Informal literary life in the 1960s and 1970s bustled in private spaces, improvized literary “salons,” artists’ studios, editorial offices of leading periodicals, and also in cafés. These private gatherings and the sharing and discussion of books were among the most significant manifestations of unofficial literary life, given the nearly complete absence of unofficial publications or self-published literary work at the time.

 

The Soviet era is often remembered for time spent gathered in cafés, which became the preferred spot for meetings and discussions. The first modern Lithuanian café, the Neringa, designed by brothers Algimantas and Vytautas Nasvytis, opened in Vilnius in 1959.

 

The Neringa Café was an instant hit with artists and the cultural community overall, including graphic artist Stasys Krasauskas, painter Augustinas Savickas, linguist Bronys Savukynas, chemist and educator Kazys Daukšas, economist and writer Domas Cesevičius, composers Benjaminas Gorbulskis and Algimantas Bražinskas, writers Juozas Baltušis, Aleksys Churginas, Eduardas Mieželaitis, Algimantas Baltakis, as well as their contemporaries from Moscow, collectively called the  “shestidesyatniki” (the 60s generation): Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Vasily Aksyonov, Robert Rozhdestvensky, and Andrei Voznesensky.

 

The Neringa Café, in particular its so-called “Professor’s Table,” is often remembered not only as a favored gathering place of the Bohemian set, but also as a kind of "university" where intellectuals from the inter-war independent Lithuania could share the knowledge they gained during their studies abroad and discuss foreign policy and cultural issues.

 

The Neringa Café was designed to be the main restaurant serving the hotel of the same name, which often hosted foreign guests. It’s not surprising, then, that the café was also favored by the KGB for the collection of intelligence. Many recall, however, that the presence of listening devices was well known and that fact did not inhibit the numerous, quite candid, discussions taking place at the café.

 

Though Poet Justinas Marcinkevičius reflected back on the “Neringa era” with some nostalgia after the restoration of Lithuania’s independence, Laima Lavastė, Ligita Valonytė, „Legendinėje kavinėje skambėjo ir laisvės idėjos, ir meilės žodžiai“, Lietuvos rytas, 2009 11 07, www.gyvbudas.lrytas.lt.  when the café opened and was growing in popularity, he criticized younger writers for spending too much time there:

 

 

And yet, many ideas were born at the Neringa. For Algimantas Baltakis, it was the place where he often met the authors contributing to the literary journal Pergalė, where he served as editor. Legend also has it that the Neringa Café was also where the idea for the famous film Niekas nenorėjo mirti (Nobody Wanted To Die, the controversial 1966 movie about a village torn between anti-Soviet partisans and pro-government officials) was hatched.

 

One could hear jazz music, long considered a suspicious genre under Soviet rule, playing at the Neringa, hosting such legendary jazz performers as Vladimir Tarasov, Vyacheslav Ganelin with bass player Grigory Talas, and in the 1980s—Leonid Shinkarenko, Vytautas Labutis, Petras Vyšniauskas, and Gediminas Laurinavičius.

 

The Neringa was also a popular gathering place for dissident intellectuals, including Tomas Venclova, Pranas Morkus, and Aleksandras Štromas, and Joseph Brodsky wrote his poem “Lithuanian Divertissement” here.

 

The younger artistic generation, born around 1950, chose to gather at other locations. One of these was the bar known as “Literatų svetainė” (The Writer’s Parlor), at the start of Gediminas (then Leninas) Avenue, on the site of the historic “Birutė” café, Lithuania’s first. Mrs. Šabaniauskienė, wife of singer Antanas Šabaniauskas, was among the bar’s hosts.

 

 

Unlike the more studious Neringa Café, where just getting inside was often difficult, the crowd at Literatų svetainė was quite diverse—full of outsiders, students, as well as renowned writers. Marcelijus Martinaitis wrote:

 

 

Jonas Strielkūnas’ poem “Retro” captures the most important symbols of the Literatų bar:

 

 

August 10, 2002  Jonas Strielkūnas, Ligi dvyliktos, Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 2003.

 

For the younger generation, however, the most important concentration of cafés was the so-called Bermuda Triangle. People and artists of different generations speak less about specific cafés that once made up the Triangle and more about the general lay of the land there, which might be described thus:

 

 

The Bermuda Triangle was frequented by young people in search of a more free lifestyle: the hippies and “informals” of the days, including the children of some of the era's cultural elite. Some of them wrote, others photographed and painted, exchanging books, but all of them shared a common view of the world and one “intangibly expressible idea” (Romualdas Trachimas). Jūratė Kavaliauskaitė, „Autentiškumo eksperimentai: ką reiškė prapulti Vilniaus senamiesčio ‘Bermudų trikampyjeʼ?“, in: Nematoma sovietmečio visuomenė, mokslinė redaktorė Ainė Ramonaitė, Vilnius: Naujasis Židinys-Aidai, 2015, p. 97. They were mostly drawn to communion with others like themselves, with their own people. In the words of Antanas A. Jonynas: “our way of life then was a bit different, the times were different—that entire Soviet era—that interaction alone sustained you, which was very important.” Audinga Peluritytė-Tikuišienė, Senieji mitai, naujieji pasakojimai: apie naujausią lietuvių literatūrą, Vilnius: Gimtasis žodis, 2006, p. 182.

 

When asked what most drew him out onto the streets, poet Aidas Marčėnas replied:

 

 

A network of establishments, though less shrouded in legend and not quite as fancy as the Neringa, drew a number of artists to a stretch of today’s Gediminas Avenue near the “Vaga” publishing house. The neighborhood attracted residents from the nearby leafy suburb of Žvėrynas and was centrally located near several cultural and academic institutions, including the Lithuanian Conservatory, the dormitories of the Art Institute and Academy of Sciences, the Semiconductor and Chemistry Institutes of the Academy of Sciences, the Urban Planning Institute, and “Komprojektas”, the central planning design enterprise. This explains why such cafés as “Rūta,” “Mėta,” and “Žarija”, and the beer bar “Tauro ragas” (on today’s V. Kudirkos Street) would draw the “intellectual bohemians,” as Jonynas called them—architects, philosophers, scientists, musicians, and writers. Autoriaus pokalbis su Antanu A. Jonynu, 2015 12 11. This particularly Bohemian community was better socially adapted, with professional careers, while the “Gorkynė set”, gathering in the Bermuda Triangle, consisted more of younger people living on the margins of society.

 

Here one could run into Ričardas Gavelis, Saulius Tomas Kondrotas, or, wandering over from Žvėrynas—Jurgis Kunčinas, Juozas Erlickas, or Algirdas Verba. The Vaga publishing house was a particularly lively place where one could go for both company and literary pursuits. Historian Alfredas Bumblauskas jokes that the Sąjūdis national reform movement was born in the beer bars of Vilnius. Artūras Jančys, „Legendiniuose alaus baruose sovietmečiu kalėsi ir laisvės daigai“, www.lrytas.lt. 

 

In the day, employees working at the editorial offices lining today’s Gediminas Avenue (Komjaunimo tiesa [Communist Youth Truth], Jaunimo gretos [The Ranks of Youth], and others) and the community working and performing at the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre would gather at the “Dainava” and “Palanga” restaurants, the latter being a particular favorite of poet Paulius Širvys. The Dainava boasted of an outside terrace, a rare commodity in the day, which guests called “the bed.” Both the Palanga and the Dainava had evening dance hours.

 

Toward the start of Gediminas Avenue, the Writer’s Union Café was open late—one could always find writers there of various different ages.

 

Poet Liutauras Degėsys recalls that the former “Žuvėdra” cafeteria on Vilniaus Street also was a popular gathering spot for younger people, including Saulius Tomas Kondrotas, actor Nijolė Oželytė, and poet Vytautas Rubavičius. The Žuvėdra, like the Narutis Café and Hotel, had a jukebox where one could even find selections from The Beatles.

 

The café at the Exhibition Hall (today the Contemporary Art Centre) was primarily a gathering spot for artists, but it also saw its share of writers (Kondrotas, Gavelis).

Particularly when compared to contemporary Vilnius, it becomes clear that every time period has its own style and “infrastructure” of social interaction. There are very few memoirs about “Gorkynė” (Gorki Street, today’s Didžioji) in which the author doesn’t look back fondly on the cafés there—now all long shuttered and gone. Vilnius today has lost all of its historic cafés with their unique pasts and cultural traditions, and only the Neringa Café remains with its original interior intact—but with an entirely different clientele and spirit.