Who could we refer to as Lithuanian Aspazija and Rainis?

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvių Aspazija ir Rainis; Ona Pleirytė-Puidienė (Vaidilutė) ir Kazys Puida, Sofija; Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė ir Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis; Lithuanian Aspazija and Rainis; Ona Pleirytė-Puidienė (Vaidilutė) and Kazys Puida, Sofija Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis.

ENSolveiga Daugirdaitė in her article reflects on the possible kindred spirits and creative couples in Lithuanian culture, concluding that Lithuanian culture has not had such a couple or at least up to now such a couple has not been sufficiently represented in the way that was done in neighbouring Latvia where the two main streets had been named after Rainis and Aspazija in Riga. That such a couple of relatively equal intellectual partners emerged in Latvia but not in Lithuania was due to the different cultural circumstances (at the end of the 19t h century, there were few intellectuals who spoke Lithuanian; from 1864 to 1904, Lithuanian writing in Latin characters was banned by tsarist authorities). Probably the presence o f this iconic couple in Latvian cultural memory determines certain differences in the male and female situation in today's Latvia. The article discusses the problematic reception of the Lithuanian intellectual couples of the 20th century in the modern research, while paying a closer attention to the two couples of the beginning of the 20th century, namely, Ona Pleirytė-Vaidilutė and Kazys Puida, Sofija Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. [From the publication p. 451-452]