In Jaroslav Melnik’s new book of short stories and short stories, “The Extinguished Sun”, there is a lot of action and passion – the characters argue, shoot, cry, have sex and pray to God… Everything is like in life. But there is another dimension in each of his texts. People die, but not completely. And what was in the past becomes real, and what is is ghostly. Time fades away… A past love rekindles and the present that suffocates us all turns into a dream.
“I am interested in human nature, his subconscious. A person reveals himself best in those moments when he is overcome by instinct, passion. Then there is a conflict with conscience, morality, God… I am interested in exactly this moment in a person. That’s why I’m writing. Love makes a person free from time”, admits the writer and philosopher, in each of whose texts we find the most important existential questions for us: who we are, why, what will happen to us after death…
Well-known Lithuanian and foreign critics and reviewers also talk about this feature of Jaroslav Melnik’s prose: “I could call him a neo-symbolist of Lithuanian literature – he created unexpected and ambitious works using symbols and allegories.” (Renata Šerelytė). And the critic and translator Laimantas Jonušys called the prose writer’s books “literature of metaphysical fiction, in which the mystical, but realistically suggestive motif of the inevitability of fate works surprisingly”.
The book full of fantasy is full of strange and mystical things, playing with time. This is how mad love for a woman prompts a scientist to extinguish the sun. After a big quarrel with his wife, the husband leaves the apartment and falls out of time – into another world. Grown-up children turn into toddlers, and the hero regains the already lost sense of family happiness. A lonely girl in an apartment gets a shock when a man on TV starts talking to her. Hurt by his adult daughter’s indifference, the father descends into the dungeons, where he meets a daughter from the past, a dear person who loves him deeply…
The writer turns seemingly ordinary life stories, consciously conveyed in a minimalistic language, into strange, often mystical worlds, where love intertwines with immortality, and time and death disappear.
Jaroslavas Melnikas – writer, philosopher, fantasist and surrealist, author of fifteen books – one of the most famous Lithuanian writers abroad. Jaroslav Melnik’s dystopia “Far Space” won the BBC Book of the Year title, also won the French “Book of the Year” award and became a finalist for the European Prize “Utopiales 2018” for the best fantasy novel by a European writer.
A well-known master of short prose, whose book “The Royal Room” (Last Day) was included in the fifteen best Lithuanian literary books of the century, and abroad – in the top five of the BBC Book of the Year and announced as a finalist of the prestigious “International Rubery Book Prize” in the United Kingdom, ten years later returns to the genre that made him famous in Lithuania and abroad.
Jaroslav Melnik’s latest novel “I will always be you” (“Je ne me lasse pas de vivre”, Actes Sud publishing house) was translated and published into French this year. “In a masterful dystopia masterpiece, Lithuanian writer Jaroslavas Melnik portrays a narrator who has lived for more than a thousand years, but his immortality has exhausted him,” writes the French weekly “Livres Hebdo” about the novel.
The writer’s cinematic prose has been screened more than once.
The book “Užgesusi solňa” was published by the Lithuanian Writers’ Union publishing house, the book’s artist is Jurgis Griškevičius
We suggest you read one of the short stories printed in the book “The sun has gone out”.
39 holes
“I curse the day I met you!” I was never happy with you! Impotent! Be damned!
– What do you need from me, kid! How dare you slander? What about the Alps, what about Côte d’Azur, what about Monaco?!
Simaitis pushed Margarita. Having lost her balance, the high-heeled shoe flopped loudly, falling onto the bed. The head hit the headboard. Her thick hair loomed before Simaitis’s eyes and stretched across the bed.
But, overcome with rage, she immediately jumped to her feet.
“You raised your hand to me?” I’m going to call the police right now! Don’t you dare hit me! I’ll call your mom!
She ran to the phone she had left in the kitchen.
Simaitis began to wander in the bedroom. Didn’t know what to do. He loved Margarita. And she loved him, when you think about it. But…
Margarita, overcome with hysteria, had already called the police.
– Alio?! Police?!
Suddenly Simaitis realized that it was not quite true. What is happening now. It was real when it happened. But now…
He quietly walked down the hall to the front door, opening and closing it quietly, making almost no sound.
It was dark on the landing, a faint light falling from above through a window on the other landing. It was surprisingly quiet. Simaitis suddenly realized that he was different. He is already different from the one who was there, behind the door of apartment 39. A completely different person.
For some reason, he decided not to call the elevator. He was afraid of the noise the elevator would make. Stepping carefully, he went down to the first floor and went outside.
Someone’s kids were playing in the playground there. A girl in a short red skirt, barely covering her pelvis, nylon black pantyhose, telling that she is small, but a woman (why do children wear women’s pantyhose?), swings on a swing, and a boy, in shorts, climbs on a toboggan – that’s what the French call children’s slides ( Simaičius once had to live in France. The boy kept getting stuck on the skate, sliding down and running back to the ladder to climb up.
Simaitis looked at the boy as if bewitched. This one repeated and repeated the same movements, moving along the same route – he skates, slides down to the ice rink, climbs the ladder, skates down, and immediately again to the ice rink… It’s as if someone plays the same movie frame over and over again… The Girl in the Red Skirt and in black tights she twirls in exactly the same way, now flying up, straight legs to the sky, now descending with her face to the ground. Feet up, face down, feet up, face down…
All this went on and on. It even occurred to Simaičius that the woman, who passed the house and entered through the door, passed the same way again and entered through the door again. Maybe it was another woman. But for some reason it seemed to Simaičius that it was the same woman.
“What am I doing here?” Who am I?” Simaitis wondered. He didn’t know what to do.
He couldn’t say how long he had been standing like that under the rustling maple in the yard. But suddenly he turned and also went to the door. “I will go and apologize for everything, I will take everything on myself, because I love her,” thought Simaitis. “And she loves me.” It’s like someone possessed us.”
It seemed like an eternity to climb the stairs. As if it wasn’t the third floor, but the thirty-third floor. He stopped in front of apartment 39 and looked at the number for a long time. “Three times three equals nine.” He had never thought of that before. Why these numbers? Why not 37, without any logic. What does it mean that they correspond to the multiplication table?
Now everything took on meaning for Simaichi. There was meaning in everything, everything turned into signs. This had never happened to him before.
Simaitis raised his hand and called. Waited. No one came, no one opened. Then he called once, again.
Footsteps were heard and the inhospitable face of an old woman appeared in the doorway.
– What for you?
– I…
“What do you need?”
– Mmm… I’m looking for… Margaritas. Margaritas Simaitienes.
– What other Simaitienes? There is no such thing here.
She slammed the door in his face.
Sims stood there doing nothing for a while. Then went down. The boy and the girl were no longer in the yard. Maybe it was a sister and a brother, and mom invited them to lunch?
For some reason, I wanted to think about these children. About nothing more.
The woman who always came through the door first was walking towards them again.
“Excuse me,” Simaitis addressed her. – I am looking for Margarita Simaitiene. She lived in this house.
The woman was much older than Simaitis. She looked at him with interest.
– She lives… She lived in apartment 39.
“Kubilia live there,” answered the woman.
– Well, yes, Kubilii.
– They live here all the time.
– I understand, forgive me.
Simaitis was about to go away, but she stopped him.
– Be happy. Apparently, once upon a time, before them, one family lived there… Exactly, her name was Margarita. Her hairstyle was also so strange, she often braided her hair in a bun. It’s been a long time since no one has braided cash registers. And she wove. I liked it.
“What happened to her?”
– After all, she died a long time ago. And her husband died. Right after her. The family was friendly. An example for all. Only God did not give children. The neighbors were good. It’s not these tubs. And who will you be to the Simaites?
– Me? Mmm… So, no one… Familiar. I came to this city on a business trip and decided to visit.
– They are long gone. This is our life…
The woman sighed. As if she was someone close to him.
– Yes, you are right. All the best.
– Sudiev.
Simaitis turned towards the street and stood for a long time, looking at the traffic of cars and people running back and forth, it is not clear where and for whom. He saw no sense in this movement. It seemed to him that the same people walked to the corner, turned behind him, then turned around and passed him again. There’s that girl in a blue dress with a light yellow scarf around her neck, because she just passed him and now she’s passing again, only in the opposite direction.
A white Porsche drove up, the door opened.
– Where have you been? he heard a voice.
A young woman, who had not yet lost her former beauty, was behind the wheel
– I’m looking for you everywhere. After all, we had agreed to meet at the Arc de Triomphe. Why didn’t you answer the calls?
– I didn’t hear.
– I called three times. I didn’t know what to think anymore. where have you been
– I was just walking.
– Where can you walk here? There are old shabby houses around. I don’t understand how people can live here. sit down
Simaitis sat down and they drove off.
The next day, Simaitis sat in his office, on the door of which was written “Director General” and led a meeting. When it was over, he was left alone and suddenly remembered the previous day. That house and those kids on the playground. And apartment 39. That horrible conversation in the bedroom… What was that? A dream or just a year has flown by. Decades. Times have simply moved on. Why did that woman say he was dead? After all, he lives, here he is, sitting in his office. Or maybe he is no longer sitting here? That woman, she could cry. Maybe someone told her he was dead and she believed it. But Margarita? After all, she was. It was his love, his soul…
How will I continue to live? he thought. I don’t know who I am.
He thought he was going crazy.
A week later, Simaitis forgot everything and continued to live, not remembering himself anymore.
But every once in a while, usually when he was alone at home and when he had to stay up late, while brushing his teeth, he would vaguely realize that someone was living instead of him.
And then the cosmic horror would come over him.
At such moments, he was afraid to look at himself in the mirror, feeling (at least it’s nonsense) that he wouldn’t see anything there.
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#Surrealist #Jaroslav #Melniks #book #claims #Love #frees #man #time #Culture
T encounter feel so vivid, so impactful, despite the passage of time? Simaitis couldn’t shake the feeling that something significant had been left unresolved.
As he stared out of the window, lost in thought, the cityscape outside blurred into a watercolor of motion. Cars honked impatiently, pedestrians hurried along the sidewalks, all caught up in their own lives. Yet he felt disconnected from it all, a spectator to an endless cycle of routines, much like the children on the playground he had observed the day before, caught in an endless loop of play that seemed both innocent and haunting.
His thoughts wandered back to Margarita, the woman whose existence had been cemented in his memory, yet now seemed an echo of the past. Why had he sought her out? Was it merely to apologize, to seek closure for something that had never truly begun? Or was there a deeper connection, a thread woven through the fabric of his life that pulled him back to her?
Simaitis shook off the melancholy that threatened to engulf him. He returned to his meeting notes, trying to focus on the present and the responsibilities of his position. Yet, the image of the old woman from the apartment, the nostalgia in her voice as she spoke about the long-gone family, lingered in his mind. It struck him that perhaps there was a lesson there—a reminder of how fleeting life could be, how easily it could slip away unnoticed while one busying themselves with the trivialities of the everyday.
His phone buzzed, breaking his reverie. A reminder pinged on the screen: “Lunch with Claudia – 1 PM.” The name pulled him back into reality, bringing with it the realization that he had commitments, a life built around other people’s expectations. Claudia, the woman from the Porsche, had become a comforting figure in his otherwise chaotic life. Yet even as he thought of her, a sense of longing for something more profound clawed at him.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of meetings and decisions that felt increasingly hollow. The conversations around him resonated like an echo, their meanings slipping through his fingers. Each time he glanced at the clock, he was reminded of the past—a ticking clock that seemed to mock his inability to let go.
By the time evening arrived, he found himself outside again, wandering the streets in search of something he couldn’t quite define. The bustle of the city faded into the background as he explored the neighborhoods, eventually finding himself in front of the now-familiar apartment building. He hesitated at the entrance, the weight of nostalgia heavy upon him.
His instincts urged him to leave, to move on from the ghosts of yesterday, but curiosity pulled him closer. He stepped inside, drawn as if by an unseen force, retracing the journey he had taken before. But this time, he had no expectation of finding what he sought. He simply wanted to be in that space again, to feel the haunting presence of memories, to reconnect with a piece of himself he thought was lost.
The old woman was not at the door when he knocked this time; instead, only silence met him. He turned to leave, feeling oddly disappointed. As he walked back into the night, he couldn’t help but notice the world moving around him, the odd sense of repetition in everyday actions, the people who walked past him, lost in their own thoughts and routines.
Maybe, he mused, there was a beauty to that—an understanding that life, in all its mundanity, was a cycle of moments, both tender and bittersweet. He would carry the memory of Margarita and the lessons learned from her absence. Perhaps he would find solace in understanding that, like those children on the playground, life continues in loops, and all one could do was navigate through the cycles, cherishing the fleeting moments that connected them to the past.
And so, in that moment of clarity, Simaitis decided it was time to embrace the unpredictable nature of life, ready to face whatever came next with open arms and an open heart.
