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The author aims to discuss three topics using the memory research method. The first part discusses construction of the imagined community and collective memory of 19th century Lithuanian intellectuals in a country where education in the national language, and the printing of books and papers, were banned. The second part of the article presents the impact of the Great War and the struggle for independence on collective memory as revealed in memoirs written in the 1914–1940 period by fighters on the front lines, refugees, intellectuals, and people in the occupied country. The third part discusses the extinction of the Great War and the battle for independence from collective memory as a natural and specially constructed phenomenon, caused by the Soviet regime.

Works of fiction and memoirs relating to the First World War written in the Lithuanian language or by Lithuanian authors have so far not been a preoccupation of Lithuanian literary scholars. Due to the breadth of the topic, the analysis in this article is limited to the most important works of fiction and witnesses’ memories of the Great War. The first fictional and documentary works analysed in the article were written during the war itself, the last at the beginning of the Second World War. There is quite a large and very varied (from the point of view of artistic quality) amount of this kind of literature. Using methods of narratology and comparison, the author sets out to analyse the main themes, plots and possible influences, while placing the writings in the history of Lithuanian literature.

[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba] Straipsnyje tiriamas kultūros sureikšminimas Maironio istorinės tematikos darbuose, kūryboje, egodokumentuose. Maironis sugebėjo perorientuoti lietuvių santykį su istorija, rasti joje pozityvųjį pradą ir jį aktualizuoti įvairiais komunikaciniais kodais. Kultūrinio matmens iškėlimas nesirėmė vien lietuvių kalbos archajiškumu ar pagoniškuoju unikalumu – dalykais, kuriuos nuo Simono Daukanto kartojo daugelis atgimimo autorių. Maironis vėrė perspektyvą tautos ateičiai, siedamas ją dar tik su būsimu kultūriniu klestėjimu, tautos kultūrine savirealizacija. Rūpestis kultūra yra viena esminių atgimimo veikėjų korespondencijos temų. Kūrybinio prado kaip esminio tautos ir žmogaus egzistencijos sando akcentavimas sulaukė plataus pritarimo jaunoje lietuvių visuomenėje, kuri savo teoriniais, filosofiniais ir grožiniais raštais konceptualizavo ir toliau išplėtojo Maironio kultūrines ir filosofines idėjas.

The article concentrates on the perspectives of two disciplines – the Lithuanian literature and philosophy of Existentialism – and their specific manifestations as literature of existentialism, and aims to represent how the main questions of existence began to arise in Lithuanian poetry and later were spread at the theoretical level at the university in Kaunas. Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas is the author whose works symbolically represent a turning point in Lithuanian literature. Finding himself in a difficult and ambiguous situation, having entered priesthood, the traditional education for peasant children, he had to break the ties with his past and gain status as an independent artist. The theme of choice, authentic life and questions of the human place in the universe found their poetic expression in the meditative poetry of Mykolaitis-Putinas. In the poetry of his last period, the theme of death becomes important and Heidegger’s concept “Being-toward-death” (“Sein zum Tode”) emerges as the last thrilling problem. Mykolaitis-Putinas had an impact on the younger generation of Lithuanian poets to whom existential problems were self-evident.