Archivum Lithuanicum

The edition of the first Lithuanian songbook Dainos oder Litthauische Volkslieder (Königsberg, 1825) prepared by Königsberg University Professor and the Head of the Lithuanian Language Seminar Martynas Liudvikas Rėza is still raising questions. Some may be answered by sources kept in Weimar: Goethe and Schiller archives, Duchess Anna Amalia Library and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s private library at the Goethe’s house-museum. These sources are poorly investigated, published only in a fragmentary way and some have not yet been translated into Lithuanian. The investigation of the circumstances of the collection reveals details that were unknown or underestimated, for example, that the preparation of the Rėza collection was pushed by Abraham Jakob Penzel’s plans to prepare a Lithuanian song collection and to ask for Goethe’s support, as well as the circumstances of how and when Goethe received the manuscript of the collection from Königsberg and why he did not reply to Rėza. It also reveals some of the circumstances of preparation of the collection, methodology and subsequent Rėza’s plans that were not implemented. Some questions also remain unanswered: when, under what circumstances, and for what purpose was an identical song edition published in Leipzig in 1827 and how did it reach the library of Duchess Anna Amalia.

The article presents the part of the written legacy of Davainis-Silvestraitis that had not yet been published and not included into the scientific circulation – his diary written in 1904–1911, aimed at overviewing the development of the Lithuanian national movement and to evaluate the national-social activities of the Lithuanian intellectuals in Vilnius. Davainis-Silvestraitis positioned himself as a public figure for whom the description of the events of the Lithuanian national movement had to be more important than himself or his personal experiences. However, the diary of Davainis-Silvestraitis that started as being written to others, very quickly became the diary for “self” which is primarily a more interesting material for reconstruction of his own life rather than the assessment of the Lithuanian national activities in Vilnius. The diary of Davainis-Silvestraitis perfectly reveals the difficult living and livelihood opportunities for Lithuanian intellectuals in Vilnius, whose main occupation was publicist activities. In his diary, Davainis-Silvestraitis simply “drowns” among the descriptions of his unsuccessful attempts to secure material well-being working in the Vilniaus žinios bookstore, writing articles and collecting adverts for the Lietuvių laikraštis newspaper. The descriptions of the Lithuanian national activities in Vilnius in the diary of Davainis- Silvestraitis are more like a documentary chronicle of events, rather than a deeper assessment of the phenomena and processes of the Lithuanian national movement, although he himself was often a participant of the events he was describing. Davainis-Silvestraitis presented his observations solely about the circumstances surrounding the signing of the “Lithuanian Memorandum to the Russian Prime Minister, Count S. Vitte” (1905), raising a hypothesis that the issue of the Suwalki Gubernia encouraged at least some of the Russian Empire representatives to have quite a favourable view on the appearance of this document. In his diary, Davainis-Silvestraitis suggested that some of the nobility representatives who supported the Lithuanian national movement had even visited the Great Seimas of Vilnius and that further cooperation was “deterred” by the position of some Lithuanian political parties and groups regarding the issue of land redistribution.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Lithuanian Catholic community still used the Gospels (in the narrow sense) or pericops translated in the seventeenth century. The book Ewangelie Polskie y litewskie by Jonas Jaknavičius, which was first published in 1647, remained popular until the middle of the nineteenth century, it had ten or eleven editions during the period of 1803–1859. The aim of the article is to discuss the relation between the New Testament, published by the Bishop Juozapas Arnulfas Giedraitis in Vilnius in 1816, and the above-mentioned editions of the Gospels, to detect whether the Gospels were based on Giedraitis’s New Testament. The edition of the Gospels printed in 1819 differed slightly from the previous edition of 1805. It was prepared on the basis of previous Gospel editions, but not on the New Testament. This was revealed by identic errors, same text lines missed. Some missed text lines in the edition of 1819 or later editions were rebuilt according to previous Gospel editions, but not according to the New Testament. Until 1856, the Gospels were reprinted without major changes without taking into account the New Testament of 1816. Bibliographers assigned the edition of the Gospels of 1858 to Jaknavičius’s works, but it is not, however, to be regarded as a new edition of Jaknavičius’s Gospels. The features of vocabulary, syntax, morphology, phonetics, and orthography show that the edition of 1858 was based not on the earlier Gospels, but on the New Testament of 1816. The unknown compiler of the Gospels of 1858 used some of the previous editions as well: retained their structure; at the beginning of the gospel fragments inserted some initial words that coincided with previous editions, used words from previous editions. Since the Gospels in 1805–1856 were published without major changes, substantial similarity of the Gospels of 1858 to any of previous editions was not detected. In the edition of the Gospels of 1858, there are some features of the Samogitian (Lowland Lithuanian) dialect. For example, although the entire book is dominated by forms with Highlander <e> [ė], <uo> [uo], forms with Samogitian <ie> [ie], <ou> [ọu] also occur. Thus, the compiler of the Gospels of 1858 must have been a Samogitian, probably from the western part of North Samogitians. It is likely that the intention to prepare a new edition of Gospels, based on the New Testament of 1816, did arise in the milieu of Bishop Motiejus Valančius.

The archive of the Franciscan monastery in Kretinga has preserved many documents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Certain papers in these documents contain prominent manufacturers’ stamps, and their comparison to such stamps in the manuscripts of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) made it possible to determine the time of compilation of Great Polish-Lithuanian Dictionary by Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864) more precisely. The stamp “ФАБРИКИ № ... АРИСТАРХОВА” of Daukantas’s dictionary was also used by Tolstoy most probably starting from 1852, especially since 1853, and in the monastery of Kretinga—since 1853. Such dating suggests that the Great Polish-Lithuanian Dictionary may have been started in 1853, although more cautious judgment would make it 1852. In such way, it is safe to claim that the Great Polish-Lithuanian Dictionary by Simonas Daukantas can be carefully dated 1852–1856 (certain corrections also appeared in 1857–1858).

Among the text samples from foreign languages in his Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), John Wilkins prints an Old Lithuanian Lord’s prayer whose source is unknown. According to Andreas Müller (1680) it was taken from the ‘London Bible’, i.e., Samuel Bogusław Chyliński’s Old Lithuanian Bible translation of which only a part of the Old Testament had ever been printed (1660–1662). A comparison of Wilkins’ text, here edited for the first time, with all relevant Lithuanian versions of the Lord’s Prayer shows that Chyliński’s handwritten translation of Matthew is indeed the version closest to Wilkins’ text. But the differences, however slight, are significant: Wilkins, who did not speak Lithuanian, could not have modified the text in this way. Taken together, the facts point to the conclusion that Chyliński wrote down an ad hoc translation of the Lord’s Prayer for Wilkins. Johannes Bretke’s spontaneous new translation of a Bible passage in an album entry of 1599 thus would not be an isolated case.

Der spezifische Gebrauch des Graphems <y> im ersten Teil von Knyga nobažnystės (in der wiederholten Ausgabe von 1684?, weiterhin KNG2) zeichnet diesen Text gegenüber anderen zeitgenössischen Schriften aus. Aus der Analyse der Verwendungsfälle von <y> ergeben sich einige Hypothesen, die im Aufsatz näher analysiert werden. Unter dem Einfluss der polnischen Rechtschreibung haben die Bearbeiter versucht, dem Graphem <y>, welches als eine nicht konsequent eingesetzte Variante von <i> zu betrachten ist, eine genauere Funktion zuzuordnen. In der ersten Hälfte des Werkes (und somit im Großteil des Psalmenbuchs) wurde das Schriftzeichen <y> anscheinend zur Kennzeichnung von [i] (selten [ī]) vor „härteren“ Konsonanten t, p, d, v, s, r, m, n eingesetzt, um der etwas härteren Aussprache dieser Konsonanten vor den Vokalen der e-Gruppe und ihrer häufigen Schreibung ohne das Palatalisierungs-i Rechnung zu tragen. Die Konjunktion ir ‘und’ wurde in Anlehnung an die Schreibung der gleichbedeutenden polnischen Konjunktion (y) ebenfalls mit <y> geschrieben. Die Schreibung <y> hätte auch durch die hypothetisch angenommene ungespannte und etwas breitere Aussprache von i in unbetonten oder in akzentuierten aber nicht verlängerten Positionen (vergleichbar mit der Aussprache in den heutigen Dialekten in der Gegend von Kėdainiai) bedingt sein können. Deswegen ist die Möglichkeit in Erwägung zu ziehen, dass das Graphem <y> in KNG2 am häufigsten zur Kennzeichnung des weniger gespannten [i] eingesetzt wurde, allerdings nur in der Umgebung „härterer“ Konsonanten. Andererseits hätte die Schreibung <y> statt <i> (mit Ausnahme von yr) auch ästhetisch motiviert sein können: so hat man sich gewissermaßen an die Ober- und Unterlängen der Schriftzeichen t, p, d, ſ, k angepasst. Im KNG2 wurde neben einem solchen Buchstaben meistens das Graphem <y> gesetzt (am konsequentesten nach t, p und d in bestimmten Stämmen). Die Anpassung des Graphems <y> hätte auch ein Stilmerkmal eines der Bearbeiter von KNG2 sein können, welcher die ersten hundert Seiten des Gesangbuches abgeschrieben und korrigiert hat. Die nicht konsequente Verwendung von <y> in gewissen Stellungen zeigt, dass die Erweiterung seines Verwendungsbereichs nicht an einem einzigen Zeitpunkt zustande kam, sondern möglicherweise beim wiederholten Lesen der zu bearbeitenden Texte ergänzt wurde. Dieses für die KNG2 so kennzeichnende Schriftzeichen gehört allerdings nicht zu den typischen Merkmalen der Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments von 1701, die zum Teil von Samuel Bittner angefertigt wurde, welcher auch an der Bearbeitung von KNG2 beteiligt war.