JUSTINA PETRULIONYTĖ: IT IS TIME FOR KAUNAS TO BE ITSELF
Justina Petrulionytė is a doctoral candidate at Vytautas Magnus University, researching representations of Kaunas city in Lithuanian literature and contributing to various projects that preserve the memory of Kaunas city. “Now both for writers and characters, the urban environment has become very usual and that expanded the amplitude of city’s depiction and possibly increased its meaning to us,” notices Justina.
Have you lived in Žemieji Šančiai since you were born?
Yes, Šančiai, at least the part in which I live, is crossed by three large streets: Juozapavičiaus Avenue, which, as I imagine, during the interwar period was measured by the long legs of charming military officers; Vokiečių (German) Street, which is completely different from the one that Sindikatas sang about (Note: a song by a Lithuanian rap band G&G Sindikatas “Vokiečių gatvė” about a street in Vilnius), and which is passed by many residents of Šančiai on their way to school; Kranto Avenue that continuously approaches and moves away from Nemunas river. But probably the character of Šančiai is best reflected by the network of winding little streets, running into the big ones, because they are intricate, colorful and full of character. These are streets of twenty riverbanks and a variety of nations and cities: Latvių (Latvian), Estų (Estonian) and Talino, (Tallinn), Suomių (Finns) and Helsinkio (Helsinki), etc. This was where we wondered in teen years: through space, time, stories, water, earth, asphalt, from Napoleon to Degutytė, from Nemunas to Tallinn, from new-time cottages to the barracks of the 19th century. Fortunately, I almost did not encounter the "criminal" side of Šančiai (or maybe I have never let it in) so for me it is only stereotype.
Of course, everything eventually changes: the most wounded street of Kaunas, where most would lose their tires has been fixed, Panemunės Bridge was blown up and then reconstructed, the barracks were mended and a series of small houses with gables are replaced by post-modern black squares. However, we swap holiday cookies with our neighbors, celebrate birthdays or carry a wreath for those who leave us forever. A lot has been etched in our behavior, memory, photos, texts of people. It is an integral part of any location: sometimes it is even more real and powerful than the actual one. Šančiai has been lucky, because this neighborhood has a very strong community that cherishes its cultural memory. I think that people can envy Šančiai kiosk, Cabbage field, Šančinės.
What do you associate your native city with?
Kaunas is my home where I wanted to get back whenever I lived somewhere else. To me, it is one of the invisible cities described by the Italo Calvino, with a lot of mysterious threads and layers. It is not enough to see Kaunas. One has to feel it as well. If you look only at the surface, Kaunas may seem deceptive, maybe reminding of a lady with a hat or a gentleman that “sells dreams for lunatic Kaunasians” and always has “something from behind the counter” (these are quotes from a spot-on poem by an artist Ed Carroll written to the academic youth creative competition "Kaunas: (Un)written Place”). According to Patackas, Kaunas is somewhat peacocky and “troublemaker of the nation”. However, I am sure that if you stop for a moment in this city and let it in and try to understand its pulse, Kaunas becomes a friend that helps in a difficult situation, comforts and listens. I think the same can be said about Kaunasians: particles of Kaunas traveling around the world.
Do you notice manifestations of bohemianism in today's Kaunas?
I associate this word with the stereotypical image: passionate conversations among the youth who create or like art, in cigarette smoke, and splashed with wine; it must be in some city café, at night or in the evening. Or in a kitchen; I keep a foggy memory of such evenings in my mind, when instead of sleeping, my sister and I, we used to secretly listen to a cheerful glee of our parents and their friends. Despite of such a romantic image, bohemianism refers to a certain alternative demeanor of mostly a young person, a community and movement based on the desire for freedom. However, it is important for the attribute not to overshadow the content: the bohemian period should become an artist's springboard into the future, rather than the drowning quicksand.
These days, the names and certain traits of the bohemian lifestyle have probably changed, but the idea itself, I think, is lively. In Kaunas, we have Poetautojai who recite poems everywhere, even in a funicular that has unexpectedly stuck on the hill. I have heard about a mysterious apartment, where students who miss informal communication gather to spend time. Moreover, I think it’s not wrong to say that in the cafés of Kaunas (for example, in Kultūra, Vingių dubingių or Punto Jazz), there are gatherings that I would also call bohemian.
What does your generation look like to you?
The foundation for the values of this generation has been laid during times very difficult to Lithuania. On the other hand, it is a generation of freedom and opportunities: the freedom has been gained, the European Union has been joined both on the map and in our heads. Certainly not everyone managed to take advantage of it: unfortunately, there are a lot of trash of Soviet ideology full in the Lithuanian consciousness. However, those who accepted this freedom, in my opinion, have become the good message for Lithuania and a message about Lithuania in the world. I am happy because I am surrounded by such people: intellectual, creative, political and most importantly, brave. Their heads are hot and hearts even hotter. And hooray for that!
How would you evaluate the situation of culture in Kaunas? What are the places where you look for culture and which you like to visit?
If you ask me, if there is a lot of culture in Kaunas, lots of cultural events, I would say yes, it is. So many of them. How does culture function in a wider political and social area, it is a more difficult question... Despite the political attention and lack of financial support, we have very strong art and cultural events like KAF'e, Kaunas Biennial, Kaunas Photo, Kaunas Jazz, Aura festival, Nepatogus kinas (Inconvenient Films)... These are only several professional initiatives taking place in Kaunas. VMU also strongly supports culture here: it would be very hard for me to imagine Kaunas without this university. I really like excursions by architects around the buildings of modernist architecture, I cannot pass the Photography Gallery, I used to go to Romuva cinema, Picture Gallery with not only the great Mačiūnas room, but also the lively café Kultūra. I mostly spend weekend evenings in the former House of Architects, an Old Town café Galeria Urbana, which invites not only with its fun menu, but friendly service and culturally and historically charged space.
Which period of Kaunas history seems the most inspiring to you?
I will probably be banal by saying that it is the interwar period? It is an undeniably phenomenal period of city's existence, when only within two decades with a top hat and “drunk from its own dreams” (Zingeris) Kaunas started to look like Paris. On the other hand, Kaunas today is a completely different city and that constant turn to the past comparing the interwar period with the present time, and, unfortunately, for the disadvantage of the latter, I think is bad. It sucks out the oxygen, that has been mentioned in an essay "Kauno ratas" by Beresnevičius. It is a pity that sometimes news start with words: “Today in the temporary capital...” Why “today”, if it was the temporary capital almost 100 years ago?
Now in the public discourse, the damage of the temporary capital label has been highlighted even more (by submitting a bid to become the European Capital of Culture, playing with the English words "temporary capital" and "contemporary capital", protests of our great architects a few years ago regarding the prohibition to develop the city centre, their thoughts and works in general, not to mention the insights by professor Leonidas Donskis...)... But in VMU Department of Lithuanian Literature, we have spoken about it already in 2013, during the conference “The Phenomenon of the Second City”. I remember a rather heated discussion with the author of a monograph about the myth of temporary capital in Lithuanian literature. Yes, the myth of temporary capital does exist, and I do not question its need for the cultural memory. However, there is another side of this myth: strange “destinies of temporary capitals”, and the outcomes of these events: what happens to the city, where the foundations of the state have been laid but then everything was moved to Vilnius? If needed, Kaunas would again stand for the entire Lithuania, as Beresnevičius says, but the time has come for Kaunas to be itself and for itself, rather than something else and for the sake of something else. I would say that the present of Kaunas and its people inspire me the same as those from the interwar period.
How would you describe the mythology of Kaunas created by writers?
City imagery in Lithuanian literature is full of similar signs like in the West, where the tradition to depict cities is considerably older. For example, novels written during the interwar period comply with the traditional script of the urban romance where the character (usually a newcomer from a village or a city) struggles in the unusual, industrial, commercial and modern world. Problems solved in literary texts about Kaunas are not only universal but also characteristic to small, "second" cities. I have noticed that in the literature of the last few decades, Kaunas has been marked by a powerful metaphor of a city-organic creature, which speaks about the birth, growth and possible demise of cities. For example, some texts highlight the relations of Kaunas with the beginning of independent state of Lithuania of the 20th century by suggesting a metaphor of a city-an eternal teenager, city-woman, others construct the image of Kaunas as a (un)happy love, city-ship in fog, city-ghost or employ city's apocalypse as a powerful tool to criticize the present.
Can you tell us a bit more about your doctoral thesis: why did you decide to analyse representations of Kaunas city in Lithuanian literature?
I was encouraged to look at the phenomenon of the city and the place of a city in Lithuanian literature more carefully by my wonderful supervisor. In my thesis, my work is not only based on the theory of the narrative, but also cultural sociology that emphasizes the importance of social origin, education and local circumstances in the cultural field. Urban environment has already surrounded several generations of my family, even though my grandparents were from rural areas, they left for the city quite early on in their lives. My parents and sister grew up on the asphalt. We have never had a countryside home or a farmstead where we could go to spend time. Maybe that's why for me, “dew runs through my face as tears” not because of the greenery of the forest, but first because of the secrets of the city. Having studied texts by Lithuanian writers and literary critics, I had an impression that city in Lithuanian literature is still shadowed by the depictions of rural life, forest and natural miracles. I wanted to investigate it.
And there were several more reasons that encouraged me to study Kaunas. First of all, its exceptional biography (the capital, small and the second city). Second of all, Kaunas is related to the beginning of the modern 20th century Lithuania and urban culture as well as the Lithuanian literature of the 20th century. Moreover, according to cultural investigators, city imagery is an important component of the national imagination. These connections can be recorded in the Lithuanian literature, but in the critical and historical literary discourse, in my opinion, it does not receive enough attention.
Raymond Williams (the pioneer of cultural materialism who arrived at the academic world from the small village of laborers) wrote a book "The Country and the City" guided by the personal experience and commitment. Very similarly, the place of the city in general and Kaunas in particular has become a personal question for me: having read a lot of texts by Lithuanian writers and literary researchers, fictional, scientific, categorical and liberal, speaking with the Lithuanian writers, and more often, when conversations do not happen.
Interviewed by Jurga Tumasonytė
Interview published in Literatūra ir Menas on 25 November 2016.