Vydūnas: the essential features of his philosophy
ENVydūnas is an extraordinary figure in our culture, as is his personal and creative fate and his extraordinary status in our cultural consciousness. Although he achieved a great deal and contributed significantly to the national culture, for a long time he remained in nearly total oblivion. It is said that the best tests of values is time; that only true values remain alive, while those which do not resist the trials of time fall into the passive stock of the past. This usually is the case. However, even true and significant values do not always survive — sometimes they are buried under an historical avalanche and it takes time for the archaeologists to arrive. Vydunas's case is of this latter type. For the younger generations of the post-World War II period he was nearly dead. His dramas which constitute the treasure load of Lithuanian dramatic composition had long been shelved in obscurity, and his philosophical treatises were for some people too frightening to look at, let alone delve into. Vydunas's works and ideas were non-existent in our culture, and, as a matter of fact, neither were they missed. Today we experience a need for the values so consistently and deliberately presented by Vydūnas to the nation.
