Aušra Jurgutienė 2023. Dekonstrukcinių skaitymų užrašai, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 310 p., ISBN 978-609-425-286-0.

This article presents, compares, and supplements two semiotic analyses of paintings by Lithuanian painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis—his sonatas painted in 1907–1909 (“Sonata of the Spring”, “Sonata of the Summer”, “Sonata of the Sea”, “Sonata of the Serpent”, “Sonata of the Pyramids”, “Sonata of the Sun” and “Sonata of the Stars”) by French semioticians, Jean-Marie Floch (article “The Life of Form. A Look at M. K. Čiurlionis’s Sonatas”, 1985) and Jacques Fontanille (article “Poliscopy in Čiurlionis’s Sonatas”, 1995), the disciples of Algirdas Julien Greimas, a founder of the Paris School of Semiotics. Focusing mainly on the analysis of two paintings from the “Sonata of the Stars” cycle, “Allegro” and “Andante”, the article proposes introducing a transcendental addresser while describing their narrative level. The article analyses significant semiotic expressions and elements of content which form in paintings and realizes the idea of the synthesis of the arts revealing the influence of the musical form of sonata on painting. It also discusses the new meanings that opened in the paintings by Čiurlionis, underlines the European art trends characteristic of Čiurlionis’s painting and its universal cultural dimension.

This article analyzes the intertext of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis in Lithuanian poetry of the late twentieth century, focusing on the processes of literary modernization during the Soviet era and raising the question of whether the poets’ fascination with the phenomenon of the Čiurlionis’s work could have contributed to this. The object of the study is poetic texts in which Čiurlionis’s work is made relevant as an intermedial phenomenon, including references to his paintings, ego-documentary, musical compositions, or commonly perceived principles of interaction between the arts. Based on texts published in commemorative anthologies (Saulėtos vizijos and Žvaigždynų sonatos), the article discusses two dominant approaches in the interpretation of Čiurlionis’s artistic ideas: turning the motifs of Čiurlionis’s paintings into ideological emblems and artistic interpretations of the paintings, characterized by varied degrees of dramatization and self-reflection. The study has revealed that the political context of the Soviet era had an impact on the content of the interpretations—the stereotypical and romantic reception of Čiurlionis as a cultural figure. However, the interpretation of ekphrasis confirms that the artist’s allegorical work created favorable conditions for the development of ambiguity and encouraged both culturally contextual and more subjective interpretations of themes in Lithuanian poetry.

The article discusses the reception of some ideas and worldview adopted from Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s paintings by poets Sigitas Geda, Leonardas Gutauskas and Jonas Juškaitis, who debuted in the 1960s and were sensitive to the mysticism of nature. Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn’s arguments that the Polish literature, especially Juliusz Słowacki’s poems (the historiosophical poem “Anhelli” and the epic-symbolic poem “The Spirit King,” describing the history of the Polish nation as a series of incarnations of the national spirit) had an influence on Čiurlionis’s art encouraged to look deeper into metaphysical thinking and experiences of holiness discussed more widely in Lithuanian academic texts in the twenty-first century. Evident in the Čiurlionis’s work, they have been manifested in Lithuanian poetry through ecstatic visions of colour, high style rhetoric and hermetic imagery. The comparative method enabled to highlight the overlaps in the perception of Čiurlionis and the aforementioned poets in art and poetry, noting the close relationship between landscape and historical themes. The author of the article considers the influence of Čiurlionis’s apolitical work on the theurgic ethos of poetry and the pathos of the cultural of resistance during the Soviet era, as well as the formation of the image of Čiurlionis as a national genius in poetry after 1990.

-

Antanas Andrijauskas 2023. Čiurlionis: Nesuprasto genijaus tragiškas skrydis: monografija, t. 1, Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas. ISBN 978-609-8231-68-7, 632 p. Antanas Andrijauskas 2024. Čiurlionis: Nesuprasto genijaus tragiškas skrydis: monografija, t. 2, Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas. ISBN 978-609-8231-83-0, 880 p.

Based on the contents of Sofija Čiurlionienė’s thank-you note sent in May 1910 to Prince Witold Kazimierz Czartoryski, which has not been discussed or published to date in Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s studies, the article aims to clarify the main benefactor of the artist’s treatment at the Czerwony Dwór clinic. Since Czartoryski is a new name in Čiurlionis’s biography, the article introduces his life, activities and personality. It raises the question of whether the prince was the only member of the historical elite who paid for the artist’s medical care, or whether several aristocrats sent funds. After Čiurlionis’s brother Stasys published his memoirs in 1935 and 1938, the claim that the artist’s medical care was funded by Prince Lubomirski from Brussels, was established. Czartoryski’s secretary, whom Čiurlionienė contacted first, lived in this city. The article also seeks to clarify who mediated this financial support, whether there are more documents related to the matter, etc. Although Čiurlionis and Czartoryski came from different social backgrounds, they were contemporaries, emerged from the same cultural region. This fact called for a comparative analysis, which revealed the common cultural trends characteristic of the period in which they lived.

-

The article investigates how food imagery in contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian literature re-articulates the Soviet period and its ideological imprint. Drawing on imagological and gastropoetic perspectives, the study examines three works by Lithuanian and Latvian authors: Laima Vincė’s non-fiction text Lenin’s Head on a Platter / An American Student’s Diary from the Final Years of the Soviet Union / September 1988 – August 1989 (in Lithuanian and English 2008), Nora Ikstena’s novel Soviet Milk (Mātes piens, 2015; in English 2018) and Dace Rukšāne’s novel Russian Skin (Krieva āda, 2020; reissued in 2025). These texts demonstrate how culinary motifs illuminate power relations: meat foregrounds the intrusive dictate of Russian imperial masculinity; milk, typically associated with care, acquires a bitter taste shaped by coercive worldviews; vodka reflects the regime’s levelling pressure, while wine signals fleeting moments of inner resistance. Food-related scenes also reveal Soviet social hierarchies structured by scarcity and informal access networks. Gastronomic imagery is a means that allows Baltic authors to show the impact of the Soviet era on local identities and to illuminate the possibilities of their renewal and cultural restoration with the onset of perestroika.

-