Ričardas Gavelis

Biography Early life Greek Catholic Church of Holy Trinity in Vilnius. Gavelis grew up in its courtyard. Ričardas Gavelis was born on 8 October 1950, in a Red Cross maternity hospital in Vilnius to mathematician Vytautas Gavelis (1928–1991) and physicist Vanda Gavelienė (née Riaubaitė) (1926–2013). Gavelis' grandfather was a pedantic farmer who mortgaged his farm immediately after inheriting it, after which he traveled to South Africa in 1925 to work in a diamond mine. During Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he owned a large amount of land and avoided deportation to Siberia by bribing government officials.

Gavelis lived facing the courtyard of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, not far from the Vilnius Gate of Dawn.

Studies and career in Soviet Lithuania Gavelis studied physics at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. In 1969 he returned to Vilnius and began studying physics at Vilnius University. In 1975 he married fellow physicist Nijolė Paukštytė. He also began creating dramas such as Inadaptus (1976) and Sūkuriai (1977). From 1978 to 1980 he was employed in the editorial department of the magazine Mokslas ir gyvenimas. In 1993 he wrote a sequel to Vilnius Poker, Vilnius Jazz (Vilniaus Džiazas).

Ričardas Gavelis died on 18 August 2002, In 2020, a square on Drujos Street was named after him. A memorial plaque was uncovered in 2021 in Druskininkai.

Literary work Themes

The fear of persecution is one of the most interesting human manias. Under its pretext you can write many interesting books and present very mesmerizing images and metaphors. The entire mania of persecution is based on fear – the fear of the unknown, the fear of not knowing. I played and played this instrument while I could... and "anti-romantic", although playful satire and irony is also present. Gavelis' work became known for its intriguing and deliberately provocative prose, which "retained something of the scientist's logic".

Memoirs of a Young Man Memoirs of a Young Man, written as early as 1987, where censorship and state policies prohibited people from knowing the true casualties of the accident, making a secondary character in the story go insane because he refused to sign the fake death warrants of the victims. Gavelis often sought to bring Lithuania to Western literature, and it is reflected in the novel's character Tomas Kelertas, the alter ego of Gavelis (who also appears in other novels), who sought to "forge the non-existent soul of Lithuania". Gavelis often explores the themes of Lithuania's identity. In 1989, pertaining to that notion, Gavelis wrote that "we have to search for Lithuanian uniqueness and express it in a European context. There is no other way. We are Europeans - so let's be Europeans",

Views and personality Gavelis explained, in the last interview recorded, creating novels for him is like jazz, in that it's unpredictable and the plot often changes during the process of writing. A supporter of the "theory of population genetics", Gavelis viewed culture as a "common way of living for humans, and most importantly, a common way of thinking" and that "culture is spiritual civilization".