Justinas Marcinkevičius 1972
Justinas Marcinkevičius (1930–2011) studied history and philology as well as the Lithuanian language and literature at the university in Vilnius. He was both a member of the Communist party and a dedicated defender of the Lithuanian language and culture. His genres were romanticism and modernism, not socialistic realism.
Justinas Marcinkevicius. Kuva: Wikipedia/ Augustas Didzgalvis.
Marcinkevičius was the vice-president of the writers’ union in Lithuania and he was at the end of the 1980’s a member of the influential Sąjūdis-movement. The movement was primarily started by artists from different genres. Sąjūdis set the ground for a national mass movement in Lithuania, which, among other things, took part in organising the “Baltic Chain” in 1989. The Baltic Chain, which was also called the Chain of Freedom, was formed by more than 2 million people from the Baltic states, who formed an actual human chain from Tallinn in Estonia to Riga in Latvia and Vilnius in Lithuania. Lithuania gained its independence in 1990.
The Lithuanian translation of the Kalevala by Marcinkevičius was published for the first time in 1972. The edition from 1986 was illustrated by the award-winning Lithuanian artist Arvydas Každailis (b. 1939). The translations also inspired the artist Gražina Didelytė(1938–2007), who did a painting of each of the 50 poems in the Kalevala. The paintings were symbolic and resembled a graphic printout. The press release about the exhibition that was opened in Vilnius in 2013 stated:
“The artist, Didelytė, was interested in the culture and history of the Baltic people and of the destinies of the Finno-Ugric people. The world of the Kalevala is very close to Didelytė’s own line of thought, respecting the nature and understanding the powers of the primeval gods were important to her. … In the Kalevala all the everyday tasks, as for example, fishing, ploughing the fields and sowing the seeds as well as cutting down the forest are skilfully integrated into the peoples’ close relationship to the nature. The characters in the book are not afraid to show their feelings – they get furious and they fall in love, they battle over the brides, families and the wealth of the tribes.”
Nijolė Baronienė & Virginija Barštytė: “J.Marcinkevičius: ‘Dievo vabalėli, paimk mane į dangų su žeme'”. – Delfi Žiniosdienos Naujienoslietuvoje. 19.2.2011. (Read 23.2.2016.)
Wikipedia: Justinas Marcinkevičius. (Read 23.2.2016.)