ROMA BONČKUTĖ

Klaipėda University

Research interests: the history of Lithuanian literature, the works of Simonas Daukantas.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.35321/all81-10

DAUKANTIAN BREATHING OF GRANAUSKAS

Granauskas’s Breath-Writing in the Manner of Daukantas

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the influence of Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864), the founder of Lithuanian national historiography and modernizer of written Lithuanian, on the prose of Romualdas Granauskas (1939–2014), particularly his novella Jaučio aukojimas (1975).

Analysis of the novella showed that R. Granauskas was influenced by S. Daukantas’s historiography and adopted the historian’s concepts, motifs, and modes of expression. Influenced by S. Daukantas’s rhythmic prose, R. Granauskas created an example of prose with a distinctive rhythm.

KEYWORDS: historiography, literature, prose, rhythm, poetics of breathing, Simonas Daukantas, Romualdas Granauskas, Juozas Baltušis.

ABSTRACT

The article considers the impact of Lithuanian national historiography initiator and literary reformer Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864) on the creative writings of Romualdas Granauskas (1939–2014); it analyzes the short story of the writer with the focus on his Jaučio aukojimas (1975).

The analysis of Jaučio aukojimas shows that Granauskas was inspired by the historical works of Daukantas and used the concepts, expressions and motifs from his texts. Inspired by Daukantas, Granauskas used rhythm in a prosaic text.

KEYWORDS: historiography, literature, prose, rhythm, poetics of breathing, Simonas Daukantas, Romualdas Granauskas, Juozas Baltušis.

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INTRODUCTION

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Romualdas Granauskas’s birth, a national conference, “Romualdas Granauskas – a Samogitian Writer,” was held on May 10, 2019, at Seda Vytautas Mačernis Gymnasium, where I shared my thoughts on the similar personal and linguistic energy of S. Daukantas and R. Granauskas^¹. While studying the reception of S. Daukantas’s BUDĄ Senowęs-Lė­tuwiū Kalnienū ir Žamajtiū išzraszę [...] Jokyb’s Laukys (hereafter, Būdas) in Lithuanian literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I noticed that Šatrijos Ragana, who was musical and had a good ear, first adopted not its ideas, themes, or lexis, but stylized S. Daukantas’s rhythm (Bončkutė 2019: 239–265). Researchers of the connections between music and literature have noted that a thought first arises as a certain energy, intonation, or musical form, for which a linguistic expression is subsequently found^². However, only highly authentic literature is created in this way. When thoughts buzz in one’s head like bees, the creator suffers until finding the one possible expression of the thought’s sound. Thus, every writer’s rhythm is an expression of individual style. The elements of rhythm at different levels of a text’s structure form the work’s matrix, which is a distinctive mark of its creator. R. Granauskas said of the novella Jaučio aukojimas (1973/1975): “And I was almost happy: at last I had overcome the first part of ‘Jaučio aukojimas’! Only that form, only that rhythm, only that Aesopian language would do” (see Daujotytė 2017: 104).

S. Daukantas’s undulating periods, living language, and its sonority are the most striking elements of his style (see Vengris 1938: 446–458), best reflected in sentence rhythm. They were readily perceptible to R. Granauskas, who had perfect pitch, and had a tremendous influence on him. Researchers of prose rhythm say that all information is conveyed in the form of a rhythmically organized message which, although not expressed verbally, creates additional meaning (Гумовская 2018: 196). The rhythm of S. Daukantas’s texts arises not only from the regular sequence of phonetic sounds, which he greatly

^¹ Wilhelm von Humboldt, whom S. Daukantas read, emphasized the vitality of language and the continual filling of words with ideas, thereby giving them energy. For a word to become a word, it must not only acquire a sound envelope, but also become a harmonious union of sound and meaning. Language is understood as an ongoing process of development: “Man muß die Sprache nicht sowohl wie ein todtes Erzeugtes, sondern weit mehr wie eine Erzeugung ansehen” (Language must be viewed not as a dead product of activity, but as activity itself) (Humboldt 1836: 38).

^² For example, experimental aesthetics emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, and rhythm was studied as a psychophysiological and aesthetic phenomenon. See Fechner Gustav Theodor 1876: Vorschule der Aesthetik. Erster Theil. Leipzig, Druck und Verlag von Breitkopf & Härtel. Available online: https://archive.org/details/vorschu lederaes01fechgoog/page/n13; Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz 1863: Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik. Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig. Available online: http://vlp.mp iwg-berlin.mpg.de/library/data/lit3483/index_html?pn=7&ws=1.5.

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siekė (žr. Subačius 2018), bet ir dėl kitų kalbos lygmenų bei turinio struktūrų pasikartojimų, tik jam būdingų, užburiančių, turinčių maginės galios. R. Granausko girdimoji atmintis užfiksavo istoriko teksto ritmą, kuris žadino kūrybinę energiją, kūrė vaizdinius, ir jis, rašydamas kūrinius, sudėtus į antrąją knygą (Granauskas 1975), itin daug dėmesio skyrė ritmui.

Viktorija Daujotytė attests that “to speak meaningfully about Granauskas and his creative approach, one should begin with Simonas Daukantas, with his ‘Būdas’” (Daujotytė 2017: 10). R. Granauskas’s novella Jaučio aukojimas is one of the writer’s first texts strongly marked stylistically (see Nastopka 2002; Kelertienė 2000: 69). Its textual rhythm has been discussed (see Juknaitė 2003), but not linked to S. Daukantas. This article aims to investigate S. Daukantas’s influence on those three sentences of the novella Jaučio aukojimas that testified to the arrival of an original creator in Lithuanian literature. The article also seeks to continue this scholarly publication’s investigations into Samogitian self-awareness and identity (cf. Pajėdienė 2018: 64–104).

The textual analysis employs comparative analysis, approaches to intertextuality, and studies of prose rhythm^³.

1. THE POETICS OF BREATHING

I have long been interested in the close connection between the rhythm of speech and an individual’s personal linguistic structure and physiology, ever since I heard Bulat Okudzhava’s lines: “Everyone writes as they hear. / Everyone hears as they breathe” (Окуджава 2001: 264), echoed in the pages of Juozas Baltušis’s diary, where he wrote of his contemporary writer friends, who “breathe shallowly” (Baltušis 2019: 409). The poetics of breathing (English: poetics of breathing) tends to attract interest in periods when literature seeks to break with the tradition of formal conventions and looks for freer expression and more authentic writing (Heine 2019: 91–92). In such periods, there is a return ad fontes—to classical thought and to the great authors of the nation. Ancient rhetoricians, or writers on rhetoric, especially Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, were concerned with adapting the structure of speech to breathing. Ancient rhetorical treatises considered the problem of dividing speech into shorter phrases in light of the speaker’s particular breathing patterns. The phrase determines the rhythm of a prose text. Ancient orators closely linked rhythm and music with eloquence. Plato (see Valstybę, Books III and IV) and Aristotle (see Poetika) devoted considerable attention to the importance of rhythm. Plato asked whether “it is not because rhythm and harmony penetrate most deeply into the depths of the soul and affect it most powerfully that the fine arts educate? They themselves

^³ Cf.: Kazlauskienė 2015; Ramonautė 2006; Heine 2019; Гумовская 2018; Moritz 2006; Fietz 1992.

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yra grožis ir žmogų padaro gražų“ (Platonas 1981: 401d), o kitoje savo veikalo vietoje pastebėjo, kad „ritmiškumas atitinka gerą kalbėjimo stilių, o neritmiškumas – jo priešingybę. Taip pat ir gera bei prasta harmonija, jeigu, kaip ką tik sakėme, ritmas ir harmonija derinasi prie žodžių, o ne žodžiai prie jų“ (Platonas 1981, 400d).

R. Granauskas’s absolute pitch may have been the most important resonator for hearing and envisioning, in S. Daukantas’s texts, the inhabitants of the native lands of Ceklis, their creators, and the final sacrifice of their last priest. The writer testified that at the beginning of his creative path he did not immediately understand which muse he would serve: literature or music. Possessing excellent hearing and being able to hear silence and the breathing of things (Daujotytė 2017: 74), while still a schoolboy he immersed himself in S. Daukantas’s texts, and first heard their sound: “I had memorized all my writing up to jaučio aukojimo. After jaučio, which I went over three times, I said: no, I’d rather think about it for another year, but I’m giving up this galley slavery” (Mustekis 2008). But he did not give it up. Thus jaučio aukojimas is like a sacrifice to Euterpe (the muse of music), before beginning to serve Calliope. R. Granauskas made the right choice, because later he said: “I live in language,” “I am in language,” “I myself am language,” “My spirit is in language” (Daujotytė 2017: 17).

². ROMUALDAS GRANAUSKAS – SIMONAS DAUKANTAS’S IDEAL READER

Umberto Eco wrote that reading any text presupposes co-authorship, because the ideal reader decodes a work while reading it, performing a great deal of creative work (Эко 2005: 25, 76). A writer creates for an imagined reader, choosing one or another textual strategy and set of codes with that reader in mind. R. Granauskas wanted the reader to decode the author as the source of the text’s stylization, since parts of the story begin with epigraphs taken from Martynas Mažvydas and the chronicles. And in the text itself we also find references to S. Daukantas:

[...] what their names are, and they answer you sincerely and simply: “Jaušis, Keklys, Daukantas” (Granauskas 1975: 21).

[...] and Jaušis, Keklys, and Daukantas step out of the circle, already understanding what you are looking for (Granauskas 1975: 35).

When R. Granauskas was writing jaučio aukojimą, it was not easy to obtain S. Daukantas’s works. For the texts of the historian, edited by Birutė Rokaitė-Vanagienė (mošidės, sic!), had not yet been published (Daukantas 1976a, b). As the story’s echoes of S. Daukantas’s texts show, the writer most likely read an earlier text of Būdo (Daukantas 1893; 1935; 1955), perhaps the Darbay prepared by the Biržiškas and published in 1929.

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senųjų Lietuvių yr Žemayziu 1822 (hereafter, Darbai) (Daukantas 1929). Historians were aided in reconstructing the world of the ancient Lithuanian by chronicles and the works of contemporary historians. Having read many historical sources in various languages, S. Daukantas undertook to describe the Lithuanian character and past from the position of a subject of history, producing the first text of historical revisionism. Seeking to create a model of Lithuanian identity and the basis for a modern Lithuanian community, he often reinterpreted sources, changing causal relations among facts and their value orientation. Similarly, as V. Daujotytė observed, R. Granauskas said that one must “[w]rite not as it was, because nobody knows how; write as it was not, but as it might have been” (Daujotytė 2017: 43).

For R. Granauskas, S. Daukantas’s Būdas became a place to find a subject and a model for a solemn narrative. This historical work helped the writer reconstruct the final sacrifice of the last priest. The word “sacrifice” itself and its derivatives have come down to us from S. Daukantas (Kabašinskaitė 2016: 61–79), and this passage in Būdo may have been an inspiration:

In the fourth [century], the Gintis sanctuary in the Palanga forest was still called by its last Curonians—the Curonian rulers—on the borders of the Kors, where secretly, even after they had become Christian, they continued to roam in Žamaitija, Prusėnai, and Žamgalė, or, as the Koržamnikai recall, to recount their happy days and say that they themselves had been true brothers (Daukantas 1845: 109).

In Būdę, temples are described (“In that sanctuary the eternal fire burned in honor of the god, from where it could be seen, and the island itself was regarded as a holy place, where the fire burned [...]”, p. 101), as are their buildings (see Daukantas 1845: 105), priests, places of sacrifice and rites, and so on.

In R. Granauskas’s story, the dominant theme described in Būdę is the Lithuanian’s bond with his native place, his innate ability to observe nature closely, to live in harmony with his surroundings, and to draw strength and energy from the sun, fire, wind, earth, trees, and water. All the most important elements of the world—air, earth, fire, and water—form the foundation of the narrative in Būdo and the story.

S. Daukantas devoted considerable attention to the preface to Būdo, which is as long as nine pages. As Moreno Bonda observed, in his preface the historian “entered into European historical debates” (Leparskienė 2019: 5). Johann Gottfried Herder’s work Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit) had a major influence on S. Daukantas when he wrote the preface. J. Herder, a pioneer of historiosophy and cultural studies, drew on the works of many of these authors in his own writings and dreamed of the time when the laws governing the development of the earth would be discovered. He discussed human history as part of the system of the whole country, a moment in a long cosmological process. The world is a macrocosm, while the human being is a microcosm, and there is an analogical relationship between them (Zusi 2007: 89–97). By living in one place for a long time, people become integrated with their environment, which determines their way of life and way of thinking. Peoples, although they once had the same ancestors, differ from one another

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others because they had long lived in different places under different conditions. An echo of J. G. Herder’s conception of organic culture, first rendered in Lithuanian in the preface to Būdo, can be heard at the beginning of R. Granauskas’s novella:

you yourself see: your bare feet treading those needles, shadows, animal tracks: you, those still running through the forest, crying out in the moonlight, howling, breaking their horns against tree trunks, will later die or be killed, and other tracks will lie over those they left: of animals, people, needles, tree trunks, shadows, thin branches, perhaps some mottled feather of a little bird (Granauskas 1975: 5).

R. Granauskas’s seer, like the ancient Lithuanians described by S. Daukantas, would rather live in the forests with wild beasts than ask permission from a foreign god, whom the “forefathers and ancestors” hated, as the writer puts it, taking over the historian’s phrase (Granauskas 1975: 16). The seer’s life deep in the forest, taken from Būdo, is described as follows:

Therefore they called him Wiespatis, because he alone always knew, could and understood everything; those who wanted to ask his advice could never enter his chambers, for they had to wait in the forest until they received an answer through other seers or his servants. Usually he showed himself to the people very rarely, and the one who had once been fortunate enough to see him considered himself most fortunate, while the one who had touched the hem of his garment thought he had thereby come to know him himself: for he lived secretly, deep within a sacred forest (Daukantas 1845: 121).

A frequent leitmotif of the theme of freedom in S. Daukantas’s Būde appears on the novella’s first pages (“with an eternal longing to be free” (Granauskas 1975: 6)). The seer tells himself, “run, run deeper into the forest, so that you do not die while other people are still there” (Granauskas 1975: 10). The novella’s seer walks “farther into the forest, into that great shimmer of leaves, grasses, stalks and trunks, into the shimmer of shadows, into the shimmer of needles on a narrow animal path” (Granauskas 1975: 7), because the forest alone belongs to the Lithuanians. In S. Daukantas’s Darbose we find a possible source: “And others, having separated, still wandered through the forests, along paths familiar to them” (Daukantas 1929: 126). Indirect quotations from Darby about the burning of villages and castles also appear in the novella (“Not once, when the Lithuanians were besieged, did they lead the enemy into their own fires and flames, as their villages and castles burned” (Daukantas 1929: 84) ← “though villages and castles burned many times” (Granauskas 1975: 14)), as does the deadly combination of the enemy’s iron and fire: “Whatever they encountered, they destroyed with sword and fire” (Daukantas 1929: 143), while the phrase “fire and iron” appears in Būde as “fire’s iron” (Daukantas 1845: 138) → “fire and iron joined together signify death” (Granauskas 1975: 7).

In R. Granauskas’s novella, the seer is addressed with a quotation from Būdo:

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TABLE 1. An indirect quotation from Būdo in R. Granauskas’s novella

Būdas

Jaučio aukojimas

A 70- or 80-year-old elder could only answer, whom they called “white head” because of such old age: for even today Lithuanians or Samogitians, addressing a Lord, King, Prince, or any other person, say, “Lord, we have come to your white head to ask a favour” (p. 123).

Greetings, seer, we have come to your white head (p. 13).

From Būdo, the kriėvai, forests, sacred oak groves, marshes, springs, the dried-up lake, the world of spruce and alder woods, the thunder god’s fire, forest bees, grass snakes... all pass into the novella.

Theorists of intertextuality, writing about the reader’s role as co-author, emphasize that a reader capable of bringing out as much as possible from an author’s text shares many personal traits with the author, and that their cognitive systems coincide (Кузьмина 1999: 62).

First, it is worth briefly recalling that S. Daukantas and R. Granauskas were both Samogitians, both residents of northwestern Lithuania, and users of the same language. Paraphrasing Jūratė Sprindytė, one can say that the two are connected not only by a “Samogitian substratum (rootedness in one’s homeland, landscape, and the names of places, towns, and bodies of water, and speech)” (Sprindytė 2019: 218), but also by a similar nature and life. In the essay Dylika juodvarnių, apie Daukantą lakstančių, the writer recalls his first impression of S. Daukantas:

They wrote in my dialect, which meant that, just as I alone had thought up that they were all from Mosėdis, so that others would not understand, I alone clearly saw Daukantas—just as big as me—being driven by his father in a horse-drawn cart through Mosėdis to Kalvarija; I don’t know where they stopped to water those horses: right there, on the Šatės road, just beyond the town, by the school; I even know that one horse was chestnut and the other bay, and that once it had a white star like the ace of clubs. Such things are truly mine; there’s no need to tell everyone about them, [...] (Granauskas 2015: 34).

It is possible that S. Daukantas’s journey may indeed have been as the writer describes it. Note that the writer “sees” that the bay horse carrying S. Daukantas to school had a white star on its forehead, while the historian fashioned the pseudonym Būdo from his grandfather Jokūbas’s name and the word Lauks: “Lauks means ‘an animal with a white mark on its forehead’” (see Razauskas 2008: 86). It is impossible to verify whether, by mentioning the bay horse with a white star, the writer associated it with Jokūbas Laukas’s pseudonym, but “laukis” in both their texts allows us to notice that they sensed the antiquity of the Lithuanian language,

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preservation with their own spirit, and thus they were able to connect history and work through language. The ancient ancestors of the Lithuanians, whom S. Daukantas calls “Indians,” had not yet begun the connection between language and body, as the surviving texts attest:

For ancient writings proclaimed that the land of the Lithuanian Highlanders and Samogitian tribes had been the land of the Lopičiandai: for the writings of their priests found there in our time show us that they, like the Indians, had been a young people in antiquity; for the language of those writings does not agree so greatly with any of the languages known today as it does with the language of the Highlanders and Samogitians (Daukantas 1845: 8).

S. Daukantas was interested in Sanskrit and followed the work of Western European scholars on the subject. He may have read about Sanskrit’s affinity with the sounds of nature, their importance in sustaining human energy, strength, and so on.

As is well known, children acquire a sense of language from their mothers; they speak in their words and hum little songs. S. Daukantas’s texts suggest that he identified more closely with his mother’s Odų line, which may have connected itself with the legendary Odin. It is worth noting that in his letters to Teodoras Narbutas (Daukantas 1998: 500) and Būdė he mentioned Odin several times as the progenitor of Lithuanian dukes, emphasizing his importance:

The second lawgiver was Odin. He lived in the eighth century before the birth of Christ; he had his dwelling on the Daugava, in the fortress called AĢar. This Odin conquered the Swedes and brought all the northern lands under his rule, then returned to the world community with new laws, ordering his people to fight their enemies and worship God (Daukantas 1845: 174).

His mother was an exceptional person; S. Daukantas respected and loved her. When Simonas was two years old, the Daukantas family took part in the Kosciuszko Uprising and launched an expedition to Liepāja. It was said in the family that Mrs. Daukantas carried food to the rebels. In his first work, S. Daukantas named women as one of the possible audiences: “I answer my reproachers that I do not write for the ignorant and the foolish, but for those mothers who can tell their children the deeds of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers; but without writings, they often lose their way” (Daukantas 1929: 13). Būdė emphasizes the importance of mothers in preserving the Lithuanian language, and the maternal ancestral line is established in more than one place in the text. At S. Daukantas’s initiative, his mother was buried in Lenkimai in 1847, beside the church, where from the nineteenth century onward only distinguished people were buried. This autobiographical element prompts reflection and conjecture that the beginnings of S. Daukantas’s decision to study history arose in the family, as he listened to stories about illustrious ancestors. Thus, judging by her surname, S. Daukantas’s mother was a descendant of distinguished ancestors. The surname indicates that the family may have

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been seers. Just as Vydūnas had heard from his mother, Marija Ašmonaitė, that “the family were direct descendants of the lineage of the last Lithuanian seers (krivės)” (Palijanskaitė 2018: 27). In writing Jaučio aukojimą, R. Granauskas “had felt the miracle of transformation, as if he had truly been one of the ancient Curonian seers” (Daujotė 2017: 11). His “[m]other, however, was—already old, she lived with him on Gerosios Vilties Street: she had no chickens, fed pigeons from the balcony, and bought the dogs a loaf of bread for the day” (Daujotė 2017: 95), and could speak with birds... Their mothers taught both of them to see and name what they saw. Under their influence, one devoted his whole life to history, while the other “spent his whole life in his native places,” depicting Šaukliai and its people in his works.

The words mother and wife are frequent in S. Daukantas’s texts. From chronicles and other historians, he had adopted the view that in the ancient Lithuanian family a man respected his wife and maintained feelings of respect and love (“For throughout that time women were treated in such a way that all their lives they remained wives, which is why, as I say, they were called wives” (Daukantas 1845: 61)). Men trusted their wives, who, when their husbands went to war, were not only wearers of the household’s burden but also defenders of the home. S. Daukantas coined the general expression wife of Lithuania, to which he gives the same meaning as the word human: “On that day one could see what a wife of Lithuania is, who in wisdom, cunning, goodness, gentleness, and hospitality surpasses all the women of this world” (Daukantas 1845: 54). In his own texts, R. Granauskas seems to continue the story of the wives of Lithuania: men make sacrifices, while women sacrifice themselves. As Violeta Kelertienė observed, “...Granauskas emphasizes the continuity of the female line.” Men went to war, while women stayed at home, caring for the farm and the children, and defending them if necessary; therefore, she is “raised to the level of Christ, crucified on the cross of humanity’s suffering” (Kelertienė 2006: 142). R. Granauskas’s Kairienė is, as it were, all of mythical Lithuania.

Samogitia is a land of powerful energy zones, rich in signs of a historic landscape that S. Daukantas emphasized in his works. How proud young Romualdas may have felt when he read that Mosėdis was derived from the old Samogitian word medė, meaning forest, which the historian linked to the name “Massagetae” for the ancestors of the Lithuanians:

For in the chancery, where Latin was written, Lithuanians always called the Highlanders and Samogitians by their ancient names, as they had lived in antiquity, namely Getae, Massagetae, and Samagetae, according to whether they lived in or near the forests. Sometimes they were called Thracians. In Łasicki’s 1564 work on the customs of the Samogitians, he says in his account of the Samogitian gods that the Samogitians came from the Danube or the Isri, settling there among the trees; for the inhabitants of the Guntina region are still called Mases to this day, and the place is called Mōsedis and still bears that name, derived from the word medė or forest (Daukantas 1845: 10).

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Vladimir Toporov, examining the unity of the anthropocultural regions of the Mediterranean, emphasized that a special place was always humanized in order to commemorate a hero worthy of remembrance. He merely observed that it is not easy to determine what mattered: whether a person gave significance to a place, or whether an important place was named after an important hero (Топоров 1993: 73). Be that as it may, once named, a place was transposed; it became a new place and acquired genus loci—when it admits a spirit and seems to take root, to settle in. S. Daukantas called Samogitia the heart of Lithuania. For S. Daukantas, the time before the ancient bočių probčių was not past; for R. Granauskas, it was the time of both S. Daukantas and the forefathers. S. Daukantas’s verbal time caught up with the writer: once again, stronger and more numerous newcomers subjugated Lithuanians in their own land; then, under the cover of a book of faith, and this time claiming that the governorates of Žagany had been Slavic lands from time immemorial... and the Lithuanian still served a foreign lord. The images of ancient Lithuanian bondage and freedom created by S. Daukantas were and remain fitting; they were archetypes for R. Granauskas, who was drawn to “write a larger work about the most difficult rupture experienced by Lithuanians and other Baltic tribes—the loss of the old faith” (Daujotytė 2017: 107).

Both were admired in Northern Samogitia; both were prominent exponents of a sense of rootedness in the land; both were “people unto themselves,” since the aristocratic blood of their forebears yearned for freedom. Saulius Pivoras calculated that in S. Daukantas’s Darbose, the word laisvė (liuosybė) [freedom] occurs 76 times, in Būdė 32 times, and in Istorije žemaitiškoje, whose U.S. edition, Lietuvos istorija (vol. 1, 1895; vol. 2, 1897), R. Granauskas may also have read, 222 times (Pivoras 2018: 94). S. Daukantas’s aristocratic bearing is attested not only by surviving documents (Janulaitis 1913: 244–284), but also by his demeanor, reflected in his texts. At the beginning of his works, S. Daukantas wrote as an epigraph the saying of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Non est generosum hominum res alienas quaerere et pati suas per ignorantiam amitti (Noble people do not pursue what belongs to others, nor tolerate what is their own being lost through negligence), because this was not only what he thought himself, but what he also wished to persuade others of.

In both writers’ texts, the principal elements of the Lithuanian landscape are forests, trees, birds, the sun, grass, a house, a little cemetery, a path, a road, and water. S. Daukantas created a history of the Lithuanian people as a forest civilization. The forest (also called miškas, medė, šilas, lieknas, tankynas, liepenas, pušynas, eglynas, beržynas, ąžuolynas, žarnai...), as the dwelling place of the ancient Lithuanians, is one of the most important leitmotifs. The forest is shelter, a defender against enemies, a provider of food, clothing, and other necessities of life, and a bearer of wealth; it also fulfills spiritual needs, for it contains the home of the dead, the abode of the gods, and the repository of the eternal fire; religious rites are held there, and sacrifices are offered to the gods.

R. Granauskas’s writing, according to V. Daujotytė, is determined by place:

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One must stand at the intersection of one’s own place and time, within one’s sensory, linguistic, and all-encompassing aesthetic zones of experience, for such density to form in the text, for such pressure to bear upon reality that it cannot withstand it and cracks; and in that crack, fissure, gap, or even tiny opening, something other than the customary appears: other dimensions, different relationships, simply something else that ordinary realism cannot explain. Here lie the elements of Granauskas’s magical realism, or its metaphysical aspects (Daujotytė 2017: 67).

Throughout his works, S. Daukantas emphasized that those who do not renounce their own language preserve their freedom. Conquerors can put you in “manors,” but they cannot take away your inner spiritual freedom or identity, which is expressed first and foremost through language. S. Daukantas left his childhood home as a teenager, leaving behind its linguistic environment as well; he changed places, jobs, and friends, but preserved his mother tongue and, through tremendous effort, refined the written language on the basis of living speech. First of all, as a potential resource for the Lithuanian language, he rejected religious texts that did not meet the criteria of linguistic vitality:

That is all the more wondrous, that this antiquity of our language was not found in our bodies for thousands of years, until this day; for our wise Highlander and Samogitian mothers, in their little nests among the forests, when they send their child out into the world and give it a sign of life, say: “Live, child, be an honest person, and take no one’s property”; they thus preserved our ancient language, of which their children can still boast and be proud (Daukantas 1845: 8).

3. STYLIZATION OF SIMONAS DAUKANTAS’S RHYTHM

Influenced by Romantic ideas, S. Daukantas devoted considerable attention to sound, which determines the melodiousness of language. “Since music seemed to the Romantics the ideal language of art” (Josipovici 2003: 233), they created not only melodious poetry but also prose. Seeking to use living speech in his text, S. Daukantas looked for ways to reflect the natural rhythm of speech in sentence structure. Thus, he paid close attention not only to the sound of words, but also to the sentence phrase, which determines an individual rhythm of breathing.

From the perspective of rhythm, the strongest passages in S. Daukantas’s texts are those in which he describes forests—forests through which he probably walked with his father, which he remembered well and longed for, and whose descriptions elicited aesthetic delight (emphasis added—R. B.):

Briefly speaking // wīnō kupļ pōsnaj it nendnēj, kitō tanki eglinaj it kanapinaj niūsoje // o tarp jų koukstai beržinū, liepīnū, klewnū, ouzolūnū, apšzrotų joria-wo // it wīlnys i padebius musdamas. // Kėlėjēs kėlaudams // wīku ar meskų

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valley path wound, // for the whole wood was there not; // only the parting between day and night was known // by the sound of bees’ buzzing whirring // or beneath the trees, flowers blossoming, // the sun by day and stars and lightning at night, not seeing through the leaves clearly; // for everywhere there eternal night shimmered, // leaves fallen // or in winter the travelers, following the stars’ path would follow // for when they lost their way among streams, the stars guided them there. // already lived there // then waited, or barefoot, along its sides, followed the little path home back. // As autumn leaves fell, // rains poured, // there would not dry, // even from the dew beneath the trees, and would grow; // therefore the impassable bog and marsh, receiving no sunlight for ages, swelled, // which, even when the deepest pools glistened, never dried (Daukantas 1845: 14).

S. Daukantas’s emotional relationship with the nature of his childhood and the past of the ancient Lithuanians influences the text’s rhythm, which is always determined by the structure of a particular language and human physiology (Kazlauskienė 2015: 87). He learned sentence rhythm from classical authors, Kristijonas Donelaitis’s Metai, and folk songs. The historian’s long sentences break into sonorous phrases, often recalling Donelaitis’s hexameter (see Bončkutė 2015: 222–245). The quotation above shows how S. Daukantas creates rhythm. In his phrases he repeats sounds and various forms of the same part of speech expressed in different ways, sometimes replacing them with participles. The quotation shows that the rhythm presses forward through verb and participle forms, helping the word shine with unexpected expression. The sound of the text stirs the reader’s feelings and compensates for losses of meaning arising from the text’s complexity. It is evident that aesthetic information that evokes the recipient’s feelings is conveyed not only by linguistic signs but also by the rhythm of the text. Aesthetic information is perceived subjectively, depending on the correspondence between the individual psychology and cognitive systems of sender and recipient. Subjective information embedded in the text’s rhythmic structure conveys to the reader the author’s personal relationship with the things depicted, reveals an original interpretation of information at the level of content, and compensates for losses of objective information if the recipient fails to decode other levels of the text (Гумовская 2018: 195).

R. Granauskas inherited his ear from S. Daukantas: the origins of rhythm and the artistic whole of the text are conveyed not only through words, but also through rhythm. For example, this quotation echoes the one quoted earlier from S. Daukantas:

though all morning, all day, until evening, brauies after them through the thickets, // brisi through fords // or, apsipildamas with sweat // kopsi up a steep slope // and jausi // how senka your last strength // in muscles dried out by old age, // – they supranta that, // perhaps even

⁴ “The discreteness of a process, its interruption and renewal, and the recurrence of certain phenomena are called rhythm” (Kazlauskienė 2015: 8).

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better supranta, // because they tyli, // when you nusviedi their bread down, // tyli, // when you guliesi down in the grass again, // and later klausei // somewhat calmer (Granauskas 1975: 21).

The sound of R. Granauskas’s novella is shaped by the same elements, that is, repetitions at the levels of phonetics, lexis, and morphological forms, as well as the reversal of subject and predicate. It is worth providing one more quotation from the novella:

and all that you paėmei, // you still nešies in your hands, // but that buvo ne yet, // but still, in that true stillness, tėra tyla, the shimmering of the forest, a shard of water and one of your hands, // in which you laikai that shard, // – a half-dried old man’s hand with prominent veins beneath brown skin, tanned, // nors vengi walking for long in the sun, through open spaces, through clearings, // where the air mirga with heat // or where, far away, one can matyti blue and green forests, rivers, hills, stony ground, the dried-up valley of a lake, with red fish-pools still shimmering above it like flower petals [...] (Granauskas 1975: 8–9).

It is evident that the reversal of subject and predicate in “there is only silence,” “the air shimmers,” and “the forests are visible...” marks the rhythm of the sentence’s segments, from which the phrases begin to lengthen and “the unbroken stream of speech, undulating in a cadence of endings and expressing the world of the seer’s thoughts, acquires an independent meaning: language as an element, as an unceasing rhythm linking the world, the cosmos, and the human being into an inexpressible unity, giving human beings a sense of strength and eternity” (Juknaitė 2003: 5).

S. Daukantas not only reinterpreted sources but also strove to bring the expression of his texts as close as possible to living Lithuanian speech. In his view, every language has its own distinctive and unique rules for combining words, reflecting the character of a nation; therefore, the narration or quotation of historical sources had to conform to the system of the Lithuanian language. The intellectualism and polyphony characteristic of S. Daukantas’s works emerge in R. Granauskas’s text: the author enters into dialogue with many texts he has read (see Natopka 2002), but the language used strongly reflects S. Daukantas’s influence, especially in the structure of the text’s rhythm. Daukantas’s texts gave the writer good material to “transform himself,” to see and rethink under their influence, and to find his own rhythm of speech.

Loreta Mačianskaitė, who wrote about Juozas Baltušis’s influence on Icchokas Meras, observed:

We hypothesize that what makes Baltušis worth reading—the recurrence of images according to the refrain principle, cinematic flashback, rhythm, and the symmetry of segments—was learned from Meras’s works, while some elements came from Granauskas, Šavelis, Bronius Radzevičius, Saulius Šaltenis, and other masters of lyrical prose (Mačianskaitė 2010: 120).

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J. Baltušis mentioned R. Granauskas more than once in his diaries, followed his work and valued it highly, and helped him take his first steps:

In prose, if R. Granauskas’s experiments are captivating and appealing, Saulius Šaltenis and his “Riešutų duona” (Bread of Nuts) are quite disappointing (Baltušis 2018: 610).

The editorial office of “Komjaunimo tiesa” sent Romualdas Granauskas’s short story “Veršio akis” (The Calf’s Eye) for censorship, intending to publish it, but they are afraid; they asked me to write something like an introduction, a couple of words. The story is written with talent, but I do not undertake to write an introduction: everything is very obscure, there are many unpleasant allusions for which the author could get beaten. I would rather talk with him personally. That will be better for him. This young writer must be protected. He is truly talented (Baltušis 2018: 699).

The newspapers reported good news: Romualdas Granauskas had been awarded the Žemaitė Literary Prize for the short story “Vidudienio dalis” (A Portion of Midday), the same one that I had passionately recommended for publication in “Jaunimo gretos” the previous year, and which was published precisely thanks to that recommendation (Baltušis 2018: 782).

J. Baltušis regretted that the Vaga publishing house had rejected R. Granauskas’s book, submitted for publication in 1973 (Baltušis 2018: 705). His attention to R. Granauskas allows us to support L. Mačianskaitė’s view that in his late prose J. Baltušis also used the art of decay from R. Granauskas. S. Daukantas, R. Granauskas, and J. Baltušis are genetically linked not only by their attention to rhythm but also by their relationship with Lithuania’s natural world. Both Žemaitians agreed with the Aukštaitian J. Baltušis that “by losing our connection, our immediate connection with nature, we lose incomparably more than nature. We lose the meaning of our lives” (Baltušis 2018: 1013).

4. CONCLUSION

The study, based on the concept of the poetics of breathing (English poetics of breathing), already found in ancient rhetorical treatises, showed that R. Granauskas, having encountered S. Daukantas’s works at the beginning of his creative career, recognized in them Žemaitian thought and speech, conveyed in the works’ content, the historian’s authentic phrases, sentence structures, and the rhythm of periods, and significantly stylized them, creating an individual model of breathing in the novella Jaučio aukojimas. By mentioning S. Daukantas’s surname twice in the novella, R. Granauskas provided the reader with a key to decoding it. The novella’s content, motifs, vocabulary, and rhythm, marked by S. Daukantas, help the reader, through the historian’s texts, to better understand the writer’s thought.

R. Granauskas’s rhythmic prose—the principal element of his authentic expression—influenced his contemporaries, first and foremost J. Baltušis, but this observation needs to be examined in greater detail.

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Granauskas’s Breath-Writing in the Manner of Daukantas

SUMMARY

The article discusses the influence of the works of Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864) on the prose of Romualdas Granauskas (1939–2014), focusing on his short story Jaučio aukojimas (1975).

The article refers to the researchers addressing intertextuality, rhythm in prosaic texts and the poetics of breathing in their works.

First of all, the article draws the parallels between the biographies of the two authors, which determined their coinciding attitudes and world-views. Granauskas borrowed the concept of the history of Lithuania as the civilization of forests and the approach to Samogitia as special genius loci from Daukantas and further elaborated on them in his prose; he also took attention to personal freedom, respect for women, love for one’s mother tongue. It is believed that Daukantas’ flowing periodic sentences and his sonority of language made the greatest influence on Granauskas, who was gifted with absolute pitch. In Granauskas’ short story we find the theme prevalent in Daukantas’ Būdas senovės lietuvių, kalnų ir žemaičių: a relationship between Lithuanians and their homeland, the inherent ability to take a deep look at nature, to live in harmony with the environment, to be able to recover one’s strength and energy from the sun, fire, wind, land, trees, water. In his short story Granauskas does not hide his links with Daukantas’ works, cites the historian’s last name, does not hesitate to paraphrase the text and uses the historian’s vocabulary. Granauskas makes use of the devices employed by Daukantas to create rhythm by using repetitions of sounds in phrases as well as various, repetitive and differently expressed forms of the predicate, which are occasionally replaced with participial ones. Granauskas’ rhythmical prose also influenced other Lithuanian writers.

Submitted on October 6, 2019.

ROMA BONČKUTĖ

Klaipėdos universitetas

Salomėjos Nėries g. 5, LT-9227 Klaipėda, Lietuva

[email protected]

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