Poetry
Pavasario balsai
Not translated into English
Maironis · 1895
Synopsis
Voices of Spring: about forty poems followed by a booklet in four parts, Kur išganymas?, “Where is salvation?”. The poet paints the landscapes and places of the country, its towns and castles, celebrates the nation's past, its freedom, its language and the life of its villages, and calls, in a confident tone, for an awakening that spring represents. The syllabo-tonic verse, which the author refines from piece to piece, provides its music.
Context
The book appeared in 1895 in Tilsit, at the author's expense, from the presses of Otto von Mauderode, in seventy-eight pages. As the Russian Empire then banned printed matter in Lithuanian, book smugglers brought it into the country. The author corrected and expanded it throughout his life: the 1905 edition in Saint Petersburg, called the third although no one has ever found a second, then the 1913 edition in Kaunas and the 1920 edition in Tilsit, before the first volume of his works in 1927. Sigitas Geda counts twenty-seven editions in a century.
Who it is for
Short poems, read above all in the later versions, quite far from that of 1895; no French translation of the collection has been found.
Prizes and reception
Hailed on publication as a comet in the sky of Lithuanian poetry, then regarded as the poetic manifesto of the national awakening.
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