Existential Motives and the Musicality of the Form in Vytautas Mačernis’ Cycle of Poems “The Sonnets of the Seasons” [Metų sonetai

Abstract

Vytautas Mačernis (1921-1944), is one of the youngest classical canon authors of Lithuanian literature. He was a student of philosophy, English philology, could read in 7 languages, translated poetry of
Ch. Baudelaire, R. Burns, A. Blok, O. Milosz, F. Petrarca. His own writing bears characteristics of a distinctive harmony between archaic Baltic culture (“Vsions”) and modern Western culture as well as manifestations of existential philosophy (“The Sonnets of the Seasons”).
Mačernis’ sonnets are distinctive not only because of their structural variations of the Italian, English
and French canon, but also because of the emergence of existential-philosophical themes and new principles of theme development. The sonnet is both a musical and a poetic genre, so its form can be analysed
not only on the basis of the traditional aspects of poetics of sonnet composition, but also on the basis of the
principles of music. The aim of this presentation is to list the characteristic features of Mačernis’ sonnets
and to overview certain principles of musical writings in existential sonnet forms through the analogies of
musical forms and processuality. The work is based on comparative methodology and draws on the works
of V. Daujotytė, V. Kubilius, J. Korolkovaitė (Kriūnienė), J. Paužienė, A. Ramonas, W. Wolf, et al.