Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija

GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS Vilnius University Research areas: modular forms, number theory, flows, differential geometry; natural-scientific aspects of musicology, late Danish, British, and Russian musical Romanticism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35321/al181-11 Language does not lie among books, but flows in rivulets of dialects in people’s mouths and, being alive, gradually wears away and changes. Antanas Baranauskas LANGUAGE IN POETRY: PHILOLOGY VS. BIOPHILIA As someone who writes poetry, as a recorder of poetry lived through, I offer a few thoughts on the language of lyric poetry. These thoughts are not mine alone. They are shared, continually reinforced by the gravity of kindred souls. The same thing, at least in spirit, is also written in Sigitas Geda’s diaries. I quote the Poet a lot in this text, so I do not give his surname. Other poets say similar things about living language, and it is reassuring that my homemade little compass is magnetized just like the great poetic star charts are oriented. Gravity, electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions—the four fundamental forces in nature. But already in the first paragraph I have mixed them up, as if I were an alchemist ignorant of chemistry. And yet let us not shout at chemistry. When discussing the diachrony of poetic language, only two questions arise: 1. Is the jaw being made to articulate? 2. Does the word awaken? Both answers are yes! The first question is fairly clear. After all, it is about perspective. Humming, babbling, onomatopoeia, the development of the mouth, facial musculature, and nerves—all kept pace with the increasingly complex central nervous system of humanoids, at least its CRT logical component. I am not saying that they kept pace with the emotional one too—perhaps Insights / Insights 235 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS Quite the opposite. But what the balance between erudition and intuition is, and what it can be, is another matter. Only one thing is clear: a poet must have at least one of these elements ringing like a bell as the front approaches. Without pause! Ideally, both bells ring together. Not necessarily harmoniously, but chaotically amplifying one another. Any communication, everyday speech, texts arising from personal experience are essentially an outward utterance of speech¹. A perspective. Most contemporary poetry seems to be like this. It is much harder with retrospect, with awakened and awakening words. Awakened grammatical forms, morphological formations, dialect words, historical spelling, the context of being. The consciousness of people of that period—the impoverished nobleman, the Jesuit, the folk hymn-singer, the ploughman, the hermit, the blacksmith, the horse thief. So, if I want to use language retrospectively, I always try to find a seed that can be vitalized, germinated. Then—to grow it. Or at least to let it rot, so that it is evident that there was life, only it was not preserved: life passed into a primordial, bacterial level. I do not want to present language as though it were a collection of dried butterflies in various colors. Or like the pellets owls cough up. As though church registers were being presented instead of a person still alive. Something utterly incapable of being revived (by the way, speaking of owls, this is really true, as any ornithologist who studies owls will attest; those regurgitated pellets always contain mouse skulls and ribs, little stones, and some other indigestible debris. The small folklore of the forest folk, gathered into just such a collection! Owls are the forest’s Slančiauskases). At the 2019 “Poetic Druskininkai Autumn” festival, my poem, written under a pseudonym (as required by the competition), won first place. The text was signed, of course, with the initials S. G. Yet for some reason everyone thought (Šiaurės Atenai, 2019-10-11, No. 19 (1323), p. 15) that I had played Geda’s madness brilliantly! And yet I was sincerely and painfully indignant (not out of personal anger) at those young poets for whom Rėza, Daukantas, and Bretkūnas were like splinters of kindling, useful only to the marsh-dwellers, the dark-shanked little lords from the bogs. For a contemporary poet, they were just ballast. Why carry a splinter of kindling when a smart screen lights up the space? Never mind that you could even take that kindling along to Velieka’s bog (there is such a peat bog between Skuodas and Mažeikiai, where the devil’s plough has been cast down; there are the gates to hell). And the smart eye will close on the second day of the journey, after one wild downpour. The Debesnai marshes near Varniai are electrified, to be sure—very much so—and Lake Lūkstas is right nearby ¹ Kardelis Naglis 2017: Lengvi lietuvių kalbos sparnai. – ALL LXXVI. Kaip gražiai autorius parodo, kuo skiriasi kalbos komunikacija ir kalbos komunija! Maniškis tekstas gal apie tą patį? Tik poeto patirti persiūtas. 236 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXI Language in Poetry: Philology vs. Biophilia and amber—“electron”—is cast up (but that is philology now). The electrification standard, however, has not been updated since the time of Netimeras and is incompatible with the smart screen. The first two lines of the poem that won this PDR prize (I was extraordinarily happy, I won’t hide it!) are as follows: Bastards! At the gates of Zion, left ajar, Generations made—unmade, then made again! Indeed, because of the poem’s planned sound imagery (the first oxymoron in this text; there will be three more!), at first I wanted to write not “bastards,” but “offspring of generations.” In the dictionary of synonyms, this means a scoundrel. Unfortunately, I had no sense at all of the word’s weight, its emotional notes and whims (“notes of a cock”), its period, geography, or register. I tried looking for it in written sources. And found it, by chance! While arranging a section of my second book of poetry, the one devoted to L. Rėza (published in this issue of ALL), I was reading all sorts of texts associated with Gediminas and his name. And there it was3: Prince <Karijotas, son of Gediminas> <...> said to Živilė <...>: “You are an upstart, not my daughter; by your wickedness you have brought shame upon your father’s house. Away from me! You and your spawn, the Grim Reaper will reap.” And yet I did not dare replace “bastards” with “offspring of generations”. Thanks to Daukantas, the word had already entered the passive vocabulary. But what was its force, what level of usage did it belong to, was the word everyday or literary? I had no feel for it. Perhaps a little, but not enough to use it in poetry. If I wrote it into a folk tale or a song, then I would truly feel and experience it. I would bring it out of its passive state. One more example. In another poem I wrote4: Seeing the Life that is to come, I take root In the northern tundra sky. ² Lyberis Antanas 1980: Sinonimų žodynas. Vilnius: Mokslas. ³ Daukantas Simonas 1995: Istorija žemaitiška [I]. Vilnius: Vaga, 526. ⁴ Northern Athens 13(1317), 8. Insights / Insights 237 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS I very much wanted to be like something that had fallen out of a bookcase and write down “the chill tundra skies.” Unlike “nuokartos,” at least a few shades of the word “žiaudrus” are clear to a Lithuanian. Because of its phonetics, derivation, and instinctively sensed morphology. And yet the word is found in a dictionary. And how foreign it seems to my present-day living expression! Good thing I changed it to something simpler. One could, of course, like some Ghanaian shaman, toss words into a bag like the bones of ancestors, rattle them over one’s head and admire them—there, look, what vitality, what primeval force! (Incidentally, local belief has it that the outcome of football matches between the Ghana and Senegal national teams is determined not by physical action on the field but by the shamans’ spiritual cries from the stadium sidelines—whichever side has the higher shout, its army wins.) But throw those bones on the ground. If no snake leaps out of a skull, as happened to Oleg Visreg⁵, then that is all the vitality there is to see. A snake is proof of life. What remains? In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings there is a stone called the Palantír. Through it, one can communicate directly with the heart of the dark realm of Mordor, with the tower of Barad-dûr. The crystal seems to carry one there, where only the most archaic survival instincts hold sway, where the field of vision has narrowed to tunnel vision. Unless you act like a creature made feral by a quadruple dose of adrenaline, the spider Shelob will soon suck the vital fluids from your body, and the Nazgûl, the dark riders, your very soul. But in fact the Palantír is only a magical illusion. It conjures visions indistinguishable from the dark reality of Mordor—that much is true. But otherwise it sits quietly with the wizard Gandalf, and if anything threatens to disturb the peace (as the crystal is troubled too, having lost its connection with Sauron, the fallen god), it is only festive fireworks. They are impressive! But that is all. Incidentally, J. R. R. Tolkien, professor of philology, is an exceptionally apt author to write about living poetry. From a mythological, composite perspective, in terms of capturing the soul’s resonance, the languages J. R. R. Tolkien constructed—the Elvish languages (and how many there are, synchronically and diachronically⁶), the language of Mordor, Entish, the Common Speech of Middle-earth—and their scripts (for example, the Sarati alphabet) are no less interesting than Volapük, Esperanto, or some occult Enochian language⁷. ⁵ Puškinas Aleksandras 1822: Daina apie Pranašingąjį Olegą. – Raštai I, vertė E. Mieželaitis. Vilnius: Valstybinė grožinės literatūros leidykla, 1954, 108. (Весций – gal geriau visregis?) Rekomenduoju paklausyti įspūdingą N. A. Rimskio-Korsakovo kantatą pagal šį tekstą (op. 58, 1899 m.). Žinia, tai iš kaukolės iššokusi gyvatė ir išpildė aiškiaregio (volchvo) pranašystę – Olegą pražudė jo mylimiausias žirgas. ⁶ Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvish_languages_(Middle-earth). ⁷ An angelic language described in the sixteenth century by J. Dee and E. Kelley, whose linguistic analysis, however, demonstrates enormous syntactic and semantic similarities to English. Be that as it may, the phenomenon of divine and other constructed languages (as art—not as science!) is fascinating. 238 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXI Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija I see the same kind of separation (not opposition, no, but something unnamed that does not set the two against each other) between language poetry that is being revived and, alas, language poetry that has been mummified. Sigitas Gėda1 was once asked why some of his texts are like botany textbooks. Here are lines from the much-read long poem Flowers of the Night8: Loaded swords no longer pierce the blade of grass; great and silent words are born <...> I don’t know whether I understand what the author means (and why analyze a poem, anyway?), but knowing the etymologies of flower names (gladiolus—sword lily; carnation—L. Rėza’s negalė—little nail; sword—wolf’s scythe—vilkdagis—Iris, goddess of the rainbow), these lines grow still more complicated, since the whole setting of the stanza is somewhat botanical and also delves deeper. With such a magnifying glass in hand, even the metaphor disappears—a scythe against a blade of grass. This isn’t even poetry, but summer work! But the Poet replied: when I write, I never use reference books or encyclopedias. It is obvious: you have to know a plant in its full temporal and spatial dimensions, its botany from genus to specimen, and best of all as if you were searching for just that one plant, your savior, for your sick mother. Like those stone flowers9. Indeed: somewhere in Lithuania there once lived a little man who, when his paklainė (a large piece of cloth stretched across a frame) broke, had no way to take hay to market and sell it, and had no money to buy flour. The little man went hungry while he mended the paklainė. With an empty stomach and a full heart, he felt what sort of word it was. But I, a poet from Anykščiai, whose harvest is not ruined by the weather, who keeps no seed at home and therefore has no moon arranging his schedule by day or night (a night schedule—night-schedule? A second oxymoron!), and who has not held the reins in his hands for ages (though he does drive; and because of that iron bit in the horse’s mouth, he even overturns a cartload of stones—the elders can’t keep up, the horse is worked up by that iron bit), will take this word paklainė from a dictionary and make it rhyme with cukrainė or varainė. Bookish philology is charming, but useless if you need something to spread on bread. Again, say the worst frosts have set in. Someone takes another little implement, a luokas (the sort used to make a hole through the ice for fish) and somewhere in the snowdrifts starts to freeze. Or perhaps he breaks the handle. Try fastening that handle again when even your mittened fingers are stiff. A luokas need not be used to stun fish, but keep trudging, search among the snow-covered stones. ⁸ Geda Gitas 1977: Mėnulio žiedai. Vilnius: Vaga, 26. ⁹ S. S. Prokofiev’s ballet The Tale of the Stone Flower (op. 118, 1948). Įžvalgos / Insights 239 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS Because of that, one or another had to go hungry. So now you really understand what the stanza means10: Those are his grandpas, They walked the track, chased the Mammoth, fished in Luokė. That knowing oneself has long ceased to inspire anyone is also demonstrated by Viktorija Daujotytė on the very first page of her book about the Poet11. Once, a Lithuanian poet rhymed Palestrina with Palestrina. Palestrina is a town in Italy, but, of course, the reference is to the late Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi (1525–1594). After reading that stanza, I wondered to myself—does the author really feel the difference between the musical cultures of Venice, Florence, and Rome? Of the Flemish, British, German, Hungarian Renaissance? The strangest musical speculations (musica reservata, Archicembalo), modern ones (C. Gesualdo)? Instrumental Renaissance music is a whole cosmos! I don’t know whether he feels it, but it certainly isn’t clear from the text. I would not put any living beings (bios) into such an argument. And whoever inserts such words (λόγος) is making their own choice. Of course, a creator is not obliged to reproduce the names of those people, to go through the whole burden of suffering. You can’t set up a crossroad for every poor wretch. How could one not quote A Song about the Native Homestead: Yes, and here I am too, walking the calvaries of shadows, I do not see that, long since grown old, overgrown and muddy, Father returns, cursing his white-haired children: “Woe to those who have distanced themselves from me!” That is what literature, empathy, and archetypal experiences are for: so the subconscious can speak. A conscious subconscious (the third oxymoron, and a tautology as well). Let us agree13: 10 Geda Sigitas 1966: Pėdos. Vilnius: Vaga, 24. 11 Daujotytė Viktorija 2010: Tragiškasis meilės laukas. Vilnius: LRS leidykla. 12 Geda Sigitas 1991: Septyni vasarų giesmės. Vilnius: Vaga, 96. 13 Geda Sigitas 1984: Varnėnas po mėnuliu (tekstas ant aplanko). Vilnius: Vaga. 240 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXI Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija What would I like to say by this? That everything is relative? Or that true lines must be marked by inspiration that surpasses our ingenuity and talents? This was known thousands of years ago. Variations on this thought play in the minds of many poets. It seems obvious to me. And they play not as a philological monody, but as a polyphony of archetypal experiences. Of course, one can put on a Užgavėnės mask, play the character in a farce, someone from Peking opera or Comedia dell’arte. But for a true creator, masks are not only Jungian archetypes14 (ego, persona, shadow, animus / anima, self), but also the multitude of impressions from wanderings, lives, and lived-through experiences, from the many books read and settled into the mind. These are precisely the experiences that allow a man (chemically and harmonically different from a woman) to feel Paskendolė’s pain, and a woman (physically and theologically different from a man) to feel Liudas Vasaris’s crisis. Such, after all, are masks15: I had pretended to be priests, a centaur, Strazdas, Jesus Christ, Lithuania’s greatest poet, all people and birds. Charon, a demiurge playing with a seashell in the Baltic. A true collective subconscious! Or, to put it in less refined, though not catechismal, words: it hurts when someone else, who lived long ago, hurt. And we ourselves feel the joy of those who lived, if there was any. And there was—perhaps only the joy of being, but there was. Even if there were no eyes to see it, that alone would be enough for some recruit. Linguistic incrustations, installations, fireworks—fun! There is life in them, but that comes from the observer. The installations themselves produce no offshoots. They are brought to life only through a connection with a living person (a tautology, I agree). To quote the Poet one last time16: Everything dies, but God does not die, I was in the grinding of his teeth. 14 Gudaitė Gražina 1997: Įvadas į analitinę psichologiją. Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla. 15 Geda Sigitas 1985: Mamutų tėvynė. Vilnius: Vaga, 42. 16 Geda Sigitas 1991: Septyni vasarų giesmės. Vilnius: Vaga, 63. Įžvalgos / Insights 241 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS Clearly, such a hypostasis is great suffering, intended, alas, for geniuses. On Rimvydas Stankevičius17: You fell for three, for three the path, for a three-centimeter hole (just right to press an eye against) to the other side As in the Lord’s vineyard – – – – – – Three is what you were given. It’s easier for me—to goat-leg it, for the Capuchins’ stripped-down— I’m only for myself. To burn with life for three is the lot of people born of natural fire: M. P. Mussorgsky, N. V. Gogol, E. A. Poe, G. Beresnevičius. And we, people not born of natural fire, can only pump the bellows intensely, kindle a spark, and live—only for one, but for one whole. Day by day. And that is enough! When I had to go to the lowlands (the dictionary says this means the north side; but surely it could be like a thaw, like winter’s notch; the fourth oxymoron!) to the vicinity of Senaslis and stoke a friend’s cottage stove so that the radiators wouldn’t burst in the cold, I’m overcome when, in that cottage barely holding above zero degrees (the Earth heats from below, though you’d better not go out dressed like a city dweller—you come back unable to feel yourself or clench your fingers into a fist), the interior warmed to 12 degrees on the second day of firing. And there, some not very aesthetic form of life would suddenly shine in a corner. Some mosses. They would sprout where other mosses had been laid in autumn. There is no firework beauty here, but what abundance! Even if you live just one day, you patiently wait out that day, the promised one. So we, living only for ourselves, need not be in God’s grinding teeth. It is enough to remain even in the traces of moss. Go on, try to eradicate that kin, clever one. You’ll only wave your hands uselessly at the ceiling, as if praying, as if driving away evil spirits. To conclude: one poet (alive, and very much so!) learned no longer to be afraid of being in a cemetery at night only after he had slept until dawn (there was nowhere else to go!) after visiting V. Mačernis’s grave in Šarnelė. But one critic, invited recently to a commemoration of that same V. Mačernis at the monument in Telšiai, did not make it to the readings—the Telšiai hotel seemed too poor. Well, but that didn’t stop the first one from calling, in the night… 17 Stankevičius Rimvydas 2018: Mokymasis skaičiuoti. Trys. Sigutų Gedai. – Vahala. Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 99. 242 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXI Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija …embracing, self-important, and over-spiritualized. Well, I read that over-spiritualized (Semantic Relations): I tread the azure sky—Good expanses flow. The palms intertwine—They join again. To critics, good philologists, of course, this is just literature. Parabola, hyperbole, metaphorical allegory, metonymic onomatopoeia, verbal personification, synthesis of theses and antitheses. Whatever you like. But to me, seeking faith and life through poetry, it seems that it is just as it is written. Sometimes. That is how it must be. At least sometimes. It must! A SECTION FROM THE POEM WAKIŪJA WIESZPATA 1810 The Lithuanian and Prussian deities will love the pastor of the literati, Liudvikas Martynas; they baptize him Jedeminas and inspire him to collect Lithuanian songs To Grasila Blažienė, for the direct connection made possible through her with the Poets, who are already in eternity, with the chroniclers and their chronicles, with P. Ruigys, J. Bretkūnas, F. Kuršaitis, and with all of Prussia, inspiring, resonant, and never to fall silent again! § 1 1.1. Far, far from Cape Ventė, toward Rusnė, there was the island of Perkūnkalvė. J. Basanavičius, “From the Life of Spirits and Devils,” 1898 Įžvalgos / Insights 243 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS 1.2. Hey, it rose, it rose, and up came the Yellow Little Ship from the Gilija sandbar. (P.): Hey, little brother, little brother, my little brother, where shall we steer the little ship, where does the little sailboat sail? (Perkūnas): What sort of shadows— I strike a match in the dark; could it be you’ve risen, Liudvikas Rėza? (Liudas): The horse is unsaddled, nibbling the yard grass, and the books lie in a row like little crayfish on a bench. (L.): There, the gray old mother, there Prussia, there the sea, where great secrets open up to a person. From a song sent to L. Rėza by J. F. Hertelis of Alavėnai, 1828 Sigitas Geda, “In the Village of Cows, Buried by Sand,” 1987–2001 1.3. Tawa Nouson kas tu es sei en dangon – the first line of the Old Prussian prayers can also be read as a cipher. The translation had a clear addressee—the Old Prussians, who in turn had even older prayers. For example, Dusų Tėve, kursai esi Antdevis... Supreme God: Andjas, Ant-dievis, Ant-Dangis. A condensed formula. In the new prayer, the old one’s tone, echo, and depth remain. The new god takes on a deeper selfhood. Sigitas Geda, “Vasarė jero šneką” (2002 diary, pp. 317–318), 2008 244 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXI Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija 1.4. The loss was of the kind that still remembered the sky, the order of the sky (Gdm, dnm, art of the sky). Sigitas Geda, “The Restoration of Babylon,” 1994 1.5. Who, after thousands of years, will find your traces, homeland, / Blooming land of my forebears, where my songs first rang out? / Yet, sorrowful place, I shall always love you, / Every vanished tree I shall carry in my heart! / For here I myself lived: among green gardens and ponds / Father and mother led me here by the hand, / They rest here—and perhaps beyond, they still love me. Ludwig I. Rhesa Prutena oder preussische Volkslieder, 1809 § 2 LIUDVIKAS’S SECOND BAPTISM The fate of Žiebiai and Karvaičiai, extinguished! The heart breathed life back—and the Hunched godling grew wrathful, Lord of Prussia. The vault is the sea, / the little sails are dunes, / swept by the wind—it aches! This is the Proud One, seeing Fate: / the destiny of a soul, the Lord’s servant, / a Prussian Lithuanian. The godling of the sky, hunter of flashes, / brought the wind to a halt. The one that drives the sea’s precious treasure shoreward, / its smoke-grey haze. The one that kneads / the sand’s sustenance, / the plains of grief. The one that fulfilled / the ancient curse / of the grey godling, / the Wrathful Perkūnas. The one that piled up Įžvalgos / Insights 245 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS A dowry for the Karvaičiai folk—the Mill of Bones... The one that raised (Long ago—forever!) a golden crown... Bareheaded, without the sea’s ploughshare, without Dagas’s whip, Alone, all alone, the god descended Into the snowdrift of ruin, Consecrating the Prūs, As far as Vėnis’s horn— Toward Runė. In the sands, as if at home, Liudas herding a little song, Louisas, (for Luther—Ludwigs, for Pius—Ludovico, for us—the Vytis of Liudas) The offspring of Kristupas Dovdas Vičius, from Žvairas, Apysnis, and Kaukėnai’s backwash. Perkūnas spoke: – Kails Pokails Ans Par Antars! The sails sail the seas, the lagoons: The old man against the child, The child against the stork! And through the sand, The bodies’ ruins: A breath against the wind, The wind against death! With the scythes of Laikmalis, With the axes of Dvaskalas, I baptize, I sand-baptize Gedminas, Geda, Be Jedemius! God sings your fate! With interludes—fish, With refrains—toads, Swallows—gunshots At the sun of the Sudovian! The order of the lagoons, The order of longing, Shod with crosses! Beings and existences!—The godling vanished, Not having touched the earth, Yet his scorched footprints did not cool. Liudas answered: – Though I am Martynas, Blessed with the host, He who raises wine Not for a toast— I enlighten Perkūnas, The errant son, The wicked little brother Of the Lord Jesus! – Liudvikas Rėza received baptism. – The songs of the Lithuanians Will flow like prayers! – The sandy altar, shining with fortune. – Let me drink, Not of sparkling wine, But of the sea’s and lagoon’s Encircling roses! 246 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXI Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija And not the little song of Weimar’s genius, of German words—the Meister, the bard, who conquered souls. I drink only the little language close to me, of Varunė, of Nemunas’s gardens. To clothe myself in the sigh of the half—of Bangpūtys in the broad reaches of the Skliuotas. That little language—as if God’s dogs had risen again, bright brothers, to bark at dreadful, timeless Death. To guard the head of the Yotvingian, the Skalvian; the Sambian, the Notangian would lick his hand. From the foe he would defend the Warmian, the Nadruvian, the Bartian, the Galindian—Burgundian, Shirlandian, no gifts for you! –– Only Donelaitis’s, Bačiai, precentors, pastors, gentlemen, buy the volume! The Seasons of Tolminkiemis And Kleinlitau (the name, like an anchor, Grunau recorded) – One gulden, fifteen groschen – – For me, not to sail into my little homeland by the sea’s wave-washed shore, not to wander the paths of the dunes... My little homeland—restless through the ages, bright in the dark, aching, briny fractures of ripples. The wind of the Curonian Lagoon, its secret nests. My little homeland—the sun that is a Katrun, the one who brightens, ripens the song of their solitude. My little homeland—the one who shapes the shapes, villages buried by snow, Gilija, Rusnė, Tilžė, Rasyte, the Light that spreads beyond the little seas, weave into eternity’s necklace! Rėza arose. Liudvikas Rėza. And—Gediminas. 2019-07 Įžvalgos / Insights 247 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSKAS § 3 Comments 3.1. Words from songs collected by Liudvikas Rėza and his assistants. Sources: Rėza Liudvikas 1958: Lithuanian Folk Songs I, prepared by J. Jurginis and B. Kmitas. Vilnius. Rėza Liudvikas 1965: Lithuanian Folk Songs II, prepared by A. Jovaišas. Vilnius. Liktis, -ies (Germanic) – candle Žėgliuoti – to sail in a sailing vessel Žėglus, -aus (Germanic) – sail Valdonis, -io – ruler Medėjas, -o – hunter Brangynas, -o (Germanic) – firewood Šėdrynas, šėdrynelė (Germanic) – veil Pernas, -o (Slavic) – feather bed Vencio ragas, -o (Vėncioragas) – Ventė Cape Namė, namė – at home Krygė, -ės (Germanic) – war Rinčynis, -io (Germanic) – Rhine wine; more generally, good wine Batis, -čio (Slavic) – Curonian, friend Vandruoti, -ja, -avo (Slavic) – to travel, to march Katrun – in which direction, which way 3.2. Contexts Prutena oder... poem The Drowned Village, translated by V. Bložė. Enthusiasm (Greek en-theos-ousia) – divine inspiration. Dagas – conflagration, fire. Pope Pius XIII – pope (1800–1823), during Rėza’s time. Liaudų Vytis – Česlovas Gedgaudas’s linguistic improvisation on the theme of the two-stemmed name “Ludwig” (In Search of Our Past, 1972. 2nd revised edition. Kaunas, 2018). The latter work is unjustifiably ethno-, linguo- and religiocentric, and often uninformed on questions of linguistics, mythology, and history. The author’s ideas in this book about instrument temperament and twentieth-century music are not even worth discussing – a third of the book could be thrown out for ignorance, another third for malice. And yet in Seven Summer Hymns, S. Geda quotes Č. Gedgaudas! 248 Acta Linguistica Lituanica LXXI Kalba poezijoje: filologija vs. biofilija And it dawned on me: can pseudolinguistics be good poetry? Rarely, but it can! After all, Č. Gedgaudas is valued not as a researcher guided by scientific methods, but as an exceptional erudite with a deep feel for language, a gift for improvisation, and a sense of the divide between the vitality and decline of language, between living morphology and artificial philologisms. One simply has to read that good third of the book. And read it as we sometimes read Tacitus, M. Pretorius, E. Stella, M. Stryjkowski, A. Vijūkas-Kojelavičius, even S. Daukantas or T. Narbutas. Why not? In my opinion, at his best Č. Gedgaudas is an original poet! Kristupas Dovydas Vichas – a parish schoolteacher in Kaukėnai, a relative of L. Rėza, who took in Liudvikas, orphaned in childhood, from 1785 to 1791. Kails pokails ans par antars (Greetings, one after another) – a Yotvingian greeting (from J. Meletijus’s notes), also used in Bronius Kutavičius’s oratorio From the Yotvingian Stone (1983). The moss-covered stones left by the Yotvingians in Lithuania are place names: Kirsnà, Gáilintas, Léipalingis, and others (Sabaliauskas Algirdas 2002: We Are Balts. Revised and expanded edition. Vilnius, 84–85). Jedminas – in 1810, when providing information to the University of Königsberg, L. Rėza stated that he descended from a Lithuanian family and supplemented his name with the Lithuanian Gediminas (Jedminas). The change at the beginning of the word is not surprising. Because of German pronunciation, in some Lithuanian words of East Prussia, jentaras appeared in place of gintaras ‘amber’ (Sabaliauskas Algirdas 1994: Where Did They Come From? A Story About the Origins of Words. Vilnius: LKĮ, 101). Sudovians in Prussia – in the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights transferred about 1,600 people from Suwałki to the Sambia Peninsula. From then on, the Sudovian corner, often mentioned in documents, came into being (Sabaliauskas Algirdas 2002: We Are Balts. Revised and expanded edition. Vilnius, 84). Rėda – a way of life, the cycle of time, the order of the world (Patackas Algirdas, Žarskus Aleksandras 2002: Book of Transformations. Kaunas. This too contains quite a bit of unscientific material, but it is good linguistic poetry). Martynas – L. Rėzos krikšto vardas. Jonas Šliūpas (Rinktiniai raštai, 1977, p. 60, perspausdinta iš 1890 m. leistos knygos) klaidingai nurodo krikšto vardą „Jonas“, o redaktorius K. Doeika taiso klaidą. Skaldas – an ancient Icelandic poet. The Weimar genius – J. W. Goethe, to whom L. Rėza wrote at least two letters (Rėza Liudvikas 1965: Lithuanian Folk Songs II, prepared by A. Jovaisas. Vilnius, 356–365). Varūnė, Pakalnė – Maži kaimeliai prie Rusnės (Rėza Liudvikas 1958: Lietuvių liaudies dainos I, paruošė J. Jurginis ir B. Kmitas. Vilnius, 115). God’s little dogs, sun-brothers – a rare astronomical phenomenon at sunset, two reflections on either side of the celestial body. The moon is sometimes also called the sun-brother. Įžvalgos / Insights 249 GIEDRIUS ALKAUSAS Prussian tribes and Lithuanian language culture – grief over a great sorrow: the Lithuanians were unable to aid their brothers in spirit and language during the Great Prussian Uprising. Von Stirländer – a Styrian; from Styria. For example, the knight Andreas von Stirländer was responsible for Mindaugas’s coronation (1253). Precentor – a teacher of children at a parish Protestant church school. One who sings ahead of the others during services opens up space so that everyone’s singing can fit (Latin præcantor). Kleintlav, Lithuania Minor – a term probably first used by Simon Grunau (Grūnavas) in the Chronicle of the Prussian Land in 1517–1526. 1 gulden and 15 groschen – this is the price mentioned by L. Rėza in his appeal (written on 1817-12-23) to friends of Lithuanian literature for subscriptions to Donelaitis’s The Seasons (Rėza Ludvikas 1965: Lithuanian Folk Songs II, prepared by A. Jovaišas. Vilnius, 34; Sprindis Adolfas 1951: Literature and Art, August 5). Address: Dr. L. Rėza, Königsberg, Monetų St. 6. Submitted on October 18, 2019. GIEDRIUS ALKAUSAS Vilniaus universitetas Institute of Informatics Naugarduko g. 24, LT-03225 Vilnius, Lithuania giedrius.alkauskas@||||||||mf.vu.lt 250 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXI