Introductory article written by Eve Kuhn-Amendola
(Translated by Mr. A. Gioielli)

We are all prisoners, but not all of us are aware of it, because we do not see the walls that imprison us and against whose stones our most desperate blows remain in vain. The director of this sad "House of the Dead", has hidden the mighty walls, through pity of his prisoners: he has given to everyone amusements and games so as not to attempt to escape; he has filled their small enclosure with sounds so that they cover the free blowing of the desert which surrounds them. Three faithful servants aid him in this task: Suffering, Love and Insanity. They possess invisible but unbreakable chains, with which they chain the poor slaves to that noisy arena, which is called "Life".

But, from time to time, when a prisoner, tired of games and suffering, succeeds in breaking his chains, and attempts to flee, and approaches the walls, he sees them for the first time.

Some, among these rebellious ones, are then attracted to these impassable stones, as if by a magnetic force, and, gradually, are transformed into stone, overcome by a stupor and an invincible horror.

Others, suffering from an agonizing desire, strive desperately to open a breach, by dint of pick-axes; but all too quickly this tremendous and useless labor kills them; or else, it tires and oppresses them, so that they return to their games of before, trying to forget forever what they have seen.

Still others, moved to pity for their suffering companions who are unconscious of their eternal slavery, themselves return to the games and songs of the arena, but standing guard over those who show signs of tiredness and are beginning to feel drawn by the fascination of those fatal stones. Patiently, tenderly, they try to restrain them from that which darkens their vision and curdles the blood in their veins, by sometimes offering them poisons of forgetfulness and somnolence.

There are only a few, however, who came back not to silence their companions or to make them forget, but to ignite in their hearts the blind desire of evasion and, above all, to terminate the games of the servant "Love", singing to them sad and terrible songs about what they have seen and how much they are suffering, because they know they are slaves for eternity. These few are the real rebels.

Jurgis Baltrusaitis is among them; perhaps the most rebellious. The tragic questioning, the heroic hope and the silent love for his companions are the flames which rise from his heart and by means of which he sees, since rarely is an individual destined to see.

Baltrusaitis is not of Russian origin, although he writes in Russian perhaps to melodious and suave to chant defiance and revolt. Through Baltrusaitis' verses one feels that he is a true son of Lithuania, one of those silent, austere individuals, of a sincerity often tragic for himself as well as others, unlikely to give in to himself, although, externally, prone to bow his head under every serious oppression.

This is the great fascination of his poems -- this incarnation of the Lithuanian spirit in verses so melodious, so perfect, that oftentimes one feels he hears a Pushkin, a Lermontov, singing no longer of sleep, love and beauty, but saying, in forms always new and diverse, the fervent and suffering aspiration of the soul, which is invincibly bound.

In his two volumes of verses, there is not one verse inspired by the god of Love; not one image of sensuality. He is repugnant to drink from the gold chalice the poisonous drink that his friend, Valery Briusov, another Russian poet, also alert to the cruel reality, offers his brothers so that they may drink from it forgetfulness and pleasure.

Baltrusaitis has only to offer his companions a heavy pick-axe to invite them to the insane work of demolition. And not even nature's beauties, which for many is the pitiful veil thrown over the walls of the prison, succeed in making them forget their slavery. The tempests of snow along the Russian steppes, the vivid writings of nocturnal lights in the celestial heights of God, the tall glaciers of the solitary mountains, everything in nature which is solitary, silent and solemn, is his preferred companion because it reminds him of the miraculous dream -- his pressing duty. His is the true cry of the "Weltschmerz", whose comparison weakens any romantic cry, whether it's of Heime or Lermontov. In Baltrusaitis, the "metaphysical" suffering of the prison world silences every personal suffering. He speaks of his own "Misery Madonna" almost with kindness and tenderness.

Baltrusaitis' suffering is, therefore, lacking any bitterness; one often feels that sense which is the supreme incarnation of solitary suffering on this earth: "My Father, my father, why have you abandoned me?"

This suffering is always alive in him. In the preface of his volume, he gives a synthesis of it, and its expression of it is of a classic beauty impossible to render with the words of a foreign language:

" All of my thoughts is a fervent desire to know the secret of the stars; all of my life is a

submission (bowing down) before the abyss."

The soul of Baltrusaitis reveals itself as mystical throughout his poems. A profound sense of the mystery of life, of the eternal "ignorabimus" is the basic note of his religion. He is one of those who knows he does not have the right neither to affirm or to deny -- that we mortals must live and die with a perpetual question on our lips. For him: "the earth is the last step. In the nocturnal seas it (earth) rises like a rock, where man, a trembling shadow, bows down and is alone with the query which is his prayer".

Like every mystic, he is always conscious of the fleetingness (fugacity) of everything. This sentiment is expressed perfectly in a poem, "The Pendulum", whose rhythm is of a special fascination and corresponds to the sadness of the "scanned sound of the pendulum, sad and rhythmical, which is heard ever more indistinctly accompanying the path of "Time" in the desert of times.

The poems of Baltrusaitis are inspired not only from his suffering. Like every truly mystical heart, through his "Weltschmerz" he has reached a state of heroic spirit, whose fundamental character is the hope, the heroic hope which is found in Beethoven, Nietzche, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky.

It is this hope which inspires him to chant the "Gloria Mundi", and teaches him to pray his "Prayer". It is not merely the hope which attends a "non-terrestrial festival", nor that "the bridges shall be thrown across the abysses" that "the confines may be kept at a distance" and "illuminate the darkness". Rather, even more.

His is the supreme hope, the hope that the miraculous dream may be realized, that his poems may be a part of the symphonic altogether of the spirits, whose final accord will perhaps crumble forever the walls of our prison.

© Copyright Oct, 1, 1976 Casimir Norkeliunas, Ph.D.
All Rights Reserved