The year 2023 was the 140th anniversary of the birth and the 50th anniversary of the death of Mykolas Vaitkus. On 27 October 2023 – the birthday of Mykolas Vaitkus, a prominent Gargždai resident, public figure, writer and priest – a sculptural composition dedicated to his memory was unveiled at the grand staircase in Gargždai Park. The sculptural composition was created by Kaunas sculptor Lukas Šiupšinskas.
The sculptural composition is reminiscent of a fragment of Vaitkus' room in Manor Park. The sculpture itself looks out over the picturesque Minija Valley. The backs of the chairs depict the four symbols of water. On the table, there are four books and a quotation that can be read while sitting on the chairs.
Mykolas Vaitkus, a talented writer whose books are a bibliographical rarity, described in his memoirs the now defunct Rönne Barons Manor, its owners and Gargždai Park. His memoirs (eight volumes in total were published in the 1970s) are particularly valuable because they vividly highlight the interwar period, about which still too little is known to the general public, with its fiery determination to create a free democratic state, with all the colours and behind-the-scenes of the spiritual, political and artistic world. M. Vaitkus was in close contact with the most prominent political, ecclesiastical, cultural and public figures of the first half of the last century – Antanas Smetona, Augustinas Voldemaras, Maironis, Vaižgantas, Adamas Jakšt-Dambrauskas, Sofija Kymantaite-Čiurlioniene, Salomeja Nėrimi, Cyprus Petrauskas, and most of the diasporic authors, especially Bernardas Brazdžionis, who encouraged him to write his memoirs, which became the most valuable part of the legacy of his work. Vaitkus also wrote novels, dramas and poems and is considered to be the pioneer of the aestheticism movement in Lithuania.
Reviews