Pills of Lithuanian literature - Salomėja Nėris (poetess)

Salomėja Nėris (real name Salomėja Bačinskaitė-Bučienė) is the most important poet of the XX century Lithuanian literature (1904-1945).
Her poetry is called išpažintinę lyriką (literallyç confessional lyrics), i.e. intimistic poetry, in other words, a kind of poetry which is autobiographical, focused on real personal facts and with a low degree of fiction, Which could be linked to what can be called ego-documents: memoirs, diaries, letters.

The most common themes of her poetry are his land. her return to her beloved land (she lived in Russia since 1941), nature as a body that extends its reasons to her body, plants that flower or turn yellow, spring, winter. cold and frost, repentance, death. And winds, there are so many poems about wind in her poetry.
Here is a good example of her typical themes, the lyrics "diemedžiu žydėsiu"


Aš diemedžiu žydėsiu.

Ir vienąkart, pavasari,
Tu vėl atjosi drąsiai, -
O mylimas pavasari,
Manęs jau neberasi - -

Sulaikęs juodbėrį staiga,
Į žemę pažiūrėsi:
Ir žemė taps žiedais marga...
Aš diemedžiu žydėsiu- -


Unannouncedly arrives the Spring
And bravely arrive
My Beloved Spring

But you won't find me again...

Unannounced on a black steed
will look down upon the earth
suddenly coloured of flowers
And as an indistinct bush of Artemisia, I will bloom forever...[1]

The main theme of this poem is the unity of man and nature, The poet depicts death as the merging of life with nature to prolong the human days in the flowering of the plant. The eternity of the human being is to be found in the reason of nature.

This ground theme is reminiscent of Lithuanian folklore motifs, which often talk about the transfer of the human soul to plants after death.

In Lithuanian, the word for Artemisia is diemedis which has been probably chosen by Salomėja Nėris because it resembles Dievmedis, the divine tree,

In English is more or less possible to repeat the same pun with dogwood and godwood.

Salomėja has probably chosen this word to emphasize the fusion of man with divinity, with what is eternal. The poetess wants to dramatise also the eternity of this tie between Man and nature also by making use of the assonance between diemedis and Dievmedis.

[1] In the variegated flowering of the earth, the flowers of Artemisia are small, and indistinct like the likìmas, the destiny of man.

On the concept of likìmas see https://princasvilniuje.blogspot.com/2022/04/non-e-un-bene-per-luono-che-divenga-cio.html