The Ballads of Kukutis E-Book

Marcelijus Martinaitis

• Herausgeber: Arc Publications
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Arc Translation Classics (obsolete)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 92

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Set in the Stalinist era, when Lithuaniaís farmers lost everything ñ their villages, their land, and even their way of life ñ to the process of collectivisation, this book documents the life of the village idiot/anarchistic trickster Kukutis. Incapable of understanding or following the laws and rules of the totalitarian regime, and knowing nothing of strictures or borders, he says and does what he likes, thus becoming a potent symbol of freedom until the downfall of communism in Lithuania. Together these poems form a black comic riposte to the horrors of occupation and totalitarian rule. "It is of the essence of the trickster that he is playful and seems to be talking - whispering, acting - about something else, and that this something else has an innocence about it, a lack of central concern. No politics here! It worked, we are told; of the few books that got through the layers of official censorship, this one - or in its separate publications - did." Stride "To describe these poems as ballads is not to say they are written in regular verse or have recourse to narrative structures punctuated by refrains, but they nonetheless penetrated the consciousness of the people of Lithuania to the extent that they were chanted by crowds demonstrating as the Soviet grip on the country was released. Kukutis is clearly of those characters who escape from their creator and belong to all." The Warwick Review Marcelijus Martinaitis, author of fifteen collections of poetry and five collections of essays, was born in 1936 in western Lithuania. After an education disrupted by first Soviet then Nazi occupation, he graduated from Vilnius University and worked as a journalist, editor and university tutor until he retired in 2002. In 1998 he received the Lithuanian National Award in Literature, the highest honour bestowed upon a Lithuanian writer. During the late 80s and early 90s, he actively participated in Lithuaniaís struggle to regain its independence from the Soviet Union. Laima Vince is a graduate in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Her other translations include Martinaitisís poetry collection K.B. The Suspect (2009). This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.

Leseprobe

The Ballads of Kukutis

Published by Arc Publications,

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Original poems copyright © Marcelijus Martinaitis 2011

Translation copyright © Laima Vincė 2011

Introduction copyright © Laima Vincė 2011

Design by Tony Ward

978 1906570 26 2 (pbk)

978 1906570 27 9 (hbk)

978 1908376 39 8 (ebook)

Acknowledgements:

Laima Vincė would like to thank the following journals and anthologies in which versions of these translations first appeared: Artful Dodge, Lithuania: In Her Own Words, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Poet’s Voice, Two World’s Walking, Vilnius Review, Webster Review and Writ.

Cover illustration:

Lithograph, 1971, by Petras Repšys, by kind permission of the artist.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

Arc ‘Classics’: New Translations of Great Poets of the Past

Editor: Jean Boase-Beier

Marcelijus Martinaitis

•

The Ballads of

Kukutis

•

Translated and introduced by

Laima Vincė

2011

CONTENTS

Introduction: Kukutis as a Trickster Character

Nakvynė pas žemaitį Kukutį

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Spending the Night at Kukutis’s Farm

Pasaulinis skausmas Kukučio nutrauktoj kojoj

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The World’s Pain in Kukutis’s Lost Amputated Leg

Bergždžia Kukučio duona

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Kukutis’s Barren Bread

Kukučio rauda po dangum

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Kukutis’s Lament Under the Heavens

Ir dangun nuėjo žemė

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And Earth Went Up to Heaven

Kukutis reicho daboklėje

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Kukutis in Forced Labour

Kukučio žodžiai

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Kukutis’s Words

Instrukcija Kukučiui, paleistam iš daboklės

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Instruction for Kukutis Released from Forced Labour

Kaip Kukutis protą atgavo

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How Kukutis Regained His Senses

Mano sugalvota pasaka pakartam Kukučiui palinksminti

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The Story I Came Up With to Cheer Up Hanged Kukutis

Įrankių, žodžių ir žmonių susimaišymas Kukutynėje

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The Confusion of Tools, Words, People in the Kukutynė

Kukučio kregždės giesmė

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Kukutis’s Swallow’s Hymn

Kukučio raštas vienkartinei pašalpai gauti

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Kukutis’s Application for Temporary Relief Aid

Kukučio pamokslas kiaulėms

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Kukutis’s Sermon to the Pigs

Kur, Kukuti, padėjai tu savo kukutį?

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Kukutis, Where Did You Put Your Kukutis?

Daug Kukučių ir vienas

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Many Kukutises and One

Kukutis nori pamatyti tėvynę

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Kukutis Wants to See His Homeland

Kukutis atmerkia akis

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Kukutis Opens His Eyes

Kukutis važiuoja greitai

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Kukutis Drives Fast

Kukučio sąmonės susvetimėjimas

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How Kukutis Became Estranged from His Consciousness

Neleisti!

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Forbid Him!

Kukučio galybė

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Kukutis’s Might

Eksperimentas

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An Experiment

Keltuvių rytas Kukučio namuos

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Morning in Kukutis’s Cottage

Kukutis – pasaulinei parodai

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Kukutis and the World’s Fair

Kukutis savo laidotuvėse

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Kukutis at His Funeral

Kukutis pasakoja apie savo trobą

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Kukutis Tells About His Cottage

Naktį, Kukučio sodyboj

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Night at Kukutis’s Farmstead

Paskutinė Kukučio diena

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Kukutis’s Last Day

Žuveliškių moterys aprauda Kukutį

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The Women of Žuveliškės Mourn Kukutis

Kaip laidot Kukutį?

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How To Bury Kukutis

Kukučio testamentas

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Kukutis’s Testament

Kukučio pagailėjimas tamsią audringą naktį

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Kukutis’s Sorrows on a Dark and Stormy Night

Kukutis kalbina savo gyvybę

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Kukutis Addresses His Life

Nuodėminga Kukučio dvasia

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Kukutis’s Sinful Soul

Kukutis moko vaiką, kaip paglostyti briedį

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Kukutis Teaches a Child How to Pet a Moose

Kumelaitė Kukučio ausy

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A Pony in Kukutis’s Ear

Kukučio senis su plienine yla

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Kukutis’s Old Man with a Tin Awl

Kukučio daina

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Kukutis’s Song

Nelaimingas Kukutis bulvėse

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Unhappy Kukutis in the Potato Patch

Kukučiui reikia moters

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Kukutis Needs a Woman

Kukučio gailestis dėl kuliamųjų sunykimo

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Kukutis Mourns the Loss of Threshing Machines

Kukutis vengia atsakomybės

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Kukutis Avoids Responsibility

Kukutis žiūri į stiuardesę

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Kukutis Gazes at a Stewardess

Kukutis pasakoja apie savo moterį

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Kukutis Tells About His Woman

Kukučio kelionė žemaičių plentu

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Kukutis’s Trip on the Samogitian Highway

Kukučio apsilankymas Vilniuje

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Kukutis’s Visit to Vilnius

Kukutis važiuoja pilnu troleibusu

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Kukutis Rides a Full Trolleybus

Kukutis Katedros aikštėje susapnuoja žuveliškių kaimą

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Kukutis Dreams Up Žuveliškės Village in the Cathedral Square

Kukučio diagnozė

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Kukutis’s Diagnosis

Kukutis muša mokslų kandidato Pliugžmos šunį

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Kukutis Beats the Agent’s Dog

Kukučio kreipimasis į alfabetą

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Kukutis’s Appeal to the Alphabet

Paskutinis atsisveikinimas su Kukučiu

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A Last Farewell to Kukutis

Translator’s Notes

Biographical Notes

INTRODUCTION: KUKUTIS AS A TRICKSTER CHARACTER

According to the Lithuanian poet Marcelijus Martinaitis, Kukutis was the first Lithuanian to bypass the Soviet border control unnoticed. In the eighties Kukutis made his appearance in Sweden and since then he has travelled the globe, showing up around the world in fourteen separate translations. Luckily, Martinaitis has been able to catch up with Kukutis since Lithuania regained its independence in 1991, and is now himself a free citizen of the world.

Martinaitis’s Kukutis character has a wooden leg. The wooden leg is a folkloric symbol of wisdom and also acts as the staff of the messenger. Because Kukutis can pass between worlds, he fulfils the role of messenger. This concept turned out to be prophetic as The Ballads of Kukutis has made its mark in a number of European countries. In fact, The Ballads of Kukutis is the most widely-read work of Lithuanian poetry outside of Lithuania. For Lithuanians Kukutis carried the message of freedom. Outside of Lithuania, Kukutis bore witness to the fragility and the tenacity of an occupied people’s will to survive.

Poet, essayist, social activist, educator, Marcelijus Martinaitis was born in the village of Paserbentis in Western Lithuania in 1936. Martinaitis’s childhood was marred by the invasions of two armies – the Soviet army occupied Lithuania in 1941 and 1944, and the Nazis occupied Lithuania in 1941. The Second World War did not end in Lithuania in 1944 after VE Day. Partisan warfare raged across the country until 1956 when fifty thousand Lithuanian men and women joined the armed resistance against the Soviet occupying forces during the post-war decades.

The Ballads of Kukutis is set in the Stalin era, during the forced collectivization of farms, when Lithuania’s farmers lost their land and their agrarian lifestyles to the process of collectivization in which private farms were confiscated and united as large collectively-run farms. During the Stalin and Khrushchev eras villages were flattened by bulldozers in order to create large expanses of arable land. These forced measures taken against an agrarian people whose entire world-view and religion was linked to the land had a devastating effect.

Martinaitis’s hero, Kukutis, the trickster fool, lives through these dark times hardly noticing the processes taking place around him. In fact, his very existence is an affront to the local Soviet government. Not only is he incapable of following the laws and regulations of the new regime, he is utterly unable to understand them.

In an interview with Martinaitis conducted on 11 May 2006, Martinaitis talks about how, when he was growing up in his village in western Lithuania, there was a contingency of people who existed outside the realm of Soviet laws and regulations and beyond the limits of sanity. Through their madness, these people obtained an enviable inner freedom. Stalin’s decrees did not touch them: they existed outside the realm of governance. Martinaitis recalls how as a child he’d sit for hours listening to these people tell their stories of the visions they’d had, of their incredible travels, of their meditations and ruminations.

The person of Kukutis is based on these village outsiders who managed to live their lives around the regime. Kukutis goes about his life untouched by the law, and therefore is a great inconvenience to the local Communist government. Not only does Kukutis live and function outside of regulation, he possesses the ability to pass between this life and the beyond: he is both animate and inanimate at the same time. He knows no borders or limits. He is a trickster character in the tradition of the Native American trickster tales.

In western Lithuania where Martinaitis grew up, the word ‘Kukutis’ was used as a nonsense word. People would jokingly refer to each other as ‘Kukutises’, especially in clumsy or awkward situations. But ‘Kukutis’ is also the name of a particular rare bird – a beautiful bird with a red crown – a bird one might glimpse only once in a lifetime. At the same time, the word ‘Kukutis’ is related to the Lithuanian word ‘gegutė’ – coo-coo bird. Martinaitis claims that the name ‘Kukutis’ came to him completely unexpectedly and from deep within his unconscious, as did the entire manuscript of poems. He wrote the poems quickly and rather effortlessly, with little revision. Years later he read that in Persian literature the name of the bird that acted as Solomon’s messenger was ‘Kukuts’.

Amazingly, Kukutis was able to infiltrate and evade censorship when The Ballads of Kukutis first made its appearance in 1977. Under the Soviet system, Lithuanian literature was censored and closely monitored by GLAVLIT, a Communist Party-run office that monitored literature and the activity of Soviet writers. The censorship process worked as follows. The writer presented his or her manuscript to the editor at the government publishing house. The editor would read the manuscript, making sure there were no obvious allusions that would catch the attention of the censors. These would be allusions such as religious references, mention of the partisan warfare of the post-war period, or ideas reminiscent of democracy or human rights. Once the editor was satisfied that the manuscript was acceptable, he passed it on to GLAVLIT and that Communist Party committee read it thoroughly, again searching for any allusions that could be considered anti-Soviet.

Obviously, the writer did not have the right to know who was reading his or her manuscript, not did he or she have access to the committee’s comments on the manuscript. If anything suspicious were detected, it was the job of the editor to mediate with the writer and to ask that revisions be made. Once all changes were made, then the manuscripts would officially go before the Soviet Literature Committee who decided whether the manuscript would be published or not and who may or may not request more changes or omissions.

After all final changes were made, the manuscript would go to press. Once the first copy of the book was produced, it would be presented once again to GLAVLIT