Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas

Garbės daktaras / Honorary Doctor (Suteiktas vardas 1997-03-26)

Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas – one of the most prominent Lithuanian poets of the 20th century, a translator, literary critic, and laureate of the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts – was awarded the VMU honorary doctorate regalia in 1997.

Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas was born on 15 July 1919 in Nemeikščiai, Utena district. After graduating from Utena Gymnasium in 1938, he began studies in Romance languages and philosophy at Vytautas Magnus University, which he completed at Vilnius University in 1942. In 1944, he moved to Germany, where he studied at the University of Tübingen and the University of Freiburg, worked as a teacher at the Lithuanian Gymnasium in Tübingen, and taught French at the School of Arts and Crafts in Freiburg. In 1949, he moved to the USA. There, he worked at the Library of Congress in Washington until his retirement, editing articles and books. He contributed to the anthology “Žemė” (1951), was one of the founders and editors of the journal “Literatūros lankai” (1952–1959), a member of the editorial board of the journal “Aidai”, and a contributor to the journal “Metmenys.”

Nyka-Niliūnas began publishing his poems in 1939. He released poetry collections including “Praradimo simfonijos” (Symphonies of Loss, 1946; awarded the United Lithuanian Relief Fund of America Prize), “Orfėjaus medis” (The Tree of Orpheus, 1953; awarded the Aidai Prize), “Balandžio vigilija” (Vigil of April, 1957), “Išduotas medis” (The Betrayed Tree, 1971), “Vyno stebuklas” (The Miracle of Wine, 1974; awarded the Lithuanian Writers’ Association Prize), “Žiemos teologija” (Theology of Winter, 1985), as well as the collections “Būties erozija” (Erosion of Existence, 1989), and “Eilėraščiai” (Poems, 1996). Nyka-Niliūnas’s artistic sensibility was shaped by existentialist philosophy, Western symbolist poetry, wartime experiences, and his life in exile. His poetry features an aestheticised philosophical experience of existence, revealing its transience, fragility, and loss, and is rich with cultural imagery. In his refined poetic images, focus on objects is avoided, while abstract states are made concrete, becoming more real than material reality. His later works are more concentrated in form, featuring shorter phrases, more concise imagery, and significant pauses. The poet not only wrote but also critiqued others’ work, publishing essays on literary criticism under pseudonyms such as Leonas Miškinis, Andrius Sietynas, and Kostas Rauda, where he adhered to high aesthetic standards, particularly assessing originality and authenticity in poetry (e.g., the collection “Temos ir variacijos: Literatūra, kritika, polemika” (Themes and Variations: Literature, Criticism, Polemic, 1996)). He published a two-part book “Fragments of the Diary” and translated the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Claudel, Henri Michaux, Stefan George, T. S. Eliot, Giacomo Leopardi, Saint-John Perse, the “Song of Songs”, William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (1964), Virgil’s “Georgics” (1984), and works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Czesław Miłosz.

Based on information provided by VMU Library.