Kreve-Mickevicius, Vincas

Krėvė-Mickevičius, Vincas 

Born Oct. 19, 1882, in the village of Subartonys, present-day Varena Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died July 7, 1954, in Philadelphia. Lithuanian writer; came from a peasant family. Graduated from the University of Kiev in 1909. Beginning in 1920 he lived in Lithuania; in 1922 he became a professor at the Universities of Kaunas and Vilnius.

After the creation of the Lithuanian SSR in 1940, Krėvė-Mičkevidius became the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR (1941). At the end of the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), he emigrated to the USA. He was first published in 1909. In his collection of Legends of Old Dainava (1912; Russian translation, 1973) and the historical dramas Sarunas (1911) and Skirgaila (1922), he portrayed the distant past of the Lithuanian people. In his collections of short stories Under the Thatched Roof (1922) and The Sorcerer (1939; Russian translation, 1963), as well as the drama The Son-in-law (1922), Krėvė-Mickevičius described daily life in the Lithuanian villages. His novella In the Shadows (1940) laid bare the social contradictions of life in bourgeois Lithuania. His main works have become classics of Lithuanian literature. Kreve-Mickevidius published several collections of folk poetry.

WORKS

Raštai, vols. 1–10. Kaunas, 1921–30.
Šiaudinej pastogėj. Vilnius, 1964.
Likimo žaismas. Vilnius, 1965.
Raganius. Žentas. Vilnius, 1968.

REFERENCE

Lietuvių litaraturos istorija, vol. 3, part 2. Vilnius, 1961.

I. LANKUTIS