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Saulius Tomas Kondrotas’ first book, The World Without Borders, once made a huge impression on me, just shocking. S. T. Kondrotas even started to seem like a demigod, not a man. Inspired by his tales, I hastened to draw illustrations for them and I still remember that windy and rainy day, when with lots of drawings I waited a good hour for a revered writer on the stairs of the M. Mažvydas National Library. However, he did not appear that way. I felt the same way sending these questions somewhere in sunny California. But, to my great surprise, I got answers.
– The title of his first book, World Without Borders, sounded like a catchphrase that must be obeyed. Has the boundary between that world and your personal reality expanded even further over time, or has it simply narrowed?
– Massively expanded and continues to expand. Back then, when I was young, there was only a feeling that the world is not what it seems. Now that understanding is like the collapse of a mountain. People live in stereotypes. That’s what the father said, that’s how the mother taught, then the school, the media … The smartest read some books and learn stereotypes, although it may not be so common in them. This can be understood. A world with clear limits is much more comfortable, more understandable. So people choose that convenience, they “know” what it is like, there is truth and justice, error and crime in their worlds. They feel that they should justify it in some way, so there is a god and a religion, already for you personally and there is no need to base anything, since the god has said it, the priest (or some other authority) has said it, it is more convenient for you. Unfortunately for me, at an early age I almost automatically dared to question those stereotypes.
Finally, the question of limits has another aspect. People live on the basis of “facts”. A television shot, a newspaper photo, a magazine article, a personal experience. Undoubted information, right? The answer is no. A frame means that there is something behind the frame. The photo raises the question of lens selection, 50mm or 200mm, plus the moment the photographer pressed the button. Maybe in a second everything would be different. An article in a magazine inevitably involves an author with all his problems.
Personal experience is worth almost nothing because memory is selective and very unreliable.
Personal experience is worth almost nothing because memory is selective and very unreliable. And where are the thousands of chemical and physical processes more than our senses simply fail or do not want to register? Too much for limits.
– In a recent article in the “Leading Lithuanian Province” program, A. Bučys mentioned him as one of the few Lithuanian authors who “could offer constructive prose to lovers and translators”. So Lithuanian critics and readers are welcome with open arms, don’t you want to return to literature on a white horse, every year with a new novel?
– This question is very stereotypical. A new novel does not guarantee a white horse every year. If you publish novels every year, you need a new one that’s better than the old one because critics and readers will compare. When there are only a couple of novels, it’s still nothing, but if there are 30, it’s already getting difficult. On the other hand, I don’t value the white horse much anymore. And what about that? All the fun in literature for me is just writing. It is interesting to do something while doing it. In the end, it basically doesn’t matter anymore. In other words, as you touch the pot, it’s interesting. When you’re done, don’t you wonder what to do with that pot anymore? It takes you to the market and sells. Then he brings you a white horse when you sell the pot. But you don’t care anymore, it’s even a new problem. A horse is a bigger problem than a pot. A horse cannot get rid so easily.
– Having started your literary journey with so much triumph, why did you suddenly shut up and almost stop writing? In the history of literature, this is a rather rare case, although perhaps enviable. Jerome Salinger allegedly stopped writing because he devoted himself to Buddhism in his entire being, and what were the reasons for his long silence?
– As without reason. The literary path is a stereotype, sorry, I keep mentioning it. Usually people are lazy or don’t dare move their butts and try something else. Well maybe they like to do what they do, so let’s not touch that. I have never followed a literary path like any other. As in the Kipling story, I always felt like “a cat who likes to walk alone and do what he likes.” I never thought that I was now on a path that should not be thrown away. Wanting – writing, wanting – touching, wanting – photographing, wanting – doing this or that, but whatever. Clearly, if you are committed or have no other choice, then you have to do what you have to do in those circumstances. But the “literary path” is not such a compromise.
I have never followed a literary path like any other.
– How is photography different from prose? Does photography offer more opportunities to expand the “limits of the world” than text? Perhaps Susan Sontag is right when she said that photography is the only art “that has managed to implement the majestic threats of centennial surrealism to usurp modern sentiment”? Do you feel so usurping when you shoot? Do the things that are photographed and photographed, on closer inspection, not seem terrible to you, as terrible as the sometimes deep starry night sky?
– How is photography different from prose? I do not know. Perhaps I would say, in part, that photography is different from prose, just as a hieroglyph is different from a letter. But there are probably incomparable things here in principle. Photography is not a thing, like literature, it has its own genres and relevant requirements. Here we will find a laconic double or quadruple and a novel with all the characters and dramas. Complicated …
Does photography offer more opportunities to expand the “limits of the world” than text? It is not the text or the photography that extends the limits of the world, but the brains that perceive the complexity of the world and find ways to transmit it to the brains that have not yet seen it.
Regarding Susan Sontag, I don’t know. It was as if I had read that text from her, but now I don’t remember absolutely anything. I don’t remember the context. I just suspect that Susan Sontag (stereotypical) thinks art is. I think there are only artists, and art is only fiction.
Much more terrible to me is a person who is ready to die for an idea, whatever it is.
In general, the things I photographed don’t scare me. At least it’s not scary for life. The starry sky doesn’t seem particularly scary to me either. Much more terrible to me is a person who is ready to die for an idea, whatever it is. Pilene, Japanese kamikaze, Hamaz … People who voluntarily choose not to see the sky on a starry night.
– Probably already belongs to the field of mythology, but legends say that you once said that it is not appropriate to write good literature in Lithuanian. Maybe that phrase sounded a little different, if you remember how exactly? Would you continue signing now? What is missing from the Lithuanian language and which language is the most appropriate for literature or philosophy then? Is it possible to translate text from one language to another? Is it just a reflection in a curved mirror?
– The current Lithuanian language has a major drawback: it is artificial. Like Esperanto. For example, the following test: There are no bad words in artificial languages. The bad words of the modern Lithuanian language are very few. “Toad”, “snake” … The current Lithuanian language started quickly in the early 20th century, when Lithuania regained its independence, and is still developing. Not that the current Lithuanian language was created out of nothing, like Esperanto. Clearly, people have spoken, and Simon Daukant is a good example. But today we would not be talking to Daukantas. There are natural halftones in the Daukantas discourse, which can only be detected in a similar way to the comparison of modern photography with the daguerreotype. The current Lithuanian language is like digital photography. Eventually those halftones will appear in the speech, I have no doubts about it, but it will take some time. See how another new language, English, flourished just four hundred years ago. We have just come to a bad time to be born. After three hundred years, it will be easier to express thoughts in Lithuanian.
In my opinion, it is not possible to translate a text from one language to another, but since even in one language there is enough space for different interpretations of that text, the accuracy of the translation is not so important. The cover of the book must include the translator’s name, then the title, then the name of the original author.
– Sometimes when I attend big international book fairs, I just want to justify that people in a small country and a small nation have the same feelings, the same thoughts and the same experiences as the representatives of the big states and nations. I’m wrong? Perhaps, however, the relatively limited outer space compresses and diminishes the inner world in some way? Is Lithuania doomed to be a spiritual province?
– Oh, here you are, Jurga, you’re wrong. The “representatives of the great powers and nations” have no special thoughts or feelings, they are simply arrogant because they belong to the great powers. Well of course you need to add fools, the bigger the state or nation. When you are at those events, it is highly unlikely that you will meet the sensitive representatives of those countries that are small in any state. Also, I suspect that the inferiority complex is still here. When a person stands in front of you in pants, but he’s French, you forgive him for those pants, even though it’s just that universal suit.
– Jūratė Sprindytė calls you “the most enigmatic Lithuanian writer”. In fact, when he reads his works, he often feels the breath of metaphysics, as if it were the text of some mystic. But the question is not about literature. Why everything called “metaphysics” or slang from pop culture – “esotericism”, which now takes place, at least in Lithuania, in such comic forms? (I mean extrasensuality, parapsychologists, astrologers, sorcerers, and spiritual obsessions or spirit sessions on all television channels.)
– Nothing new here. That comedy is inherent in humanity. Psychics, parapsychologists, astrologers, sorcerers, locally; Christianity, Buddhism, Islam: a step forward. No difference. People worry about certain responses, and people receive services according to their level of limitation.
– Is there at least one religion you can dive into without any skepticism, irony or critical feeling? Can you imagine a deeply believing “corrupt” modern western man and why not st. Cruz de Juan or Milarepa?
– Maybe Buddhism? If it were a religion. But it would be difficult for me to immerse myself in something without skepticism, irony or critical feeling. I probably wouldn’t pay anymore.
I have more Western believers than I want (although in California, thank God, maybe less than in the southern states).
– There are many “dreamy” states in your prose. Do you make sense of your own dreams, or do you remember them, analyze them, encrypt the characters? Are you at least somewhat interested in psychoanalysis? Do you remember your childhood and do you agree with the theory that it is what determines our whole future?
– Psychoanalysis is nothing interesting. Also, Freud was a scammer and snatched all his data from his finger, it is not even clear what to believe, even if you wanted to. Dreams, I don’t care. I really like to dream, although I usually dream of nightmares, after which I can’t recover for half a day. I do not analyze anything, the task is to forget the dream faster.
I really like to dream, although I usually dream of nightmares, after which I can’t recover for half a day.
I remember childhood often and more and more often. And as for the determination of life, I believe that any previous event determines the later one. I also disagree that childhood determines ALL of our future lives. And where is free will?
– In your youth, did you belong to any embryonic hippie movement, latent Buddhists or other parallel reality that existed along with the compulsory studies of Marxism-Leninism and the Vremia program? Which books made the most impression on you then, and are you still discovering texts that would thrill, surprise, something fundamentally strange?
– And yes and no. Friends were hippies with long hair, but I shaved my head so that hippies would not have any illusions that they belonged to them. It didn’t belong to anyone, but it was with friends. For that age, it was possible. Now, not without being a Democrat in a Republican company. Or vice versa.
What impressed me the most were three authors: Freidenberg, Body and Levada. I don’t remember their names, only their last names. Freidenberg was a professor at Leningrad University and died in Stalin’s fields. His lecture book was “Myth and ancient literature”. The body is an American scientist who developed the concept of “paradigm” in the history of science. Levada is a Muscovite who has studied religions in terms of historicity. Those books opened horizons for me. Especially Freidenberg, especially Freidenberg, who proved that all human life is a myth. The fact that we have tables and chairs and Asians is not a consequence of mythology. And that mythology is alive and well today.
– Why is old age no longer a symbol of wisdom as it was before? Perhaps because the ancient ancestors were like the present forties and fifties, and then they died without the morass of old age and Alzheimer’s? This is my version, and what is yours? Do you like easy aging?
– Senti does not like it, but for physical, organic reasons. I wish I was always in my twenties. Due to old age and wisdom, it was a couple of hundred years ago that a villager received less information in his life than in a number in today’s New York Times. The wisdom of old age is simply worthless in this fast-paced world. Who cares how to protect the mice from the barn when the barn leaves? Ecclesiastical, on the other hand, has not gone anywhere and does not seem to stop being significant. What matters is that wisdom.
– Can you imagine the end of the world, if it is not total, at least its staff, that is? and. you were afraid to die In general, are there things that scare you?
– I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to do it. Like semolina porridge. The problem is, that oatmeal still had to be eaten. I suspect that will be the case with death. Many things scare me. Composer Grieg once said he feared the time would come when young people would make good music that he would no longer understand. Well, I still like Eminem, but I have many fears. I never thought that there would come a time when I feared loneliness. I am very scared now.
– Are you a traveler? I’m not just talking about tourism, I just think that some people are nomads, others are the housemates to whom it belongs. How and why do you choose exactly where you decide to live?
– I certainly belong to a nomad. As Susan Sontag herself wrote, life is just an adventure. It would be silly not to take advantage of that opportunity. Climate does not play the last role in choosing a place to live. Cold and dargana humiliates a person.
– When you feel happy? Is it a long-term state or just moments?
– Usually times when you see, hear, remember, feel something. On the other hand, there is so much happiness that you just don’t think about, which is part of daily life … You realize that you only have it when you lose it.
– In the end, an insignificant, or perhaps essential, question from one of his short stories: what would lead him to the Moon if he were allowed to choose only one thing? Christmas? In the shower? A bicycle?
– Friend. Or maybe the enemy. Someone you can talk to.
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