Biography Essay

Like his contemporary Bernardas Brazdzionis, Jonas Aistis (also known as Jonas Kuosa-Aleksandriskis and Jonas Kossu-Aleksandravicius) reached the peak of his achievement and reputation between the two world wars and continued to write in exile with diminishing powers and increasing patriotic intensity. At his best, Aistis accomplished a breakthrough in the uses of Lithuanian poetic language, crossing the barriers of established stylistic modes with their frames of reference for imagery from the romantic tradition and undermining the accustomed rhetorical and public stance of "the bard" by means of intimate, personal, painful, and ecstatic discourse never before employed in Lithuanian literature. The relentless, heavy sorrow that pursued Aistis throughout his life did not lead him to unproductive self-pity; on the contrary, it became transfigured into poetic discourse of radiant, though still painful, beauty.

Aistis was born Jonas Aleksandravicius on 7 July 1904 to the family of a village smith in...