Eighteen established writers, one from each city/region, were commissioned to write a chapter in a response to their Arts & Society theme within the context of their city.
Just as Ulysses is innovative in its form and language, so the writers were chosen with a view to reflecting a breadth of genres, styles and innovations. All the (new) chapters from the 18 cities/regions will be brought together in a book to be published in the Autumn 2024: ULYSSES European Odyssey.
Andrius Jakučiūnas wrote Vilnius’ chapter.
Writer’s Statement
It would be fair to say that James Joyce has played a role in my creative development: primarily as the legend of a complex narrative, as an approach towards the world of interiority, contexts and cultural meanings, and as a courageous breaker of stereotypes and experimenter. He was an important support for me as a budding writer.
Joyce tries to create, and in fact does create, a universal model which, encompassing both micro and macro levels, seeks to explain all existence. Like an alchemist, Joyce fuses together different materials, and produces a functioning structure which, of course not coincidentally, draws on a Classical epic, Homer’s Odyssey.
It is in Joyce’s phenomenal ability to see (or even, I would say, to create) the whole, where I see a shadow of what also concerns me. Like Joyce, I have always been attracted to universal models based on the principles of the epic, and to systems of thought that can be applied to a single individual, to society, and to the Universe. Therefore much of my writing has sought to encompass the whole context, or rather to provide a kind of reflection of it, both by engaging in an abstract discussion of values and meanings, and by mimicking processes of thought and turning them into artistic forms.
Writer’s Biography
Andrius Jakučiūnas was born in Vilnius in 1976. He is an award winning prose writer and literary critic. After graduating from Vilnius 43rd Secondary School in 1994, he went on to study Classical Philology at Vilnius University. After graduating he worked as a teacher, which he later gave up for a professional writer’s career, including working as a news editor at the weekly cultural newspaper, Nemunas (2007-2015). He started his writing career with the collection of short stories, The Life or Death of Socrates (1999). Later works include two novels Notes of Servius Galus (2005) and Homeland (2007), a collection of short stories, Lalage (2011) and a journalistic project, Utopia (2017).
He has won multiple awards. In 2006 Servius Galus, was included in the list of the twelve most creative books of the year, and was nominated in the prose section of the Book of The Year Campaign. In 2007 he made the top twelve list again with Homeland, which was also nominated in the prose section of the 2008 Book of The Year Campaign. Homeland won the Kazimieras Barėnas Literary Award in 2009. In 2011 Lalagė was included in the top twelve list of most creative books of the year, winning the Lithuanian Writers’ Union Award in 2012.
Jakučiūnas writes literary criticism and has published numerous texts on cultural and social topics, including those relating to urban change. He was honoured by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture Award for Journalism in 2012 and 2019. He currently teaches creative communication at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas.