Vilnius Czeslawo Miloszo ir Juditos Vaičiūnaitės poezijoje

This paper is dedicated to the discussion of the image of Vilnius in Cz. Milosz's (1911-2008) and J. Vaiciunaite's (1937-2001) poetry based on Milosz's cycle of poems titled "The town without a name" (1969) and Vaiciunaite's poems on Vilnius. Jurijus Lotmanas distinguished two possible outlooks on the town: looking at it from afar and looking at the world from it. The first outlook is obvious in the Milosz's cycle of poems „The town without a name". Vilnius, the town of Milosz's youth, is easily recognized among the many realities. It is being looked at from the perspective of time and space. The views of Vilnius are arranged by the principle of collage: there many reminiscences of culture and history, motives of nature, personalities and abstract concepts. Some aspects of Vilnius, namely: Vilnius at the begining of XLXth century (Adomas Mickevicius, philomats) and the period of prewar, as well as the World War II time stand out in the background. The theme of jews' holocaust, the activities of university, scenes of townsmen's life are also integrated. The multiform past of Vilnius seems to have been lively then and the present of the subject -on the contrary - is declining, full of cofusion and losses. Ethic dimension is distinct in the reflection of impermanence and death. The attitude towards the town in Lithuanian poetry is in essence negative because of the fixed approach, which was presupposed by expressionists - the town is opposite to man's spirit, imprisoning and standardizing him. The only poet, namely Vaiciunaite has coherently humanized the town's culture, enlarging immensely the very possibility of town's approach and thus occupying the exclusive place in the Lithuanian literature. The experience of those people, who live in Vilnius and feel its being and conditions of life, is unfold in her poetryVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij