Photo by Jurga Graf

The invisible side of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

SATURDAY, 9 NOVEMBER - 3.00 PM
Translator Vytenė Muschick, translator Carmen Caro Dugo in conversation with Eglė Deltuvaitė,
MO Museum, Events Hall (Pylimo g. 17, Vilnius)
Free entrance
Duration 60 min

During the event, the writings by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė will be introduced: the history of the book Lietuviai prie Laptevų jūros, the manuscripts of the book and their destiny. The (in)visibility of the author in Lithuania and the work on making her writings more popular in the world will be discussed. How do people react to this book? Can foreign readers understand the theme of exile in a new way? Participants: translators Vytenė Saunoriūtė Muschick and Carmen Caro Dugo. Moderator Eglė Deltuvaitė.

Vytenė Saunoriūtė Muschick has translated Lietuviai prie Laptevų jūros by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė into German („Aber der Himmel – grandiose“, 2014). Saunoriūtė Muschick was born in Vilnius. She lives in Berlin since 1995 and in both Berlin and Belgrade since 2015. He studied the philology of Lithuanian and Scandinavian in Vilnius University, Uppsala and Reykjavik. Now she is studying German studies in Budapest. She is working to make the work of Grinkevičiūtė better known in the world. She has translated novels by Karin Alvtegen, Henning Mankell, Cecilia Läckberg from Swedish. Her latest translation from German – Babos Dunjos paskutinė meilė (“Aukso žuvys“, 2019) by Alina Bronsky. Now Saunoriūtė Muschick together with Lina Itagaki is working on a comic book about scientist and ichthyologist Sabiha Kasimati who suffered from the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha.

Dalia GrinkeviciuteDalia Grinkevičiūtė

About Dalia Grinkevičiūtė
Dalia Grinkevičiūtė was a writer and an exile. She was born in 1927 in Kaunas, her father worked in a bank. During the first wave of mass exile in 1941, Dalia, her mother Pranė Grinkevičienė and her brother Juozas were deported to Trofimovsk Island in the Arctic Ocean, 500 km behind the Arctic Circle. The father was separated from the family and died in 1943. In 1949 Dalia and her mother escaped and captured her painful experience in 229 separate sheets, put them all in a jar and buried it. In 1950 Dalia’s mother died and she illegally buried her in a basement of the house. Soon after, Dalia was arrested and repeatedly exiled. In 1956 she could return to Kaunas and to continue her medical studies in Omsk. From 1960 to 1974 she worked as a doctor in Laukuva dispensary. She could not find the hidden jar, so she wrote her memoirs again. It was distributed in a self-published way and thanks to Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner it reached Paris, then the US. In 1988 it was first published in Lithuania in “Pergalė” magazine.

Dalia Grinkevičiūtė died in 1987 before her first publication in Lithuania. In 1991, Nijolė Vabolienė found Grinkevičiūtė’s hidden jar unexpectedly while planting a peony bush. In 1997 all the manuscripts of the author were published for the first time in the memoirs Lietuviai prie Laptevų jūros collected by the Publishers' Union of Lithuania. Now the first manuscript is in the National Museum of Lithuania and the writings of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė are included in the canon of Lithuanian culture and school programs.

 

Sponsors

 

ORGANIZERS



THE EVENT IS SPONSORED BY THE EMBASSY OF JAPAN



PARTNERS

PR Service/Edelman Affiliate
Kultūros ministerija
Lietuvos Kultūros Taryba
Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania
Nordplus
Literatūra ir menas
Shakespeare Boutique Hotel Vilnius
Vilniaus miesto savivaldybė
Lietuvos vertėjų asociacija
Aukso žuvys
Apostrofa
Baltos lankos
Wallonie-Bruxelles International
Pegasas
Rara
Finnish Literature Exchange
Swedish Art Council
Martynas Mažvydas Library
Vilnius City of Literature



INFORMATION PARTNER

LRT



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