Writing Vilnius on the map of Europe
20 April, 2009. During the London Book Fair the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania presents two authors: a renown poet and translator, esseyist Tomas Venclova and cultural geographer Laimonas Briedis, who will be discussing their recent books on Vilnius. The event starts at 7 pm and will be followed by a glass of wine with both authors and Lithuanian publishers present at the book fair.
Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania and European Capital of Culture 2009, is known to be a place of many voices. Once described by the Polish-Lithuanian poet Czesław Miłosz as the city with no name, it nevertheless manifests an entire panoply of names: Jewish Vilne, Polish Wilno, Russian and French Vilna, German Wilna, Belarusian Vilno, and Lithuanian Vilnius. No single history or language can embrace this multitude of identities, for each name resonates with different experiences, memories and expectations of Europe. As such, the city both unites and divides the continent, making it a point of many departures and arrivals. Two new books present the narrative wealth of Vilnius by exploring its biographical connections with the linguistic and cultural realms that go beyond the city’s national borders.
Vilnius: A Guide to Its Names and People by poet, translator and essayist Tomas Venclova, according to the author, is an extension, a second volume of his Vilnius. City Guide - a highly popular book, published in five languages. Nine chapters of the new book present biographies of 576 people whose lives involved Vilnius and who left their mark on the history of the city. This is a book about everyone: fighters for freedom or civil rights, as well as those that suppressed them and those responsible for the occupations and totalitarian regimes, the holy persons of various confessions and the adventurers, without classifying them by race, religious affiliation or ideology. Through all the epochs, from the founding of the city in the 14th century, one may read the book as a work of reference written in a lively way, as a detective story or simply as a set of stories about the inhabitants of Vilnius or persons connected to Vilnius according to Tomas Venclova.
http://www.knygnesys.co.uk/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=2003
Vilnius: City of Strangers by Laimonas Briedis, a Canadian-Lithuanian cultural geographer, is the first biography of Vilnius to retrace the meandering pathways of the city within the changing cartographies and fragmenting histories of Europe. The book, based on foreign accounts – letters, scrapbook imprints, diaries, memoirs and essays of eminent and less known intellectual travellers – and written as a stranger’s tale of self-discovery, unearths Vilnius as a threshold place of everlasting mutations of identities and cultural reincarnations where native and foreign fold into local. Described by historians as a genuinely new chapter in the narrative of Europe, and praised by literary critics for its stunningly beautiful and melancholy evocation of the lost memories of Vilnius, the volume is an allegory of the Baroque city, guiding locals and visitors alike through an orthographical map of the city.
http://www.knygnesys.co.uk/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=1722
20 April, 7 pm, Lithuanian Embassy in London (84 Gloucester Place, London W1U 6AU, Tube: Baker Street). By invitation only. culture@lithuanianembassy.co.uk, tel. 020 7935 9872
