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

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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

Downloaded from Schoeningh.de09/28/2021 10:26:28AM via free access REVIEWS 71 than the Eclogues, it is not a poetic com­ sermon apparent in previous centuries of pendium of husbandry and tilling. . Lithuanian literature: yet the arguments in Nor is Metai landscape poetry m the favour of summa genorum must be resis­ strictest sense of the word. There is no pre­ ted, as in the poem's present form descrip­ cise topography, and with the exception of tion and action episodes are loosely struc­ the neighbouring locality of Taukiai the tured; the upshot being juxtaposition village remains anonymous; nor are the rather than synthesis. natural geodesic contours of river, lake Donelaitis's Protestant work ethic dis­ and hillside made manifest. We accept that tinguishes his rural epos from the main­ it is Donelaitis's village, but also any stream of landed-estate poetry in baroque Lithuanian village. At the same time the and post-baroque Poland. The realism of pictorial and emotional potential of. land­ his picture diverges in a number of ways scape are fully revealed; and nature 1s here from the idealization of Mickiewicz, and in full spate of season, climate and provides a healthy corrective to some of weather. the historical embellishments of subse­ The natural calendar provides a formula quent writers and scholars. He evinces an which organizes the structure of the poem, awareness of the pre-Christian practices imposes patterns and contrasts, and moti­ still prevalent among a people who in the vates the sequence of events. Nature sets words of the chronicler 'worshipped the the time for works and duties on the land, entire creature world'. For Polish literary while weather orchestrates the mood. enthusiasts of the Lithuanian past fascina­ Agricultural and liturgical time are fused tion with paganism, enhanced by memories in sacral time, thereby connoting the exist­ of resistance to the conquests of the Teuto­ ence of sacral place. As calendar literature nic Knights, often provided a convenient of the highest order Donelaitis's poem code for national resistance tout court. stands somewhere between Hesiod and For Donelaitis, the village pastor, there is Virgil on the one hand, and the great nothing here to condone, let alone praise. quasi-novelistic canvasses of Mickiewicz's From the parallel text in this edition Pan Tadeusz on the other: calendar and even the non-Lithuanian reader will get a breviary are the main organizers of time sense of the remarkable assonantal and and space in some of Polish literature's alliterative qualities of Donelaitis's verse, most representative works, and play a inherent perhaps in the phonetics and particularly significant role in the Polish­ stress patterns of the Lithuanian language language literature of the Grand Duchy and the native folk genre of the dainos. of Lithuania. There is no evidence of any These sonorities are less apparent in Po­ major connection between Donelaitis and lish. Yet Zygmunt Lawrynowicz, himself a the Polish literary tradition; but the need poet of distinction, has approached the for a comparative study would seem to translation of Metai with a strong feeling stem from the very nature of the material for the intrinsic poetic virtues of the origi­ being discussed. nal, and has sought to give as faithful a This is however but one aspect of Metai. rendering as possible. Discrepancies are Its main protagonists - nature, climate, thus the result of editorial teamwork and the weather, the sun and the rain - also not of a translator's licence. His version is provide the backcloth for a sideshow of eminently fluent and readable, full of verve dramatic genre scenes. Set up to prove a and colour, and he strikes on the whole a moral point, these pictures illustrate a felicitous balance between the word-horde medieval typology of human character of Polish rural poetry, and the rumbus­ centred round the cardinal vices of glut­ tious colloquialness called for in the genre tony, avarice, and so forth. (One might here scenes. note that Donelaitis's animals possess an Besides a bibliography, this edition car­ innate ethical code that serves as a yard­ ries two highly informative forewords: stick for passing judgement on the com­ Andrzej Wakar writes on the cultural portment of men.) These episodes often and historical background of Lithuanian bring to mind the paintings of a Brueghel East Prussia, and Lawrynowicz surveys the or a Brouwer, commented and explicated life and works of the poet. Both these in­ by a preaching chivvying pastor. It is troductions, and a recent article by Rimvy­ tempting to see Metai as a sublimation of das Silbajoris ('Kristijonas Donelaitis, a disparate strands such as fable and.:. Lithuanian classic', Slavic Review, 41 (2),

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1982, pp. 251-65) testify to the permanent available to the Anglo-Saxon reader. With value of Donelaitis's oeuvre. The appear­ such rare exceptions as Theodor Fontane's ance of this Polish translation is a particu­ delicate mood watercolour etchings of sand larly welcome event in terms both of Baltic dunes and pine forests in the Prussian and Slavonic literature, and the publish­ Jtmker country of Effi Briest, and the ing-house of Pojezierze in Olsztyn deserves archetypal contours of Johannes Bobrow­ warm words of credit for making readily ski's Sarmatian Shadow Land, the Baltic available texts from a region of Europe too landscape impinges all too seldom on the often neglected by the general publisher in imaginative awareness of literate Europe. the West: one might here note that Metai Milosz's testimony to Baltic culture and is available in Armenian, Byelorussian, civilization (inter alia in The Captive Czech, Estonian, German, Latin, Latvian, Mind), the aura of Hanseatic orderliness Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. and wellbeing that emanates from that Clearly, there is a mass of fascinating world, would suggest that the sermonizing background material tucked away in poetics of pastor Donelaitis were deeply Lithuanian scholarly journals; and the and durably rooted in the ethos of his peo­ three articles mentioned would seem to ar­ ple. gue the case for making Metai readily Nina Taylor

Janovi~. Sakrat. Miniatures. Edited and translated by Shirin Akiner. The Anglo-Byelorus­ sian Society, London, 1984. 91 pp.

Sakrat Janovi~ (b. 1936) is one of the overblown; perhaps closer in technique are most original and talented Byelorussian Lev Konson's compressed sketches of writers today, and certainly the leader labour camp life, Kratkie povesti (Paris, amongst the not inconsiderable group who 1983). Dr Akiner is well aware of the prob­ live in ethnically Byelorussian east Poland. lems of translating poetry, and understands In a splendidly lucid introduction to her the tag 'traduttore, tTaditore'. Her versions bilingual anthology Shirin Akiner not are almost entirely accurate and read only describes Janovi~'s life and special smoothly, but, for all that, the parallel qualities as a writer but also explains how text format will be welcome, since, like all it comes about that there should be a sig­ poets, in prose or verse, Janovi~ really nificant Byelorussian minority to the west needs to be read in the original. of the Soviet Byelorussian border. Well In his love of his native land, affection known for her work on not only Byelorus­ for country traditions, and dismay when sian language and literature but also Tatar youth seems to reject its heritage, Janovi~ and Central Asian studies, Dr Akiner has recalls the Russian village writers, particu­ already published a substantial article larly Vasily Belov. Janovi~'s sense of na­ on Byelorussian writers of the Bialystok tional identity is, of course, of quite a dif­ region ('Contemporary Byelorussian Litera­ ferent nature. He has a considerable fol­ ture in Poland (1956-81)', Modern Lan­ lowing in Poland, and many of his works guage Review, 78, 1 (1983), pp. 113-29) are translated into Polish; some, indeed, which has been translated and republished have, sadly, appeared only in translation. for readers in the geographically isolated However, he has avoided the temptation but culturally alive region whose culture of becoming a Polish writer with a large she has championed. Miniatures is a timely and appreciative audience (the position of and valuable addition to her work in this Vasil Bykaii vis-ii-vis Russian literature is field. not dissimilar, though he faces none of Prose miniatures are a genre that the practical difficulties with which Jano­ Sakrat Janovi~ has made peculiarly his vi~ has to contend). In his own words, own. To them he brings a sensitive, quoted in the Introduction: 'I can only feel immensely precise, lapidary style and a in Byelorussian; my imagination derives considered economy that makes compari­ its inspiration from that language, the lan­ son with poetry inevitable; in his fi..itely guage of my childhood. In any other lan­ honed imagery and powerfully restrained guage I would not be able to create, only lyricism he makes even Turgenev's cele­ to enumerate the names of things'. brated poems in prose seem clumsy and Dr Akiner has caught the essence of this

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