Poetry
Idylls of Semeniskiai
Semeniškių idilės
Jonas Mekas · 1948
Synopsis
Idylls of Semeniškiai: a series of numbered idylls, in unrhymed verse, that bring back to life the poet's native village and the peasant life of before the war. The first listens to the ancient sound of the rain and to the work of the land handed down from generation to generation; another follows a river through villages and plains, among the washerwomen and the fishermen, in the heat of summer; yet another returns to the market days of childhood, when the father sold at the mill and the mother did her shopping.
Context
Written in Germany in the refugee camps, the idylls appeared in 1948 at the Mattenberg camp under the Žvilgsniai imprint, which the author ran with his brother, with five illustrations by Vytautas Leonas Adamkevičius: two hundred illustrated copies and two hundred without illustrations. The Lithuanian encyclopaedia notes their cinematic narration. Ramūnas Čičelis reads in them a monument to the native place, which the narrator knows entirely while saying he knows nothing of it, love taking precedence over knowledge.
Who it is for
Pastoral poems in a peasant language that resists translation; they exist in English, and a wide selection of the poetic work appeared in French in 2024.
Prizes and reception
The author's first major book, celebrated in Lithuania, where his poetry is mostly read.
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