TWO MODELS OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY IN THE LITERARY URBANISM OF CZEŁAW MILOSZ AND TOMAS VENCLOVA

Abstract

The article examines the correspondence between Czeslaw Miłosz and Tomas Venclova in the aspect of a public declaration of views on the problem of Polish-Lithuanian understanding. The free-flowing story about the current state of this important dialogue was the result of the synthesis of an autobiographical narrative with an analysis of the historical situation, a reproduction of the past and the present in the format of a personal destiny. The letters are written from the perspective of emigrants, which causes the ambivalence of the narrative technique. On the one hand, this is a reproduction of the palimpsest city in the context of its centuries-old history, on the other hand, it is an emotional subjective approach to the description of the small homeland. Built on the play of these plans, the story allows the authors to balance, without adhering to a certain ideology, the concept of being Vilna / Vilnius in the cultural geography of Eastern Europe. The list of Polish and Lithuanian emigrants goes beyond private communication and bears all the signs of writing as a national identity. The writers set before themselves the most comprehensive understanding of both peoples, coming from historical reality, conjunctural minds and ideological controversies. Vilno / Vilnius serves as a drive for broad references, historical and philosophical developments and virtuoso inscription of a special part in the format of history and culture from the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the present day. As a place-palimpsest with rich cultural sagas, replete with a national warehouse, it very much becomes a valid enclave, in the middle of which a new similar European identity is being formed. Both Miłosz and Venclova are aware of their diversity and have no interest or affiliation with the so-called “mest” theories and concepts, to put it simply Lithuanization or polonization. At the same time, Vilno / Vilnius produces powerful sensations that form the foundation for understanding the Lithuanian capital in the context of European literary urbanism. Vaughn evokes a special sound from the perspective of expulsion, emigration, due to the pain, the dislocation of the catastrophic information, the national tragedy.