White Shroud by Anatanas Škėma

Author:Anatanas Škėma [Škėma, Anatanas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908251848
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

48 See note 5.

49Serfdom was introduced in Lithuania in 1447 by Kazimieras Jogailaitis, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland. The oppression of the serfs became heavier in 1795, when Lithuania was annexed by Imperial Russia. Reforms abolishing serfdom were introduced in 1861 and intensified following the Uprising of 1863.

50Perkūnas, Pykuolis, Patrimpas: the ancient Baltic gods of air/ lightning, the dead, and nature/fertility.

51These refrains appear at various points in the novel. They evoke archaic Lithuanian polyphonic song, and have no literal meaning, except for the phrases, skambinoj kankleliai (the zithers rang) and augo (it grew).

52See note 64 re. vėlės.

53Reference to traditional Lithuanian wooden sculptures (dievukai) depicting a pensive Christ (Rūpintojėlis – “the Sorrowful One”) or other saints, often placed at roadsides.

54Reference to the Lithuanian Riflemen’s League, a volunteer civic defense organisation founded in 1919.

55Lithuanian poets, Antanas Strazdas (1760–1833) and Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780).

56Boris Babochkin (1904–1975), a Russian film actor and director. Best known for playing the lead character in the 1934 film Chapaev, about a Red Army commander during the Russian Civil War.

57All Gaul is divided into three parts (Latin).

58Aestus: the Aesti were an ancient Baltic people, first referred to in this way by the Roman historian Tacitus in his treasise Germania, ca. 98 CE.

59“Išsisupus plačiai vakarų vilnimis,” from the poem “Nuo Birutės kalno” (“From Birutė’s Hill”, 1895) by the Lithuanian poet Maironis (1862–1932).

60“Mano krutinę užliek savo šalta banga,” from Maironis’s poem.

61Ženia is the Lithuanian spelling of Zhenia, the diminutive of the popular Russian name Evgenija.

62Pensive Christ: refers to a Rūpintojėlis (Sorrowful One), a traditional Lithuanian wooden statue of a pensive Christ figure.

63Following the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania (1940), many Lithuanians, still reeling from the mass deportations begun by the Soviets, hoped that the advance of the German army would lead to the restoration of Lithuania’s independence, or at least autonomy. These hopes were soon quashed when Nazi authorities established full administrative control of the country, using lower-level Lithuanian bureaucrats for rubber-stamping purposes. The German occupation lasted until the second Soviet occupation in Summer 1944.

64Ich danke Ihnen recht schoen: Thank you very much (German).

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