“The Full Stop: The Decline of a Personality”

On Saturday, 7 February, at 2 p.m., the Andrejs Upīts Memorial Museum invites visitors to explore the exhibition “The Full Stop: The Decline of a Personality” through a special and in-depth account of Andrejs Upīts’s final years, the nuances surrounding the creation of the book “The Sunset Without the Sun”, and many other related topics. The tour will be led by museum specialist Laura Tabūna.

The exhibition “The Full Stop: The Decline of a Personality” was created by literary scholar and senior museum specialist Arnis Koroševskis, while the artist is Kristians Brekte.

Arnis Koroševskis describes the exhibition: “Andrejs Upīts did not die just once. The first time he was ‘buried’ was in 1919, during a period of turmoil when, as power changed hands in Riga, his obituary was mistakenly circulated. The second time Andrejs Upīts almost passed away was in Riga Central Prison in the spring or summer of 1920, when he was imprisoned there for collaboration with the communist authorities and was under a death sentence. The third time Andrejs Upīts died as a talented writer was in the 1940s, when, while still able to draw on the remnants of his artistic inspiration, he produced several important and enduring literary works, but had already partially subordinated his talent as a writer to the programme and methods of the nomenklatura of the time. The fifth time the writer nearly died was when he suffered a stroke at the end of Stalin’s rule, in 1952. The sixth time Andrejs Upīts put a full stop to himself as a talented writer was in the mid-1960s, when he was preparing the tendentious literary-critical essay “The Sunset Without the Sun”. On 17 November 1970, Andrejs Upīts passed away at the age of almost 93. During the final 25–30 years of his life, he did everything possible to ruin forever the name and biography of this eminent Latvian man of letters.

Was it worth it? How did the writer feel, live, and work during the final years of his life? There is no unequivocal answer.”

Admission: 8 euros.