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Setting up a self-education group
Tomas Venclova Poet
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Well, [Jonas] Aistis, by the way, held [Boris] Pasternak in great esteem and he even has poems with epigraphs, with mottos from Pasternak. Well, and… then after graduating from university I made a living working as a translator, that is to say, I signed a contract with a publisher to translate books, a novel or something similar. I would spend half a year or a year translating something, then I would hand it in and get a fee and on those it was possible to live... it was possible for about a year... it was possible to live on that for a year. Not in luxury, not lavishly, but then almost nobody lived in luxury and lavishly in Lithuania. And I could live like everyone else, and so I lived like that, I had no job. But then I thought up a strange thing and very risky one – to set up a self-education group to which young people would come and… the group was not a public one – in fact it was clandestine – and to share information on contemporary world culture. That culture was hardly accessible in Lithuania. And we wanted to give talks about the best known of our contemporaries, world writers – contemporaries or somewhat earlier ones – about [Ernest] Hemingway, about [James] Joyce, [Franz] Kafka, about [Eugène] Ionesco. I remember giving a talk and we even tried to put on his play La Leçon [The Lesson] which is on in Paris now, as far as I know, in a theatre, a 20th century classic. Also, about musicians of that period, about architects, about people in the theatre. And there might have been 10 of us young people – a group who would get together in a private flat and give talks to one another. In this way we also learned. It was a self-education group. Of course, those things were prohibited, all the more so since we were studying authors, artists who... about whom people avoided talking. Not always because of politics but they were modernists, they were, so to speak... they had nothing to do with the understanding of the arts in the Soviet Union which prevailed at the time. And it was wiser not to talk about them, whereas we talked about them and tried to understand what they were writing and what they wanted... what they wanted to say.

Na, Aistis, tarp kitko, labai vertino Pasternaką ir net jo eileraščių yra su epigrafais, su moto iš Pasternako. Na, ir... štai, po to kai baigiau universitetą, gyvenau iš vertėjo darbo, tai yra pasirašydavau su leidykla sutartį išversti kokią nors knygą, romaną ar panašiai. Kokį pusmetį ar metus versdavau, paskui atiduodavau, gaudavau honorarą ir iš to honoraro tais laikais būdavo galima pragyventi, būdavo galima tuos maždaug metus buvo galima ir pragyventi. Ne prabangiai, ne prašmatniai, bet tada prabangiai ir prašmatniai beveik niekas Lietuvoj negyveno. O taip kaip visi buvo galima gyventi, ir taip aš gyvenau, jokios tarnybos neturėjau. Bet tada sugalvojau savotišką dalyką ir labai rizikingą – sukurti tokį savišvietos būrelį, kuriame galėtų rinktis jaunimas ir... būrelis buvo ne viešas, faktiškai, net gi slaptas; ir dalintis žiniomis apie dabartinę pasaulinę kultūrą. Ta kultūra buvo Lietuvoje labai mažai prieinama. O mes norėjome skaityti pranešimus apie... žymiuosius dabartinius mūsų amžininkus, pasaulio rašytojus, amžininkus arba kiek ankstesnius. Apie Hemingvėjų, apie Džoisą, Kafką, apie Ionesco. Atsimenu, tada aš skaičiau pranešimą ir net bandėme pastatyti jo pjesę "Pamoka", kuri Paryžiuj ir dabar eina, kiek žinau, teatre, tokia XX amžiaus klasika. Taip pat apie to laikotarpio muzikus, apie architektus, apie teatro veikėjus. Ir taip mūsų buvo ar ne dešimt jaunuolių. Toks būrelis, kurie rinkdavosi privačiam bute ir vienas kitam skaitydavom pranešimus. Tuo pačiu būdu lavinosi, tai buvo savišvietos būrelis. Žinoma, tokie dalykai buvo draudžiami, tuo labiau, kad mes studijavom autorius, menininkus, kurie, apie kuriuos buvo vengiama kalbėti. Ne visada dėl politikos, bet jie buvo modernistai, jie buvo, taip sakant, nieko bendro neturėjo su peršama tuomet Tarybu Sąjungoje meno samprata. Ir geriau apie juos buvo nekalbėti, o mes kaip tik kalbėjome ir stengemės suprasti, ką gi jie rašo ir ko gi jie nori, ką gi jie nori pasakyti. Na, ir tai buvo tas būrelis.

Born in 1937, Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian scholar, poet, author and translator of literature. He was educated at Vilnius University and later at Tartu University. As an active participant in the dissident movement he was deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1977 and had to emigrate. Between 1977 and 1980 he lectured at University of California, Berkeley, where he became friends with the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, who was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the school, as well as the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. He is currently a full professor at Yale University.

Listeners: Andrzej Wolski

Film director and documentary maker, Andrzej Wolski has made around 40 films since 1982 for French television, the BBC, TVP and other TV networks. He specializes in portraits and in historical films. Films that he has directed or written the screenplay for include Kultura, which he co-directed with Agnieszka Holland, and KOR which presents the history of the Worker’s Defence Committee as told by its members. Andrzej Wolski has received many awards for his work, including the UNESCO Grand Prix at the Festival du Film d’Art.

Tags: Lithuania, La Leçon, The Lesson, Paris, Soviet Union, Jonas Aistis, Boris Pasternak, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco

Duration: 2 minutes, 7 seconds

Date story recorded: May/June 2011

Date story went live: 20 March 2012