Trapped in Silence. Vladas Šimkus – a Silent Modernizer of Lithuanian Poetry

Abstract

The article introduces the fi gure of Vladas Šimkus (1936–2004), who had a great impact on the work of many poets of his time, although he himself remained in the shadows. He belongs to a prominent poetic generation, which also includes Vytautas Bložė, Marcelijus Martinaitis, Tomas Venclova, Judita Vaičiūnaitė, Jonas Juškaitis and Sigitas Geda, but he is mostly known as an outstanding translator and editor. Many great Lithuanian poets admit that Šimkus has infl uenced them, but he is a rather forgotten poet. One of the most important elements of Šimkus’s poetics is silence, the meanings and functions of which can be analyzed on several levels and in different contexts.