Jonas Mekas: Was it this week, or last?

Jonas Mekas, born in Lithuania 1922,
died this week in New York. But may-
be he died last week, depending on
whether January 23rd belongs to the
present 7 days, or the previous ones.
Imprecision presents itself repeat-
edly in recalling his fruitful life.

A figure held in high and affection-
ate regard in film circles, poetic
circles, autobiographical circles,
and fashionable social circles in
New York for nearly seventy years,
his obituaries capture a widespread
admiration for a sensitive strand 
of artistic integrity, and for pro-
fessions of feeling with a delicate
reticence of style. Two examples,
both drawn from The New York Times,
are linked below.

As it happens, the principal works
by or about himself were revisited
in The New York Review of Books only
last June, by a doctoral candidate at
UCLA, and (as frequently happens at
this excellent periodical) that first
presentation led to a spirited ex-
change of views, five weeks later.
They, too, are linked below.

The lives of so many Lithuanians,

to say nothing of published intel-

lectuals, to say even less of men

in their young 20's, were lost in

the 1940s in that bloodland, in 

Timothy Snyder's apt description,

that Jonas Mekas' American career

owed much to his memories of his

own ordeals there, even as he "al-

ways made a point of his devotion

to the present." No one can doubt,

the times would have left a mark.

The key to its outlines, although

necessarily ambiguous to a degree,

lies in the central reality so im-

pressively documented by Snyder -

the rivalry of two savage dictator-

ships for the same dwindling lives.

In a personal letter to the scholar

at UCLA, whose article is indispen-

sable reading on "the authority of

a witness [without] the responsib-

ility of one," Mekas addresses the

strain encapsulated in historian

Eric Hobsbawm's exacting phrase,

the need to protest against forget-

ting. What Mekas has to say is on-

ly perfectly chilling in this hour

in the United States:

                  You are talking about difficulty

                  to acknowledge the facts. No, it's

                  not for me, not at all. What's dif-

                  ficult is the remembering of the

                  facts themselves. Because there

                  were "facts"; life consists of

                  "facts," but each of us concentrates

                  in our lives only on certain "facts,"

                  closest to each of us. The rest pass-

                  es unnoticed, not essential to one's

                  existence, slips our of memory.

Jonas Mekas
Kassel, 1946

Associated Press
Jonas Mekas, 'Godfather'
  of Avant-Garde, Dies at 96
The New York Times
January 23, 2019

Manohla Dargis
Jonas Mekas: A Poet
  with a Movie Camera
The New York Times
January 27, 2019

Michael Casper
I Was There
The New York Review
  of Books
June 7, 2018

Barry Schwabsky
  and Michael Casper
On Jonas Mekas
  An Exchange
The New York Review
  of Books
July 19, 2018

Timothy Snyder
Bloodlands
  Europe Between
    Hitler and Stalin
Basic Books, 2010©

Eric Hobsbawm
On History
The New Press, 1997©