Paslaptinga beribio matymo galia ir "Anykščių šilelis"

ENThe article deals with Antanas Baranauskas’s poem "Anykščių šilelis" (The Forest of Anykščiai) from the point of view of its likely affinity to Charles Baudelaire’s system of aesthetical philosophy. Developed in his sonnet "Correspondences" (1857) and giving birth to the aesthetic system of symbolism, Baudelaire’s "Correspondences" theory is a contemporary of Anykščių šilelis (1858–1859). The poem by Baranauskas approaches the system and the aesthetics of symbolism by both chosen poetic means and the object of depiction (nature) as well as genetic links with Romanticism. "Anykščių šilelis" is considered to be the first Lithuanian romantic poem. Despite that, there were almost no attempts made in Lithuanian literary research to treat Baranauskas’s poem from the point of view of symbolic aesthetics, i.e., attempts to discern some deep essence under the empirical surface of natural images. The exception could be seen only in Motiejus Mi kinis’s idea expressed in 1933, which suggests that Lithuania should be envisaged behind the images of the Anykščiai forest. However, analysis of the artistic mentality of the poem shows that "Anykščių šilelis" does not provide any assumptions to talk about either symbolic or romantic perception of the world. When exploring nature, the poet does not reject empirical sensations and makes no attempts to reveal the plane of transcendental existence or, according to Jan Śniadecki, a categorical opponent of romantic art, to employ "mysterious powers of limitless sight". Paradoxically, literary scholars treating "Anykščių šilelis" as a romantic poem analyse it from the classicist mimesis standpoint and are not aware of any methodological contradictions.