“But it’s not just people who remember”2 – Whitehorn’s Windmill by Kazys Boruta: Literature as a Medium of Cultural Memory

Abstract

“Whitehorn’s Windmill” is considered to be the most outstanding work of KazysBoruta and one of the most important Lithuanian novels of the 20th century. Thebook was written during World War II when the Lithuanian state became theobject of aggression of two totalitarian powers and lost independence for a longtime, and it has grown from the writer’s anxiety about the fate of his country and the persistence of Lithuanian identity. Hence, Boruta reached for the richresources of the native folklore, to evoke the mythologized image of theLithuanian village, which in Lithuanian literature has the rank of chronotope,and at the same time, it is an important component of Lithuanian imaginationabout the sources of national culture. The story, the meaning and functions of the“Whitehorn’s Windmill,” its genesis and post-war fate, its literary and non-literarycontexts, as well as the history of its reception, allow us to interpret the workfrom the perspective of reflection on literature as a medium of cultural memory.