The talk will concentrate on the challenges of multiculturalism in contemporary Lithuania, with a special emphasis on Lithuanian-Jewish relations, remembrance of the Holocaust and the historical memory traumas. It will address the ongoing sharp public debates in Lithuania over the controversial historical figures of the Second World War that reveal an emerging divergence between public glorification of armed resistance as a secular religion and an intimate exploration of a troubled past.
Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian poet and scholar, professor emeritus at Yale University, former dissident and founding member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. After a successful career in the U.S., where he emigrated in 1977, Venclova returned to his native Lithuania last year.