nuolatos
kažin kokios
žmonijos
liekanos
kažkokia
mėsa
baisi
kaip
ekskavatorių
perpjauta
žemė
užstoja
gražius
mirusių
tautų
veidus
An Unfinished Drawing On The Street
Translated by Kerry Shawn Keys
relentlessly
leftovers
of
humanity
some
meat
horrible
as
earth
cut into
by
an excavator
obstructs
the beautiful
faces
of dead
nations
Ofullbordad teckning på gatan
Translated by Ulf Eriksson, Anna Harrison, Mikael Nydahl, Carina Nynäs, Liana Ruokyte, Casper Udmark
Ständigt
dessa
mänskliga
lämningar
ett slags
kött
fasansfullt
som
jord,
slaktad
av grävskopor
skymmer
de döda
folkens
vackra
ansikten
A poem as it was an emotion, a short notice on the same things, in a contrapositive background. The remains of humanity flesh versus pretty faces of dead nations. The poet speaks of nations, their identity that differs from bewildered and chaotic crowd, a shapeless generalization.
Sigitas Geda is considered to be one of the most important figures of Lithuanian literature. His creative work is a great Lithuanian national cultural value. His voice stood out in front of others, his exceptional relation with Lithuanian culture, ethno genesis, language and religion provoked and gave birth to a cultural field that stood up under the years of Soviet occupation. The poets merit is breaking many stereotypes about poetry and its forms. You can call him one of reformers of poetry led by the generation of Vytautas P. Bložė,Marcelijus Martinaitis and others. Very often it is nearly impossible to translate the poems of S. Geda, for their many contexts and his own multicultural myths. For this reason authors comments on his poetry become another important part of his creative work.
Sigitas Geda was a unique poet. He was in constant search for answers to his questions, such as the identity of nation, genesis of language, relations between nations and their cultures, linguistic ties, parallels of man and nature, origins of religion, etc. Lithuanian language is not marinistic. Sigitas Geda gave a lot of his attention to the sea, which he saw as a primordial element, a link between northern tribes, a place, from which many things came or were originated in it (in various manners). Following the Indo-European prehistory he unified the great myths of various nations, archetypes, symbols, manipulated etymology, saw the ancient and the modern history, one and many tribes at the same time, thus making his individual myth. His poetry is multi-plane and polyphonic, significant to whole region of Baltic.
Erika Drungyte
Language | Year | Translator |
English | 2002 | Kerry Shawn Keys |
Latvian | 2004 | Knuts Skujenieks |
Swedish | 2001 | Ulf Eriksson, Anna Harrison, Mikael Nydahl, Carina Nynäs, Liana Ruokytė, Casper Udmark |