Lithuania's Tomas Venclova is one of Europe's greatest living poets. His work speaks with a moral depth exceptional in contemporary poetry. Venclova's poetry addresses the desolate landscape of the aftermath of totalitarianism, as well as the ethical constants that allow for hope and perseverance. "The Junction" brings together entirely new translations of his most recent work as well as a selection of poems from his 1997 volume "Winter Dialogue".
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Every major poet has an idiosyncratic inner landscape against which his voice sounds in his mind... [Venclova's] landscape is that of the Baltic in winter, a monochromatic setting dominated by damp and cloudy hues - the light of the skies condensed into darkness. --Joseph Brodsky
Venclova is a lyric poet of magisterial allure, committed to philosophical meditations...Part exile, part seer, he is the artist as witness and a living example of a literary elite that evolved in crisis yet remained true to the dictates of art. --Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
If in Venclova's volume, Winter Dialogue, there is a concern with endurance, and a search for absolutes in the face of adverse conditions both in Lithuania and in exile, in his most recent work, The Junction, we find the figure of a poet returning from exile, surveying what has occurred, what buildings still stand, and the fates of those one loved. And while these poems are filled with melancholy at the passage of time, there is also a sense of affirmation. For despite everything, each element that is salvaged constitutes a form of victory - a testimony to all that can be, and is, preserved from the vicissitudes of History. --Ellen Hinsey
Venclova is a lyric poet of magisterial allure, committed to philosophical meditations...Part exile, part seer, he is the artist as witness and a living example of a literary elite that evolved in crisis yet remained true to the dictates of art. --Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
If in Venclova's volume, Winter Dialogue, there is a concern with endurance, and a search for absolutes in the face of adverse conditions both in Lithuania and in exile, in his most recent work, The Junction, we find the figure of a poet returning from exile, surveying what has occurred, what buildings still stand, and the fates of those one loved. And while these poems are filled with melancholy at the passage of time, there is also a sense of affirmation. For despite everything, each element that is salvaged constitutes a form of victory - a testimony to all that can be, and is, preserved from the vicissitudes of History. --Ellen Hinsey
About the Author
Tomas Venclova was born in 1937 in Klaipeda, Lithuania. After graduating from Vilnius University, he travelled in the Eastern Bloc, where he met and translated Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. Venclova took part in the Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements and was one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. His activities led to a ban on publishing, exile and the stripping of his Soviet citizenship in 1977. Since 1985 Venclova has taught Slavic languages and literature at Yale University. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Vilenica 1990 International Literary Prize, the Lithuanian National Prize in 2000, the 2002 Prize of Two Nations, which he received jointly with Czeslaw Milosz, the 2005 Jotvingiai Prize, and the New Culture of New Europe Prize, 2005. His works include volumes of poetry, essays, literary biography, conversations and works on Vilnius. His poetry has been translated into English in Winter Dialogue (Northwestern University Press, 1997) and The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008).
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Format:Paperback
Anyone who comes to the poetry of Tomas Venclova, particularly in The Junction, will enter a landscape where the dead are living, where historical moments speak to each other, where the real is imagined and the imagined real. This is the landscape where impossible intimacies are possible, where the voice lives longer than the heart, where the darkest and most ragged emotions are given softer hues of forbearance and formal grace, literally through rhyme and meter. This landscape is informed in part by Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital and the city of Venclova's youth that suffered some of the severest atrocities during the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Entering consciousness in the 1940s amid ruins and remnant beauty, Venclova understood implicitly "the world was twisted, turned inside out and maimed." The landscape of these poems emanates from a deeply moral and humane soul, not simply the affirmative survivor, the exile hosting ghosts and you and me. This landscape comes from a poetry of the highest order. Translated into dozens of languages, it will undoubtedly transcend our own times to readers not yet born.
Venclova's writing offers an education in Lithuania's struggle to establish and sustain a national identity against hegemonic legacy of Poland, Germany, and Russia. Along the way, we are introduced to a rich cultural heritage, descriptions of stately architecture, nuances of language and dialect, and the diversity and character of Lithuanian people. We are introduced to the lives of exceptional literary figures, who suffered censorship and yet whose work reaches across borders and time. Venclova, whose writing and scholarly activity was also banned, has stated a stark axiom: "One cannot be silent about any crime." His writing remains rigorously vigilant against censorship, silence, and complicity.
Venclova's writing offers an education in Lithuania's struggle to establish and sustain a national identity against hegemonic legacy of Poland, Germany, and Russia. Along the way, we are introduced to a rich cultural heritage, descriptions of stately architecture, nuances of language and dialect, and the diversity and character of Lithuanian people. We are introduced to the lives of exceptional literary figures, who suffered censorship and yet whose work reaches across borders and time. Venclova, whose writing and scholarly activity was also banned, has stated a stark axiom: "One cannot be silent about any crime." His writing remains rigorously vigilant against censorship, silence, and complicity.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Offering readers a taste of the life in Lithuania
15 May 2009
By Midwest Book Review
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Offering readers a taste of the life in Lithuania, "The Junction" is a collection of poetry from one of the nation's finest poets in Tomas Venclova. Addressing the issues that are uniquely Lithuanian but will ring well with much of society and most importantly humanity, Venclova's poems speak well and give an indepth look into the mind of a citizen of the Eastern European country. "The Junction" is a fine read and something to be treasured by poetry enthusiasts. "An Attempt at Describing a Room": o the pillows and the palettes and the earrings made of gold/but the map will never show it as the address is annulled//but the boulevard is glowing and the tea turns into air/but the wires stretch into nowhere and the essence is unclear//tongue of flame begins to flicker midnight strikes you as you write/and the lobsters shrimp and fish break through the canvas with their sight//since the border of the fishbowl stretches out our windowpane/where the blind and artless shepherds tend the nutshells in the brine//hardness sets the liquid plaster you I cease to hear or see/void of gratitude and happy underneath the spreading tree.
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