THE WHITE SHROUD – Romance by Antanas Škėma

He’s sometimes referred to as Lithuanian Albert Camus. His style is full of unexpected metaphor and subconscious. He was born in a November day, 1910. Antanas Škėma, was a Lithuanian writer, and during World War I he lived in Russia with his parents. In 1921, they all came back to Lithuania. From 1940 to 1944 he did work in Vilnius State Theater (at first as an actor, and later as a director). In 1949, Škėma left Europe for United States of America. He often plays with the sounds of language, disengaging phonemes from their literal meaning, as if to suggest a more transcendent meaning to the sounds.

The White Shroud was Škėma’s only novel and is considered the first modern Lithuanian novel. In his most prominent work, he discusses the soul of the artist, his talent and squalor, the poet’s nature and also issues of responsibility in the post-war world. These themes are revealed through the consciousness of the novel’s protagonist. The writer stretches space in the novel, allowing memories of family life to flow inside it, alongside a desperate present complicated by a love triangle. The novel portrays the descent into insanity of the poet Antanas Garšva. Most critics consider it an interesting literary experiment, opening new avenues for the novelistic genre in Lithuania. Škėma has a special angle from which the course of life appears fragmented (distorted into fantastic patterns which all yearn to come together into some design of meaning). In this he is a true modern writer.