Francophone bridge Lithuania-France | Anykščiai
On Monday, after returning from the winter holidays, an exceptional and exciting day awaited the students: against the background of such an extraordinary event during the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the French speakers at Anykščiai Jonas Biliūnas Gymnasium
The first meeting with Valdas Papievis, a former member of Bilili, a writer, radio journalist now living in Paris, and translator, actress and president of the Lithuania-France Association, is Caroline Paliulis.
The event was started by second grade high school students. Martynas Žemaitis’ guitar melody was very consistent with read excerpts from the writer’s novel Eiti, recently translated into French by Caroline Paliulis. Evening Jasevičiūtė that the author and translators can participate and that the long-awaited moment has come. In the spring, pupils made a video for the French Institute’s Lire à haute voix competition and, based on the French translation of Valdas Papievis’ novel Go, produced a video for Le Morceau de Hirdciel sur Terre.
Today, the author and translator is responsible for the novel “Go”, which was published in 2010. was nominated in the Book of the Year election for adult prose more, and translated into French ten years later.
The novel “Odile, or the Loneliness of Airports” (2015), which has been included in the top five books of the year (a film based on it), has already started to be translated into French and other languages.
Although Valdas Papievis from Anykščiai in 2016 awarded the National Culture and Art Prize for the expression of existential experience and the renewed aesthetics of the novel, but at the meeting the writer spoke modestly, as if feeling good again, to whom many teachers from Biliūnai had several parables on his future path. He felt the spirit of the school now and at the same time noticed that life is a return and a break-up, that time changes even a place. He said he was a little confused when he called him a writer. Writer – profession, craft. Writing for him was never a job, rather a state. He said that he starts writing spontaneously, does not plan anything, often even the plot.
According to the writer, the novel “Go” is a birthday child. The music of the film “In The Mood for Love”, played in full sound, with the clouds of the approaching storm over Paris, through the window, seemed to hit the trigger – write! The author, when he started writing, knew that Provence, which had already become his own in Paris, would always attract him with magical force, smell of lavender and enchant him with meetings with the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar.
Translator Caroline Paliulis compared the work of Valdas Papievis with that of Claude Monet, the leader of the French artist, Impressionist. The writer captures everyday moments in fantastic detail. It was not easy to translate the novel, even for a Frenchman of Lithuanian origin who returned to his grandparents’ land – Lithuania. Caroline compared the speech to the sound of a piano because it is picturesque, rich, full of various nuances. The manuscript of the French book went a long way until it finally found a small, original publishing house, Le Soupirail, determined to publish a novel by a Lithuanian writer, while the major French publishing houses refused.
Valdas Papievis was happy with the translator’s work and compared it to moving to another house, where everything is his own, cozy.
He later answered questions from high school students and admitted that he felt that “reality is beyond my imagination.” He questioned whether there was anything essential to learn in life, but he also said that he knew that it was necessary to get out of any situation – to get rid of knees and elbows, but to get out of scratches.
He writes books for himself, for others, for everyone. The writer spoke about a new book, Eko, which had recently been published, received a lot of attention and entered the top twelve (2021) books: an empty Parisian, an empty emigrant and a flaming Cathedral in the square, as if to see it happen in a year’s time. The writer joked that he seemed to be a prophet.
Valdas Papievis is mysterious about the newly written book, but in order to write it, he has to go to the created city.
Caroline Paliulis and Valdas Papievis told how they were both French and Lithuanian. And how the Lithuanian chose Paris and the French chose Lithuania.
After the meeting, the guests thanked the Francophones from Biliūnai for welcoming the young people as creatively and kindly as rarely.
In the donated book “Un morceau de ciel sur terre”, the President of the France-Lithuania Association wrote: “Joli pont entre la France et la Lituanie. Merci. ”(Beautiful bridge between Lithuania and France. Thank you.)
The residents of Biliūnai escorted the honorable guests, who stopped at one stop from the still long Francophone bridge “Lithuania-France”. Tadas is still waiting for many events and projects dedicated to European Francophonie: meetings with the former member of Bilifon, Francophon, Deputy Minister of Social Affairs and Security of the Republic of Lithuania Audrius Bitinas and teachers of the Nantes Lyceum from France; projects “Creation of Lithuanian Artists in France”, “Traces of Napoleon in My District”, “France and the European Union”, virtual exhibition of the artist Antanas Mončys, etc. After two speeches, Ugnė Taurelytė, a third student, will represent Anykščiai districts at the Republican French Olympics of Lithuanian students.
Information of Anykščiai Jonas Biliūnas Gymnasium