Antanas
VIENUOLIS (pen name of Antanas
Zukauskas), writer born in Uzuozeriai, county of
Utena, on April 7, 1882. After four years of study
at the gymnasium in Liepaja, Latvia, he went to
Moscow where he became an apprentice in a
pharmacy. However, city life held no attraction
for him and in 
1903
he left Moscow to visit the Caucasus. He spent the
next four years there, which left an indelible
impression on him for the rest of his life. He
earned his living as a pharmacist's assistant and
traveled throughout the region observing the
beauties of nature and studying the customs of the
people. There he began his literary career with
the legends Amzinasis smuikininkas (The
Eternal Fiddler) and Uzkeiktieji vienuoliai
(The Cursed Monks). In 1907 he returned to Moscow,
gained a degree in pharmacy at the university, and
devoted more and more of his free time to literary
work, publishing it in Lithuanian periodicals.
Works of this period include PaskenduolS
(The Drowned Maiden), Krymo ispudziai (Crimean
Impressions), and Kinta laikai, nepastovi ir
zmogaus laime (Times Change and so Does Man's
Fortune), the latter echoing his experiences
during the 1917 revolution in Russia. He returned
to Lithuania in 1918 and took part as a
press-correspondent in the wars of independence;
his articles were published under the title Is
korespondento uzrasomosios knygeles (From the
Note-Book of a Correspondent). In 1922 he settled
in Anyksciai where he spent the rest of his life,
working in his pharmacy, writing, and occasionally
undertaking journeys During World War II, his son
was deported to Siberia at the time of the first
Soviet occupation (1940-41), and his daughter
withdrew to the West at the approach of the second
(1944); his pharmacy was confiscated. Living under
the Soviet regime, he had to pay tribute to the
occupying power, as did many who wished to
continue their activity in the creative arts. His
largest gesture of this kind was the novel Puodziunkiemis
(a place name), written in 1947-1951, in which he
portrayed the transformation of a village into a
collective farm. The author once remarked that the
novel had not been printed as he had written it,
but it nevertheless stands above other works of
that period which follow the dictates of socialist
realism. As a writer he was held in high official
esteem throughout the post war years. A number of
his works, especially Puodziunkiemis, were
translated into instead of pursuing socialist
realism, he turned more to legends and traditional
stories, and immersed himself in writing his
memoirs. He died of a heart-attack on Aug. 17,
1957.
Folklore was for
Vienuolis the earliest school of literature. While
studying at the gymnasium, he spent his summer
vacations traveling from village to village and
writing down stories, songs and folk tales as told
by the old people. Another stimulus to writing was
the poetry of Bishop Antanas Baranauskas, whose Anyksciu
silelis (The Forest of Anyksciai) and the
songs from Kelione Peterburkan (The Journey
to St. Petersburg) he had learned by heart as a
child and used to recite them at home. His mother
was the daughter of the Bishop's brother. He later
read Rousseau, Maupassant and other French
realists as well as the Russian classics. His
studies of the exact sciences have also left their
mark on his writings, for example, his emphasis on
evolution and heredity. This, however, did not
diminish the Lithuanian character of his outlook
or his sensitivity which gave his work
extraordinary emotional tension, as in Paskenduoles,and
which sometimes approached sentimentality, as in
the novel Viesnia is Siaures (Woman From
the North).
Vienuolis believed
that the writer should draw his material from life
and should strive "to show things as they are
in nature". He based his stories upon real
people and incidents,
filling out the facts of reality with the force of
his imagination which served him especially when
he set about reconstructing the historic past of
Lithuania in the novel Kryzkeles(Crossroads)
and in creating legends.
In 1920 Vienuolis
began publishing his work under the title Rastai
(Writings), of which 11 volumes appeared by 1937.
In the same year he published his Rinktiniai
rastai (Selected Writings) with an
introduction by Motiejus Miskinis. After the war,
in 1953 -55 his Rastai were brought out in
7 volumes. But this edition omitted those of his
works which expressed his attitude to the
Russians; those which portrayed realistically the
unvarnished reality of the Bolshevik revolution;
and those revealing the idealism which accompanied
the wars of liberation and the restoration of the
Lithuanian state. His testament, and beliefs and
of his last wishes, was likewise not published nor
carried out. One of his requests which the Soviet
regime refused to carry out was that a cross be
placed upon his grave.
He reached the peak
of his art in the short story and the tale, and
with such works as Paskenduole, Inteligentu
palata (The Intellectuals' Ward) and V6zys
(Cancer), he placed the Lithuanian short story on
a European level. Of the three, the finest is Paskenduole,
the tragic story of a peasant girl who is seduced
and abandoned. In this masterpiece are present all
the best qualities of his works:
knowledge of man and
nature and his feeling for them, a lyrical mood,
emotional tension coupled with restraint,
directness of language and vocabulary, melodious
sentence structure, natural treatment of
psychological crises, tasteful handling of the
subject, all of which blend into a single
artistically finished structure. Inteligentu
crats and the gentry
at the end of the tsarist era, is one of the most
accomplished and convincing moments of
psychological insight and truth in Lithuanian
literature, The short story Vezys is
noteworthy as the author's first attempt to deal
with a complex theme, the decline of a once rich
aristocratic family, in the development of which
he skillfully comes to terms with its extensive
material. In novels his manner is traditional and
in part old fashioned, as in Pries diena
(Be fore Dawn, 1925), Viesnia is siaures (1932-33),
Kryzkeles (1932), Ministeris (The
Minister, 1935), and Puodziunkiemis (1952).
He was a pioneer in
planting legends and literature of travel as
literary forms in the Lithuanian soil. Of the
former the works composed in the Caucasus are the
best, Amzmasis smuikininkas and Uzkeiktieji
vienuoliai. In his travel sketches he provides
excellent descriptions of nature and vividly
captures the character of the people, their
customs and culture, occasionally not sparing his
sense of humor.
Historical
patriotism incited him to write drama, although he
had been interested in the theater for a long
time, frequently attended performances and wrote
monologues. His first drama was 18S1 metai
(The Year 1831;
1937), based on the
insurrection against the Russians. Previously he
had written Prieblandoje (At Twilight;
published in 1944), a play full of humour and
comic figures. After the war he returned to
historical drama with Tvirtov6 (The
Fortress). His dramas have interesting episodes,
but on the whole they lack scenic action.
The memoirs of
Vienuolis are the crown of his literary career.
The pieces collected in Is mano atsiminimu
(My Recollections, 1957), such as Samdine Alena
(The Maid Alena), by their sincerity, grasp of
reality and the best works issuing from the
author's pen.
English translations
of Paskenduole (with the title Veronika)
and Uzkeiktieji vienuoliai (The Cursed Monks) are
available in Selected Lithuanian Short Stories,
edited by Stepas Zobarskas (New York, 1963).
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