Starvation and literature: reading contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian novels

ENThe cataclysmic events in the Baltic states during and after the Second World War, such as the Holocaust, concentration camps, Siberian exile, etc. make hunger and famine a momentous topic in the Baltic works of literature: it has become so popular that it recently amounted to a rich body of Lithuanian and Latvian contemporary trauma narratives. Food researchers search the literature for phenomena related to satiety, i.e., gustatory experience. My debate will focus on food deprivation, low-calorie intake, malnutrition, and the corresponding physiological and psychological effects and reactions. How does the social, political, and psychological situation of a starving person deconstruct the accepted view of food? What is the relationship between starvation and femininity in the representations of trauma? Is it possible to adequately articulate starvation if neither the writer nor the reader has experienced it directly? The paper is based on a few Lithuanian and Latvian modern literary accounts, namely Five Fingers (Pieci pirksti) by Māra Zālīte, Between the Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, In the Shadow of Wolves (Mano vardas – Marytė) by Alvydas Šlepikas, Darkness and Company (Tamsa ir partneriai) by Sigitas Parulskis, and The Beautiful Ones (Skaistās) by Inga Gaile. My interest in focusing on these texts is determined by the capacity of a literary text to capture ethical debates expressing the relationship between life and death, the individual body and power, and the edible and non-edible. By proposing a comparative trajectory and using structuralist research tools, I will trace the problematic depictions of starvation in Lithuanian and Latvian literary works and highlight the anti-cultural meanings that it acquires. Keywords: famine, hunger, starvation, Lithuanian literature, Latvian literature, omnivore paradox, gusteme, culinary triangle. [From the publication]