Born after the death of her grandfather, the famous writer Antanas Škėma, Corinna Škėma-Snyder was only able to get to know him through the stories told by her mother and others, and through his own work.
“To be his granddaughter in the USA meant nothing,” she admits. Unlike in Lithuania, where Škėma is considered one of the great writers of the mid-20th century.
Antanas Škėma died in a car accident on August 11, 1961, in Pennsylvania. This year marks the 61st anniversary of his death.
Read more: Lithuanian immigrant song from post-war New York. White Shroud by Antanas Škėma
Traumatic childhood experiences
“He was super charismatic but a very difficult person to live with,” says Škėma’s granddaughter.
During the First World War, Škėma lived with his parents in Voronezh, Russia, and later in Ukraine. As a child, he experienced the horrors of war. Later, he returned to Lithuania, where he also experienced the Second World War. He fled to Germany with his wife and young daughter, and later travelled to America.
“My mother did write about their relationship. I think everybody knows who he was as a husband. He had girlfriends all the time. My grandmother was a caretaker to him, he had addictions, he suffered enormously. But the people around him suffered too.
“He and my mother had a very close connection intellectually. This is a man who gave my mother books at a young age, which was amazing, but who reads Rielke at twelve? But he was telling her: you have to read this book,” says Škėma-Snyder.
Out of place and alien
Škėma’s childhood traumas from the war and his family experiences left scars for life and spilled over into his work, notes his granddaughter.
His best-known novel, White Shroud, about the existential and creative suffering of an elevator operator in New York, is also rich in autobiographical details. According to Škėma-Snyder, the work revealed to her some episodes of her family history.
“I wouldn't say he doesn’t belong in New York – he doesn’t belong anywhere. I don’t think it’s just a US thing,” says Škėma-Snyder. “It seems that this book reveals a biographical component of a trauma of his childhood during the First World War with his mother, she was sick, my grandfather’s father had his son bring his mother to a mental institution, they were also in Ukraine during the fighting – it was very brutal experience.”
Škėma moved around constantly looking for a place where he’d fit, his granddaughter says. “He was in New York, he went to Chicago, he came back to New York, he went to Monreal, he was in Boston... He moved a lot for this theatre work that he did. But he had a lot of mental illness and trauma to handle as a person. I was impressed with the amount of work he could do in that context.”
She adds that she does not think that the notion of “strangeness” in the novel is only about being a war refugee: “It’s more about being alienated, that moment in history of total disturbance twice in a lifetime as a child and later as I parent.”
Škėma-Snyder says she also recalls vividly the day when her mother took her to Ellis Island, a gateway to America for millions of migrants. It was also the first stop for the Škėma family when they arrived from war-torn Europe. “My mom was like: this museum make me uncomfortable, it makes it look like everyone who came here couldn’t wait to come to US, but it wasn’t a dream for my family. We had to be because we were refugees but this wasn’t our choice to be here.”
Her grandparents’ experience was quite typical, she believes. They were educated people, but had to do menial jobs in the US. “My grandmom worked in a shop and [Škėma] was elevator operator. And when he was in Chicago, he worked in a furniture factory. That’s very typical American immigrant experience,” she says.
New interpretations of Škėma’s works
Škėma-Snyder notes that her grandfather wanted to write not only in Lithuanian but also in English. He wanted to go beyond the limits of “a Lithuanian writer”.
“He read in English enormously. He was really not interested in just having this very Lithuanian context for his work,” she says.
She herself read White Shroud first in Lithuanian and then in English. Asked how her grandfather’s work impressed her, Škėma-Snyder says she found it to be a complex novel. However, she stresses her admiration for the use of sound and has no doubt that the work has not lost its relevance.
“As I mentioned before, he was from a generation who grew up during World War One, experienced World War Two. That was very much a moment in time for European history.
“I was talking to a friend a couple of years ago and we were thinking that it was a very unique moment, it’s not gonna happen again. But then for me Ukraine is just the same story for the next generation, right?”
Škėma-Snyder is also positive about various contemporary interpretations of Škėma’s works. For example, a new film by Jurgis Matulevičius, Isaac, based on Škėma’s eponymous story, or the play The Awakening, based on Škėma’s other work.
“I’m super supportive of seeing his work continued to be reimagined. It’s great that everyone has to read it in school, but I also have friends whose kids are really bored –it’s a very difficult book. So I’m really happy to support people who do something different with different approach,” she says.
First visit to Lithuania
Being Škėma’s granddaughter does not mean much in the US, says Škėma-Snyder, but it does open doors in Lithuania.
Here, because of this, she got to know people she might never have met otherwise. This was one of the reasons that prompted Škėma-Snyder to take her mother’s – and grandfather’s – name. She took this step around 1995.
“I think it’s idiotic that we have to take our dad’s name. So that was part of it. But it’s definitely part of my life now. Especially taking on the responsibility as an executor of his estate,” she adds.
However, Škėma’s granddaughter admits that, until her first visit to Lithuania, she had no idea who her grandfather really was, or at least what his name meant here.
“My mother went back to Lithuania for the first time in 1987 and she took me with her. And that’s when I suddenly realised who he was,” she says. Škėma-Snyder and her mother was spending evenings with writers and artists and going to theatre every night.
At that point, Škėma’s work had not yet been published legally in Lithuania, but plenty of people had read White Shroud from samizdat copies. “People were like: oh, I read White Shroud secretly, it was the most powerful book I ever read,” Škėma-Snyder recalls.
She says she went to her mother’s homeland with no preconceptions, no images in her head, but “as an American growing up during the Cold War, there were some unique layers to this trip”.
Moreover, her family had no relatives left in Lithuania, which, she points out, was unusual at the time.
“Where weren’t 500 cousins at the airport. But for my mother, her community was creative community, not her family. It was the first time that I saw my mother with other Lithuanians that she hadn’t seen in a long time. That was interesting to watch,” she says.
She admits that this visit to Lithuania was also very meaningful for her. Having never identified herself as a Lithuanian, and not knowing the Lithuanian language herself, she saw a different side of her mother’s life, her family’s life and history.
“People were very intense: oh, you’re Lithuanian. Which I’m not. Culturally, I’m American. I have a really good friend in Vilnius and she said: you know, even your Lithuanian got perfect, I can just tell you’re not Lithuanian because of the way you hold your body. You weren’t raised there. You can see it in the way you talk, move, in thinking. I was: yes, it’s true.”
Traumas that travel through generations
Antanas Škėma died 61 years ago, on August 11 in Pennsylvania, on his way home from a convention of Santara-Šviesa, a Lithuanian organisation in the US. On the occasion of the artist’s 50th birthday, it staged his play The Pipe, directed by Kostas Ostrauskas, in which Škėma himself played the leading role.
The writer’s daughter Kristina was also in the car during the accident. She was thrown out of the car and was severely injured but survived. According to Škėma-Snyder, her father’s death left lasting marks of pain in her eyes.
“It was an incredibly traumatic experience. My mother had an incredible phobia about cars.”
Škėma-Snyder was born in 1964, several years after the accident. “I think that my mum was still really struggling. She was only out of the hospital for two years at that point. And she just got married,” she says.
The accident also changed her relationship with the Lithuanian community. “I don’t think she felt particularly at home in the Lithuanian community without her father, he was her connection,” says Škėma-Snyder.
She says the trauma suffered by her mother also affected herself and her sister.
“When we had old phones and the phone would ring late at night or early in the morning, my sister and I both thought it was very normal to think that something terrible had happened to someone. I thought that everyone thought that when the phone rang early in the morning that someone is dead. That is how trauma transition works. You don’t have to have personal experience,” she notes.
Attempts to learn Lithuanian
Although Lithuanian was not the language of the family, Škėma-Snyder eventually decided to learn it. When asked what led to this decision, she explains that it was a part of her mother’s life, even though she did not want to open up about it.
Škėma’s granddaughter admits that her Lithuanian language skills are poor, but she has never felt any resentment that her mother decided not to teach her children Lithuanian.
“That’s her decision. And I think the fact that she brought me with her on her first trip back was a big decision,” she adds.
Many of the things that held the US Lithuanian community together were alien to her mother even before Škėma’s death, she believes. Even though her mother used to go to Lithuanian camps, she did not understand the calls to foster friendships with others just because they were Lithuanians.
“They would be: if you have two friends, a Lithuanian and an American, and you had to pick one, you must pick the Lithuanian. My mum’s like: that’s the biggest nonsense. That’s not who I am as a person. My mother had eventually found a few friends with whom she really shared things, not just being Lithuanian,” says Škėma-Snyder.
Neither her mother nor her grandparents were religious and they were not particularly involved in Lithuanian community activities. “My mother was a super active feminist and an AIDS activist for healthcare. There were many reasons why she really disconnected from the Lithuanian community.”
Tattoo of a Lithuanian fairy tale
Although Škėma-Snyder says that she never heard her mother say that she would ever want to return to Lithuania, she did see some Lithuanian details when she was growing up. For example, the family used to celebrate Christmas Eve, although not in the traditional way.
Nowadays, Škėma’s granddaughter has hardly any Lithuanian signs in her life, but she says she got a tattoo last year. She rolls up her sleeve and shows a drawing and a sentence from the Lithuanian fairy tale Elenytė Turned into a Golden Marten.
“It’s an illustration by Petras Repšys. It’s from a fairytale book illustrated and published in 1992. I always really liked his work so I did this last year,” says Škėma-Snyder.
Asked if she would like her children to take an interest in Lithuania and the family history, Škėma-Snyder shrugs: if they want to.
“My daughter is interested, my son is not particularly interested. That’s fine. I’m actually trying to get their citizenship done. So if they want to be able to live and work there, they can. I got mine a couple of years ago through my grandparents.”
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