Forest of the Gods

Balys Sruoga was a well-known Lithuanian poet, dramatist, and literary critic. In 1943, professor of Vilnius University, he was deported to Stutthof concentration camp (along with other professors, under the charge of campaigning students against joining the Reich troops). Having returned from Stutthof, he wrote a fictional memoir book Forest of the Gods, to become not only a heart- stirring document but also one of the finest specimens of Lithuanian prose. The author transforms his painful personal experience into an ironic and grotesque narrative. The very title of the memoir book is ironic as „the factory of death“ is given a poetic name of the grove of gods. The concentration camp becomes a miniature model of the absurdity of the world. The book abounds in cultural implications and reflections on the status of our civilisation. The Stoic posture of the narrator in the face of absurd makes it comparable to Existentialist literature. The manuscript of Forest of the Godswas banned from publication by Stalin regime as a „cynical ridicule of the victims of German invaders“. It was first published in 1957, ten years after the death of Balys Sruoga.