Antanas Vienažindys

Antanas Vienažindys (1841–1892), also known by his pen name Vienužis, was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest and poet. While only a handful of his poems survive, he is considered the most famous Lithuanian poet between Antanas Baranauskas (1850s) and Maironis (1890s).

Born into a family of affluent Lithuanian peasants, Vienažindys was educated at the Panevėžys Gymnasium and Varniai Priest Seminary. Ordained as a priest in 1865, he was first assigned as a vicar to Šiaulėnai and Krinčinas. After a conflict with a local dean, he was reassigned to a poor parish in Vainutas and then to distant Braslaw. In 1876, he was reassigned to Laižuva where he rebuilt the parish church which burned down in 1884. It was an expensive red brick neo-Gothic church with two towers. Vienažindys died in Laižuva of stomach cancer in 1892.

Vienažindys wrote poems since he was a student at the priest seminary. He did not publish his poems and they spread by word of mouth and by manuscripts distributed to friends and relatives. They became popular among the Lithuanian people and folklorists have recorded more than 3,000 folk variations of his poems. Many Lithuanian folk songs and other poems are attributed to him, but only 27 poems are verifiably known to have been written by him. His first poetry collection was published posthumously in the United States in 1894.

His poetry is described as popular Romanticism. His earliest poems are joyful, light, and humorous. Later poems are increasingly sorrowful. They express grief and pain over losing a beloved after the Uprising of 1863, loneliness, and resignation. Influenced by Lithuanian folk songs and Polish and Russian sentimental romances, Vienažindys' poetry is valued as one of the first examples of intimate, personal, and subjective lyric poetry in Lithuanian poetry. He is also frequently cited as the first Lithuanian poet to write about romantic love.