Leszek Bednarczuk. „Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Millenium Lithuaniae MIX–MMIX“

JONAS PALIONIS Research areas: the history of the Lithuanian written language, onomastics. Leszek Bednarczuk THE LINGUISTIC IMAGE OF THE GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA. MILLENNIUM OF LITHUANIA MIX–MMIX Kraków: Lexis, 2010, 311 p. ISBN 978-83-89425-69-0 The Millennium of Lithuania, more precisely—the millennium since the earliest mention of the name Lithuania in written sources—has received wide attention not only in our scholarly world, but also in that of other peoples, especially neighboring ones. A considerable number of articles have appeared concerning the mention of the name Lithuania (Lituae) in the Quedlinburg Annals, as well as substantial studies inspired by this millennium jubilee, exploring from various perspectives the economic, political, social, and cultural problems of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). Some of these discuss, more or less extensively, the diversity of languages and linguistic relations in the GDL. In this respect, a particularly noteworthy work is the substantial book published in Kraków in 2010 by the Polish Baltist, Slavist, and Indo-Europeanist Leszek Bednarczuk (Leszek Bednarczuk)1, entitled Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Millenium Lithuaniae MIX–MMIX. This is probably the first study of its kind, examining a large body of complex problems that are not only linguistic but also historical, which the author has been investigating since 1974 (the book’s “Bibliography” lists no fewer than 32 articles of this kind by him)2. 1 For more information about him, see Lietuvių kalbos enciklopedija. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 2008, 74. 2 Among other works directly related to the jubilee of the name Lithuania, the following are worth mentioning: Białuński G. Misja prusko-litewska biskupa Brunona z Kwerfurtu, Olsztyn: Towarzystwo Naukowe i Ośrodek Badań Naukowych im. Wojciecha Kętrzyńskiego, 2010; Meysztowicz W. Św. Brun na Litwie w 1009 roku. – Lituano-Slavica Posnaniensia. Studia historica 13; Millenium of Lithuania = Millennium Lithuaniae, ed. and text author Mindaugas Šapoka. Vilnius: Lithuanian Art Museum, 2009; Lietuva 1009–2009, comp. Adomas Butrimas, Rūta Janonienė, Tojana Račiūnaitė. Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2009; Pietkiewicz K. Początki państwowości litewskiej. – Studia historyków w roku tysiąclecia Państwa Litewskiego. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2010; Zinkevičius Z. Netimeras, Zebedenas ir kt. – Baltistika 44(1); Lietuvos vardas. Kilmė ir formų daryba. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2010. 170 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Millenium Lithuaniae MIX–MMIX The book’s introductory remarks (“Słowo wstępne”) show that the author was concerned not only with linguistic relations in the GDL from the earliest times, but also with their development up to the present day (“do dzisiejszej sytuacji językowej”); they also indicate that the book is based on the author’s previously published articles, revised and corrected. The book under review can therefore be considered a revised synthesis of his earlier research. The book consists of 15 chapters of varying length, followed by an extensive bibliography (586 items), a list of abbreviations, summaries in four languages (Lithuanian, Belarusian, English, and Polish), two maps (an ethnolinguistic map of the GDL and a map of place names in the Vilnius region containing the formant -enientą), and a table of the names of Vilnius streets from the 16th to the 20th centuries, compiled by Jonas Jurkšas in 1985. In the introductory remarks, the author has divided the linguistic subject matter “w pewnym uproszczeniu” into three thematic groups: 1) language contacts in the GDL (Chapters I–IV); 2) ethnic onomastics of the GDL (Chapters V–IX); and 3) linguistic regionalisms developed in the lands of the GDL. In the author’s view, the most suitable method for investigating this subject matter is the areal-comparative (“arealo-porównawcza”) method, since it makes it possible to interpret linguistic phenomena independently of their geographical distribution (“niezależnie od granic językowych”). In this respect, the approach closest to such an interpretation is ethnodialectology, while putative languages and dialects may be called ethnolects (the author’s terms). The following are treated as such ethnolects in Chapter One, “Stosunki etnolingwistyczne na ziemiach Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego” (pp. 13–26): 1) Lithuanian, 2) Belarusian, 3) Polish, 4) the language of the Lithuanian Tatars, 5) the Karaim language of Trakai, 6) Northeastern Yiddish, 7) the pagan dialects of the Narew (“pogańskie gwary z Narewu”), and 8) the speech of the Russian Old Believers. Although the existence of some of the ethnolects distinguished here, as well as of some that are not mentioned, may be questioned, their identification and the introduction of new terms are well-founded (although, in my view, separating the interpretation of linguistic phenomena from their geographical distribution is not always appropriate). To gain a clearer picture of the book’s subject matter and understand the significance of the author’s qualification of that classification as “w pewnym uproszczeniu,” it is useful to provide the complete list of the book’s fifteen chapters. Apart from the first chapter mentioned above, the remaining ones are as follows: II. Drogi christianizacji Litwy (with the supplement “Pogoń i wici”) (pp. 27–40); III. Pochodzenie etnosu i języka Białoruskiego (pp. 41–60); IV. Język polski na ziemiach WKL (pp. 61–99); V. Rzeczpospolita obojga narodów (pp. 100–108); VI. Nazwy Wilna i jego mieszkańców w dokumentach WKL (pp. 109–122); VII. Nazwiska (od)etniczne mieszkańców WKL (pp. 123–158); VIII. Innowacje toponimiczne na ziemiach WKL (pp. 159–165); IX. Areały hidronimiczne na ziemiach WKL (pp. 166–180); X. Dlaczego za Niemen? (pp. 181–185); XI. Słownictwo flisackie na Wilii (pp. 186–193); XII. Sytuacja językowa nad Bereziną (pp. 194–200); XIII. O języku kronik miejskich Mohylewa i Witebska (pp. 201–212); XIV. Polonizmy w zabytkach i gwarach Smoleńskich (with the supplement “List do Recenzijos / Reviews 171 JONAS PALIONIS Filipa Obuchowicza...” and a Vilnius copy of the text of a Belarusian letter held in Krakow, together with an analysis of its language) (p. 213–254), and XV. The linguistic heritage of the GDL in the works of Adam Mickiewicz (p. 255–280). The chapter and appendix titles already show that the book includes matters not directly related to its title or the issues it examines; moreover, it devotes most space to Polish studies and closely links linguistic analysis with the history of the peoples that inhabited the GDL. This latter feature, characteristic of all the chapters, makes Bednarczuk’s work interesting and valuable not only to researchers of Baltic and Slavic ethnolinguistics, but also to historians of those peoples. In general, Bednarczuk’s book mentions and expertly discusses so many issues related to the linguistic mosaic and history of the GDL that a brief review cannot cover them all or comment on them at length. I will therefore limit myself to a few general observations and a few matters concerning the Lithuanian “ethnos,” especially those that reflect the author’s original perspective. One such observation concerns the temporal dimension already mentioned. Although the book follows the traditional view that the GDL covers the period from Mindaugas to the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian state (“Rzeczpospolita”) in 1795 (p. 13), it often crosses the temporal boundary of this historical phenomenon and reaches even into the present day. This is especially evident in the chapters describing the Polish ethnolect and the features of Polish in the ethnic lands of the GDL (Chapters IV and VI). Crossing the temporal boundary may be justified in chapters explaining the origins of ethnonyms, but the substantial digressions into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in discussions of the linguistic situation and language relations in the GDL are not connected either to the book’s title or to the issues it examines. It would have been helpful to include at the beginning of the book a map of the GDL clearly showing its borders and their historical changes (the small map at the end of the book depicts only part of the northern and eastern territory of the GDL). Another general observation concerns the classification of GDL ethnolects found in the first chapter. The list of the eight ethnolects mentioned includes, on the one hand, the oddly named ethnolect “pagan dialects of the Narev” (“pogańskie gwary z Narewu”), while, on the other, it omits the Samogitian language (or dialect). As is well known, opinions differ on the putative “Narev ethnolect,” whose supposed existence was prompted by a glossary discovered in 1978 by Viacheslav Zinov in a settlement in the eastern part of the Białowieża Forest. The glossary explains about 200 Polish words that, in Zigmas Zinkevičius’s view, were translated into Yotvingian in the second half of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century3. If we were to regard the linguistic mixture in the glossary’s explanatory section, in which Latvian, Finno-Ugric, and Germanic elements are also discerned, as a separate ethnolect, then the concept denoted by this term would be unduly narrowed to a single (in this 3 Cf. Schmid Wolfgang P. Die „Germanismen“ in sog. Polnisch-Jatwingischen Glossar. – Indogermanische Forschungen 91, 273–286. 172 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Millenium Lithuaniae MIX–MMIX cases of unclear origin) written monument, and one could identify very many such ethnolects. The words “pogańskie gwary” were also unnecessarily included in the name of this putative ethnolect, as there is no sound evidence for them (the author’s reference to the data presented in Konstantinas Jablonskis’s book Lietuviški žodžiai senosios Lietuvos raštinių kalboje is not sufficient). The omission of the Samogitian dialect from the list of ethnolects is a fairly serious gap, which the author ought at least to have explained. One might suppose it was omitted because, until the victory at the Battle of Grunwald, the Samogitians, frequently attacked by both the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, were at times seemingly cut off from the GDL. In fact, however, they were always an integral part of the GDL, though often serving the purposes of its rulers. The distinction of Samogitian, like other ethnolects of Baltic origin (Aukštaitian and Dzūkian), and their relations with Slavic (Belarusian, Polish, Russian) and non-Slavic (Tatar, Karaim, Yiddish, Hungarian) ethnolects seem not to have received much attention from linguists to date, nor have they been the subject of broader, synthetic studies, although in recent decades works related to these issues have begun to appear increasingly often4. It has already been mentioned that Bednarczuk’s book devotes most of its space to Polish studies, more precisely to the use of Polish in the GDL at different stages of its development and in different territories. The Belarusian language and the so-called chancery East Slavic are described somewhat less from the perspective of ethnolects, while Lithuanian receives the least attention, although some issues concerning the latter, especially onomastics, are also discussed at greater or lesser length. This is entirely understandable, particularly given that the book was prepared on the basis of articles the author had published in various publications, which constrained the choice and nature of the topics. As for matters concerning the Lithuanian ethnolect, it should be said that the author has drawn on many different historical sources to reveal its features, both sources published and unpublished in the works of other researchers (including Lithuanian scholars), and has offered original interpretations of numerous historical and linguistic facts. Here I will point out just one or two disputed facts about the Lithuanian language and/or the history of Lithuania that are treated originally in the book under review. I will begin with the explanation of the origin of the name of Lithuania’s coat of arms, vytis. Lithuanian linguists and historians have offered differing explanations of this name. Pranas Skardžius believed it to be a neologism coined by Simonas Daukantas—a calque of the Polish pogoń ar pogonia5. The historian Inge Lukšaitė, however, did not agree with this view, and discerned— 4 In this respect, the study by German historian Motiejus Nyndorfas (Mathias Niendorf), Das Großfürstentum Litauen. Studien zur Nationalbildung in der Frühen Neuzeit (1569–1795). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006, 329 p., is particularly interesting and informative. Its chapter “Žemaiten ein Fall verhinderter Nationsbildung” describes precisely relations of an ethnolectal nature in Samogitia, but it was not used in Leszek Bednarczuk’s book. 5 This view was expressed in 1937 in Gimtoji kalba No. 11, p. 152, in his response to an anonymous reader’s question: “Is the word Vytis (the national emblem) not of the same origin as the Russian vitiaz?” Recenzijos / Reviews 173 JONAS PALIONIS [He] noted the “undeniable” trace of the word knight in the place name Vutec Kalns (= Vyties kalnas)6, in a document from 1629 in Kęstučiai, in the Karšuva district, recorded by Konstantinas Jablonskis, and linked it with the personal names Vygailas, Vytenis, Vytautas (?)7. Although such a connection is entirely well-founded, it reveals neither the origin of the use of the word knight in the sense of ‘coat of arms’ nor its relationship to the chancellery-language forms vi̇t, vi̇c of the GDL and Polish wici. Bednarczuk’s article “Pogon i wici,” published in the Polish journal Język polski (66, 1986, pp. 165–170), is devoted precisely to these problems; it was later included, considerably edited and shortened, in the aforementioned second chapter as an appendix (pp. 38–40). In his article, the book’s author provides further sources recording Polish equivalents of vyties—pogoń, pogonia—and its relationship to wici, which meant ‘a certain letter or edict sent by the king or the Sejm.’ The book, however, gives little space to this relationship, probably because its existence is not supported by the very different semantics of these words. Lukšaitė’s observation is much more reliable: in the army of old Lithuania there existed “[…] Vyčiai [struck out by the article’s author]—special horsemen whose duty was to pursue the retreating enemy”8. They may have been called wici in Polish, although neither Bednarczuk’s article nor his book gives examples of this sense. Lukšaitė’s observation supports this review’s author’s conclusion that “the form of Lithuania’s state emblem was probably created by Lithuanians themselves in the fourteenth century (or perhaps earlier?)”9. Bednarczuk’s book offers an important qualification to this conclusion: the emblem’s image appeared on Algirdas’s seal, impressed on a 1366 treaty with Casimir the Great. The sole surviving copy of that treaty is reportedly held in the Czartoryski Library in Kraków (p. 40). Among the author’s original contributions concerning the Lithuanian ethnolect is his approach to the problem of Belarusian ethnogenesis, discussed in Chapter III. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, and linguistics, Bednarczuk proposes—a hypothesis he had already put forward in 198410—that the Belarusian ethnic group and language took shape as a result of belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose political borders delineated the ethnographic area of Belarus with near precision11. This hypothesis, grounded in the substrate of Baltic hydronymy, seems quite credible. 6 Jablonskis Konstantinas. Lietuviški žodžiai senosios Lietuvos raštinių kalboje. Kaunas: Lietuvos istorijos draugija, 1941, 332. 7 Lukšaitė Inge. Dėl žodžio „vytis“. – Mūsų praeitis 1. Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos institutas, 1990, 122. 8 Ibid., p. 121. 9 Palionis Jonas. Kieno sukurtas Lietuvos herbas (vytis)? – Literatūra ir menas. 2002-11-22. 10 Bednarczuk Leszek. Sprawozdania z posiedzeń Komisji naukowych, 1987, 28 (1984), 117. 11 “It seems that the distinct Belarusian ethnic group and language emerged as a result of belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose political borders define almost exactly the extent of ethnographic Belarus” (pp. 47–48). 174 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Millenium Lithuaniae MIX–MMIX Many matters related to the Lithuanian-language ethnolect are also discussed in the chapters devoted to the use of Polish at various stages of the existence of the GDL. For example, Chapter VII perhaps for the first time in the history of Baltic studies describes such Slavicized Baltic ethnonyms as Litwan, Litwasz, Litwosz, Litwach, Litwiniec, Litwinek, Litwinik, Litwak, Litewiak, Litwiniuk, Litewiak, Litwic, Żemojtel, Żmu(j)dzin, Łotysz, Łotwin, Łotyszonok, Łatyszonek, Jatwieżan, Jatwieżin, Jadzwiź(ie). This account is undoubtedly of interest to Baltic scholars (it reflects the close historical ties between the Baltic and Slavic peoples), but it has one previously mentioned drawback: it is not confined exclusively to the GDL. It includes considerable data from writings and spoken language of the post-ducal period, and often draws on Kazimierz Rymut’s dictionary Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych, ed. K. Rymut on the basis of materials from the Government Centre for PESEL Information, I–X. Kraków, 1992–1994, whose nature is already indicated by its title. The explanation of the ethnonym gūdas in this chapter is original and, it seems to me, quite convincing. Unlike Kazimieras Būga, the author of the book under review connects this ethnonym with the Lithuanian adjective gudas, which has, among other meanings, ‘ordinary’ (LKŽ III 692), a meaning that may have been transferred to “people who speak poorly (differently, worse), as Belarusians were considered to do” (p. 133). It seems to me that this explanation is further supported by the fact that the noun gūdas is used by Samogitians in a derogatory sense to refer to speakers of other dialects (Eastern Highlanders) (LKŽ, ibid.). The chapters on the use of Polish in the non-ethnic lands of the GDL, where previous research on this problem is synthesized with the author’s characteristic insight, also contain interesting observations for Lithuanian studies and Baltic studies more generally, as well as original interpretations of facts grounded in historical sources. For example, Chapter VIII presents 53 place names from Mazovia (Mazowsza), Podlasie (Podlasie) and the Vilnius region (Wileńszczyzna), with the formants -ęta / -enięta, considered innovations of the former GDL lands. A number of them are quite justifiably linked to a Lithuanian base: Balenįeta (: bala), Dusinęta (: dusinti), Girbinęta (: gerbti), Gudzieniętz (: gudas), Klidzinįeta (: kliedas), Miedzienięta (: medis), Mieszkienięta (: miškas), Rumienęta (: rumus), Rymszenięta (: Rimša), Urlenięta (: Urликiai, Urlikis), Wojnidzinįeta (: vainoti, *Vainvidas). However, the author found only 12 that existed during the GDL period (from the second half of the seventeenth century), so most are the result of later Polonization of place names. Moreover, even those found are generally not directly connected with the cited Lithuanian common nouns, but are (at least most of them) of anthroponymic origin. In general, with regard to the presentation of Lithuanian place names in Bednarczuk’s book, whether one likes it or not, a very evident methodological shortcoming must be pointed out. In many cases, Lithuanian place names are given only in Polonized form. No one will deny (nor does the author of the book deny) that until the beginning of the sixteenth century the influence of the Polish language in the GDL was still fairly weak, and that in ethnic Lithuanian lands not only peasants and serfs but also most nobles, princes, and state leaders spoke Lithuanian, Recenzijos / Reviews 175 JONAS PALIONIS in other words, the state elite. The names of villages, towns and small towns in those lands were also Lithuanian, and most survived in later centuries (the seventeenth and eighteenth; many down to the present day). Therefore, from a scholarly perspective, it is incorrect to work exclusively with Polonized forms of place names or personal names when studying toponymy (and anthroponymy) of Lithuanian origin. This is incorrect, among other reasons, because a non-Lithuanian scholar may incorrectly reconstruct authentic proper names from Polonized forms, especially those whose Polonized forms differ greatly from the Lithuanian ones (e.g. Soleczniki / Šalčininkai, Wierzbłow / Virbalis). The tendency not to give Lithuanian forms is particularly characteristic of Chapter VI of the book, which, drawing on Gediminas’s letters and other historical documents, as well as Aleksandras Vanagas’s 2004 study Lietuvos miestų vardai, discusses the city of Vilnius and its surroundings. Here, after a historical overview of the name of Vilnius in the first subsection, the following subsections contain very few authentic Lithuanian forms. The others deal almost entirely with Polonized names for Vilnius’s bodies of water, hills, suburbs, gates in the old wall, streets and lanes, castles and towers, certain facilities (bridges, mills, markets), and, to a lesser extent, the names of the city’s and region’s inhabitants. This one-sided presentation of the city’s toponymy, based exclusively on certain written sources and on a comparative table of Vilnius Old Town street names appended at the end of the book, compiled by Jonas Jurkštas in 1985, during the Soviet period, and not very successful, which the book’s author has modified somewhat (pp. 308–311)12 may give readers a misleading impression that the name of the GDL capital is of non-Lithuanian origin. There can hardly be any doubt that, during the old period of the GDL (thirteenth–sixteenth centuries), many streets in Vilnius had Lithuanian names, which were written in German, Polish or the Slavic chancery language on city plans, maps and in official documents. For example, the street names die Deutsche gasse, S. Johangasse, die Schloßgasse recorded on the aforementioned Braun map are nothing other than translations of the Lithuanian names Vokiečių, Šv. Jono, Pilies streets. As can be seen from the list provided in the book, many street names translated or otherwise adapted to the Polish linguistic system were already found in sixteenth-century Polish writings, e.g.: Antokolska (/ Antakalnio), Koniska (/ Arklių), Rudnicka (/ Rūdninkų), Tatarska (/ Totorių), Trocka (/ Trakų), Vilenska (/ Vilniaus), Zarzeczna (/ Užupio) and others. But this does not mean that the Lithuanian inhabitants of the city, 12 The table is called unsuccessful here because its first column lists not the oldest names of Vilnius streets (recorded in Braun’s atlas around 1550), but those used during the Soviet period, many of which had been changed (e.g. Domininkonų – Garnelio, v. Pilies – Gorkio, v. Vokiečių – Muziejaus, etc.); moreover, the sources for the names are not given in the subsequent columns. In the table appended to Jonas Jurkštas’s booklet Vilniaus vietovardžiai (printed in the publication Kalba ir žmonės), Bednarczuk changed the headings of some columns: compare Jurkštas’s heading for the first column, “Current street name,” with Bednarczuk’s “do 11 III 1990.” The headings of columns 3, 12, 13 and 14 were changed, and column 6 (1837) was omitted. 176 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Millenium Lithuaniae MIX–MMIX Those who at the time still made up a considerable proportion would already pronounce the titles of the few Polish publications in Polish. Of course, it is now impossible to reconstruct the names of all the streets of Vilnius that existed during the existence of the GDL, as well as those of other urban features, because of the scarcity of written sources. However, a retrospective examination of documents written at the time and later in other languages (chiefly chancery Slavic and Polish) makes it possible to recover a considerable number of authentic Vilnius urban names. The historian Jurkštas did this quite reliably in the work mentioned above; in my view, the author of the book under review has made rather little use of his work (although his booklet does appear in the bibliography and, as noted, the table of Vilnius street names compiled by him is used). Chapter IX, too, contains many interesting ideas about the distribution areas of Baltic hydronyms in the GDL. Drawing chiefly on Vanagas’s research, it describes the geography of hydronyms with the formants -nt-, -k-, -ykšč- (-ykšt-), -(n)yčia, -ing-, -us, -da in terms of their formation and origin, their relationship to Slavic equivalents, and provides etymological characterizations of some of them. Among other things, it is reasonably argued here that toponyms and hydronyms with -eika in the territory of Belarus may indicate that the Baltic ethnos was present there comparatively recently (p. 170). However, the assumption, based on the opinion of Tadeusz Lehr-Splawiński, that the name of the largest river in the GDL, Nemunas, may be of Finno-Ugric origin and related to the Finnish word niemi ‘promontory, cape’, is motivated neither morphologically nor semantically (p. 176). It is likewise difficult to believe that the name of the lake and town between Vilnius and Narutis, Svyriãi (Belarusian Svir, Polish Świr), could be of Finno-Ugric origin (ibid.) and unrelated to the Lithuanian verb svirti. An insightful Lithuanian scholar could find more such and similar doubts or debatable points in Bednarczuk’s new book. Yet this is also what makes the work of this Polish linguist interesting and appealing, and demonstrates the author’s innovativeness and linguistic maturity. Since this review has focused mainly on comments relating to Lithuanian studies and has not addressed or discussed the many problems of Slavic studies, especially Polish studies, mentioned in the book, its author does not claim to offer a comprehensive assessment of this rich book. Nevertheless, what has been said allows us to conclude that it is a significant work of a synthetic nature, providing much new data and new interpretations for further research into this kind of linguistic mosaic of the GDL. There is no doubt that it will attract considerable attention not only from Lithuanian and Baltic scholars, but also from Slavic scholars, especially Polish scholars. Received 15 February 2012. JONAS PALIONIS Juozo Tumo-Vaižganto g. 9–27, Vilnius, Lietuva Recenzijos / Reviews 177