LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XXXVII (1997) LEKSIKOGRAFIJOS IR LEKSIKOLOGIJOS PROBLEMOS

Algirdas SABALIAUSKAS

KAZIMIERAS BŪGA AND LITHUANIAN LEXICOGRAPHY

The history of Lithuanian lexicography is part of the complex and often tragic history of our culture. For four centuries now, Lithuanians themselves and their foreign friends (and sometimes enemies) have been writing dictionaries of the Lithuanian language. For some, dictionaries were a means of learning. Others wrote them in order to explain the words of the Bible more clearly. For still others, a Lithuanian dictionary was a monument to a dying nation and language. Let us recall the thought expressed by Ferdinand Nesselmann in 1846: “In fifty years, compiling a dictionary of the Lithuanian language will already be impossible” (Nesselmann 1846: 149)—understand, the Lithuanian language will already have disappeared... Lithuanian dictionaries were written by priests, doctors, professors at foreign universities, and Lithuanians of greater or lesser learning. Dionizas Poška apologized to the readers of his future dictionary:

Do not blame my writing! For you write with a plough, not with a quill, in the winter of writing (Poška 1959: 86).

Jakob Brodovski devoted thirty years to a Lithuanian dictionary but, alas, never saw the fruit of his labor. Like a beautiful legend, Antanas Juška, too, entered the history of Lithuanian lexicography without seeing the fruit of his labor. Only the industrious Frydrichas Kurschaitis successfully completed his great works and, with satisfaction, was able to write in the last lexicographic work he published in 1883, “Lithuanian-German Dictionary”: “Thus I conclude my literary work on the Lithuanian language, wishing blessings to my nation, to which I belong by birth and for which I have worked conscientiously for a long life” (Kurschat 1883: XII).

The problems of Lithuanian lexicography were of great interest to the awakeners of the Lithuanian national revival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who sometimes wrote dictionaries themselves as well. The extent to which the idea of a dictionary had permeated the consciousness of Lithuanian intellectuals of that time may perhaps be indicated by the following fact. The renowned figure of the Lithuanian national revival, Petras Kriaučiūnas, a teacher at the Marijampolė Gymnasium who was himself compiling a Lithuanian dictionary, recalled in the 1903 issue of “Varpas” (9/10, p. 229) that his former student, the writer Antanas Vilkutaitis-Keturakis, while mortally ill and with his nerves shattered, had written to him that he seemed to have won a huge sum of money in a lottery and “would undertake, out of his own pocket, to establish Lithuanian newspapers in every larger city in Lithuania, with generous pay for editors and writers; he also promised to print a good Lithuanian dictionary and other important Lithuanian books with his own money” (Kuzmickas 1981: 213–214).

The future president of Lithuania collected material for a Lithuanian dictionary

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Kazys Grinius, the future archbishop and blessed Jurgis Matulaitis, and many other luminaries of Lithuania at that time.

When we recall the researchers of the Lithuanian language from the 19th and early 20th centuries, we probably, willingly or not, divide them into two groups: foreign professors at prominent European universities, who had excellent linguistic training but insufficient command of, or even familiarity with, the living Lithuanian language; and our own people, great enthusiasts for their work, who knew their native language well and were sometimes quite familiar with its dialects, but lacked sound linguistic training. The first researcher of the Lithuanian language who lacked nothing—neither an excellent education nor a remarkable feel for and command of his native language, nor ability or enthusiasm—was Kazimieras Būga.

K. Būga, who had not even yet obtained his secondary-school leaving certificate, had already collected several notebooks’ worth of material for a Lithuanian dictionary. In 1902 he began recording dictionary material “not in notebooks any longer, but on cards”. This date is rightly regarded as the beginning of the card file for the academic “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language.”

In 1912 K. Būga graduated from Sankt Peterburg University and was retained to prepare for a professorship in the department of comparative linguistics headed by Professor Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. This date is also connected with K. Būga’s work as a lexicographer. It was in that year that his first lexicographic work was published: “Litovsko-russkij slovarčik k pervym 20-ti litovskim skazkam v izdanii “Lietuvių pasakos” (Vilnius, 1905), sostavlennyj K. K. Bugojų pri učastii I. A. Boduèna-de-Kurtenė” (S.-Peterburg, 1912). It was a teaching aid intended for a purely practical purpose—the Lithuanian-language course taught by J. Baudouin de Courtenay at Sankt Peterburg University and the Higher Women’s Courses. Of course, today it is only an important detail that K. Būga’s surname is entered here alongside the surname of his great teacher. A much more important event in K. Būga’s life in 1912 was that in that year the Sankt Peterburg Academy of Sciences commissioned him to edit and publish volume II of Antanas Juška’s dictionary. K. Būga now devoted himself, one might say, exclusively to this work. Birutė Tolutienė has described K. Būga’s work on this lexicographic publication in detail (Tolutienė 1961: 261–272). This was the beginning of K. Būga’s major lexicographic undertaking. B. Tolutienė assessed this work as follows: “K. Būga greatly expanded A. Juška’s dictionary entries with new material. Newly introduced meanings and the cited written sources provided much important data for studying the history and use of the headword. K. Būga spared neither his own material, nor his knowledge, nor the effort involved, and turned some of A. Juška’s entries into full-fledged studies” (Tolutienė 1961: 263). Of course, after such editorial changes the dictionary had departed considerably from A. Juška’s original, which displeased the Academy of Sciences. K. Būga wanted to create a perfect Lithuanian dictionary from A. Juška’s dictionary material. But he soon realized that this was impossible, because the material was insufficient, not all of it was reliable, and, moreover, it had been collected from only a small part of Lithuania. Checks and additions took an extraordinarily long time. The work was also held up by the chief

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the slowness of editor Filip Fortunatov’s work. K. Būga worked at the universities of Perm and Tomsk. In 1918, he was awarded the title of professor. He gathered material very intensively for what was now his own forthcoming dictionary. In 1920, he returned to Lithuania with a card index of dictionary slips weighing four poods. Before long, his card index grew fourfold. On May 13, 1923, K. Būga began writing his own dictionary, in which he resolved to write everything then known to linguistic scholarship about each word. K. Būga’s work ended tragically. The second fascicle of the dictionary was published only after the author’s death.

K. Būga himself spoke very critically of his dictionary: “Let no one look for perfection or consistency in the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. Working in haste, hardly anyone could achieve all this [...] The Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language should be regarded as a draft, which I would not dare publish until living conditions in Lithuania were better, without first thoroughly revising and polishing it. I thought our descendants would not condemn me for that draft, since even the draft would provide a considerable amount of material” (Būga 1961: 696).

In 1930, the dictionary’s editorial office was reorganized. The Ministry of Education appointed Juozas Balčikonis to lead it. Napalys Grigas, the editorial secretary—a man without academic degrees or a higher-education diploma—took over K. Būga’s dictionary card index from the University and even startled his former professor Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius: “Now we will know who will continue the work of editing the Dictionary, which no one has dared to take on since Būga” (Grigas 1981: 23).

The new editorial office immediately faced the problem of what kind of dictionary to prepare. It was possible to continue publishing the material collected by K. Būga. But who could replace, in the words of Jānis Endzelīns, K. Būga’s spirit, which so penetratingly understood and explained this material? (Endzelīns 1979: 669). The character of the dictionary was fundamentally changed. Its card index grew. One might say that the whole nation became the dictionary’s author. Today we are delighted to have seventeen volumes of the dictionary. This dictionary is undoubtedly the most important work by Lithuanian linguists of our century. It is, in the words of the Lithuanian playwright and critic Kosto Ostrauskas of the United States, “perhaps the finest Lithuanian book,” which should be read “page by page, and not merely searched for a word and its meaning when the need arises” (Ostrauskas 1989: 7–8). Bronė Vosylytė, who studied K. Būga’s lexicographical activity and devoted a considerable part of her life to the academic Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, rightly maintained that “Būga’s dictionary began a new stage in the development of Lithuanian lexicography—the stage of publishing the great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” (Vosylytė 1956: 113).

Several generations of Lithuanian lexicographers have now worked on the dictionary. Yet two individuals contributed most to this work: Kazimieras Būga and Juozas Balčikonis.

LITERATŪRA

Būga K. 1961: Rinktiniai raštai 3, Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla.

Endzelīns J. 1979: Darbu izlase 3, 1 d., Rīga: Zinātne.

Grigas N. 1981: Kaip aš tapau žodynininku. – Mūsų kalba 1, 21–25.

Kurschat F. 1883: Littauisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, Halle A. S.: Verlag der Buchhandlung

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des Waisenhauses.

Kuzmicka S. V. 1981: Antanas Vilkutaitis-Keturakis, Vilnius: Mokslas.

Nesselmann G. H. F. 1846: Zum littauischen Lexikon. – Neue Preussische Provinzial-Blätter B. 2, H. 2.

Ostrauskas K. 1989: “Žodžiai, žodžiai, žodžiai...” – Metmenys 56, 3–15.

Poška D. 1959: Raštai, Vilnius: Valstybinė grožinės literatūros leidykla.

Tolutienė B. 1961: Antanas Juška leksikografas. – Literatūra ir kalba 5, 87–377.

Vosyl y tė B. 1956: K. Būga žodynininkas. – Literatūra ir kalba 1, 84–113.

KAZIMERAS BŪGA AND LITHUANIAN LEXICOGRAPHY

Summary

Kazimieras Būga (1879–1924) was the first specialist in the Lithuanian language who lacked neither excellent training nor the knowledge of and feeling for his mother tongue. Būga’s life and the history of the Academic Lithuanian Dictionary are two things which are inseparable. In 1902 Būga, still a secondary school student, began to rewrite his collections of words on special slips. This date is considered to be the beginning of the card index of the Academic Lithuanian Dictionary.

In 1912 Būga got his degree from the University of St. Petersburg and started preparing for a professorship in the department of comparative linguistics headed by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. In 1918 he was granted the rank of professor. In 1920 Būga returned to Lithuania. He brought with him a large file of cards for his future dictionary. On May 13, 1923, Būga began to write the dictionary. He tried to record everything that was known up to that time about each word. In 1924 the first book of his dictionary was published. On December 2, 1924, Būga’s untimely death was a tragedy for Lithuanian linguistics.

In 1930 the Ministry of Education directed Juozas Balčikonis to continue Būga’s work. It was decided to increase as much as possible the card of index accumulated by Būga and to write the dictionary anew. In 1996 the seventeenth volume of the Academic Lithuanian Dictionary was published. All in all, there will be twenty volumes of the dictionary. The Academic Lithuanian Dictionary is the most important work of Lithuanian philology of our century. It has been prepared by several generations of Lithuanian linguists. But the greatest contribution to this work was made by Kazimieras Būga and Juozas Balčikonis.

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