Iron and Silver || A Poetry Performance for Adults

“I always thought I didn't like poetry, that I didn't understand it,” says actor Rolandas Kazlas, “I preferred prose, philosophers, playwrights, and I looked at poets and verses with distrust. But in truth, I was waiting and searching for poetry that resonated with me. One probably needs to seek it like Love, like a beloved, and a poet – like a soul brother. A self that is both the same and different: more sensitive, more open, more subtle, loving, and strangely radiant. Having discovered Vladas Šimkus's poetry, I found what I had been waiting for and secretly longed for.” Born in the Kelmė district, and having spent most of his life in Vilnius since his studies at Vilnius University, the poet, translator, and editor Vladas Šimkus remains one of the most enigmatic figures in Lithuanian literature. Having started publishing his works while still at school, at the age of 24 he released his first poetry book, “Gražiausia sekundė” (The Most Beautiful Second). A few years later, he published the collection of poems “Kranto kontūrai” (Shore Contours) (1963). And his 1968 poetry book “Geležis ir sidabras” (Iron and Silver) became a significant event not only in the poet's own biography but also in Lithuanian poetry as a whole. The same can be said for the poet's fourth independent collection, “Bitės pabėgėlės” (Refugee Bees) (1973), which surprised colleagues and literary critics with its radical turn towards ironic discourse and a painfully sober debunking of many ingrained cultural myths. This collection by Vladas Šimkus was his last original book (in 1982, a selected works collection “Nusileisk, dangau ant žemės” (Descend, Heaven to Earth) was also published). As literary scholar Professor Viktorija Daujotytė, who consulted the creators of the performance, wrote, from the leading positions of Lithuanian poetry of that time, which he had occupied with his best collection “Geležis ir sidabras” (Iron and Silver) (1968), V. Šimkus “almost incomprehensibly retreated into subtext, into silence, and stopped writing poems. Only a translator, a high-ranking professional, and an equally distinguished editor remained.” The poet worked in the editorial offices of “Jaunimo gretos” (Youth Ranks), “Literatūra ir menas” (Literature and Art), “Švyturys” (Lighthouse), “Pergalė” (Victory), and “Metai” (Years). He translated the works of A. Mickiewicz, A. Voznesensky, A. Pushkin, B. Brecht, S. Veres, A. Čaks, H. Heine, F. García Lorca, F. Schiller, J. W. Goethe, and other poets, and translated plays, musicals, opera and operetta librettos for Lithuanian theaters, but he no longer wrote original poetry. According to V. Daujotytė, Vladas Šimkus received rare attention from poet friends and critics who sensed the scale of his talent, but “when asked why he no longer wrote, why he was silent, he would simply reply: 'I'm not entirely silent, I translate a lot, and that's creation too. Or: I got tired of writing the way I did, and I don't know how else... Sometimes with painful irony: I felt I had no talent... Talented people write easily, but I struggle so much, I even count...'” Nevertheless, Vladas Šimkus's poetry, preserved in four collections, its imagery and the portrait of the man who created that poetry – that ephemeral “matter” that attracts, speaks to, and (if successful) shapes the perceiver – overcame a decades-long gap in time and became the impetus and content for the performance to which Rolandas Kazlas invites us today. As the author of the performance “Geležis ir sidabras” (Iron and Silver) says, it should be “an open conversation with oneself and the audience about choice. And at the same time – an invitation. Amidst scattered daggers, a pile of iron, cold concrete, grey everyday life, and a meticulously calculated existence, to seek, discover, and feel the mysterious, faint light of silver. To fight for those rare silver minutes. Sometimes the fight is waged by retreating into subtext, into silence....”

Adresas: Vilniaus teatras „Lėlė“