Judita Vaičiūnaitė (July 12, 1937 – February 11, 2001) was a Lithuanian writer. Best known for her poetic exploration of urban settings and mythological women, she is one of Lithuania's most famous 20th-century poets.[1][2][3]
Early life and education
Judita Vaičiūnaitė was born in 1937 in Kaunas, Lithuania.[4][5] Her father was a professor of psychiatry, and her mother was a nurse. She was particularly close with her sister Dalia.[4]
After World War II, she moved to Vilnius with her family.[3] There, she studied at Vilnius University, graduating in 1959.[6] Vaičiūnaitė would live in Vilnius for the rest of her life, making the city a central subject of her work.[1][4]
Vaičiūnaitė's first poetry collection, Pavasario akvarelės ("Spring Watercolors"), was published in 1960.[2] She went on to publish new collections frequently, producing more than 20 books of poetry.[2][6] She also wrote fairy tales and poems for children.[2][4]
Vaičiūnaitė worked as an editor for several literary journals in Lithuania.[6] She also completed translations of other poets into Lithuanian, notably the work of Anna Akhmatova.[8][9] In 1978, she was named the laureate of the Lithuanian Poetry Spring [lt] festival.[4]
Vaičiūnaitė's poetry dealt with a wide range of subjects and themes, including Lithuanian and Greek mythology, modern jazz, history, and contemporary city life.[1][3][11] Her urban-centered poetry, frequently set in Vilnius' Old Town, is perhaps her best known.[1][2] It came at a time when most other Lithuanian poets were from the countryside and focused on the natural world in their work.[12][13] She also incorporated the city's multicultural history into her poems.[3][14]
She frequently employed dramatic monologue in her work, often from the point of view of female historical and mythological figures.[1][14] Her poetry was influenced by the neo-romantic work of Salomėja Nėris, the first prominent Lithuanian woman poet.[15] Alongside Marcelijus Martinaitis, Sigitas Geda, and others, she was part of a generation that quietly revolutionized Lithuanian poetry as dissatisfaction grew with Soviet rule, but the neo-romantic strains persisted.[3][4][14][10]
Vaičiūnaitė was a highly independent single mother, but she was also convinced of the importance of romantic love. She wrote with a feminist realism, narrating the lives of single women in the city.[4][3][12]
Death and legacy
Judita Vaičiūnaitė died in Vilnius in 2001.[4][5][16] A 2010 posthumous collection of selections from her work, Kristalas: Poezijos Rinktinė, was published by the Lithuanian Writers' Union.[6][14] In 2018, a collection of her work in English translation was published as Vagabond Sun: Selected Poems.[3]
^Venclova, Tomas; Hinsey, Ellen (2014). "Meetings with Anna Akhmatova". New England Review. 34 (3/4): 170–182, 383, 390. doi:10.1353/ner.2014.0039. S2CID176956687.
^Silbajoris, Rimvydas (1980). "Lithuanian literature". The Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.
