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24 March 2009
Tomas Venclova, considered one of the major figures of world literature and one of Europe's great poets, visited UCL to take part in a discussion with then Director Robin Aizlewood. Venclova was one of the trio of great poets, alongside Nobel Prize winners Joseph Brodsky and Czesław Miłosz, who were close friends, interlocutors and translators of each other's poetry.
Venclova was also one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, and was forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1977. He was stripped of his Soviet citizenship, joining an elite club of just some 40 people to receive this "honour", as he put it, starting with Trotsky and later including amongst others Solzhenitsyn and Rostropovich.
Venclova spoke about Lithuania and Europe today, the city of Vilnius and his book 'Vilnius', essayist in its approach and with its origins (in part) in the conversations he once had with Susan Sontag on the occasion of his first book on the city.