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With Lithuania, finally, I find a world of reference. Did not Mickiewicz said... And even more importantly, Miłosz. This should be the familiar Europe. 
But of course, they are Polish writers. The real Lithuania must be hidden beneath, invisible precisely for the voice they had given to her, to that water snake that did not deserve the stone to be thrown. In that Lithuanian Paradise lost.

A z cięż­kich mo­ich grze­chów je­den naj­le­piej pa­mię­tam:
Jak prze­cho­dząc raz le­śną ścież­ką nad po­to­kiem
Zrzu­ci­łem duży ka­mień na wod­ne­go węża zwi­nię­te­go w tra­wie.   

I used to read Miłosz passionately in my time, and it seemed to me that I saw Lithuania so distinctly through his poetry, as a mythic land, beyond time, history, the usual dimensions of "the flat map", as I wrote in one of my books. A bubble of intimacy bulking into another dimension. Perhaps I was right, since that was not Lithuania for sure, not that one that should be here in my global travelling and literary collection. That one, I ignore completely. 


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Leiden, 29.04.2019