Vydūnas' dramas: A ritual of national salvation

Abstract

Vydunas (Vilius Storasta, 1868-1953), writer, philosopher, and cultural leader of the Lithuanian community in East Prussia, was one of the key figures of the first Lithuanian national renaissance at the turn of the century.1 His major dramas Shadows of the Ancestors (Probotiu seseliai, 1900-1908), Eternal Fire ( Amžina ugnis , 1902-1913), Chimes of the Sea (Jūru varpai , 19141920), and World on Fire (Pasaulio gaisras , 1922-1928) belong to the classics of Lithuanian literature.2 Written during the first quarter of the twentieth century, contemporaneous with symbolism and expressionism, Vydunas' dramas share with these modernist movements some stylistic, formal, and thematic elements. However, Vydunas' world view, as depicted in the dramas, appears different from that which we understand as modernistic or avant garde. In twentieth-century literature we are accustomed to finding a fragmented, seemingly absurd world, one in which human beings feel alienated, where human nature itself appears as a battleground of unconscious instincts and barbaric impulses. By contrast, Vydunas' dramas invite us into a world which is whole, harmonious, and meaningful. Here even suffering, death and heroic self-sacrifice are purposeful and ennobling. Not chance, but a Divine Will rules the world. The individual who seeks the purpose of life discovers it, though the path to enlightenment may lead through a shedding of false illusions. The term holy theater3 describes this type of drama, which aspires to transcendence and spirituality. It is fervently anti-materialist and religious in outlook, although not bound by conventional Christian dogma. Vydunas considered drama to be the most effective form of art, because drama can express most powerfully the struggle of the human spirit to rise above subhuman forces, above those physical and material constraints which shackle and enslave life.4 The location of the action is usually some sort of hallowed ground: the pagan Lithuanian shrine Romuva, a sacred forest or oak grove, an ancient burial ground, an ancestral home, or a mythical seashore. The time is either the mythical past or a dimension in which past, present and future co-mingle from the vantage point of eternity. The complex external structures of the dramas,