Poetry
100 pavasarių
Not translated into English
Kazys Binkis · 1923
Synopsis
A hundred springs: poems in which a carefree youth, friend of the wind and the sky, plays pranks and greets the spring. The images leap one onto another, the language is that of everyday conversation, some lines repeat a single word or consist only of sounds, and the city appears in all its absurdity. The poet parodies his predecessors and moves on to irony and free verse, without losing a lyrical thread: the joy of spring and of the wind.
Context
The collection appeared in 1923, shortly after the author's stay in Berlin, where he had discovered the new movements of Western Europe; it marks his move to modernism, after a first book of 1920 devoted to nature and love. Binkis was then leading the Four Winds group, whose 1922 issue he had written alone. The subtitle announces verses attuned to the feeling of the time, said to be “in a slightly more modern manner”. This verse is often compared to Mayakovsky; Birutė Ciplijauskaitė sees Kamensky in it instead. A second edition appeared in 1926.
Who it is for
Free, spoken verse, short and ironic; no French or English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the book that moved Lithuanian poetry into modernism and gave it a new, ironic, spoken language.
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