The Construction of the Reception of Rilke and the Contexts of the Soviet Period

Abstract

Written in spirit of literary hermeneutics, this article presents the research of the reception of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) in the Lithuanian Soviet period as well as the related problems. In this sense, the aim of such research could be treated as the process of creating an academic text. Its reconstructive origin impels us to question the relatively proper level of the existing investigation and discuss its fragmentary mode. In this case, it is necessary to introduce such aspects of this type of reconstruction based on the previously accomplished texts and results of the research, e. g. so-called “taxonomy”, chronologies, comprehensible and consistent narrative of the literary history, etc. The double effect of the latter, as positive prejudices (according to the German term Vorurteile), significant approaches or as stereotypic judgements, popular clichés, to the potential researcher must also be taken into consideration. The epoch in mind – The Soviet period – possesses multifarious ambiguities and binary systems. For this reason, the whole unity of the contexts of literary science, literary critique, and even literary policy and politics is relevant for this type of reconstruction of the reception. Though the article follows a certain chronological sequence, which is merely for pragmatic convenience, nevertheless it questions the very implications of the “evolution” of the reception, the literary and historical periodization, etc. The first part of this text deals with the theoretical overview of the basic problems mentioned above. In the second part, those problems are included in the context of the research of the reception of Rilke in Lithuanian literature of the Soviet period. According to the claims of literary scientists, ambiguity is one of the main characteristics of the Lithuanian Soviet period that affected the whole of literary reality: the practices of reading, translations, the behavior of readers, etc. Besides, it necessitated the various semantic actions in order to adapt to the conditions of the shifting socialism. On the other hand, Rilke as an author of the bourgeois West had to be included in the dialectics of the constant interplay between ideological conformism and intellectual opposition. As could be seen further, there were different phases of the reception of Rilke in the Soviet Lithuanian literature. By the way, at least two different types of readers (“dependent” vs. “opposing”) and the variety of the reading strategies were created.