Pasivaikščiojimas po Semeniškius

LTJono Meko "Semeniškių idilės" kartais būna skaitomos kaip romantiškos, net sentimentalios, nostalgiškos išeivijos poezijos pavyzdys. Tačiau vienas iš labiausiai į akį krintančių tų idilių bruožų yra kaip tik jų daiktiškumas, minimali vaizduojamos tikrovės deformacija. Žemė, lietus, želmenys, upė, žmonės neiškyla prieš mus kaip kokio nors idealaus, išsvajoto ir prarasto pasaulio simboliai, bet lieka patys savimi, nes autorius tiki savaiminga emocine jų jėga, įkvepiančia prisiminimais atskridusį kūrybinį polėkį, visai nepriklausomą nuo to, ką paprastai vadintume „literatūra". Idilių 1997 m. laidos „Post scriptum" Mekas rašė: „Skaičiau bendralaikių poeziją, jie visi rašė taip gražiai, gražia oficialia lietuvių kalba, ir jie visi rašė apie miestą ir tėvynę labai patriotiškai, ir rašė gražiai. Bet aš norėjau rašyti tik apie Semeniškius. Be poezijos, daiktiškai. Aš galvojau apie daiktišką, dokumentinę poeziją. Taip ir rašiau". Išeitų, kad Mekas skiria „daiktišką" poeziją nuo „poezijos" apskritai, lygiai kaip būtų galima skirti „kūrybą" nuo „literatūros". Darydami tokį skirtumą remtumės prielaida, kad „poezija" ir „literatūra" yra dirbtinė, atoki nuo šiltos gyvenimo srovės, kaip bet koks menas yra tam tikra prasme dirbtinis. Mekas nenorėjo laikytis lietuvių poezijos tradicijoje nusistovėjusio žodyno, poetinių priemonių, stiliaus ar net tematikos. Jis norėjo būti ne literatas, o tik kūrėjas, arba tiesiog pasakotojas, žiūrintis į savo adresatą ne kaip į specialiai pasiruošusį grožinės literatūros skaitytoją, o kaip į eilinį žmogų, nesigilinantį į meno specifiką, bet žmogiškai artimą bendru tėvynės ilgesiu [p. 8-9].

ENThe Lithuanian poet and film-maker Jonas Mekas (b. 1922) wrote his "Semeniškių idilės" (The Idylls of Semeniškiai) in the early years of post-war Europe, a time that seemed like the end of civilization, when so many of the basic human principles appeared irretrievably lost among the ruins of bombed-out cities, buried under soul-crushing despair. As an exile, a refugee from the Soviet occupation, Mekas carried the additional burden of dispossession, the loss of home and country and of an accustomed and, therefore, meaningful way of life. Many of Mekas' fellow writers sought to articulate this calamity of forced exile in terms they knew from previous literary tradition, hoping that rhetorical cadences in elevated style would be adequate to embody and convey their own sufferings and those of their crucified nation. Mekas resolutely distanced himself from such modes of writing, calling them "literary" and thus, as it were, irrelevant to actual human feelings as they exist before being drowned in beautiful words. He stated his own position as follows: "I read the poetry of my contemporaries, they all wrote so beautifully, in beautiful official Lithuanian diction, and they all wrote about cities and fatherland, very patriotically, and they wrote beautifully. I, however, only wanted to write about the village of Semeniškiai. Without poetry, in the language of facts. I thought of straightforward, documentary poetry of things. And this is how I wrote." "The Idylls of Semeniškiai" certainly is full of "things." It is a peasant world with heavy horsedrawn wagons, farm implements scattered all around, sloshy autumn roads, exuberant summer rains rushing through the trees, and open spaces bitter with deep winter cold.It is also full of people: barefoot children with knapsacks on their backs, solid old aunts and grandmothers, men sweating in the fields or standing, listening to the rain, farm markets noisy with buyers, hagglers, beggars and drunkards, and whatever else accumulates in loving memory of time past. It is the poet's love that makes the difference between poetry and mere lists of things. Love - the deep, intense yearning for every face and every pebble now lost - in effect functions in the book as a poetic device would, transforming the plain things remembered into statements of devotion translucent with feeling. In a way, Mekas is a poet of the five basic senses, full of strong smells and melodious sounds of nature and of intoxicating wide vistas of the native land in its regular cycles of resurrection, full bloom, death and mourning. In this way, what is ordinary about living close to nature becomes extraordinary, unique and deathless in the written word. As a sample, we might quote from a description of women going berry-picking across a landscape that turns before our eyes into a river of life and time, flowing into an endless sea of blue eternity: "They pass the black and muddy marches, dark groves of black willows, yew trees, through red saplings, flowering bushes - a chatty, multicolored bunch of peasant scarves. And when they wade across the last few swampy patches, ditches clogged with mud and covered up, it opens suddenly: green fields as far as eye can see, they reach far out, to grey moss-covered roofs, to settlements, to rising tops of birches, gray crossbeams of the water wells, to the very edge of poor and patchy woods, as far as clearings, trampled upon by cows and horses - the fields of oats and peas come running and endless blue of flax - a blinding blue, so blue.".The river may indeed be the governing hidden metaphor of the entire collection, embodied in the flow of time, and of living consciousness across lost native spaces as well as those of loving memory. The vibrancy and emotional richness of Mekas' verse reach down to tap the roots of Lithuanian pastoral poetry as represented by the eighteenthcentury epic poet Kristijonas Donelaitis, author of the rustic epic called "Metai" (The Seasons), at the same time as it connects with twentieth-century authors, such as Sigitas Geda, who also fills the page with exuberant, smelly, melodious country life that in the end, as in Mekas, represents the only humanly significant reality.