Links Between Letters and Poems Written by Balys Sruoga

The paper reviews personal letters and lyrics written by Lithuanian writer Balys Sruoga (1896–1947). The poet is distinguished for his unique writing style; his personal letters expose outstanding linguistic expression. It is not easy “to kill the author” in his poetry, to separate his lyrical subject from the poet himself. We can retrace the author’s friendship, the contrasts of his mood, and the same poetical images as well as symbols in Sruoga’s personal letters to his wife Vanda Daugirdaitė. Sruoga transmitted his own life situation of ethical value from reality into the aesthetic form, and individualized it. The valuable poetic relationship with reality and poetic thinking was expressed through the composition of the lyric confession poem. The Dionysian and Apollonian motifs in Sruoga’s poetic and epistolary texts were examined to show that the same motifs and even the same formulations appear in both. Consequently the study of parallels in Balys Sruoga’s personal letters and poetry opens a number of interesting research opportunities of fictive and non-fictive links: the construction of the individual linguistic world view, the manifestations of personal identity, and the search of creative identity forms