Review

Zinaida Nagytė-Katiliškienė published her works under the pseudonym Liūnė Sutema (meaning "Swamp in Twilight"), which perfectly describes the harsh landscape and dominating motifs of her poems. The poetess belongs to poets of the landless generation mostly distinguished by two prominent names of Sutema and Algimantas Mackus (mentioned first in all literary anthologies). The group also included Vitalija Bogutaitė, Danguolė Sadūnaitė, Marija Stankus-Saulaitė, Rimas Vēžys, Eglė Juodvalkė, Živile Bilaišytė, etc. These writers started their creative path in the shadow of landowners and never became an ideologically unified generation as they never created a manifesto that would have united them, never published a separate anthology or formed a community of like-minded people.

The generation of post-war exodus poets was dominated by women as they had a more complex relationship with language and were more faithful to the tradition of the word in both philological and ontological sense. Liūnė Sutema published collections of poetry entitled Let It Be Like in a Fairytale (1955), Nothing Is Foreign Anymore (1962), Nameless Land (1966), Famine (1972), Graffiti (1993), Let It Be (2006), and I'm Back (2009). Historical self-awareness in these collections is revealed through the connection between the native land and personal destiny. Particularly prominent in Liūnė Sutema's poetry is the narrative beginning, and poems are often combined into a cycle that expands the possibilities of poetic narration. The collection Vendetta (1981) features the issues of death and meaning of life, all in the context of guilt and forgiveness as Liūnė Sutema's worldview was formed by Christian idealism and existential philosophy. Her favorite artists were R. M. Rilke, S. Lagerlöf, F. Nietszche, E. Wiralt, V. Ignas, V. van Gogh.

Justifications

• Liūnė Sutema and Algimantas Mackus are the two most prominent representatives of the landless generation of Lithuanian émigré poets.
• Liūnė Sutema’s meditative poems are unique in style and depict images originating from Lithuanian history and folk tradition.
• She was decorated with Lithuania’s most prestigious National Culture and Art Award (Lietuvos Nacionalinė Meno ir Kultūros premija) for poetry of spiritual security.
• Recipient of Vincas Krėvė literary prize, the Prize of Lithuanian Writers‘ Union, and the Literary Prize of the USA Lithuanian community.

Biography

Zinaida Nagytė (pseudonym Liūnė Sutema) was born in 1927 in Mažeikiai, Lithuania and was surrounded by the cultural context of several languages since childhood. Her father worked as a railway worker, therefore the children of the Nagys family spent their childhood moving from one city to another and never got attached to one landscape or created a mythical country of childhood. Liūnė Sutema's mother was Latvian, and one grandmother was German, both of them "cultural ambassadors" of their native lands who encouraged interest in multilingual literature through the works of J. Kossu-Aleksandravičius (Aistis), R. M. Rilke, S. Lagerlöf, F. Nietszche, E. Wiralt, and others.

Liūnė Sutema started primary school fluent in three languages: Lithuanian (native), German, and Latvian. These three languages remained mother tongues for the poet throughout her life. She finished primary school in Kėdainiai (Lithuania), where the family survived the entire period of German occupation. During the war, when the Germans were retreating from Lithuania, both of her brothers moved to Germany. In 1944, the Nagys family had to flee Lithuania with a large wave of war refugees. In 1945 Liūnė Sutema graduated from high school in Germany and later studied Art History, German Literature, and Philosophy at the universities of Innsbruck and Freiburg.

The first poems written by Liūnė Sutema under her pseudonym were published in refugee camps. In Freiburg, the budding poet met the already well-known writer Marius Katiliškis, and their mutual sympathy turned into love. Sutema married Katiliškis in 1949, shortly after reaching the shores of the New World. 

In 1949 the family settled in Lemont, USA, where Liūnė Sutema lived until her death. The entire life of the poet was plagued by tragic losses. In 1964, her close friends Julius Kaupas and Algimantas Mackus died unexpectedly. In 1980, her husband Marius died after having his both legs amputated due to a serious illness. Both of their children, son Saulius and daughter Agnė, also died young. Having experienced such blows and losses of fate, Sutema isolated herself in her joyless world. Yet all those years she did not denounce her obligations to the emigrant community: she taught at a Lithuanian school, worked in a nursing home and took an active part in the cultural life of Chicago. However, unlike many emigrants, she avoided a trip to the land of her childhood and never returned to Lithuania even after the declaration of independence. When she was honored with the National Culture and Art Award in 2006, she decided not to leave her home in Lemont stating that she did not have the necessary documents for the trip, only the Lithuanian passport issued before the war (Sutema never accepted US citizenship, though she could work legally and had social guarantees). Hence, the sentimental journey to homeland was only possible in poet's imagination, as evidenced in the collection of poems spanning all periods of her creative life, I'm Back (2009). Most likely, Liūnė Sutema chose to live in her own creative land. Indeed, there was a time when she wanted to return to Lithuania, she even wrote a poem I Want to Return Home, yet when her brother Henrikas Nagys did that and saw that there was nothing left of their native village, only a split oak tree, Liūnė Sutema gave up the idea and said that she took away Lithuania as imprinted in her heart.

http://www.tekstai.lt/tekstai/446-liune-sutema

https://www.bernardinai.lt/2013-01-17-mire-poete-liune-sutema/

https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Nagyt%C4%97-Katili%C5%A1kien%C4%97

https://www.lrt.lt/tema/liune-sutema

https://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/i-lietuva-taip-ir-negrizusi-liune-sutema-issaugojo-nepriklausomos-lietuvos-pasa.d?id=60463983

http://www.tekstai.lt/tekstai-apie-tekstus/106-s/5448-laimut-adomaviien-lins-sutemos-sugrimas

https://epublications.vu.lt/object/elaba:1819551/1819551.pdf

Works

Bibliography

Antanaitis, A. T. & Mickienė, A. (1994). Egzodo rašytojai: autobiograms. Vilnius: Lietuvos Rašytojų sąjungos leidykla.

Liūnė Sutema. (2006). Tebūnie: eilėraščiai. Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla.

Liūnė Sutema. (2009). Sugrįžau: poezijos rinktinė. Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla.

Mackus, A. & Liūnė Sutema. (2005). Poezija. Vilnius: Žaltvykslė.

Paplauskienė, V. (Ed.). (2009). Liūnė Sutema: gyvenimo ir kūrybos keliais. Kaunas: Naujasis lankas. 

Paplauskienė, V. (2011). Liūnė Sutema: on the Paths of Her Life and Creation. A Summary of a Monograph. Kaunas: Naujasis lankas. 

Šalkauskytė, D. (2008). Zinaida Nagytė-Katiliškienė. Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija, T. XIII (Leo-Magazyn). Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.

Žvirgždas, M. (2010). Liūnės Sutemos sugrįžimas. Knygų aidai, 1, 14-21.

Didactic approach

DIDACTIC APPROACH: Lithuanian literature

Documents