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According to the author of the novel, the personality of P. Cvirka has interested him since childhood. The uncle of the writer Juozas, a great storyteller, lived in his parents’ neighborhood. During the interwar period, he lived and worked in the United States for some time. When the old man’s daughter was preparing to go somewhere for a long time, G. Alexa’s mother asked: “My father will be sad alone, let the boy spend the night with him.” As G. Aleksa herself says:
“I heard my uncle’s stories about his nephew Peter and America. I was able to read books with the author’s autographs. When I read “Frank Kruka” by Cvirka growing up, I realized where I was drawing the details of American life. The writer’s mother’s family had a hard time, so Petras Cvirka used to spend the summer with her uncle Juozas. According to the uncle, Peter, who was locked up in the old barn, kept writing something … I, a child, really liked to get into the barn: or perhaps the writer forgot or hid something there? When I asked my father, Alexander, to tell us about the writer, he said “they were all red” and waved his hand angrily.
Manis did not like Peter Cvirka. A neighbor who was ill asked to bring firewood to the kitchen. The barn was already turned into firewood. After receiving the huge key, I went inside. After showing up at the shelter, I found books dotted with mice and various papers. I asked him to give me that “property.” The woman said angrily: “Those letters are very dear to me. “And he added,” Next time I’m growing up, maybe I’ll quit. “Then I didn’t understand why heart-friendly letters were entrusted to mice. Next time it didn’t come so fast …
After graduating from medical school, I was already working in Vilnius. Neighbors died, relatives sold their house. While visiting my parents, I saw a new owner transporting a shipment from his uncle (as Veliuoniškis calls his uncles) to a nearby garbage dump. I took a look at what he was throwing. My hopes came true in heaps. The property of a barn thrown away. This is how postcards, letters and several books written by Peter Cvirka came into my hands.
My father’s sister, godmother Petronėlė, when she saw how happy I was with those papers wrapped in rats, she gave me a “memory book” from her gym. And there is the recording by Petras Cvirka, a fourteen-year-old Vilkija Progymnasium student: “Like the yellow music of autumn, as the last sad chords of summer will touch your heart, remember that they wanted to live … and we will make it equally comfortable .. – Isn’t it too late then to dream of the “happiness” of life? .. Maybe ?. Ex-kun. Petras Cvirka “.
I was amazed by the calligraphic writing and the teaching of ideas, which was very different from the peer records on the album.
A little later I met the writer’s sister, Izabele. This talkative and charming woman spoke of her brother Peter’s childhood. I wrote a youth theater play “Vilkiūkščiai” about the writer’s days in Vilkija progymnasium. Theater experts were not interested in this work.
In the autumn of 1989 he participated in the Veliuona Story Festival, where the Peter Cvirka Literary Prize was awarded for the latest book of stories. Actress Kazimiera Kymantaitė said at the table that the writer had been poisoned. Later I had to visit the actress’s house with the writer Romualdas Granauskas and learn in detail about the doctor Albina, guardian of the House of Writers’ Union, and about the circumstances of Cvirka’s death. Then even more witnesses appeared: the writer Jonas Mačiulis, the traveler Antanas Poška. Petras Norkūnas, Doctor of Medical Sciences, who participated in the commission that observed the autopsy of Peter Cvirka’s corpse to determine the cause of death, stated: “Everyone thought it was a heart attack, but we found nothing. The blood vessels are healthy. Apparently some spasms … Then I found out. He knew the woman he was having lunch with. I learned from her that at the time he was being treated for roundworms. Those alcoholic drugs were the cause of death. “
The party figures, as if in agreement, repeated in their memories: “Cvirka died of a heart attack. The blood vessels of the heart were clogged and brittle, breaking like matchsticks … ”So I decided: I have to find out the reasons for the lie.
Lithuania woke up to the ideas of the Revival Movement. At that time, Cvirka’s cousin, Julius Velička, had to be treated. He knew that the writer visited him often. The disease progressed and Julius Velička spoke about Cvirka’s last visit before his death. He admitted that so far he hadn’t told anyone what they were talking about then, as that would have become a clue. The writer was overwhelmed by despair at the massacre, by the “cruel smell that got into his throat” and told about the new novel, in which he promises to write the whole truth about what is happening in Lithuania. “
Photo by Vytautas Račkauskas / Peter Cvirka
According to Gaspar Alex, explaining the history of work is more difficult than writing the novel itself. The idea of this work, as a collection of diverse intuitions, arose after long reflections and deliberations. The author of the book spoke with both dissidents and Soviet sympathizers. He admits that it has not been easy to avoid the pitfalls of the current situation and internal and external censorship. Today, it has become fashionable to schematically represent historical events and their characters.
Taking this novel, G.Aleksa had to understand the historical situation of Lithuania in the 20th century. in the first half, when Peter Cvirka matured as a writer. He received respect and awards for his novel The Earth as a Feeder and his collection of stories Everyday Stories. He received support from the Smeton Ministry of Education for a trip to Paris.
There is an enormous amount of footage on the writer. According to G. Aleks, he had to critically evaluate the memories of Soviet actors to understand their bias and tendency. Cvirka lived in the context of important historical events. Soviet historians highlight the role of the Communists in highlighting the “fascist” regime of Antanas Smetona.
According to Lyudmila Stern, a history teacher, “a significant part of the Western European Intellectual Union in the 20th century. in the 1930s and 1940s as an ideal and prosperous world order for the future. “Western intellectuals were cleverly manipulated. Cvirka, like the entire group of Lithuanian writers, fell into the Soviet net.
G.Aleksa spent a lot of time at the Lithuanian Special Archive, Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore. Virginijus Gasiliūnas, the head of the Scientific Library manuscript, revealed to him a number of subtleties in the manuscript of the unfinished novel The River Doesn’t Return. Due to the editing of Antanas Venclova and Kostas Korsakas, Cvirka’s writings received unfavorable indications for the Soviet regime. Therefore, G.Aleksa decided to add an excerpt from Cvirka’s unfinished manuscript “The river does not return” at the end of the novel.
According to G. Aleksa: “I did not have the objective of writing a biographical novel. I wanted to show it to a man. A wrong man who failed and did not have the opportunity to explain the reasons for his mistakes. I was happy to find a way to reveal Peter Cvirka’s personality during the last hours of his life, when he seems to be telling his own story, which, like a movie, shows fragments of a past life.
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