Place

DONE

DONE Ežerų Dugne

— — — — —

DONE To Carve Something Meaningful

DONE Stendhal at Hand in Vilnius

Stendhal might have spent the night in a building near where I live.

There is a plaque on the wall of the building — a bookstore now, specializing in French literature — memorializing the night that Stendhal is said to have stayed there.

With its bilingual inscription and bas relief portrait of the artist, the plaque brings some kind of life to that corner, projecting a line clear to a far side of Europe.

Something of French culture once comforted itself here, if you can imagine.

You’ll have to imagine.

The plaque does not cite its sources. It does not quote from the writer. It does not paint a picture of an event, a time, or a place.

ŠIAME NAME … BUVO APSISTOJES … STENDALIS

DANS CETTE MAISON STENDHAL … FIT ETAPE

Where would one look if one were inclined to dig up the truth of what may or may not have happened in this or another place at this or that time so many decades, centuries since?

But then, who would care to doubt these chiseled records?

All told, the plaque is less a statement of fact than one of values.

“Draw this place closer, in your mind, to what you might already know well,” it says.

“Comfort yourself, that you are not so far away, so disconnected, as you thought—as you might have feared.”

In some letters Stendhal notes his passing, while marching with Napoleon’s army, through various cities and towns in the region. His remarks are spare, revealing an experience of dismal early winter and little else.²

DONE The Wise Man of Švarco

There is a man who looks at me where I walk my dog in the park.

Near the French embassy, up the street from the university, he stands in a long black coat and hat, peering over a significant beard, maintained with care for decades, or so one can deduce from its stately sweep.

He is a painting on a wall. Less a mural or a portrait than an icon.

The wall marks the boundary of what was the Jewish ghetto in Vilnius, established during the Nazi occupation.³

This representation, notably greater than life-size, is rendered in a stenciled style. It was placed here as a reminder of the kinds of lives that used to pass not just behind, through, around, and in front of walls like the one it appears on, but also—and perhaps most importantly—with no special regard for such things: unheeded and undetermined by the barriers such walls would become.

This painting—one of many in the area—has been given a nickname: “The Wise Man.” His arms are folded, his hands are tucked into opposing sleeves, his head is tilted knowingly. His posture is one of forbearance, as much as wisdom, or anything else. One feels suffered to look, but not to linger.

I pass him with the briefest acknowledgment and return home. He does not follow me.

This man’s likeness, it turns out, was drawn from an archival photograph.⁴

Upon learning this, I started to feel whatever life, wisdom, forbearance, and otherwise that the painting purported to represent drain out of that static, flattened artifact.

What of the real man, himself? Did he live in this sector? Or in this city? Was he wise? Did he, in his life, stand for what he has been made to stand for, now? And how, and to whom, did he convey whatever wisdom he might might have possessed?

Of what is this painting a reminder? Perhaps only a reminder to remember — which may be enough, and plenty, for a given moment.⁵