Lietuvių Beletristikos Antologija II
Redagavo Bern. Brazdžionis ir Ben. Babrauskas
1965
Introduction
This is the second volume of an ambitious Lithuanian prose anthology compiled in diaspora Chicago in 1965, edited by the distinguished poet Bernardas Brazdžionis and critic Benys Babrauskas. It gathers beletristika—short fiction and prose—by dozens of Lithuanian authors writing both in exile and during the interwar independence period, preserving a broad cross-section of literary voices that Soviet occupation had suppressed or scattered. As a product of the Lietuviškos Knygos Klubas, it represents a sustained institutional effort by the Lithuanian diaspora to maintain and transmit a living literary canon far from the homeland.
Community and publication context
Community and publication setting
Context and significance
Significance
The Lietuvių Beletristikos Antologija, Volume II stands as one of the most ambitious literary projects of the mid-20th-century Lithuanian diaspora. Compiled in Chicago in 1965 by two of the exile community's most prominent literary figures — poet Bernardas Brazdžionis and critic Benys Babrauskas — it gathers prose fiction by dozens of authors spanning the interwar independence period and the exile generation, creating a deliberately curated counter-archive to Soviet literary policy. The editors' preface makes explicit that the anthology preserves the living memory of independent Lithuania's cultural achievements at a moment when those achievements were being suppressed, distorted, or co-opted inside the occupied homeland.
The volume's reach across more than 650 pages and its broad roster of contributors — including canonical figures such as Marius Katiliškis, Aloyzas Baronas, Julius Kaupas, Algirdas Landsbergis, and Kazys Almenas alongside lesser-known writers — makes it an invaluable documentary record of the diaspora's self-understanding as the custodian of authentic Lithuanian literary culture. The presence of a library lending card from what appears to be a Lithuanian community library, with the borrower name Ona Kratavičienė, further documents how such anthologies circulated as shared cultural property within diaspora institutions, functioning simultaneously as literary reference works and as tools of identity formation for Lithuanian-Americans maintaining connection to their heritage.
How this record carried memory
Institutional diaspora publishing: the Lietuviškos Knygos Klubas (Lithuanian Book Club) systematically collected, edited, and distributed Lithuanian prose fiction among exile communities, sustaining a literary canon and readership outside Soviet-occupied Lithuania.
Record connections
People, places, and institutions linked in the catalog