Kairiarankio kentauro pėdomis: literatūros kritika, eseistika, pasisakymai

LTŠi knyga - literatūrologo, literatūros kritiko Marijaus Šidlausko dvidešimties pastarųjų metų brandžiausių publikacijų ir iki šiol neskelbtų tekstų rinkinys, kuriame apmąstoma literatūros vieta šiandienos pasaulyje, šviežiu žvilgsniu aptariamas literatūros klasikų palikimas, argumentuotai diskutuojama literatūros istorijos sampratos klausimais, nekonjunktūriškai reflektuojamos naujos knygos ir kultūros reiškiniai, žvalgoma egzistencinių verčių Lietuvos rašytojų kūryboje ir laikysenose. Tyrėjo žvilgsnis išsiskiria nuolatiniu dėmesiu sociumo realijoms. Leidinys skiriamas literatūros specialistams ir plačiajai visuomenei.

ENThe book Kairiarankio kentauro pėdsakais (In the Footsteps of a Left-Handed Centaur) by the literary scholar and critic Marijus Šidlauskas is a collection of articles and essays from the period 2004-2022. The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter discusses the cultural foundation of statehood, the ontological importance of the mother tongue, explores the historical retrospective of the dialogue between Lithuania Major and Lithuania Minor, and reflects on the boundaries and perspectives of literature and its meaning in the face of topical issues such as war. It ends with a reflection on the personalities and work of Professor Donatas Sauka, an unconventional academic, and Sigitas Geda, an anti-academic as well as a spontaneous and extremely talented poet. The detective playful intrigue of the stylishly written text of the conclusion of this chapter gave the title to the whole book. The texts of the second and third chapters reflect anew on the legacy of classic Lithuanian literature. The author discusses the unique richness of the language of Kristijonas Donelaitis, the pioneer of Lithuanian fiction, and debates with the representatives of post-modern literature, who endeavour to belittle the value of the poem Metai (The Seasons). He grasps the vitality of the text of Motiejus Valančius’s Palangos Juzė, offers a lively discussion of the generational stereotypes and archetypes of the first Lithuanian newspaper Auszra (Dawn), reveals and comments, with hitherto unseen precision, the polemic between Jonas Mačys-Kėkštas and Jurgis Zauerveinas (Georg Sauerwein) in the Auszra. These texts point to the competences of the author, who is an excellent historian of Lithuanian literature of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, and the gaze of a literary sociologist that is directed at Vincas Kudirka’s poetry and Povilas Višinskis’s activities.From a psychoanalytical point of view, not only the relations between the generations in the milieu of the Auszra, but also the formation and cultural realisation of Gabrielė Petkevičaite-Bite are discussed. Regarding the poetry of Julius Janonis, the author refuses to treat him simplistically as an ideological herald. In the third chapter, Marijus Šidlauskas explores, in a new and lively way, the texts of Maironis (Jonas Mačiulis), the Lithuanian classic of lyrical poetry, and the universal dimensions of his poetics. He highlights the traces of Maironis’s worldview in the world perception of the neo-romantic poetess Salomėja Nėris. This part of the book includes reviews of works about Maironis: Brigita Speičytė’s monograph Anapus ribos: Maironis ir istorinė Lietuva (2012; Beyond the Border: Maironis and Historic Lithuania) and the collection of scholarly articles Maironio balsai: kūryba, veikla, atmintis (2020; Maironis’s Voices: Work, Activities, Memory) compiled by Manfredas Žvirgždas. The texts of the third and fourth chapters are united by a search for the value vertical and the focus on the contexts of Christian Western culture. Chapter 4 begins with an analysis of the poetics of longing for God by Jonas Aistis (Kossu-Aleksandravičius). By opening the metaphysical meaning of Vytautas Mačernis’s ‘king’ poetics and the signs of Kazis Bradūnas’s ‘field of love’, the author moves towards the complex forms and manifestations of God-seeking in contemporary Lithuanian poetry. The closing text of this chapter discusses the issue of literary and other values. The fifth section of the book contains reviews of a wide range of books, from academic monographs to fiction. [...].In the sixth chapter, the author appears in the role of a wit. He gives an amusing speech when accepting the Vytautas Kubilius Prize, cheerfully reviews Rimtautas Rimšas’s humorous book of adventures Vyriško torto receptas (2014; The Recipe for a Masculine Cake), reflects with a smile on the process of his own writing, and reveals the enjoyment of the text created through the intellectual essays of Gintaras Beresnevičius. In the second part of this chapter, in a more serious tone, he returns to the history of regional literature with the article ‘Do we need Hermann Sudermann?’, sees off to the world a collection of historical and contemporary poetic texts about the Curonian Spit, introduces Tomas Venclova, who was born in Klaipėda, to the residents of this city, and discusses the subtleties of writing the book of interviews with Viktorija Daujotytė Vartai į abi puses (2015; Gates to Both Sides). Most of the texts in the book stand out due to the author’s ability to connect the contexts of his own and world literature and philosophical thought.