Vladas Braziūnas

Vladas Braziūnas. As we all know, the press writes about what it overhears. Sometimes it writes about what it understands, having heard with one ear only. That is what happened with the piece of news from Baltic News Service that you have quoted, which circulated in various media. Minsk is important here, and we will talk about it later.

But let us start from the title, Magnus Ducatus Poesis. It means the Grand Duchy of Poetry, not of poets. In the comments section of the Internet paper bernardinai.lt, one reader even claimed that poets were suffering from delusions of grandeur, and that probably Minor Duchy would suffice. It would be enough for poets, but not for poetry. Poets are small, but poetry is big. The power lies with poetry, and not with us. And something else: Magnus Ducatus Poesis is in no way a joint effort of Lithuanian and Belarusian poets. Taking a broader view that is also directed to the future, I would define it like this: it is a community of Lithuanian, Belarusian, Latvian (and Latgalian), Polish, Russian and other (including the ethnic minorities of these countries) poets and poetry translators, musicians and painters, other artists who are close to poetry, and critics, founded on the basis of aesthetic and ethical values, as well as, according to Vanda Zaborskaitė, on the basis of “republican ideas of freedom and tolerance, and values of personal dignity and civil duty of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”.

The prehistory of the idea is long and natural. From an interest in your neighbours’ poetry, from a living relationship with that poetry and its writers (which arises from long years of translating this poetry into Lithuanian), you start feeling a certain affinity, and recognising the hard-to-describe poetic dialect of a large European region. You start to feel you are a resident of this land, and you see that another resident, too, is very much like you. You feel that he or she too, feels it, notices it, and tries to give it a name. We did not want to strain anything here; we did not harbour any plans or ambitions to actualise history. It simply happens that this region of the poetic dialect coincides approximately with former possessions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. That is why the allusion made by Magnus Ducatus Poesis looked so convenient, natural and binding. Soon an explanatory component in the title emerged: surmounting boundaries.

E.A. Magnus Ducatus Poesis was founded at the Lithuanian embassy in Minsk. In view of the political situation in Belarus, it is not difficult to understand why at an embassy. But why in Minsk, of all places? In the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Minsk never played a key role; or did it?

V.B. The very idea incorporated in the name was hovering in the air (not yet in Latin, though). And when this name was pronounced on the evening of 7 February 2006, it was taken up by everybody and accepted as everyone’s. Yes, it happened at an informal reception at the Lithuanian embassy in Minsk. We were chatting, and then, after a while … Petras Vaitiekūnas, the ambassador at the time, sensed our serious intentions immediately, and the next day we were at the embassy again with the Belarusian poet Andrei Khadanovich, this time with a purpose. We browsed through our written visions, rendering them together into business language, with forecasting and calculations. The ambassador suggested that the first official public introduction of Magnus Ducatus Poesis could take place in Minsk on July 6, at the commemoration of Lithuanian Day of Statehood. That is how Minsk appeared in the foreground.

E.A. And yet, if I understand correctly, Magnus Ducatus Poesis embraces more than just bilateral cultural relations between Lithuania and Belarus. Poets from Poland, Ukraine and Russia also took part in the project. What are the duchy’s prospects? Will it remain just an annual embassy event with a nice-sounding title? Or does it have any bigger ambitions?

V.B. It is not a bilateral matter, I hasten to say without even reading this question. That is especially important. In the first poetic-musical action of Magnus Ducatus Poesis, the co-authors were really very different. They included Uladzimer Arlov, Andrei Khadanovich and Maria Martysevich from Belarus, Barbara Gruszka-Zych and Romuald Mieczkowski (a member of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union residing in Warsaw) from Poland, Vladas Braziūnas, Antanas A. Jonynas and Kornelijus Platelis from Lithuania, the Russian Georgi Yefremov (a member of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union), and Oleh Kotsarev and Dmitro Lazutkin from Ukraine. We translated each other’s poetry into our own languages, and those poems and translations of them, arranged and read by both their authors and the translators, formed the foundation of the whole event. (I must add that Birutė Jonuškaitė, who translated the poems by Barbara Gruszka-Zych, was not present in Minsk.) What is most important is that it was not just a poetry soirée, where poets from different countries read a poem or two, with translations of them, and with the reading accompanied by musical interludes. The aim was, and we achieved it, to present Magnus Ducatus Poesis to a select audience (diplomats from various countries residing in Minsk, and Belarus’ elite in art and culture) in one event of music and poetry, a work brimming with life and improvisation, a poly-logical concord. There was a poetic dramaturgy to the event: from the Babel of poems resounding, in a certain order, at the same time and in their original languages, there emerged the word of poetry, a word that could be heard and understood by everyone. Music enveloped the sound of poetry, and intertwined with it. From allusions to the folk art of the nations of the region, it moved to free avant-garde improvisation. The action started and ended with music, but it did not stop (only the pauses in the music were silent), and throughout the whole event music was conversing with poetry, reading it, and listening to it. Therefore, we can say that it was a great success by the (multi)instrumentalists Todar Kachkurevich (Belarus), Algirdas Klova (Lithuania) and Valdis Muktupāvels (Latvia). Their playing, as well as Rūta Muktupāvela (Latvia) singing in Latgalian, flowed like some magical magma, fusing everything into one. I am not talking here in my own words, so much as in those of the people who saw and heard us on that afternoon. I am also quoting participants in the event (those who were interviewed by the media). The reality exceeded their expectations.

Our immediate plans include publishing the first Magnus Ducatus Poesis almanac, with a video and audio CD (Belarusian film-makers made a video of the event, the embassy acquired the film contributed it to our book). Next year a similar event will be held in Ukraine, or maybe in Poland. We are not avoiding Lithuania, of course. This year we planned an event in Minsk, and a larger one in Vilnius; but unavoidable organisational difficulties (related to the changes in the government in Lithuania) prevented us from carrying it out. Among the participants, we did not see the Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova (who lives in the USA), the Ukrainians Yuri Andrukhovich and Andri Bondar … And yet I am mentioning them because they have done a lot for the cause of communication between poetries, and for Magnus Ducatus Poesis, and we link the future of our community with them.

We can see vast areas of activity. We can see what should be done; translating and propagating the community of the poetic and, in general, artistic culture of this broad Central European region; highlighting the authentic directions, phenomena and personalities of each of these cultures, including the ethnic minorities of these countries, as the common identity of the region and as a polyphony of individual identities, aiming at their dispersion inside and outside the region; encouraging and stimulating the region’s multidirectional cultural cooperation; activating external (European and global) cultural exchange, raising the international competitiveness of this culture in general, and poetic culture in particular; and enhancing the culture of poetry translations, and the prestige of the translators translating the poetry of the nations of the region, both inside and outside the region. It may sound abstract, yet behind these abstractions we see meetings, festivals, conferences and publishing (including e-publishing) in different countries every year … God give us good health and time to keep our promises. And that the number of “us” grows. There have emerged among us not only valiant poets, translators and other artists, but also swift and resourceful management enthusiasts. I, personally, am far from that. That is why we are looking for friends and sponsors, media sponsors among them; and, therefore, we are casting hopeful looks in the direction of The Vilnius Review magazine.

E.A. What is a grand duchy without a grand duke? When will his name be announced?

V.B. Not before the duchy is established de jure. When Magnus Ducatus Poesis is in control of its borders and is recognised by the world.