We found a philologist: Tomas Taškauskas

In front of your eyes is the second interview of this year's "We found a philologist" rubric, in which we interview the writer, VU Faculty of Philology alumnus Tomas Taškauskas. Tomas Taškauskas has been active in the philological world for many years, creating both his own texts and writing various articles and reviews in the press, as well as translating the work of other authors from French language. For those who want to get to know our respondent better, we suggest visiting his website and Facebook page! And well, in this interview, we invite you to read the author's thoughts about faith, creativity and other related questions!

- What is the thing / person who made you sincerely laugh most recently?

- That’s a very hard question, because…. I laugh sincerely (and loudly) every day (and not just once). So it is quite easy to make me laugh. Maybe even too easy! Most often the people that make me laugh are my daughter and wife as well as my colleagues from the IT company, where I am currently working.

- The best / most memorable moment from your time studying in VU?

- The things that stuck out the most are a couple of written pieces – Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė and her piece "Metūgės". Also, Bronius Krivickas and his works. And that during my time studying I proposed to a wonderful girl, with whom we exchanged rings and here we are happily married for more than 10 years.

- What attracted you to writing poetry?

- It is like asking why you fell in love… it’s because poetry was the most alluring for me and I wanted to spend all my life with it. I could tell we were a match made in heaven from the very beginning. And communication between us has been up to scratch. It is a stroke of rare luck for this mutual love. However, I realized this wish of mine better when the time went by. And nowadays from time to time, I rediscover that I just really like poetry. And that's on that.

- How do you maintain faith in your life?

- I would like to clarify, it’s not me who supports faith it’s the faith who is supporting me. I don’t know how I would endure the absurdities of life, the latent stress of quarantines and war, my own flaws and mistakes, all the pain which I caused for others and myself, the strength I would have to get back on my feet over and over again, how would I have overcome the traumas of my childhood if not friendship with God. A friendship that teaches me to smile more often and not to take myself too gravely.

- What kind of feelings came over you the first time you published a book?

- „Aš nuo šitos laimės apsvaigau”¹ all of a sudden the line from Virgis Sakėnas song popped into my mind. The first book is indeed an immersive experience. Happiness, a feeling of fulfillment, and comprehension that you and your art is needed, these things are the greatest pleasure for a writer and a poet. Emotional fuel that lasted me a long time. Until my second book, which I published only 10 years later.

"I'm giddy with this happiness"¹

- Do you feel a change in your creation?

- I'm in the most creative phase of my life right now - I have more ideas than I have time to implement. That's why I would like to spend more time writing. The biggest breakthrough for me so far has been getting into the short poetry genres, from puns to sententia and haiku variations. It remains to be seen where my creative intuition takes me next!

- What would you wish for the current students?

In short, to love not only the language, but also those who speak it! If answering in more detail, I suggest you do an exercise on how to find your life's mission, i.e. to clearly answer the question of what I want to do in my life. According to A. Havard, from whose books I took this exercise, we must ask ourselves two questions: a) Who am I? I.e., what is my story and what is my talent? b) What challenge do I feel called to respond to with passion and dedication? I like the first part the most, because the question "who am I" encourages us to describe the people, works, ideas, events that have had or continue to have the greatest influence in our lives. And when you find your place, it becomes much easier to behave as each of us should behave - freely, with respect for others and for our individuality.

- If the philology program did not exist, what field of study would you have chosen instead?

- If the philology program did not exist, it should be invented.

- What would you say is the most dominant trait of your character?

- Chaotic creativity!