The life of the poet Paulius Širvis, who became a popular legend, comes to life with a performance at the Venclov House-Museum

It is true that Širvys probably would not object to that. According to Marcelijus Martinaitis, he remained “beyond” the archives: his legacy and manuscripts were scattered, looted, taken away by acquaintances, sprinkled, burned, discarded, discolored.

A biography of the poet’s life is also hidden in some way. Various documents refer to 1922 October 17 Širvis’s birthday is incorrect. That year his brother was born. In fact, the poet was born in 1920. On September 6, 1940, he rejuvenated in 1940 by enrolling in the Vilnius Infantry School, where he did not accept his elders. True, this did not prevent him from commemorating and celebrating the “wrong” day. According to him, he became a poet after writing his first love letter in his youth, but not in his own name, but for a friend who, finding no words, asked for help.

In the books of birth metrics and in the memories of his childhood friends, his name is not Paul, but Paul. He began calling himself by another name during the war, when he was taken prisoner in East Prussia. In the long run, it was the identity of the poet and the warrior that became the most important face of his personality: he was asked to confirm his identity and, instead of a passport, he produced an order book and a collection of his poetry “Longing is a song” from your pocket. For him, these were the royal documents attesting to its existence.

The figure of Širvis also serves modern man as a key to the 20th century. Lithuanian history in general. The poet’s path involves a lot: rural life in the interwar period, the war, the German prisoner-of-war camps, service in the Soviet army, and most importantly, reintegration into society after the war.

This return of the injured person to the injured society was extremely difficult for Širvis. Furthermore, when looking at Širvis, we also see how poetry itself lived differently at that time. People not only recited and turned the poet’s poems into songs, but also energetically gathered in large groups for meetings with him and readings. We would say that Širvys was like the embodiment of longing in those days. He served the public as a mirror of his painful but loving side.

Will commemorate the century with a performance

A small and meager legacy of the poet’s manuscripts has been preserved. A part of them is preserved in the Venclov House-Museum. These are Širvis’s love letters to his beloved Alfonsas Žegliūnaitė, extracts from diaries and manuscripts of poems. To mark the 100th anniversary of Širvis’s birth, the museum is organizing a performance based on surviving documents and poetry, according to a press release.

The playwright of the performance Augustas Sireikis states: “The future performance can be boldly called an example of documentary theater. When preparing his dramaturgy, one has to work not only with Širvis’s poetry, but also with drafts, personal notes, recollections of the poet and, most importantly, letters. In the latter, Širvys appears almost even more sensitive than in his poems, the dark side of the personality stands out: melancholy, loneliness, a strong sense of homelessness. It is these letters dedicated to the love of youth, Alfonsas Žegaliūnte, which are the main starting point of the playwriting. With their help, we tried to recreate and show the young man behind the well-known popular song or the celebrity of the old town, a young man in whom the inexhaustible yearning lay from the beginning as the very essence of his nature. To achieve this goal, we face the main challenge of documentary theater: to feel responsibility towards the real person and their relatives, but do not want to simplify everything to the banal word of praise. Therefore, it can be said that we follow the example of modern documentary makers: we do not create an ode or seek objectivity, but rather try to reveal the subjective truth that unfolds from the current perspective. Not only that, although the performance is about him, it also talks about those who listened to Širvis. This should be of particular interest to the young spectator of the show: we do not engage in a dialogue with the past through political issues or simple factoring, but by listening to a sensitive human story about ourselves. “

Paul and Paul

At the core of the performance ideas is a kind of fragmentation of Širvis. Not many people know that the famous poet did not really grow up like Paul, but like Povilas Širvys. During the war, he was taken to work for a German farmer, where he fell in love with his daughter Ern. He couldn’t pronounce the name “Povilas” and screamed “Pavel”.

Meeting her was one of the brightest and most romantic moments of his life, to which he constantly returned with his thoughts and poems. It was then that he started calling himself Paul.

By building this at the center of the drama, Paul and Paul are perceived as two characters in one person. The tension, conflict and dialogue between these two sides unlock the complexity of the poet’s inner world. Paul is a traumatic personality who, after the war, returned with a marked soul and body, having lost something irreparably. Povilas, for his part, is a bright and optimistic young man destined to disappear. Paul is a life that has been taken from Paul.

According to the creative team, “in acting we are just trying to imagine the relationship between a dark, self-destructive person and the other imaginary side of him. In this way, the documentary project becomes not only an artistic subject, but also a psychological or philosophical one: how the other side of Paul, who had to be stifled, would look at Paul ”.

Širvys did not like large gatherings or noble events. According to the creators of the performance, “it seems correct to talk about it in the small space of the Venclov House-Museum, in a peculiar niche of the Old Town, which has especially preserved the living legacy of Soviet literature and culture. The concise and intimate setting is more suitable here than anything else, because the poet himself had no external mask or representative face; if he speaks, it is always intimate. He does not hide his inner dramas, they appear as bright as an immediately noticeable scar on his face. “

This performance is part of the continuous cycle of events “Names of Vilnius”, dedicated to the 20th century. For the presentation of important, exceptional and distinguished personalities for the city of Vilnius and for the promotion of the memory of its cultural and social activities.