in the block of an apartment building.

A poet who tears out one new extension after another in his struggle with an exhausting illness. But that fatigue is not visible in the poems. One for whom peace is only a thinned-out archipelago in the struggle with the great ones in the great sea. But there are no oceans in his poems. A warrior who, on the battlefield, distinguishes only the shoulder boards of two colors. Yet what a shimmer of colors in the poems! Among poets I have seen no greater erudite. Only there are few abstractions in his texts.

Forester, carpenter, librarian. Apart from herbalism, one would expect no other kinds of talk from him. And he will tell so many stories about the literature of the past that the abundance of names will briefly press a more sensitive penman to the ground. He also loves intense lights, so that they illuminate every corner. Not only allegorically. Back in 1971, he was noticed at a competition for young philologists, and Marcelijus Martinaitis himself wrote him a letter, preserved by its addressee like a relic:

Vytautai, I, as a Samogitian, “smell” the land of Samogitia in your images, the soul of which V. Mačernis has revealed somewhat more in poetry.

The great poet preserved Vytautas the scholar’s poems and, after the surprised author had sent him a copy, returned them as a gift 30 years later. I believe that this quotation contains the seed of Vytautas’s creative

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Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV

Vytautas Stulpinas – poet of steady flow

seed. Poetry must remain poetry, even if we translate it from a dialect into the standard language. Thus Vytautas, like Mačernis in former times, writes in Lithuanian but thinks in Samogitian. For what distinguishes each person does not separate them. And Mačernis, mentioned in the letter... What more is there to say. This year, the jubilee year, we heard much from Vytautas about this unique figure of the land of the Samogitians.

Squeezing yet another gift – time – from life, he published his first book, “The Great Room,” only in 1998. It was followed by “The Threat of Nocturne” (2002), “Quiet Utopias” (2003). These two were edited by the Highlander Jonas Strielkūnas. After that came the trilogy “Shadows” (2007), “Distances” (2013), “Evenings” (2016). Laureate of the Dionizas Poška and Salomėja Nėris prizes. There are no seas, unclear spaces, universes, or fiery spheres in his poetry. If they appear, they are only like a little wave on Tausalas, a landscape seen from a garden arbor, the Kolka lighthouse in Courland. States are recorded in the poems from specific days marked on the calendar, so it is not easy to understand and fully decipher the poems. Specific events, people, and flickers are encoded. It is obvious that behind many texts lie stories whose keys to unraveling are found only in the author’s memory. When it is written that Cedronas is running toward Varduva, we understand that we are in Žemaičių Kalvarija. But if a small spruce grove is mentioned, we will not learn the more precise location. But is that necessary? As Vytautas says, all esotericism for him is the bluish hills beyond Tausalas at sunset. That is all. When all externalities and inner realities grow quiet, a boundary is reached where the laws of dynamics no longer apply. Statics takes hold. But what a flow this is! Indeed, Vytautas does not like the suffix –ybė. He does not like the word “heart” either. Thus – no grand things and eternities. Only boundlessness, only spaciousness. Let it be so: when everything grows quiet, what matters most comes into operation: the essence of life.

The poet of the quieted and already true, steady flow.

Giedrius Alkauskas

Insights / Insights

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