Buchis, Algimantas

Born on September 19, 1939 in Kaunas ( Lithuania ). Mother - Sofia Serbentaite Buchene ( lit. Sofija Serbentaitė Bučienė , 1900 - 1964) came from the maternal line from the branch of the ancient family Rajunets in the estate Upite ( lit. Upytė ). Father Anicetas Bučys ( lit. Anicetas Bučys , 1904 - 1998) was a native of small boyars Жemaiti ( English Samogitia ), his father did not engage in agriculture, becoming a builder of water and windmills. My son began to write poetry at school, was published in the pre-war press of Lithuania , served in the army of independent Lithuania (1918 - 1940), and ended up in exile at the end of the war. For a long time, the family had no news of him, and in all post-war questionnaires, they answered the question about marital status with the then standard phrase about her husband and father: "he disappeared during the war." During the reign of Stalin, the announcement of even a few facts about his father’s biography would be a good reason for the remaining family in Lithuania to be considered “enemies of the people” and included in the lists of exiles to Siberia . Until Lithuania regained independence in 1990, his father lived in exile in the UK , where he published plays and a book of poetry in London in Lithuanian ^[1] . He returned to Lithuania before his death, and was buried in Vilnius in the old Rasu cemetery.

The childhood and adolescence of A. Buchis is marked not only by the dramatic fate of the family, but also by the reality of post-war Lithuania, when life was divided into two non-touching worlds: official education and family undercurrent.

In 1957, after graduating from high school, he entered Vilnius University to study Lithuanian language and literature. After the XX Congress (1956) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , where repressions, mistakes and the cult of Stalin were condemned, illusions of political and spiritual freedoms appeared among the people, especially among young people. Unfortunately, at Vilnius University the atmosphere was thoroughly permeated with the ideology of “the struggle against bourgeois nationalism”. At the end of 1957, the persecution of teachers of the department of Lithuanian literature began, and “suspicious" teachers were expelled. Even the best professionals began to give their lectures, silent on “ideologically undesirable” facts and topics, students were forced to attend courses on the history of the Communist Party of the USSR , atheism , scientific communism , pass tests and exams on these and other pseudosciences. After the first year, Bucis became a rare guest at the lectures, without risking losing a scholarship or a place in the hostel, because it was not supposed to be for the native Vilnius people. In the third year, he “left” the university altogether and went to work on urban construction sites (in Vilnius he built a boarding school for orphans with 450 beds), he began as a student, reached the fourth degree of a bricklayer. The construction experience was later reflected in the novel “Enemy of Your Enemies” (1982). I had to return to university because of the draft I received in the Soviet army. After passing the exams, he returned in the fall to the same course of the Lithuanians.

Party control at the faculty at the time of graduation in 1962 was even more strengthened than in 1957. Bucis, as a salvation from the routine, accepted the appointment of the administration in the village school to educate children in accordance with the acquired diploma specialty “philologist and teacher of the Lithuanian language and literature”.

Appointed as a teacher at the eight-year-old school Bartkuškis ( lit. Bartkuškis ) taught since 1962 Lithuanian language and literature, drawing, at one time even mathematics (due to lack of teachers). At the same time, he wrote and published poems and critical articles on literature in the republican press, published the first collection of poems “At the Ringing Stones” ( 1963 ), in which the motives of the working suburbs and life in the countryside are noticeable. In 1964, he received an invitation from the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature to go to Moscow to enter the graduate school of the Institute of World Literature named after Gorky . There were no legal obstacles (two years of pedagogical work as intended), and in the same 1964 , Bucis went to Moscow, where in 1968 he defended his dissertation "The Problem of the Novel in Modern Lithuanian Literature", receiving a Ph.D. in philological sciences . In 1994 , the dissertation was nostrified by the Scientific Council of the Academy of Sciences of Lithuania with the recognition of the European degree of Doctor of Humanities .

Three years of scientific specialization in the department of Theory of Literature of the Moscow Institute of World Literature were important not so much for gaining a scientific degree as for developing theoretical thinking and a structural-historical approach to literary processes. At that time, a new academic three-volume “Theory of Literature. The main problems in historical coverage ”, in which the literary genres and laws of development of individual national literatures in Europe were considered in their original versions of historical formation. The first volume ( 1962 ; Image, Method, Character) and the second ( 1964 ; Childbirth and genres of literature) were already published, the third volume ( 1965 ; Style, work, literary development) was being prepared for publication. The authors of the new “Theory of Literature” are young and enthusiastic scientists S. G. Bocharov , V. V. Kozhinov , P. V. Palievsky , V. D. Skvoznikov, G. D. Gachev then did not yet have worldwide fame, but weekly discussions of manuscripts at meetings of the theory department with the participation of two or three graduate students became truly Socratic feasts of intellectual thought ^[2] . Theoretical concepts in the historical aspect were in their own way connected with the revival of the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin ( 1895 - 1975 ), because it was then that his texts were brought to Moscow by V.V. Kozhinov and S.G. Bocharov, who visited the scientist who had not yet been rehabilitated in his Saransk link for participating "in a conspiracy against the Soviet government." So they arrived in Moscow, according to the then words of the excited V.V. Kozhinov, in the old suitcases of the manuscript of M. Bakhtin, among them are both the famous books about Rabelais and Dostoevsky (second option). The “Copernican revolution” (the term of S. G. Bocharov), accomplished by M. Bakhtin in literature and poetry of prose, legitimized the independent and independent being of the “Other” voice and, therefore, the polyphony of prose, the polyphonic correlation of independent voices in the novel. In the dissertation and the book “Roman and the Present,” Bucis tried to apply Bakhtin's ideas as much as possible on the material of the Lithuanian novel of the Soviet period ( 1940 - 1970 ) ^[3] . Later, with the participation of the French literature scholar Julia Kristeva, the gradual dissemination of M. Bakhtin’s ideas around the world began. When Buchis visited the USA in 1985 , in conversations with intellectuals of the Lithuanian emigration, it seemed that M. Bakhtin at that time had the status of a “very fashionable and influential” theoretician of literature in the scientific community of American universities.

The solid "baggage" of the theory of literature after returning ( 1967 ) to Lithuania could only remain in the form of "frozen capital." At that time, Lithuanian literary scholars engaged in the Soviet period created academic collective works on the influence of the Great October Revolution and Lenin's advanced ideas on the development of 20th-century Lithuanian literature , the most prominent in literary criticism were articles by critical impressionism (V. Kubilius) and a school of demanding aesthetic and moral assessment modern literature (A.Zalatorius). Bucis refused an invitation to work at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature , although the institute paid a post-graduate scholarship at the time, and in fact avoided serving in scientific institutions with their planned thematic assignments during the years of the Soviet Union , nor did he make any official political career.

Creative work at home ( 1968 - 1998 ) was interrupted from time to time by service in the editorial offices of various literary publications of the Lithuanian Writers' Union . In many ways, the routine work of the literary critic and observer of the current literary processes, in which "ideologically correct" mediocrity usually prevails, often literary criticism itself was reduced to the provincial level. If not the critic himself, then tomorrow will inevitably cover the routine writings of topical fiction writers and their serving literary critics with ashes of oblivion. Literally, Buchis himself turned his books of literary articles into ashes. To the surprise of many colleagues, over the years, he told in an interview how in January 1991 , when people burned Soviet party cards at the building of the Lithuanian parliament in the night fires, his critical books were burned ^[4] . The arguments were professional and moral: in Soviet Lithuania, all Lithuanian historians, literary critics, and critics whose works were published at that time knew well the basic taboos that could not be broken. No one mentioned: that Lithuania was forced by the Stalinist government of Moscow to admit Red Army troops into the territory of independent pre-war Lithuania in 1939 ; that the post-war popular resistance of Lithuania was suppressed by the Soviet punitive detachments only in the early 50s; that in the cultural life of the republic state pre- censorship prevailed; that even the most daring Lithuanian writers used the so-called Aesopian language, while the most flexible ones brazenly lied, distorting history and composing verses based on Kremlin notes. “Those who did not do this were sitting in concentration camps or simply could not print a single book of their own ... What are individual people! Numerous institutes with enormous staff of humanitarian specialists have been adapting to the Kremlin's directives for decades, constantly falsifying the history of Lithuania and its culture, literature, introducing lies in the entire education system from elementary grades to high school graduates. But has anyone publicly admitted this today? Or at least apologized for lying for decades ” ^[5] .

In addition to works on literary criticism, Bucis published four poetry books and two novels before Lithuania gained state independence ( 1990 ). In an interview with writer R. Vanagas, he stated that he was going to re-publish his poems and novels in independent Lithuania, and “there is no need to change a word in them” ^[6] .

After twenty years (from the book about J. Avizius of 1990) “book silence in repentance”, Buchis published (starting in 2008 ) three literary studies in which new methodological and cultural concepts were identified.

Comparative Literature by Contrast

Interest in comparative literary criticism was determined during the years of graduate school. Along with the theory of M. Bakhtin about the polyphony of the novel, the ideas of G. Gachev , who worked in those years in the theory department of the Institute of World Literature, had a considerable influence. Even then, the famous author of "Accelerated development of literature" ( 1964 ) began to create national models of the peoples of the world. Together with graduate students of various ethnic groups, Buchis took part in the classes of the optional group assembled by G. Gachev. In the discussions, ethnic features of life and perception of Kazakhs , Lithuanians , Latvians , Abkhazians were revealed and discussed in order to comprehend national characteristics at the deepest level of nature (body, housing, life), soul (national character) and spirit (language, logic) in their unity. Further research by G. Gachev led him to create the so-called national cosmos (now more than 15 volumes have been published devoted to the characteristics of various peoples of Russia, America, India, England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Jewish and Islamic civilizations). After graduate school, Bucis for a long time ( 1975 - 1990 ) was the only representative of Lithuanian literary critics after the academician K. Korsakas in the editorial board of the All-Union Russian-language magazine "Friendship of Peoples", at the meetings of which the most striking works created in the Union and Autonomous Republics of the USSR were discussed annually. The interest in the problems of national literatures was strengthened by numerous literary acquaintances and contacts, especially with the writers of the Caucasus and the Baltic states , as well as participation in writers' conferences abroad. Trips and performances in Poland ( 1979 , 1980 ), Yugoslavia ( 1980 ; 1989 at the Pen Club congress in Slovenia), Romania ( 1981 ), and the German Democratic Republic ( 1983 in connection with the compilation and introduction to the collection of Lithuanian short stories in German ), in the USA ( 1985 for a meeting with writers of Lithuanian emigration), in Italy ( 1987 as part of the delegation of the magazine "Friendship of Peoples"), in West Germany ( 1990 as part of the delegation of writers along with Ch. Aitmatov , D .Granin , Father A.Menem, N. Anastasiev , etc.) were reflected in numerous literary articles. In 1962 - 2014 it was published not only in Lithuanian, but also in Russian (84), English (4), German (4), Spanish (6), Polish (7), Estonian (2), Latvian (7), Armenian (3), Bulgarian (2), Georgian (1), French (2) and Japanese (1) languages ^[7] .

Long-term close acquaintance with writers of different nations and the works of various national literatures inevitably led to the need to develop a new theoretical point of view on the study of the identity of national literatures. Traditional comparative studies were usually limited to describing international writing contacts, identifying the so-called historical and personal literary connections, searching for literary influences, borrowings, similar literary movements, movements, creative directions, etc. Traditional methodology, unfortunately, most revealed “similarity and similarity” literary phenomena in different national literatures, which did not contribute to revealing the identity of individual national literature, did not reveal its historical originality and traditional identity.

A structural comparison of completely different literary experiences from the historical experience — Armenian, Georgian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian — led to the methodological conclusion that traditional “literary connections” are only the external side of “invisible”, internal typological interactions ^[8] . The study of similar ideological influences on different national literatures, say, on the literature of the countries of the post-war socialist camp, on the Baltic literature in 1945–54, on the Bulgarian and Romanian post-war prose, demonstrated the crisis of traditional comparative analysis by analogy, since in such cases nothing was revealed for except for the statement of uniformity, the discovery of the same fashionable genre and stylistic standards in all compared national literatures (for example, panoramic after military novels in the manner of the epics of Alexei Tolstoy throughout the USSR and the social camp of Eastern Europe) ^[9] . In the end, Buchis began to put forward the concept of comparative literary criticism in contrast, not only by analogy.

He developed a new concept in articles on various national literatures ^[10] , trying to prove that, due to the traditional search for analogies in world literature, the brightest and most original works of national literatures often go unnoticed and underestimated, for example, the Lithuanian poet of the late 18th century Cristionas Donelaitis or the most talented Croatian 20th century writer Miroslav Krleža . Not a few similar examples were revealed in literary conversations with writers and literary scholars from different countries, with the Latvian literary critic H. Hirsch (Harijs Hiršs - Daugava, 1979, No. 11), with the Georgian poet, prose writer, literary critic Tamaz Chiladze (Literature and Art, 1987 29 August), with the Polish poet and literary critic Bogdan Drozdovsky (Bogdan Drozdovski - «art and Literature", 1987, January 13), with the Georgian literary Guram Asatiani, who initiated more than one year in Georgia were held literary workshops on Georgian letters round with the participation of Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, critics and writers. Bucis described the theoretical foundations and possibilities of comparative literary criticism in various aspects in special theoretical articles ^[11] ; the article “National Identity and the World Context” translated into several languages ​​aroused very wide interest ^[12] .

Criticism concept

Attempts to apply a comparative analysis by contrast in the monograph “Roman and the Present” ( 1973 ; in Russian, 1977 ) aroused skepticism from individual critics. It was a comparative analysis of the same life situation of suicide (the choice of suicide as an answer to a meaningless existence) in works completely different in their artistic structure - in the famous novel by F. Kafka “The Process” and the novel by the Lithuanian writer J. Avizius “The Village at the crossroads. ” In Lithuania, A. Zalatorius, a literary critic with a delicate aesthetic taste, noted the unjustified artificiality of a comparative analysis of such various works. In the Moscow press, Evgenia Knipovich, a well-known critic and expert on German literature, partially agreed that the monograph presented by the author of "contrasting" Lithuanian literature with Western European literature, in her words, "with unrealistic bourgeois art (Joyce, Kafka , Camus , Sartre ) has its own configurations described by the researcher ”, although she added right there:“ But I think that it’s even more important in solving the aesthetic issues of socialist realism, in solving the main ideological and artistic problems - ” kinship “in all the literature of the Soviet Union, in the literature of the countries of the socialist community and the progressive, revolutionary literature of the whole world” ^[13] .

"Center" and "Peripherals" in the historical narrative

In 2008 , the published book “Barbarians vice versa classics” (that is, barbarians on the contrary classics) is equipped with the subtitle “Center and Periphery in Writer's Strategies”, which defines the semantic structure of the study. The book contains not just 33 essays about Lithuanian writers from different eras, “in front of us, according to the observer, we have a comprehensive, large-scale written author’s study, similar to a monograph, and even more - the history of the literature of one nation” ^[14] . Three periods of state independence are distinguished in Lithuanian history, when Lithuanians ruled in Lithuania regardless of the policies of neighboring states, and then the life of the people depended on the historical Lithuanian centers of power in Kernava and Vilnius ( 1251 - 1386 ), after that - Kaunas ( 1918 - 1940 ) and again in Vilnius (from 1990 to 2004 ). In all other periods of history, the Lithuanian state was more or less dependent on foreign geopolitical centers of power, on various agreements and unions with Poland ( 1386 - 1795 ), on the power of the tsarist Russian Empire ( 1795 - 1918 ), on the Moscow authorities of the Soviet Union ( 1940 - 1990 ) or from government bodies of the European Union (since 2004 ), and accordingly - from foreign centers of power in Krakow and Warsaw (1386–1795), in St. Petersburg (1795–1918), Moscow (1940–1990), Brussels and Washington (after 2004).

The book analyzes the various geopolitical interests of national and foreign centers of power, respectively - various historical challenges to the Lithuanian people. On the other hand, the author examined 33 individual creative strategies of Lithuanian writers who, for seven and a half centuries, responded to the challenges of history in their own way, choosing their own life strategy of individual behavior, creating their own artistic world, comprehending the fate of their homeland and their vision of human destiny.

Polyparadigmatic study of cultural conflicts

In 2009 , the book “The Most Ancient Lithuanian Literature in the Age of King Mindaugas” appeared, in which the analysis of the most acute cultural conflicts during the clash of 13th century indigenous paganism and Christianity spreading from neighboring countries is based on the previous experience of analyzing the constant interactions of the “center” and “periphery” ". Paganism and Christianity in the book are perceived and explored as completely independent historical and cultural paradigms, as two civilizations, as two systems of thinking and values, each of which is self-sufficient and full-fledged in universal human being. The subtitle of the book “Polyparadigmatic study of medieval cultural conflicts” indicates both the subject and the method of research. In the 13th century, Lithuania was in a unique situation, when three ways opened before the people and the state. The West promised Latin Catholicism, the East - Greek Orthodoxy, and for centuries a proven tradition - Russian paganism. The severity of the conflict split even the family of King Mindaugas : the eldest son Vaishvilkas elected Greek Orthodoxy, his father adopted Christianity in Latin Catholic tradition in 1253 , but again returned to paganism in 1261 . The fate of Lithuanian culture and literature in the 13th century was thus found at the center of many cultural and religious conflicts. According to the author, their analysis is unpromising within the framework of any one cultural or religious paradigm, for example, Catholic or Orthodox, or pagan. In each case, research will come to a standstill when our chosen paradigm (for example, Catholic) will allow us only to deny or belittle the significance of any other paradigm (for example, Orthodox or pagan, embodying polytheism). Traditional comparativism, therefore, takes on a new direction in polyparadigmic research, not giving preference to any of the contrastingly correlated phenomena. The history of the late Middle Ages in Lithuania itself demonstrated the highest degree of humanistic tolerance, even Orthodox churches, Catholic churches, Muslim mosques, Jewish synagogues were built even on the original ethnic territory of Lithuania, pagan groves were worshiped until the beginning of the 15th century, that is, until the first union with Catholic Poland . Unfortunately, the traditional mono-paradigmatic method of research, which continues the line of Polish historiography of the 19th-20th centuries, still dominates in the history of Lithuanian culture.

The history of Lithuanian literature still began at the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. Bucis discovered the 13th century for her by searching for and publishing 13 texts in Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic languages ​​in the 2012 History and anthology of Ancient Lithuanian Literature. Most of them are sacred and have never been represented in the context of Lithuanian culture, among them - the hagiographic life of the son of King Mindaugas, who founded in the middle of the XIII century. one of the oldest monasteries of the Greek rite on the banks of the Neman River near Novogrodok, as well as sacred texts dedicated to the Orthodox saints St., forgotten or completely unknown in modern Lithuania. Haritin of Lithuania († 1281) and St. Dovmant Timofey († 1299), who fled from Lithuania with the country's first wave of political emigration after the assassination of King Mindaugas ( 1263 ). According to the author, the oblivion of the first Christian saints of Lithuanian origin hides the deep conflicts of the Middle Ages, when saints recognized by the Eastern Church were not recognized in the West, and vice versa - Christian saints canonized by the Western Church were not recognized and did not commemorate the Byzantine Empire and Orthodox Slavic countries - in Bulgaria , Serbia , in Russia.

Criticism concept

According to the well-known literary critic V. Daujetite ( lit. Viktorija Daujotytė-Pakerienė , born 1945), “a very important intrigue appears in the book of A. Bučys: conflicts arose and arise because the world is from the Middle Ages, and even earlier, did not agree and does not agree due to various approaches, because of the desire for a single truth. The position of the author of the study, checked and discussed, seems acceptable: “the true sacred foundation is not monoparadgmic in nature”; sacred nature lies deeper than it reaches the dogma of monoparadigm (p. 155). But the positions of strong "powerful people" suppress other positions, other paradigms. More than one annalistic text testifies to the conviction that all that is beyond the bounds of the Christian faith is the world of heretics (p. 156). Positive talk about the work of Vladimir Pashuto, “The Formation of the State of Lithuania” ”(1959); for it, scientifically based, allows you to see how much untruth was written about the beginning of Lithuanian statehood. The author recalls the work of Edward Said "Orientalism" (1978); one can expect work that, according to A. Buchis, will consistently and deeply reveal the long history of creating a negative image of paganism in the Baltic countries and ancient Lithuania "(p. 147). Where one paradigm is considered correct, the world is narrowed down to its limits. A. Buchis’s principled attitude: the human world (worlds) is polyparadigmatic; this is how it is today, it was like that in the Middle Ages. Comparative studies, like a humanistic strategy, must study not similarities, but differences that rise from the same foundation " ^[15] .