Exhibition “Diplomacy of Lithuanian Exiles in the Fight for Freedom”

Arūnas Antanaitis, the director of the Valdas Adamkus Presidential Library-Museum. Photo: National Library of Lithuania.

On January 9, 2018 the traveling exhibition “Diplomacy of Lithuanian Exiles in the Fight for Freedom” by Vytautas Magnus University Lithuanian Emigration Institute and the Valdas Adamkus Presidential Library-Museum was opened in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.

According to Arūnas Antanaitis, the director of the Valdas Adamkus Presidential Library-Museum, when creating the exhibition, the most difficult task was to decide what to include and what to leave out – so vast is the archival material about Lithuanian political, lobbying and other activities in exile spanning for over a hundred years.

The exhibition is aimed at highlighting the most important activities of émigrés in the fight for freedom in the US, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Great Britain, France, and other countries. The creators of the exhibition wanted to show not the official efforts of the émigrés, but the so-called citizen diplomacy, i.e. the contribution of ordinary people to Lithuanian statehood. Alongside material, moral and political support, they helped to establish Lithuania’s name in the world and used all possible means to support Lithuania’s independence abroad.

A Guest from the US

Jūratė Kazickaitė. Photo: National Library of Lithuania

On November 3, Jūratė Kazickaitė, the President of the Kazickas Family Foundation, visited the National Library of Lithuania. She was accompanied by Neila Baumilienė, the Head of the Foundation’s New York City branch. The guests were given a tour of the Library and introduced with the activities and ongoing projects of such departments and centers as Adolfas Damušis Democracy Studies Centre.

The main focus of the Kazickas Family Foundation is education and social projects in Lithuania and the United States. During the meeting, the guests discussed future projects and further cooperation with the Library.

 

BaltHerNet Newsletter 2017, no.3

Below, you will find the Autumn edition of the Baltic Heritage Network quarterly newsletter. In these pages, you will find information about our past and future events, new publications, and what is happening across the globe within the diaspora research and archive communities.

In this issue:

  • Andres Kasekamp Arrives as the Chair of Estonian Studies
  • Sharing Our Stories was exhibited in Ottawa
  • “We Thought We’d Be Back Soon” Captures Displaced Persons’ Experiences
  • Celebrating 10 Years Since the First BaltHerNet Summer School
  • Adolfas Damušis Democracy Studies Centre opened at the National Library of Lithuania
  • Third printing of Alberta’s Estonian Heritage “Collection”
  • Summer Interns
  • VEMU Events Spring 2017
  • BALTHERNET Conference: New Beginnings of Baltic Diaspora

Please click on the pdf link below to read more: 
https://www.balther.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/BHN_3_20_2017.pdf

Film Screening “Reflections of Paradise according to B.M. Galdikas”

On September 22, the National Library of Lithuanian invited film fans to spend an hour in the jungles of Indonesia with Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas, a Lithuanian-Canadian anthropologist, primatologist, conservationist, ethologist and author. “My real home is where my heart is—in the Kempliky National Park,” says one of the most famous anthropologists of the time, Dr. Galdikas. Although she rarely visits Lithuania, Galdikas always emphasizes her Baltic origin and love for her parents’ homeland.

In Indonesian tropical forests, Dr. Galdikas has spent more than 40 years studying and preserving “the last great monkey living in the trees.” During these years, the orangutans have almost disappeared due to the heavy logging and hunters who sell animals to individual buyers, as well as zoos or laboratories.

A few years ago, Neringa Skrudupaitė, a journalist and traveler, visited the Orangutan Rehabilitation and Conservation Center in Kalimantan, island of Borneo. After returning to Lithuania, she created a documentary film, “Reflections of Paradise according to B.M. Galdikas,” about Dr. Galdikas’s work with the endangered primates. The film captures the daily routine of a scientist’s work and the challenges she faces every single day.

Venclova’s Evening and the Exhibition

Tomas Venclova. Photo: National Library of Lithuania

In commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of Tomas Venclova, a Lithuanian-American poet, scholar, philologist, translator and a dissident, the discussion was organized in the National Library in Lithuania on September 11. The event called to reflect on Venclova’s contribution to the culture and the continuity of his works and thought in contemporary Lithuania.

On this occasion, the exhibition of photographs and books, “Tomas Venclova: That Is How the Word Approaches,” was opened in Vilnius Town Hall. One of the partners, the National Library of Lithuania, prepared a collection of Venclova’s poetry books. The exhibition invited acquaintance with poet’s poems in their original language and in their translations into twenty-three languages. Despite the rather complex strophic and rhythmic patterns of his poems—or perhaps because of them—Venclova’s poems have been translated not only into English, Russian, Polish, and German, but also into Albanian, Macedonian, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and even Esperanto, among other languages.

Most of the publications were drawn from the Tomas Venclova Collection housed at the National Library of Lithuania.

Venclova’s Evening drew huge crowds. Photo: National Library of Lithuania

80th birthday of Tomas Venclova

September 11, 2017 marks the 80th birthday of Tomas Venclova, a prominent Lithuanian poet, intellectual and Professor Emeritus at Yale University, US. While living in Soviet Lithuania, Venclova became a dissident. He left the Soviet Union in 1977. In the United States, Venclova formed a triumvirate with two other émigré poets from Eastern Europe, a Russian poet Joseph Brodsky and a Polish-Lithuanian poet Czesław Miłosz. Having lived in the US for decades, Venclova is still very involved in the intellectual life of Lithuania and Europe. In his writings and by his personal example, the poet encourages the cultural and historical dialogue and challenges prevailing stereotypes. Venclova’s poetry, which blends history and personal experiences, has been translated into over 20 languages.

Venclova‘s poetry in the original language is available here >> 

Quotations from translations of Venclova’s poetry

 

Above all, though it’s hard, love language –

humbled in newspapers, obituaries saturated with lies,

in the bedroom’s close darkness, the informer’s confession,

in the cry at the bazaar, trenches, the stench of hospital wards,

 

in third-rate theatres, secret police offices, on lavatory walls.

In grey buildings where the stairwell’s shaft is guarded

by steel nets, so that it is not a man, but the century,

which selects the instant of his death

<…>

It was given so that we might be different from clay,

the palm, the thrush, perhaps even from angels,

so that by naming, we should grasp objects clearly.

 

From poem “Commentary”; translated by Ellen Hinsey

 

Although I won’t be able

To shake you, still I will,

I’ll put out every taper:

The tower and the bell,

The stony streets, the shore

Bedecked with tar, and even

My soul, though I’m not sure

It counts among the living.

 

Here, underneath my feet,

The shaky roadway crumbles.

The shooting range, unlit,

Conceals a dark-voiced rumble

Of waves, a vast expanse,

And, from the days of Noah,

Above the depths, the dance

Of Aquilon and Notus.

From “Ode to a City,” translated by Ellen Hinsey. According to Tomas Venclova, the poem was written as a farewell to Vilnius in 1974, when he decided to emigrate.