In Vilnius, we are used to looking down on Kaunas, but last Saturday I realized how wrong we are. The city festival was happening, and Kaunas appeared to be the most European place I ever experienced in Lithuania. Japanese drummers. Women holding hands. No hint of the rashness, muteness and moneyed provincialism so common in Vilnius. Behind the details – genuine theatre culture (I admit – my company is sponsoring the National Drama Theatre), a spirit of the inter-war aristocracy, period buildings designed by Lithuanian-Jewish architects. Interestingly, Kaunas is the most ethnically Lithuanian city, but it manages to be pretty exciting against the odds.
I wish some media were produced in Kaunas. Maybe then we could avoid such a mute, unexploded scandal as that of Monday, when a few MPs just came short of calling to herd homosexuals into concentration camps, with the help of trigger-happy TV journalists.
This draws me to conclude that if Lithuania had any more Jews, many of my compatriots would probably murder and plunder them again at their earliest convenience. There are voices who would beg to disagree. However, that doesn’t come easy. If you are gay, the municipality bans the EU-sponsored tolerance event. If you are a progressive MP, you are forced to answer questions like “are you a lesbian?” on prime-time TV. This particular TV piece is propaganda as powerful, but nowhere near as artful as the one my parents’ generation was fed during the Soviet occupation. However, it speaks the same language. It is not European in its discourse.
My realisation that Lithuania is and in the foreseeable future will remain an Eastern European nation has recently become fully conscious. Consciousness is not something Lithuania possesses at the moment – she believes it is literally the Center of Europe. Actually, Pessoa’s Lisbon might be the book which best displays the unseen spirit of today’s Lithuania – with more depth than one could expect to find here.
