Reading with Corinna Harfouch and Hideyo Harada from Antanas Škėma's novel of the same name
"The White Sheet" is a milestone of modern Lithuanian literature. Written in exile in New York, Škėma uses his own biography to tell the story of the Lithuanian exile Antanas Garšva. In early 1950s New York, he works as a liftboy in the city's largest hotel. His daily up and down in the elevator feels to him like the labor of Sisyphus (earning Škėma the nickname "Lithuanian Camus"). The mindless repetition of the same things, coupled with the sensory overload of the American megacity's artificial reality, wears down the nerves of the already neurasthenic Garšva, who nevertheless sees himself as a poet, born to leave behind verses for eternity.
Music also plays an important role in the reading. The pianist Hideyo Harada plays piano pieces from Bach to Mozart, Chopin and Schumann to Čiurlionis and Bartók.
