Genetic scholars, as they follow the evolution of an artwork, seek to grasp the sui generis character of the creative process. This pursuit of an elusive objective recalls a recent provocative tourism campaign launched by Lithuania’s capital to attract a younger demographic.
The ad boldly declared: “Vilnius—the G-spot of Europe. Nobody knows where it is, but when you find it—it’s amazing”. Be as it may, one derives pleasure from genetic research: delving into manuscript materials uncovers the historical contexts the author faced, touches on the intertextual influences the writer engaged with, and pulls the archive reader into discussions about the work’s reception. Reconstructing the genesis means intruding into various realities—both credible and possible—of the work under development. It also involves tracking the mimetic operations employed when the creative mind transforms everyday experiences into fiction and vice versa. However, these textual and non-textual realms reach the scholar in fragments.
Geneticists have persistently experimented with the problem of the perception gap adopting various methods: differentiating creative processes (cf. Genesis 2017), comparing practices across different arts (cf. Genesis 2022), or consulting creative agencies (cf. Genesis 2023). In the words of Aristotle, both genetic scholars and writers operate similarly: “the poet’s job is not relating what actually happened, but rather the kind of thing that would happen” (Poetics, 1451a). Aligning two seemingly impassable mazes of literary studies—genetic reconstruction and mimesis—thus means inspecting the emergence of meaning. From initializing to modifying and, to some extent, stabilizing it, the author (or the critic) inscribes himself into the generative algorithm of surrounding discourses (cf. a semiotic approach by Algirdas Julius Greimas) and constantly breaks this code when creative impulses incite. Integrity and fragility counterbalance each other in the composition process: fictionalizing acts can be recognized within what’s perceived as authorial documentation, while editing sometimes equally both refines and obscures articulated ideas,
et cetera.
Revision may continue ad infinitum, although it remains a mystery how the author determines the moment of aesthesis. Besides, the way geneticist rationalizes the construction materials of the cathartic recoil literature causes in the reader, may not necessarily match with the author’s or editor’s vision for the work’s effect. The language of the conference is English with possible sessions in French, if offered.

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On the second day of the conference „Genesis – Vilnius 2025: Genesis&Mimesis“, which is now in full swing, we are pleased to share photos of this excellent international meeting and the opening address delivered yesterday by our honourable guest, Madame Nathalie Ferrand, Director of ITEM (Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes). The address was titled: From North to South, East to West: Genetic Criticism as a Compass in the Ocean of Texts and Manuscripts.

 » It is a great pleasure and a great honour for me to open this new international conference dedicated to genetic criticism on behalf of the Institute for Modern Texts and Manuscripts (ITEM).

My deepest thanks must go to all those involved in the conception and organization of this year’s conference: to Professor Paulius Subačius and his colleagues, to the organizing committee who drew up its stimulating and engaging programme, to the University of Vilnius for hosting this event, and to the participants from different disciplines and countries who are gathered here today.

“Genesis – Vilnius 2025” is the sixth in a series of meetings that began in Helsinki in 2017, followed by Cracow in 2019, Oxford in 2022, Taipei in 2023, and Bologna in 2024. For the most part these conferences have been held within the bounds of the European continent, though their venues have ranged from this continent’s far north to its south. Thanks to Peng Yi, however, who organized the 2023 event in Taiwan, the Genesis Conferences have extended their span out of Europe, and the West altogether, into Asia.

The Institute for Modern Texts and Manuscripts has been engaged for a long time already in building up a tradition of international research and of strong scientific collaboration with other countries and continents: with Latin America (in particular with Brazil via the Associação dos Pesquisadores do Manuscrito Literario) since the nineties, with Japan where Japanese colleagues have been working, for many years now, closely together with Proust specialists in this field. Close collaboration has been going on with Africa for some twenty years now, and more recently it has begun with India. But the pattern that the Genesis Conferences are gradually forming is one which is broadening this framework yet further. These meetings now impress as a sort of wind-rose mapping the shifting fortunes of our discipline on a veritably global scale.

What is impressive about these international conferences is not just the breadth of their extension across space but also the regularity of their occurrence in time. They have now taken on the steady rhythm of being held once a year. This regularity, however, has by no means lessened the richness or the novelty of the topics broached at each successive annual conference. As much is clear, for example, from the programme that lies before us in the next three days. Nor has this steady familiarity dulled our desire to practice, or still less our pleasure in practicing, genetic criticism. Proof of both these points, I think, is the fact that there have already been conceived and formulated a set of keynote themes for all the Genesis Conferences of the next five years, right up until 2030. These conferences will be held in Lisbon, in Tokyo, in Thessaloniki and in Antwerp, with a stop-over in Paris in 2028 to celebrate together the sixtieth anniversary of genetic criticism’s coming into existence. The colleagues involved in preparing these upcoming encounters are all here amongst us today and it is impossible not to admire the great variety of the topics that they are soon to propose to us.

One of the reasons why genetic criticism continues to interest scholars, and even interests them more year by year, is probably the following: it provides a sort of compass which enables one to find one’s bearings, and not to lose one’s way, in a form of textuality which is quite peculiar, complex and even labyrinthine: namely, the author’s manuscript. All those scholars who work on very large genetic dossiers – especially those of novelists – know how the material making up the drafts can be of a positively blinding richness. The scholar, however, must provide rational and convincing explanations of all that is there in this material. The method, and the concepts, of genetic criticism allow him or her to do so, even if this involves mobilizing also, where necessary, the tools of other disciplines belonging to the field of manuscript studies, such as codicology and palaeography.

In the discipline’s early years practitioners of genetic criticism were sometimes looked upon as eccentric individuals who spent their time transcribing crossed-out passages in author’s texts, wasting months of effort on such seemingly unfruitful matters. Some were of the view that the labour of genetic critics was expended mostly in vain, yielding little in the end but interminable surveys of the tiniest, seemingly most trivial details of texts and manuscripts. Now, it is certainly true that the description of manuscripts, and the transcription of all that is in them, is an indispensable stage in our work. It is also true that we spent a great deal of time poring, with our magnifying glasses, over erasures. But it was not labour lost, because it was the best way to enter into the concrete mechanisms of invention and of creative intelligence, so that we can better understand them. Thanks to this patient work genetic criticism has brought to light another form of textuality that challenges the classic methods of interpretation, these latter having been founded for a long time solely on texts fixed once and for all. Thus, genetic criticism makes possible a profound revision and renovation of our understanding of creative works and creative individualities. The fruits of this approach are more and more clearly evident in the publications which are produced every year in what is now a flourishing field.

Genetic criticism, then, can be defined, today, as a “science of written invention“. I borrow this excellent definition from Daniel Ferrer, who proposes it in the remarkable preface which he provided for the latest addition to our new collection collectively entitled Dans l’atelier de… (In the workshop of…), in a volume dedicated to the writing processes of Virginia Woolf.

The next three days are going to be devoted to a wonderful topic of discussion: Genesis & Mimesis. It is a very challenging topic, both for philosophers and for literary scholars. A topic like this leads us, in fact, down to the very roots of our culture, passing through the work of such authors as Plato and Auerbach and beyond. Mimesis is nothing less than one of the key modalities of our relation to truth and to what is real. By thinking, side by side with one another, genesis and mimesis, it becomes possible to envisage mimesis not only as a result which ensures the solidity of the literary or artistic work, thereby producing the illusion of reality or a relation to what is true, but also as a process, as a path toward producing or achieving these same results.

But mimesis may also be intended in another sense: that of an imitation of models – i.e. of other texts and authors – through which a writer tries to find his own way toward originality. This too is a lively and exciting field of scholarly inquiry.

Very probably, the three days set aside for this will not be enough to thoroughly explore the field of fundamental questions which opens up before us here. Nevertheless, this luminous idea proposed for Genesis Vilnius 2025 by Professor Paulius Subačius, who has been the principal initiator and organizer of this conference, will surely open up a series of exciting avenues of exploration which will be followed out still further in the future. Let me extend, then, my warmest thanks to you and to all the participants, and wish all of us good fortune in the work ahead! »