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Jerzy Giedroyc

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An unexpected love story
Tomas Venclova Poet
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Well, that’s how I went on living in Leningrad and after that I returned to Vilnius. I spent eight years in total in Russia. It was in Russia that I found my present wife. To be exact, not quite in Russia, since she had come to Vilnius as a tourist. She was a young thing, 19 years old, I was already about 30 and I began showing her Vilnius. I began by showing her St Anne’s Church, and all of the beautiful places in Vilnius – the Hill of Gediminas, Bekes Hill. Then I took her to Trakai, then I took her to Kaunas and we became friends. We continued our friendship for some time and then separated but remained good friends. After that I was already... I was already an émigré. [Mikhail] Gorbachev came along, or perestroika, and it became possible to leave the Soviet Union, and some friends living in Holland invited my present wife – at that time she wasn’t yet my wife – to visit them. We met, and after some 20 years of not seeing one another, realised that we had feelings for one another. Then I invited her to America and suggested that we marry. We married, and we also had a church wedding, and we have been  together now for over 20 years. So that’s also an unexpected love story. She’s from... from St Petersburg, she also knew [Joseph] Brodsky a little and some of my other friends at the time, but she was from a slightly different group of people, she had been... she had been an actor for a period, she had acted in films, and in one film she had even had the lead role. She then abandoned that work and became an editor working with German ­– that is to say, books translated from German into Russian, she edited them. After she became my wife – she is my wife – she has no job as such, at this time. Well, she’s with me in Paris at this time, you’ve seen her.

Na ir taip aš egzistavau tame Leningrade, o po to grįžau į Vilnių. Tai iš viso aš Rusijoje praleidau aštuonerius metus. Rusijoje susiradau ir savo dabartinę žmoną. Tiksliau pasakius, ne visai Rusijoj, kadangi ji buvo atvažiavusi kaip turistė į Vilnių. Ji buvo jaunutė, devyniolikos metų, man jau buvo apie trisdešimt metų, ir aš jai pradėjau rodyti Vilnių. Pradėjau rodyti Šventos Onos bažnyčią, visas Vilniaus grožybes – Gedimino kalną, Bekešo kalną. Paskui nuvežiau į Trakus, paskui nuvežiau dar į Kauną, ir mes pradėjom draugauti. Kurį laiką draugavome, paskui išsiskyrėme, bet likome geri bičiuliai. Po to dvidešimt trejus metus nesimatėme. Po to aš jau buvau... aš jau buvau emigrantas, atėjo Gorbačiovo, arba pertvarkos laikai, pasidarė įmanoma iš Tarybų Sąjungos išvažiuoti, ir bičiuliai, gyvenantys Olandijoje, mano dabartinę žmoną, tada dar ne žmoną, pakvietė pas save į svečius. Mes susitikome ir, po dvidešimt kelerių metų nesimatymo, vėl pajutome, kad vienas kitam labai simpatizuojame. Tada aš ją pakviečiau į Ameriką ir pasiūliau susituokti. Mes susituokėm, taip pat ir bažnyčioj susituokėm, ir jau dvidešimt su viršum metų gyvenam kartu. Tai irgi tokia netikėta meilės istorija.

Jinai yra iš... iš Peterburgo, taip pat buvo truputį pažįstama ir su Brodskiu ir su kitais mano tuometiniais draugais, bet gal šiek tiek iš kito rato, jinai buvo, kurį laiką buvo aktorė, ji vaidino filmuose, ir viename filme tų laikų vaidino net svarbiausią rolę. Paskui pasitraukė iš to amato ir virto tiesiog redaktore, dirbo kaip redaktorė iš vokiečių kalbos, reiškia, knygos verčiamos iš vokiečių kalbos į rusų, ji jas redagavo. Na, o po to kai tapo mano žmona, tiesiog yra mano žmona, kokio nors darbo šiuo metu neturi. Na va, šiuo metu yra su manim Paryžiuj, jūs ją matėte.

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: Russia, Lithuania, Tanya Venclova

Duration: 2 minutes, 18 seconds

Date story recorded: May/June 2011

Date story went live: 20 March 2012