The role of the addressee in Lithuanian exodus poetry

Abstract

The role of the reader as a textual model, the impact of the text on the reader, and the correlation of the two are not sufficiently studied in the Lithuanian 20th century exodus poetry. Studies often focus on the empirical role of the reader with an emphasis on the reader’s reactions, on images or themes, leaving aside the reflection of the act of reading. The study of the reader model in the context of exodus poetry is complicated due to a purified, “unornamented”, airtight, and un-communicative poetic language. This language is used to tell the fate of a literature in exile (‘a literature without a reader’). This article focuses on the conditions of literary communication, structural elements of the texts, studies of poetic language, and uses them to reconstruct the reader model, which appears in the texts of Liūnė Sutema (Zinaida Nagytė-Katiliškienė). The analysis of the interaction of a poetic text and the reader reveals the commonality of literary creation and our nature. And the attempt to evaluate questions about reading the texts is parallel to the reflexion of all human experience.