Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius | |
|---|---|
 Krėvė-Mickevičius in 1921 | |
| Prime Minister of Lithuania | |
| In office 24 June 1940 – 1 July 1940 | |
| Chairman of Lithuanian Nationalist Union | |
| In office 19 August 1924 – 29 June 1925 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1882-10-19)October 19, 1882 Subartonys,Russian Empire |
| Died | June 7, 1954(1954-06-07) (aged 71) Broomall, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Political party | Lithuanian Nationalist Union (1924–1926) |
| Spouse | Rebeka Karak (m. 1913) |
| Children | Ona Aldona Mickevičiūtė - Mošinskienė (1914–2005) |
| Alma mater | Lviv University |
Vincas Mickevičius (pl.Wincenty Mickiewicz, October 19, 1882 – July 17, 1954), better known by hispen nameVincas Krėvė-Mickevičius, was aLithuanianwriter,poet,novelist,playwright andphilologist. He is also known asVincas Krėvė, the shortened name he used in the United States.
Vincas Mickevičius was born to a family of peasant farmers on October 19, 1882, in the village ofSubartonys inDzūkijaethnographic region of Lithuania. His family was calledKrėvė by the local villagers, the name that he later used for his pen name. The customs and traditions of his native district were a constant source of the inspiration for his literary work.
In 1898, he became a student for the Roman Catholic priesthood at theVilnius Seminary, but in 1900 he was expelled from the seminary. In 1904, he enrolled theUniversity of Kyiv. However, a year later, the university was temporarily closed due to the revolutionary conditions in theRussian Empire, and Krėvė-Mickevičius, unwilling to interrupt his studies, entered theUniversity of Lviv, inGalicia, which was at the time part of theAustrian Empire, and in 1908, he received his doctorate inphilology. That same year, the University of Kyiv awarded him a gold medal for his thesis on the original home of theIndo-Europeans. In 1913, the University of Kyiv awarded him the degree of Master ofComparative Linguistics for his dissertation on the origin of the namesBuddha andPratjekabuddha.
In 1909, Krėvė-Mickevičius became a high school teacher in the city ofBaku,Azerbaijan. Three years later he assisted in founding thePeople's University of Baku, and delivered lectures there.
Lithuania achieved independence in 1918, and a year later, Krėvė-Mickevičius became Lithuanian Consul in Azerbaijan. In 1920, he returned to Lithuania, and settled inKaunas, which at the time was thetemporary capital.
When theUniversity of Lithuania was founded in 1922, Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius became professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and remained there as part of the faculty for the following two decades.
His first attempts on writing came at the age fifteen, at first usingRussian andPolish languages; however, after 1902, he wrote inLithuanian. The first volume of his collected works was published in 1921, at which time he was already a well-known and respected figure, serving as editor of several academic and literary periodicals.
On 24 June 1940, he was appointed as Prime Minister of Lithuania by acting PresidentJustas Paleckis. He headed the "People's Government of Lithuania", which was formed essentially as arubber stamp for theSoviet takeover of Lithuania. On July 1, 1940, he, together with some other communists, visitedVyacheslav Molotov (Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR) and asked for full annexation of Lithuania into the USSR (this visit was later used as the pretext for that de jure annexation, although occupation and the de facto annexation happened before that). On returning, he offered his resignation, which was not accepted at the time.
After the start of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania in 1941, and the closing of higher educational institutions in 1943, Krėvė-Mickevičius went into hiding. Soviet forces reoccupied Lithuania in 1944, at which point he fled the country and settled in adisplaced persons camp at Glasenbach, nearSalzburg, Austria. There, he taught at the local camp's high school. In 1947, theUniversity of Pennsylvania extended an invitation to join its faculty. There, he served as an assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures until 1953, when he retired. On July 17, 1954, Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius died inBroomall, Pennsylvania, United States.
He was considered as a candidate for theNobel Prize in Literature.[1]
The literary production of Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius is wide and varied. It included historical dramas, collections of folklore, short stories and sketches of village life, novels on contemporary problems, and tales based on oriental themes. At his death he was engaged on a major work entitledSons of Heaven and Earth, which defies classification. It is written partly as drama and partly as a narration; its subjects are biblical with the action taking place inPalestine at the beginning of the Christian era. His work filled with a romantic impulse, drawing attention to rural life and oriental themes, is balanced with realistic narration and description. His writing is characterized by an unusually large vocabulary with remarkable purity. Some scholars sustain that Lithuanian language acquired a range of expression through his works only rivaled by that ofAncient Greece.
In 1997, a museum to Krėvė-Mickevičius was opened in his last residence before emigration inVilnius, Lithuania.[2] A road in theDainava district ofKaunas, Lithuania (Vinco Krėvės prospektas) is also named after him.
