Kalbos pelkės ir pelkės kalboje

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Literatūra; Egzodo literatūra; Grožinė literatūra; Rašytojai; Poetai; Kūryba; Metaforos; Gamta; Pelkės; Ekologija; Ekokritika; Kritika; Kultūra; Lithuanian literature; Exodus literature; Fiction; Writers; Poets; Creation; Metaphors; Nature; Swamps; Ecology; Ecocriticism; Criticism; Culture.

ENThe section "The Swamps of and in Language" is based on the ideas presented in the conference "Swamp in Lithuanian Culture". Looking at what connotations the word swamp takes in contemporary Lithuanian language, immediately two opposite directions of the usage of this word can be seen: positive in the discourses of natural sciences and environment, and negative - in spoken everyday language. Interesting seems the group of text fragments, where swamp is drawn parallel between swamp and something other. Swamp in these texts is either opposite to cultivated nature or natural nature. So swamp is both a part of nature, and opposite to it. The other direction is where the word swamp is rhetorically used in very strong negative meaning. Negative metaphors, such us "moral swamp", "the swamp of sentiments", "the swamp of not spoken complexes", "the swamp of general danger", "the swamp of romantic triviality", "the swamp of soviet education", are often found in the texts, which are directly related with politics and certain ideology. In these texts swamp is only supplementary, strengthening word, which could be displaced by word "evil". By the help of metaphor swamp is linked with present social disorder of the state. These with ideology and politics related texts demonstrate, why could it have happened, that now we must save swamps, and first of all, - to perceive, that they must be saved. One more category is the texts, where the meaning of swamp is ambivalent. One of such examples could be the metaphor "swamp-mother". Such anthropomorphism makes swamp a subject and indicates most important and closest kinship relations, this way giving to the swamp the meaning of the one, who protects her children. Swamp (and all the nature) protected, saved Lithuanians from crusaders. Swamps (as forests, woods and earth) hided, they are related with resistance movement in Lithuania.Swamp is a territory, which protects own people, but for the stranger cannot be known. The relation between the swamp and the maintenance of Lithuanian national and/or state identity is obvious. In Marius Ivaskevicius's short story "Mindaugass Dream" swamp is a synonym of Lithuania; swamps have their own language and people talk with them. Such image of swamp as state is very rare, not only in prose but especially in patriotic poetry. But it is very true because in swamp as in state one must know how to behave, know how to talk with it. It seems that such tropes as personification, animisation, prosopopoeia and apostrophe, which give voice and body to nature, give hope, that swamp and nature is alive. Tough in literary theory these tropes are considered to be rhetorical figures, i.e., the voice is given to the one, who is voiceless, but there is very strong desire to animate it. Talking about the historical roots of our ecological crisis, Lynn White blames Christianity for its anthropocentric arrogance and dominating view to nature. Whites ideas inspired lots of debates and critique. Though it is very important to look for those roots, but it must be done not forgetting that in different cultures Christian religion takes different forms, and the archaic pagan background is still in the depths of the believe. The question rises, how the creation of man and his relationship with other creatures of G o d is represented in Lithuanian etiological tales. In Baltic etiological tales human being springs up when G o d accidentally spits. Beresnevičius states that this self-depreciation lies in the depths. How do those two crossing conceptions of not valuing own life and seeing oneself as "the centre of the world" manifest nowadays in Lithuanian consciousness?.Is not the fact that the Lithuanians take the first place on suiciders' number is a symptom of the intertwining of those two believes - we commit a suicide not valuing our lives, but doing it we must be at the centre of the world, seen by all. In his writing Mekas also criticises both all present ideologies "which put a man at the very centre of universe", i.e. the perceptions, that "we are the centre of universe", and Lithuanians not valuing themselves. The subsection "Natūrai Supernatural" is devoted to the study of Leonardas Gutauskas's text "The Last Witch of Čepkeliai". This text is a literary fairy tale. The chosen genre is directly related with myths, deeper structures by which we perceive and think about the world and ourselves, relating one with others. Indicating the genre, the author of the text as if prompts the reader the way this text should be read - as a fairy-tale, i.e. text, in which cultural experience is put together in concise image, word and phrase. Gutauskas's fairy-tale is directly related with main statements of ecocriticism, because in this text we can find and read about the historical roots of our ecological crisis, and feel, that it is more related with thinking than action. The idea "People see, what they believe in" is emphasised in this text. And moral of this fairy-tale could be, that the world of fairy-tales and nature can win the believing in devil, if only we respect the autonomy of nature world. The subsection "The Failed Taming of the Wild" presents the ecocritical analysis of Jonas Biliūnas's canonical short story "Kliudžiau" ("I've Hit"), where grown up narrator remembers how he shot a little cat playing and imitating Cooper's hunters, when he was a teenager. [From the publication]