Ojàrs Väcietis

Väcietis, Ojàrs 

Born Nov. 13, 1933, on the farmstead of Dumpji, Trapene Volost (small rural district), now the Valka Raion. Soviet Latvian poet. Member of the CPSU since 1966.

Väcietis studied at the philology department of the Latvian State University. He began to publish in 1950. The verse collections The Wind of Distant Wanderings (1956), In the Fire (1958), No Time to Avoid the Rapids (1960), Breathing (1966; State Prize of the Latvian SSR, 1967), Time of the Cuckoos (1968), Beyond the Hundredth Craving (1969), and others are characterized by civic-mindedness, communist ideals, and a feeling of responsibility for his generation. Väcietis is the author of a novella about the young entitled With the Eyes of Those Days (1958; Russian translation, 1961). Also published in Russian were the collections Meridian Through the Heart (1960) and Synchronizing the Watches (1962).

REFERENCES

Ocherk istorii latyshskoi sovetskoi literatury. Riga, 1957.
Chaklais, M. “Ne mozhet byt’ provintsiei—serdtse.” Druzhbanarodov, 1967, no. 12.

V. A. LABRENTSE