REMEMBRANCE

On the occassion of Greimas’ centenary, his face, name and ideas are becoming collective memory. On this page, we present various memorial gestures and objects created in his honor.

SILVER COIN

To commemorate 100 years since the birth of Algirdas Julien Greimas, the Bank of Lithuania has issued a new collectible silver coin. These coins are made of 925 sterling silver!

© Rolandas Rimkūnas

POSTAGE STAMP

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Algirdas Julien Greimas has been commemorated with the issuance of a postage stamp in his memory. The stamp was created by artist Aušrelė Ratkevičienė and is part of the series “World-Renowned People from Lithuania”. It has a print run of 200 000 and a denomination of €0.39.

CALENDAR

The semiotic calendar for the year of Greimas consists of twelve cardboard sheets: each month delivers Algirdas Julius Greimas’ thoughts on time from On Imperfection (1987). The structure of the calendar is based on Greimas’ two principles of semiotics that are important to the analysis of time: the semiotic square and aspectuality. Laying out the twelve sheets into a picture of the whole year, one should follow the logic of movement in the semiotic square: winter is negated by spring, which leads to summer, and from there we go to the summer-denying fall, which takes us back to winter. When the sheets are laid out according to the principles of the semiotic square, fragments of a Greimas quote printed on the other side of the sheets rejoin into a coherent sentence.

© Lietuvos Nacionalinė UNESCO komisija
© Gintautė Žemaitytė, Aušra Lisauskienė

EXHIBITION

Exhibition “The World As Seen by a Semiotician” interlaces A. J. Greimas’ semiotics with his personality. The exhibition is comprised of two parts: an optical installation the Semiotizer and three narratives about Greimas’ roles in life, his school of semiotics and a number of important concepts. It was created in collaboration with the Lithuanian National Commission for UNESCO. The exhibition team includes Gintautė Žemaitytė, Aušra Lisauskienė, Justinas Dūdėnas, Jurgis Dagelis, Milda Valančiauskienė, Miglė Anušauskaitė, Austėja Oržekauskienė, Dmitrij Gluščevskij, Paulius Jevsejevas.

1 GREIMAS

Algirdas Julien Greimas was proud of the fact that students would call his “Dictionary of Old French” (1968) simply Greimas. “Can I have the Greimas, please”, they would ask the librarian. By request of the A. J. Greimas Centre of Semiotics and Literary Theory, the Mint of Lithuania has issued 300 souvenir coins called 1 greimas. The coin was authored by graphic artist Petras Repšys. On the obverse, there is the inscription: “1 greimas”, on the reverse, a portrait of Greimas. The coin is made of a copper-nickel alloy and is 33 mm in diameter.

BUST OF GREIMAS

The bust of Algirdas Julien Greimas, situated near the Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts of the University of Šiauliai, was unveiled on September 6, 2017. The author of the bust is Gintautas Lukošaitis, a sculptor from Šiauliai.

POSTERS

The city of Vilnius got decorated with posters commemorating A. J. Greimas’ centenary. Displayed in different parts of the Lithuanian capital, the posters were created by semioticians Daiva Saukė and Giedrė Smolskaitė.