Narrative
Liūdna pasaka
Not translated into English
Jonas Biliūnas · 1907
Opening lines
Namas, kuriame – tik ką atvažiavęs – apsigyvenau, stovėjo pačiam miške. Gražus vasarinis namas. Aplink jį kvepiančios pušys ir eglės atakaitoj snaudė, už kelių žingsnių vėsi upė plaukė...
The house where I settled, having only just arrived, stood in the very middle of the forest. A fine summer house. Around it fragrant pines and firs dozed in the sun, a few steps away a cool river flowed...
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from lt.wikisource.org
Synopsis
A sad tale: the narrative opens with a lyrical page, L'Ombre blanche, in which the narrator, who is ill, contrasts the young days that are fading with the autumn of life that is approaching. He then tells the story of Juozapota, a peasant woman whose husband takes part in the 1863 uprising against the Russian Empire. Attentive to the heroine's inner life, the narrative follows what the uprising and its defeat do to her existence.
Context
It is the longest narrative by its author, a psychological drama about the Polish-Lithuanian uprising. It belongs to the works of his last years, written between 1904 and 1907, when illness kept him in Zakopane, and marks the shift from the social realism of his early work towards a more intimate prose with an elegiac tone. Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas noted that its ending takes up the motif of its beginning.
Who it is for
A short narrative, never translated into French. It helps to know that the uprising of 1863 was crushed and followed by a long repression.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the author's major work; his stories have been translated into many languages.
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