REVIEWS 69 practical guide. It gives a fuller indication soil and makes one dream of setting forth than previously available of the nch van­ with a visa, a car and a good map. ety of architectural styles on Byelorussian Lindsey Hughes Donelajtis, Krystyn. Pory roku. Translated from the Lithuanian by Zygmunt Lawryno­ wicz [with the Lithuanian text en vis-a-vis]. Introduction by Andrzej Wakar and Zygmunt Lawrynowicz. 'Pojezierze', Olsztyn-Bi.alystok, 1982. xlv + 205 pp. Born in Lithuania and educated within cendancy of Polish culture accounts more the Polish system in Vilna in the 1930s, the than any other single factor for the slow poet Czeslaw Milosz laments that his gen­ development of Lithuanian literature in eration of schoolboys were told nothing the vernacular. Ironically, it was over the 'about the fine, rich folklore of Lithuania, border in Lithuania minor alias Lithuanian even though pagan activity was still extant East Prussia (inhabited largely by Lithua­ there, nor about the first printed texts in nian colonists but corning increasingly peasant dialects, or the Protestant pastor under the sway of the East Prussian Donelajtis who in the 18th century wrote authorities) that old Lithuanian literature The Four Seasons, a poem in Lithuanian was to achieve its finest florescence: hexameters which can be interestingly Donelaitis's The Four Seasons is by com­ compared with the Seasons of the more or mon assent the greatest literary work of less contemporary James Thompson' (Rod­ the feudal period. It is odd to reflect that zinna Europa, 2nd edn, 1980, p. 83). this development went hand in hand with From childhood the average Pole cannot Prussian plans for cultural unification: escape awareness of the Lithuanian and bent on gaining influence over the local Byelorussian landscape, if only from its Lithuanian population through educational fairy-tale apotheosis in Adam Mickiewicz's means, the Prussian authorities organized a Pan Tadeusz. It is again from Mickiewicz network of parish schools. This created a that the average Pole will have heard of need for bibles, hymnals and collections of Kristijonas Donelaitis. A footnote sermons, whose authors in the main were appended to Graiyna (1823) mentions his German pastors with some knowledge of poem The Four SPasons, published a few Lithuanian acquired in the Lithuanian years previously in Konigsberg by Jan seminary at Konigsberg University. Mean­ Ludwik Reza, as being 'deserving of praise while it should be noted that German lite­ both for its subject-matter and its fine po­ rati and thinkers in the second half of the etic expression. It should be of particular 17th century were the first to evince an interest to us in that it presents a faithful interest in the folk culture of Lithuanian picture of the customs of the Lithuanian East Prussia, and that subsequently the peasantry'. It is probable that from the stimulus and incentive of such men as very outset Mickiewicz consciously or Lessing, Kant, Herder and Goethe gave subconsciously plotted a poetic mythologi­ Lithuanian lore a permanent status within zation of the Lithuanian past: the first in­ the cultural context of Europe. kling of his plans for a national epic can The father of Lithuanian literature, be traced back to his essay on Dyzrna Kristijonas Donelaitis, owes much to the Boncza Tomaszewski's Jagiellonida, czyli tradition of Protestant pastors. He was polq.czenie Litwy z Polskq (1818). One born in 1714 in the village of La.Zdyneliai may therefore safely speculate that the (district of Gumbinsk), East Prussia, one of very existence of Donelaitis's poem, even in seven children of a poverty-stricken peas­ Reza's bowdlerized and embellished Ger­ ant who died six years later. At school he man rendering, was seminal in Mickiew­ acquired a good grounding in Latin, Greek, icz's development. Nevertheless the native Hebrew, French and religion. Theological culture of Lithuania has remained a lar­ studies at Konigsberg University, where he gely unknown quantity in the general cul­ lived in Collegium Albertinum, enabled tural awareness of Poles, in spite of him to deepen his knowledge of several centuries of intimate political union Lithuanian language and literature, and with the Grand Duchy. rh~toric; he also studied musical theory Within the Grand Duchy itself, the as- and practice. After qualifying he spent 70 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES three years as choinnaster in Stalupienie work should be considered by the Lithua­ (present-day Nesterov), several miles away nians as worthy of imitation both in poetry from Lafdyneliai, where he probably com­ and in eloquence, the more so as it bears posed his Fables in the Aesopic vein. Then, the hallmark of true originality: there is after a further spell at Konigsberg, he was nothing borrowed from foreign literatures'. appointed to the parish of Tolminkiemis Donelaitis certainly had his followers in (present-day Cistye Prudy), where he the 19th century; and his Metai gained reg­ remained until his death in 1780. ular mention in the ethnographic and folk­ According to sources of the period, the loric materials compiled throughout the parish comprised four crown farms, two century. free farms, and thirty-two serf villages, as Mickiewicz called Metai a descriptive well as a 40-hectare estate for the mainte­ poem. In the 1818 edition it was termed nance of the pastor and his family. Apart 'ein landliches Epos'. For those who stress from performing his clerical duties, Done­ its value as a source of ethnographic laitis is known to have built a new stone material, Metai remains primarily an church in place of the old wooden one, and encyclopaedia of customs of the Lithua­ a hospice for the widows of pastors. He nian countryside. It presents an appeal to was more than once in conflict with the the reader's love of the vernacular, a manager of the crown estates, and in a eulogy of the Lithuanian peasantry, and court case c. 1770 between manor and a condemnation of the feudal German local peasantry he came out strongly on overlords. Its theme is also the beauty of the side of the latter. Extant manuscript nature and of work; and the equality of material testifies to Donelaitis's mildness peasants and landowners. Donelaitis is in of character, his proneness to spiritual de­ danger of being all things to all critics: pression, and his deep-rooted love for his formulator of literary linguistic norms, native tongue. spokesman for Lithuanian nationalism, Metaf was started in 1765, and it is not mouthpiece for the peasant point of view known how many drafts were produced in the class struggle. The illustrations of before what is assumed to be the final ver­ the artist Vytautas Kalinauskas are a good sion of 1773-74. At his death, his widow case in point, as they exploit its potential handed his papers over to J. Jordan, the usefulness to the cause of socialist realist pastor at Walterkiejmy, who lent the aesthetics. manuscript to J. Hohfeldt in the neigh­ There has been little disagreement on bouring parish of Gierwiszkin; and some the subject of the poem's originality. Metai material was irretrievably lost in the tur­ was approximately contemporaneous with moil of Napoleon's Muscovy campaign. At James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient the behest of Herder and later Humboldt, Poetry (1760), with Fingal (1762) and Te­ Jan Ludwik Reza of Konigsberg Univer­ mora, the Ossianic epic (1763) and Percy's sity, a collector of Lithuanian folk songs, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). published in 1818 an abridged- and mor­ It was completed at about the same time ally improved - text, together with his as Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther own translation into German. His endeav­ (1774), and the beginnings of his Wilhelm our was highly praised by the philologist Meister (1777). In this context Milosz's S.B. Linde, by the philologist and pub­ reference to Thompson is helpful in that it lisher J. Grimm, and came up for discus­ serves to define Metai by negatives and op­ sion at meetings of the Society for the posites. Friends of Sciences in Warsaw. It was A quick flashback to Thompson's Damons however only in 1865 that the first com­ and Celadons, to his Teviotdale, and its plete edition was published for the explicit associations with the landscapes Russian Academy of Sciences by Professor of Lorrain, Rosa and Poussin; to the aura A. Schleicher, at a time when the Lithua­ of pleasurable imaginative reflectiveness nian language was banned by the tsarist that emanates from his rosy and even in­ authorities. There were further editions in dolent way of life, can serve as a starting­ 1869 (G.H.F. Nesselmann, with a liteFal point for stating what Donelaitis's Metai is German translation), 1894 (in Halle), and not. As nature poetry it is neither an exer­ in 1897 the works of Donelaitis were cise in idyllic escapism, nor a eulogy of ru­ brought out in the United States. ral retirement in the Horatian vein. In his foreword Reza writes that 'this Though its spirit is closer to the Georgics .