Klaipėdos universitetas

The article notifies the significance of the cultural dialogue which has the history of four centuries, the dialogue between Prussian Lithuania and Lithuania Proper. Taken into account are the peculiarities of ethnic formation of both areas, as well as different strategies of assimilation policy used by Prussia and Russia. Consequently, these different strategies were accepted differently and yielded different effect. The activity of two cultural societies, that of Litauische literarische Gesellschaft, and that of Birutė is taken for comparison in the aspect of rising Lithuanian national self-consciousness, and the emphasis is laid upon sociopsichological aspects of the dialogue (which was not always direct) rather than upon historical or cultural parallels. To refresh run-of-the-mill academic attitude and discourse, unconventional literary means of the detective genre are put to use as a compositional and stylistic instrument.

BALSAS – JAU IŠ TYLOS

Užsitęsusios vasaros įmagnetinta rugsėjo penktosios naktis Rolandui Rastauskui buvo paskutinė. Ji nusinešė į savo tamsą nepakartojamąjį, kūrybinės energijos ir ateities sumanymų kupiną Rora, kuriam iki septyniasdešimtmečio tetrūko penkių savaičių. Pasiglemžė Jį be jokių įspėjimo ženklų, plėšriai ir įžūliai, nors, sako, paskutinį vakarą prašęs palikti buto duris nerakintas – maža kas... Rytą trenkė žinia, skelbianti mirties absurdo triumfą.

The article discusses the problem of spatial localization of Lithuanian literature and literature in general in the context of centre / periphery relations. The emphasis is laid upon the relative character of the concepts of centre and periphery, the fact which forestalls the formalistic or unconditional approach to the spatial existence of literature, when it is seen as isolated from historical, social and metaphysical implications of time. The author enters into polemics with postmodernistic treatment of culture and literature where hierarchic value system is no longer valid. He also proposes that modern culture is no longer literary-central and directs attention to the dramatic shifts in value-judgements and the consequences of the process.