Juozas Paukstelis

Paukštēlis, Juozas 

(real surname Ptašinskas). Born Feb. 19 (Mar. 3), 1899, in the village of Titonis, now in Pakruojis Raion. Soviet Lithuanian writer. People’s Writer of the Lithuanian SSR (1974).

Paukštēlis, who began publishing in 1922, graduated from the University of Kaunas in 1927 and became a teacher. In 1928 he published a collection of short stories, Midnight Ballad, and in 1932 an autobiographical novel, A Widow’s Child. His novels The First Year (1936) and Neighbors (1939; Russian translation, 1959), written in a spirit of critical realism, dealt with Lithuanian provincial and village life.

During the fascist occupation, Paukštēlis discontinued his literary work. In the Soviet period he wrote a trilogy, comprising the novels Youth (1959; Russian translation, 1961), Do Not Rise, Little Sun! (1963; Russian translation, 1966), and Our House Is Here (1969; Russian translation, 1971); the life of the principal hero is closely connected with events in Lithuania during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 and the postwar period. The trilogy won Paukštēlis the Republic Prize of the Lithuanian SSR (1969).

WORKS

Audra ateina. Vilnius, 1956.

REFERENCE

Lietuvių literatūros istorija, vol. 3, part 2. Vilnius, 1965.

E. B. VETROVA-BORISOVA