Water Carrier

Sculptor Romualdas Kvintas. 2020 m.

You are a dark amulet set in Lithuania.
Old grey writing – mossy, peeling.
Each stone a book; parchment every wall.
Pages turn, secretly open in the night,
As, on the old synagogue, a frozen water carrier,
Small beard tilted, stands counting the stars.

— From the poem “Vilnius” (1926) by Moyshe Kulbak
Water Carrier

Monument to idealism

The work of the water carrier in Vilnius was important, even though those who were engaged belonged to the poorest inhabitants of the city. The subject of the statue symbolizes idealism, which was abundant even in the most difficult times.

Romualdas Kvintas (1953–2018)

Romualdas Kvintas

The Lithuanian sculptor Romualdas Kvintas is known for many works, e.g. statues commemorating Vytautas Kernagis in Nida, the writer Romain Gary, the physician Dr. C. Shabad, the singer D. Donskis and the linguist J. Jablonskis. In the autumn of 2015, a sculpture by Kvintas dedicated to Hermann Kalenbach and Mahatma Gandhi was erected in the town of Rusne; in the fall of 2017 this was followed by his statue of the church reformer Martin Luther in Vilnius. In the fall of 2019, a year after the sculptor’s death, a sculpture for the singer, poet and artist Leonard Cohen was unveiled.

The sculptures of Romuald Kvintas are characterized by a special feeling of coziness, of perfection, sensitivity, and have a characteristic shape. Important people are presented as normal people, and the sculptures have a real-life size. A direct eye-to-eye communication between the sculpture and the viewer is probably one of the most significant features of Romualdas Kvintas’ oeuvre.

Moyshe Kulbak (1896–1937)

Moyshe Kulbak

Moyshe Kulbak was born in Smarhon (present-day Belarus, then a town of Russian empire) grew up in a religious Jewish family, studied at the state Jewish school, attended the cheddar in the evenings, and later – Švenčionys and Volozhin Yeshiva.

In 1919 the writer moved to Vilnius. 1920-1923 M. Kulbak spent time in Berlin. In 1923 he came back to Vilnius, which was a center of Yiddish literary culture. In Vilnius he taught modern Yiddish literature at the Real-Gymnasium (a Yiddish-speaking high school), as well as at the Yiddish teachers' seminary. By1928 he decided to return to Minsk (capital of the Soviet Belarus), where much of his family lived, and where there was a lively Yiddish literary scene. In 1927 was elected the first president of the World Jewish PEN Club. In September 1937, Moyshe Kulbak was arrested during a wave of Stalinist purges. He was accused of espionage, locked up in a Soviet Gulag concentration camp and executed a month later. In 1956 the poet was rehabilitated by the Soviet authorities.

Moyshe Kulbak began writing poems and prose in Hebrew, and later wrote in Yiddish. M. Kulbak is considered to be the creator of deep intellect and great spirit, fusing in his books the philosophy of Kabbalah, Jewish folklore with the idea of Western Europe and it’s literary mentality. In many ways, M. Kulbak's work is a synthesis of Lithuanian Jewish literary modernism.

One of the most significant works of M. Kulbakas is the poem "City" (Lithuanian name - "Vilnius", 1926), which is considered to be the deepest and most beautiful work about this city. Using a gentle elegiac verlibr, unexpected metaphors, bold generalizations, the poet draws laconic and expressive image of Vilnius.