Review
Sofija Kymantaitė became an active participant in the public women's movement. At twenty-one, she participated in the first Lithuanian Women's Congress in Kaunas and read a report there.
During the First World War, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, like most Lithuanian intellectuals, moved to a refugee centre in Voronezh. And here, the educator actively contributed to academic and cultural life. Many Lithuanian schools were also evacuated, and the "Saulė" courses moved there from Kaunas, so Sofia received an invitation to continue working as a teacher. In addition to these Lithuanian teacher training courses, she also taught at the Lithuanian Girls' Gymnasium. Sofia was very concerned not only with the education of the students but also with her life outside the school. She cared about the right conditions for learning, cared for students both morally and materially, and developed her independence, beautiful demeanour, and culture. As a teacher, she prepared and published a series of Lithuanian literature textbooks, a collection of articles "From Our Literature" (1913), a textbook "Synopsis of the History of Lithuanian Literature" (1918) and a Chrestomathy of the History of Lithuanian Literature (1918), wrote school drama works and directed performances.
Biography
Sofija Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė - writer, literary critic, public figure, pedagogue, language culture specialist, and translator was born in Joniškis into the family of poor Samogitian nobleman Leonas Kymantas and Elžbieta Jarulaitytė. The uncle, priest Vincentas Jarulaitis allowed the girl to study. Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, the vicar of Kuliai, taught the Lithuanian language and lent to the forbidden Lithuanian press. This young priest took thirteen-year-old Sofija to the first Lithuanian performance, "America in the Baths", igniting a love for Lithuania and the Lithuanian word in her heart. Sophia studied at St. Catherine's pension in St. Petersburg and Riga Gymnasium and studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Krakow.
In 1907, due to circumstances, just a year before graduating from the university, she could no longer continue her studies in Krakow and returned to Lithuania (later, the lack of a diploma would be an obstacle for her to teach at Vytautas Magnus University). J. Tumo-Vaižgantas offered her to work in the editorial office of the newly established newspaper Vilties. Sofia agreed and started working: she wrote articles and reviewed books, and Vaižgantas continued to teach her Lithuanian, improving her writing style. In the editorial, she met J. Jablonskis, whom she considered a life teacher.
Sofija Kymantaitė became an active participant in the public women's movement. At the age of twenty-one, she participated in the first Lithuanian Women's Congress in Kaunas and read a report there.
During the First World War, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, like most Lithuanian intellectuals, moved to a refugee centre in Voronezh. And here, the educator actively contributed to academic and cultural life. Many Lithuanian schools were also evacuated, and the "Saulė" courses moved there from Kaunas, so Sofia received an invitation to continue working as a teacher. In addition to these Lithuanian teacher training courses, she also taught at the Lithuanian Girls' Gymnasium. Sofia was very concerned not only with the education of the students but also with her life outside the school. She cared about the right conditions for learning, cared for students both morally and materially, and developed her independence, beautiful demeanour, and culture. As a teacher, she prepared and published a series of Lithuanian literature textbooks, a collection of articles "From Our Literature" (1913), a textbook "Synopsis of the History of Lithuanian Literature" (1918) and a Chrestomathy of the History of Lithuanian Literature (1918), wrote school drama works and directed performances.
Widowed at age 25 and with an infant daughter, Čiurlionienė settled in Kaunas. She got a teaching position at teachers' courses established by the Saulė Society and taught Lithuanian language and literature. To raise funds to support struggling students, activists organized cultural evenings with lectures, music, and plays. During several such evenings, plays by Čiurlionienė were performed. During World War I, she evacuated to Voronezh and taught at Lithuanian teachers' courses and girls' schools established by Martynas Yčas. Since there was a lack of Lithuanian textbooks, she prepared and published a collection of articles Iš mūsų literatūros (From Our Literature; 1913), book Lietuvių literatūros istorijos konspektas (Outline of the History of the Lithuanian Literature) and an accompanying anthology (both in 1918). In 1919, she returned to Kaunas, got a job in the education department of the Ministry of Defence and prepared an anthology for the Kaunas War School. From 1925 to 1938, she taught the Lithuanian language at Vytautas Magnus University. In 1935, the university sent her to Western Europe to learn the best practices of teaching language and literature. She visited Basel, Bern, Geneva in Switzerland, Lyon in France, Toruń, Warsaw, and Kraków in Poland. She collected material for a book on the methodology of teaching the Lithuanian language and literature, but it was not finished due to World War II.
Čiurlionienė continued to be active in public life. In March 1929, she attended a meeting on the situation in Eastern Europe organized by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Vienna. Her efforts to defend Lithuania's territorial claims to Vilnius Region received praise in Lithuania, and she was sent to the 6th congress of WILPF in Prague in August 1929. She also became a member of the Lithuanian government delegations to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1929–1931 and 1935–1938. The other two members of the 1929 delegation were Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras and diplomat Vaclovas Sidzikauskas. In 1930, she joined the League's Fifth Committee, which dealt with social and humanitarian questions such as human trafficking, prostitution, and children's welfare. In Switzerland, she learned about the Union of Friends of Young Women (French: Union Internationale des Amies de la jeune fille), established in 1877 and founded its chapter in Lithuania (Mergaičių bičiulių draugija) in 1929. The union sought to help young women who moved from villages to larger cities to avoid being exploited or trafficked. In 1935, Čiurlionienė returned to the League and became a member of the First Committee (legal and constitutional questions) and Sixth Committee (mandates, slavery and political questions) but returned to the Fifth Committee in 1936.
