Salomeja Neris
Encyclopedia
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n poetess.
Biography
Nėris was born in Kiršai, in the current district of VilkaviškisVilkaviškis district municipality
Vilkaviškis district municipality is one of 60 municipalities in Lithuania....
. She graduated from the University of Lithuania where she studied Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
and German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and literature.
After that she was a teacher in Lazdijai
Lazdijai
Lazdijai is a city in Lithuania located about east of the border with Poland. In 1990 Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union, and new check points between the borders Poland and Lithuania were established and Lazdijai became the center that oversees and continues to regulate these...
, Kaunas
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...
, and Panevėžys
Panevežys
Panevėžys see also other names, is the fifth largest city in Lithuania. As of 2008, it occupied 50 square kilometers with 113,653 inhabitants. The largest multifunctional arena in Panevėžys is the Cido Arena...
. Her first collection of poems, titled Anksti rytą (In the Early Morning), was published in 1927.
In 1928, Nėris graduated from the University and was appointed to teach German language at the Seinų
Sejny
Sejny is a town in north-eastern Poland, in Podlaskie Voivodeship, close to the border with Lithuania and Belarus. It is located in the eastern part of the Suwałki Lake Area , on the Marycha river, being a tributary of Czarna Hańcza...
žiburys Gymnasium in Lazdijai. Until 1931, Nėris contributed to nationalist and Roman Catholic publications. While studying German in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, in 1929, Nėris met Lithuanian medical student Bronius Zubrickas and became attracted to him. Zubrickas had socialist views and Nėris engaged in socialist activities in order to court him.
In 1931, Nėris moved to live in Kaunas, where she gave lessons and edited Lithuanian folk tales. In the second collection of Nėris's poetry, The Footprints in the Sand, there is evidence of the onset of a profound spiritual crisis. In the same year, verses containing revolutionary motifs were published in the pro-communist literary journal Trečias frontas (The Third Front).
A promise to work for communism was also published. However, it was not written by her but by the chief ideological editor of Trečias frontas, Kostas Korsakas, and communist activist Valys Drazdauskas (Nėris was more interested in writing poetry than in declarations, politics and theories about art) (see).
Salomėja Nėris was awarded the State Literature Prize in 1938.
Activities during the Soviet occupation
Controversy surrounds her involvement with the Soviet occupationOccupation of Baltic Republics
The occupation of the Baltic states refers to the military occupation of the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union under the auspices of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 14 June 1940 followed by their incorporation into the USSR as constituent republics, unrecognised...
. She was appointed as a deputy to the Soviet-backed "People's Seimas" and was a member of the delegation
to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to request Lithuania be accepted into the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Nėris was requested to write a poem in honour of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and was subsequently awarded the Stalin Prize (posthumously, in 1947). After that, she wrote more verses on the theme, as encouraged by the USSR Communist Party officials. She spent World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in the Russian SFSR.
Salomėja Nėris returned to Kaunas but fell ill and died of liver cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma
Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer. Most cases of HCC are secondary to either a viral hepatitide infection or cirrhosis .Compared to other cancers, HCC is quite a rare tumor in the United States...
in a Moscow hospital in 1945. Her last poems show deep affection for Lithuania itself. She was buried in Kaunas, in a square of the Museum of Culture, and later re-interred in the Cemetery of Petrašiūnai.
Pseudonym
Her original pen namePen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
was Neris
Neris
Neris is a river rising in Belarus, flowing through Vilnius and becoming a tributary of the Neman River at Kaunas...
, the name of the second biggest Lithuanian river. In 1940, she received a letter from her students calling her a traitor
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
to her homeland and asking her not to use the name of the River Neris. She added a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
on "e" and used only the pen name Nėris, which until then had no particular meaning.
Books
- Anksti rytą. - Kaunas, 1927. - 77p.
- Pėdos smėly. - Kaunas: Sakalas, 1931. - 61p.
- Per lūžtantį ledą. - Kaunas: Sakalas, 1931. - 48p.
- Mūsų pasakos / sp. paruošė S.Nėris. - Kaunas: Spindulys, 1934. - 160p.
- Per lūžtantį ledą. - [Kaunas]: Sakalas, [1935]. - 48p.
- Diemedžiu žydėsiu. - Kaunas: Sakalas, 1938. - 69p.
- Eglė žalčių karalienė. - Kaunas: Valst. l-kla, 1940. - 107p.
- Poema apie Staliną. - Kaunas: Spaudos fondas,1940. - 16p.
- Rinktinė. - Kaunas: Valst. l-kla, 1941. - 192p.
- Dainuok, širdie gyvenimą: eilėraščiai ir poemos. - Kaunas: Valst. l-kla, 1943. - 39p.
- Lakštingala negali nečiulbėti. - Kaunas: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1945. - 109p.
- Eglė žalčių karalienė. - [Kaunas]: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1946. - 96p.
- Poezija: [2t.]. - Kaunas: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1946.
- Našlaitė. - Kaunas: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1947. - 48p.
- Žalčio pasaka. - Chicago, 1947. - 112p.
- Rinktinė. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1950. - 276p.
- Eilėraščiai. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1951. - 84p.
- Poema apie Staliną. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1951. - 36p.
- Pavasario daina. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1953. - 38p.
- Poezija. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1954. - 500p.
- Baltais takeliais bėga saulytė. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1956. - 164p.
- Raštai : trys tomai. - [Vilnius]: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1957.
- Rinktinė. - Kaunas: Valstybinė pedagoginės literatūros leidykla, 1958. - 112p. - (Mokinio biblioteka).
- Širdis mana - audrų daina. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1959. - 474p.
- Eglė žalčių karalienė: poema pasaka. - Vilnius: Valst. grož. lit. l-kla, 1961. - 51p.
- Pavasaris per kalnus eina: eilėraščiai. - Vilnius: Valstybinė grožinės literatūros leidykla, 1961. - 511p.
- Biała ścieżka. - Warszawa: Państ. inst. wydawniczy, 1963. - 34p. - in Polish
- Kur baltas miestas: rinktinė. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1964. - 143p.
- Rinktinė. - Kaunas: Šviesa, 1965. - 90p. - (Mokinio biblioteka).
- Laumės dovanos. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1966. - 25 p.
- Poezija: 2t. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1966
- Keturi: poem. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1967.
- U rodnika. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1967. - in Russian
- Lirika. - Moskva: Chudožestvennaja literatura, 1971. - 230p. - in Russian
- Poezija. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1972. - 2 volumes
- Negesk žiburėli. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1973. - 151p.
- Egle - zalkšu karaliene: poēma, translation by Daina Avotiņa. - Rīga: Liesma, 1974. - 58p. - in Latvian
- Širdis mana - audrų daina. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1974. - 477p.
- Kaip žydėjimas vyšnios: poezijos rinktinė. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1978. - 469p.
- Poezija: rinktinė. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1979. - 827p.
- Veter novych dnej: stichotvorenija. - Moskva: Chudožestvennaja literatura, 1979. - 334p. - in Russian
- Mama! Kur tu?: poem. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1980. - 38p.
- Nemunėliai plauks. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1980. - 201p.
- Negesk, žiburėli: eilėraščiai ir poemos. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1983. - 103p.
- Nedziesti, gaismehlit. - Ryga: Liesma, 1984. - 129p. - in Latvian
- Raštai: 3 volumes - Vilnius : Vaga , 1984.
- Blue sister, river Vilija = sesuo Žydrioji - Vilija = Sestra Golubaja - Vilija. - Moskva: Raduga, 1987. - 261p. - in English and Russian
- Solovej ne petj ne možet: stichi. - Vilnius: Vaga, 1988. - 160p. - (Litovskaja poezija). - in Russian
- Egle, koroleva užei: poem, translation by M. Petrov. - Vilnius: Vyturys, 1989. - 62p. - in Russian
- Wiersze wybrane, translation by M. Stempkowska. - Kaunas: Šviesa, 1989. - 221p. - in Polish
- Prie didelio kelio: eilėraščiai. - Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų s-gos l-kla, 1994. - 96p.
- Tik ateini ir nueini: rinktinė. - Vilnius: Alma littera, 1995. - 220p.
- Eglė žalčių karalienė. - Vilnius: Lietus, 1998. - 126p.