Justinas Marcinkevicius by Augustas Didzgalvis

Justinas Marcinkevičius (10 March 1930 – 16 February 2011) was a prominent

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

n poet and playwright.

Life and career

Marcinkevičius was born in 1930 in Važatkiemis, Prienai District. In 1954, he graduated from the Faculty of History and

Philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

Vilnius University Vilnius University ( Lithuanian: ''Vilniaus universitetas'') is a public research university, which is the first and largest university in Lithuania, as well as one of the oldest and most prominent higher education institutions in Central and Ea ...

with a degree in

Lithuanian language Lithuanian (, ) is an East Baltic languages, East Baltic language belonging to the Baltic languages, Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of Lithuanians and the official language of Lithuania as well as one of t ...

and

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

. He joined the Communist Party of Lithuania in 1957. He worked for a number of years as vice-chairman of the board of the Union of Lithuanian Writers. Marcinkevičius is regarded as one of the most prominent members of

Sąjūdis The Sąjūdis (, ), initially known as the Reform Movement of Lithuania (), is a political organisation which led the struggle for Lithuanian independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was established on 3 June 1988 as the first oppositi ...

. He died in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

Literary style and themes

Having grown up during the post-war period, Marcinkevičius evokes in his poetry a romanticized version of childhood spent in the Lithuanian countryside, of first love, of man's relationship with nature. In his poetry specific and solid peasant thinking is combined with a mind seeking to draw broad general conclusions, and the tradition of Lithuanian poetry singing the Earth's praises with contemporary modes of poetic thought. As a poet, he has sought to grasp the essence of national experience and give it fresh artistic expression. In his lyrical verse Marcinkevičius strives to comprehend the real meaning of what is going on inside man and society and moves the reader with his ardent lyrical confessions. For most his life Justinas Marcinkevičius lived and wrote during the complex times of

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public s ...

. He defended the cultural self-awareness of his nation. The poet brought back humanistic idea in describing a man, continued on the romantic and

lyric poetry Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term for both modern lyric poetry and modern song lyrics derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, t ...

tradition, valued the aesthetic side of literature, as opposed to the heroic and propagandistic style of socialist realism. Marcinkevičius wrote poems in a romantic and modern style.

Awards and acknowledgements

* Lithuanian National Prize * Herder Prize 1998 * Baltic Assembly Prize for Literature, the Arts and Science (2001) * National Advancement Prize in Culture (18 May 2008)

Works of note

After the emergence of Marcinkevičius' first book ''I Plead for a Word'' in 1955, he has published fourteen collections of poetry, three historical plays, two collections of essays, a novella and various translations into Lithuanian.

Poetry and compilations

*''Liepsnojantis krūmas'' (The Burning Bush; 1968) *''Gyvenimo švelnus prisiglaudimas'' (The Gentle Cuddle of Life; 1978) *Rhymed trilogy of historical dramas: **''Mindaugas'' (1968, English translation of Part 2 in 1971) **''Mažvydas'' (1977) **''Katedra'' (The Cathedral; 1971)

Novels

*''Dienoraštis be datų'' (A Diary Without Dates; 1981) *''Tekančios upės vienybė'' (Unity of a Flowing River; 1994) He has also translated into Lithuanian works of

Adam Mickiewicz Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (24 December 179826 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He also largely influenced Ukra ...

, Alexandr Pushkin, Sergei Yesenin,

Mikhail Lermontov Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romanticism, Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called ...

, and the Finnish

Kalevala The ''Kalevala'' () is a 19th-century compilation of epic poetry, compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling a story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory ...

legend.

References

* Year of Lithuanian book
Justinas Marcinkevičius Biography
. Retrieved on 2007-09-24 *"HONOR AND SUFFERING, The Second Part of the Drama-Poem MINDAUGAS," Lituanus 17,4 (1971)

. Retrieved on 2013-03-15 *"Mindaugas," translated by Ona Čerškutė-Spidell, introduced by Rimvydas Šilbajoris, in Alfreds Straumanis, ed., Fire and Night: Five Baltic Plays (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1986), pages 145-208. {{DEFAULTSORT:Marcinkevicius, Justinas 1930 births 2011 deaths Burials at Antakalnis Cemetery Lithuanian male poets Lithuanian dramatists and playwrights Vilnius University alumni People from Prienai District Municipality Grand Crosses of the Order of Vytautas the Great 20th-century Lithuanian poets 20th-century dramatists and playwrights Herder Prize recipients Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 2nd Class