“I want the whirlwind of my thought to awaken people’s hearts, lift them from their tepid philistine lairs which they hopelessly try to mingle with the desire for peace and love.” Justinas Mikutis died in 1988. Justinėlis, as many called him, had become a nearly legendary figure: some saw him as a saint and others as possessed. Without a doubt he was one of the most remarkable personalities of our time, a martyr and thinker, shaking society from cultural and moral slumber, a wonderfully alive and free person – sometimes extremely sensitive and at other times – quite unceremonious, temperamental, an unparalleled Samogitian apostle, the voice of conscience wandering around Lithuania. He was so full of historical insights, religious interpretations, and cultural prescriptions intertwined with poetic generalizations, that he simply couldn’t stop and write down the incredible flow of his thoughts! Born in 1922, he studied at the University of Kaunas. During the war years, he worked as a teacher, and was arrested after the war and suffered eleven years of Stalinist camps. Upon his return, he interacted with Lithuanian intellectuals coming into their own – though he later said with resentment that any tired Samogitian boor feels his own thoughts better than some celebrated Lithuanian cultural figure. < … > (From “Incoherent thoughts about eternal things”, the introduction.// Vaidotas Žukas. Veidai. Jaunųjų kūrybos almanachas 88. Vaga, 1989).
Justinas’Figure in the Park. 1985 I painted Justinas Mikutis like a poet walking in the park: “I ne slishkom li velikolepno ot gremutshevo parka glazam?” (Can my eyes endure the grandeur of this thunderous grove?) (Osip Mandelstam).
