Revising narratives of the city: topography of memory and imagination in the selected essays from newcomers of Vilnius

ENFor centuries, Vilnius was considered a heterotopic border city and a palimpsest of polemic historic heritage. It was a center of mass migration during political crises and occupations; most newcomers had to make some effort to adopt the traditions of autochthonous citizens. The language barrier and changes of ethnic composition occasionally led to misunderstandings, discontinuity of collective memory, and even clashes of rival nationalisms. Vilnius/Vilna was attributed to the exotic Orient by the incomers from the West; the city was related to the concepts of isolation, wilderness, provinciality. During the Soviet occupation, the oxymoronic stereotype of an “ancient but youthful city” was promoted, and the inconsistent symbols of the past were exiled to oblivion. Within the circles of the émigré diaspora, Czesław Miłosz and Tomas Venclova launched a discussion about memory and nostalgia in terms of trying to “escape from the ethnocentric enclosure”; they reconsidered the uniqueness of Vilnius in the context of post-imperial Central Europe. For Miłosz, interwar Wilno/ Vilnius was a lost chance of normalcy, a symbol of an intimate Paradise Lost; for Venclova, who grew up in the Stalinist capital of Lithuania, the cityscape looked “twisted, turned inside out and maimed” (Miłosz, Venclova, 2009, 241). In the maze of the Old Town, Venclova recognized heteroglossia, a paradoxical harmony deriving from chaos: Vilnius resembled Rome or Florence but at the same time it scared the newcomers with its violations of logic and relativity. The collection of short stories Vilniaus įkvėpti (2009) represented the change of image-creating strategies. In this book, a city is exposed as a touristy location, as well as a scene of initiations or crimes. For wandering post-modernist European authors, it’s a city of graveyards and well-kept memory signs.The liberal German thinker Felix Ackermann, reflecting multi-layered historical heritage and stereotypes from the perspective of a contemporary scholar of humanities, encourages ethnic Lithuanians to consider discontented voices from different social classes and minorities while discussing future projects of development. Ackermann criticizes the relationships a majority of Lithuanians share with the past of their state and with the cultural heritage of Vilnius. Ackermann introduces a new type of newcomer – one who does not seek to adapt to the local order but feels competent enough to criticize, deconstruct, and change the system. Keywords: national myths; cityscape; collective memory; urban communities; ethnocentric position; palimpsest.