Dalia Pauliukevičiūtė

Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore

Letters from Sofija Ivanauskaitė-Pšibiliauskienė to Jurgis Šaulys

This presentation aims to analyse the correspondence between two prominent Lithuanian cultural and political figures of the early 20th century – the writer Sofija IvanauskaitėPšibiliauskienė and the diplomat, one of the signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania, Jurgis Šaulys. It is often expected that they would be read as a one-sided show of attention by a woman to a much younger man, which went unanswered. However, from the letters of Sofija Ivanauskaitė-Pšibiliauskienė, one can reconstruct the complexities of part of the 20th-century Lithuanian and Belarusian national movements, the openly undiscussed manifestations of sexual initiation, and the changes in attitudes towards this sphere of more private life. On the one hand, the addressee of the letters appears as an idealised and unattainable partner and teacher – a kind of equivalent of a muse. However, he is also a collector of information about intimate adult interactions, seeking to interrogate specific details and to gain at least a remote ‘experience’. From this socio-cultural point of view, the presentation will focus on the 47 letters written between 1902 and 1910, which have been preserved in the Kazys Pemkus Foundation.