Two interpretations – two continents: a reading of Algirdas Landsbergis’s play Five Posts in a Market Place

ABSTRACT

In his drama, Five Posts in a Market Place, Lithuanian émigré playwright Algirdas Landsbergis applies the philosophy of existentialism to depict the trauma of war as a universal experience. It was initially written in Lithuanian (1957) for an audience of postwar displaced persons in the North American Lithuanian diaspora. In 1959, Landsbergis rewrote the play in English, and it was staged in New York in 1961. Drawing on the theoretical work of trauma theorist, Cathy Caruth, this article considers how the playwright’s experiences of war and postwar trauma render the play a trauma narrative, while also avoiding direct autobiographical references by adhering to the philosophy of existentialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Existentialism
• trauma
• postwar anti-Soviet resistance
• suicidal choice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to the Lithuanian Genocide Research and Resistance Center, and the historian Arvydas Anušauskas (1996), 118,000 people were deported to Siberia from Lithuania in the years 1944–1953 and 23,000 were killed, imprisoned, and deported in 1940–1941.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laima Vince Sruoginis

Laima Vince is a novelist, poet, nonfiction writer, academic, and literary translator. She teaches as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine. Her dissertation, “Memory and Postmemory in the Writing of North American Writers of Lithuanian Descent„ applies the theoretical tools of trauma theory, postmemory, collective trauma and cultural memory to postmemory writing about Lithuanian collective trauma and cultural memory by North American writers of Litvak and Lithuanian heritage.  She has researched and written about the creative work and life of the Litvak poet Matilda Olkinaite, and has translated her poetry and diary from Lithuanian into English, published as The Unlocked Diary (Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore, 2021). She has published novels and works of literary nonfiction both in English and Lithuanian, and edited and translated three anthologies of contemporary Lithuanian literature, including The Earth Remains, published by Columbia University (2002). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award in Literature, two Fulbright grants in Creative Writing, and a PEN Translation Center Award.