Genesis of Alfonsas Maldonis’s Poem “Waking Up from Sleep”

Abstract

Critics ranked poem “Pabudimas is miego” (Waking Up from Sleep) as one of the best Alfonsas Maldonis’s poems in his collection Rytas vakaras (Morning Evening) (1978). The first manuscript of the poem written in 1970 can be found in poet’s archive. Poem’s text and the exact date of the document indicate that the poem was inspired by the death of a famous Lithuanian linguist Jonas Kazlauskas. It is believed that the Soviet KGB which persecuted Kazlauskas is to blame for the linguist’s death. By comparing the manuscript and the printed version of the poem, we can see how the poet eliminates the details of a particular event from the text. However, the foreboding of danger and violence that is very strongly felt from the very beginning remains in the final version. The inner turmoil of the lyric subject also stays. The subject is trying but is unable to understand what kind of behavior would be suitable in that specific situation. It can be assumed that Maldonis had two goals when editing the manuscript. First, he wanted the poem to be published. The poet knew that censors would have removed the poem from the book because of the references to Kazlauskas’s death. Second, Maldonis’s aim was to write a poem which would have carried a universal meaning. From the poet’s manuscripts one can conclude that it is precisely the move from the mundanely concrete to the more general image is characteristic to the genesis of Maldonis’s poems. Keywords: Alfonsas Maldonis, archive, manuscript, versions of the poem, genesis of the poem. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15823/zz.2018.5