LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXXIV (1994)

LIETUVIŲ KALBOS TARMĖS IR JŲ TYRINĖJIMAI

William SCHMALSTIEG

IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR ANTANAS SALYS

I sincerely regret that I cannot be with you today, but I am grateful to my good friend and colleague Algirdas Sabaliauskas for translating into Lithuanian these brief reminiscences about one of my beloved professors*. Since a conference in memory of Professor Jonas Kazlauskas will soon be held, I will also say a few words about him.

My first real contacts with Lithuanian culture began in the fall of 1950, when I entered the University of Pennsylvania as a graduate student. During my first semester, my professors were Alfred Senn (Slavic Philology Seminar), Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius (Russian language (Russian conversation and composition), Soviet Russian literature), Franz Rosenthal (Arabic), Carlton Coon (anthropology), and Atanas Salys (Bulgarian). Since Slavic language departments were small in those days, each faculty member had to take on many duties. Thus, Prof. A. Salys taught a course in modern Bulgarian. In this course, we used the Грамматика болгарского языка by the renowned Russian Slavist S. B. Bernstein.

Prof. A. Salys came to the University of Pennsylvania after the Second World War, invited by Prof. A. Senn, who had been charged in the late 1940s with establishing a Department of Slavic Languages. In addition to his former student A. Salys, A. Senn also invited V. Krėvė-Mickevičius and Pranas Skardžius, but there were rumors that the latter declined because he did not want to work with A. Senn. My first impression of A. Salys was favorable.

The professor was exceptionally caring and conscientious. He gave us, his students, not only a good grounding in Bulgarian, but also the fundamentals of general linguistics. He spoke rather slowly, but loudly and clearly. Although his English had a slight accent, no one had difficulty understanding him. (It was different with V. Krėvė-Mickevičius, whom I never actually heard speak English. Since I did not know Lithuanian during my first year at the University of Pennsylvania, I always spoke Russian with V. Krėvė-Mickevičius. Prof. V. Krėvė-Mickevičius knew Latin very well and could probably read English with ease, but I got the impression that speaking English was extremely difficult for him.)

Prof. A. Salys always seemed to be in good spirits and friendly, ready

* An English-language version of this article: S c h m a l s t i e g W. R. To the memory of Professor Antanas Salys // Lituanus, 1992. V. 38, № 3. P. 58—68.

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spend an endless amount of time explaining to us, unsophisticated American students, all sorts of matters of grammar or linguistics in general. It seemed to me that he was a man with a smile on his face. In the second semester I studied many of the subjects I had begun in the first, but instead of Soviet Russian literature I took V. Krėvė-Mickevičius’s course on Old Russian literature. (In it, V. Krėvė-Mickevičius tried to explain the complexities of the medieval Russian epic, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”) Instead of anthropology, I began studying the Prussian language with Prof. A. Salys—my first Baltic language. Somehow, the University of Pennsylvania bookstore managed to obtain several copies of J. Endzelynas’s “Altpreussische Grammatik” (Riga, 1944). We used this grammar as our textbook. I still have the copy I bought then. On the second page of the cover it says: Auflage 1000. It must now be a bibliographic rarity.

There were only five or six students in our group, but I remember only two—a certain William Gibbon, a local American like me, and Antanas Klimas, whom I met in 1950 and with whom I have been friends ever since. Prof. A. Salys probably found it difficult to teach elementary Baltic philology through the Prussian language. But in the end, apparently, he succeeded, because one day he told me that I was beginning to understand what he was trying to convey. I always studied diligently and earned fairly good grades, but nothing came easily to me, and I often did not grasp the point of a lecture right away.

After a year of study at the University of Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1951 I transferred to Columbia University, where I studied with the famous French linguist André Martinet. In the spring of 1952 I was called up for military service, and it was not until the fall of 1954 that I was able to return to the University of Pennsylvania.

I immediately began attending Prof. A. Salys’s courses in Lithuanian, Polish, and Old Slavonic. In 1954–55, four students took the Lithuanian course; among them was my good friend Samuel Levin, now a well-known professor of English linguistics in New York. During that academic year, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, S. Levin, Kostas Ostrauskas (sometimes Vincas Maciūnas as well), and I would often meet in the anteroom of the University of Pennsylvania library to chat. The three of us—that is, S. Levin, K. Ostrauskas, and I—called ourselves the Lithuanian Patriots’ Club, whose slogan was “Chicago today—the world tomorrow.”

Our Lithuanian textbook was written entirely in Lithuanian, and we used it mostly to learn paradigms, since there was no comprehensive Lithuanian textbook in English. I believe the textbook was written by Father J. Starkus, but I am not sure, because I do not know where it is now.

Prof. A. Salys understood the difficulties of Lithuanian grammar for English-speaking students, so during our exercises he would translate most grammatical matters for us. I think we all acquired a good grounding in Lithuanian grammar here, although Prof. A. Salys did not focus on spoken language. He corrected our written work quickly and carefully, pointing out our elementary mistakes as if he never tired. At that time we read mimeographed Lithuanian texts, some of which were eventually published as the second volume of Prof. A. Senn’s “Handbuch der litauischen Sprache” (Heidelberg,

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1957). From a reprinted copy of this book, K. Ostrauskas recorded Lazdynų Pelėda’s “Piršlybos” on my tape recorder, and I listened to it intently many times, trying to learn spoken Lithuanian. Of this course, S. Levin especially remembers the saying “Aklam kelio neparodysi” (now A. Senn, Handbuch II, 19), and whenever I meet S. Levin, he repeats this saying to me. I fear he may think that this proverb applies to me. (Samuel Levin, the English linguist, should not be confused with Jules Levin, the Balticist.)

Prof. A. Salys taught the Old Slavonic and Polish courses just as methodically and carefully as the others, but in his teaching he followed American practice and allowed students to interrupt him with questions at any time. A student once asked him how he had learned Polish. A. Salys replied that he had learned it by listening to radio broadcasts while he was still living in Lithuania.

I saw Prof. A. Salys in a bad mood only once, when a policeman fined him for parking his car where it was not allowed—he was the only one in the entire block to be fined, although other cars were parked illegally too.

At first, Prof. A. Salys was to be my dissertation supervisor, but because of some administrative problems it was decided that Prof. A. Senn would supervise me. I often went to Prof. A. Salys for help, and both A. Senn and A. Salys served on my final doctoral examinations. You can imagine my confusion when the problem of the Lithuanian word kùnigas arose. Prof. A. Senn maintained that this word had never contained a nasal element after the second vowel—that is, it had never been *kuningas or anything of the sort—whereas A. Salys thought otherwise. During the examination I was asked for my opinion. Not wanting to take either side, I replied that something could be said in support of both views.

In 1956, after earning my doctorate, I left to work at the University of Kentucky in Lexington (Lexinton). I continued to correspond with Prof. A. Salys even after leaving Pennsylvania. He then suggested that I translate J. Endzelynas’s “Baltų valodu skaņas un formas” into English with his help. The professor thought we could add some Lithuanian paradigms, and the book would then also serve for a Lithuanian course that lacked an English-language textbook. He found me a Lithuanian translation, “Baltų kalbų garsai ir formos,” originally prepared under the direction of Jonas Kazlauskas, and I began the project. In the end, A. Salys withdrew from the work, and I completed it with the help of the Latvian linguist Benjamin Jēgers. The work took a long time and was finally published in 1971 under the title “Jānis Endzelīns’ Comparative Phonology and Morphology of the Baltic Languages” (The Hague, Paris: Mouton).

I wrote to Prof. A. Salys regularly and had the opportunity to see him fairly often, especially after I returned to Pennsylvania and taught first at Lafayette College in Easton (Ist one), and later at The Pennsylvania State University, where I still work. He advised me and lent me books from his personal library while I was writing the article “Lithuanian” (pp. 287–300) for the volume “Current Trends in Linguistics” (1963), edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (The Hague: Mouton). At the time, more than one of us did not know what the initial A. before Sabaliauskas stood for. Prof. A. Salys said he thought it might be Albinas. Thus our good friend

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Algirdas Sabaliauskas became Albinas in this article.

While leafing through folders of papers, I discovered that I have about a dozen letters from Prof. A. Salys, written between 1966 and March 27, 1972. He was always interested in helping Lithuanian linguists travel, if possible. In a letter dated December 30, 1966, he wrote: “Neither Kazlauskas nor Mažiulis can ‘stick their noses’ abroad [...] I was only surprised that Rector Kubilius, during the opening ceremonies for the academic year at Vilnius University [...] mentioned as established facts that Kazlauskas and Mažiulis were going to the United States and France. Apparently, the rector was playing politics here. Without Moscow’s approval, he announced and publicized everything, so that Moscow would later be embarrassed not to let them go. And refusing permission would once again reveal Moscow’s foolish stubbornness and its distrust even of official party members (both Kazlauskas and Mažiulis are party members and most likely joined for career reasons). If they still aren’t allowed to go, everyone in Vilnius will talk about it a lot and curse the ‘Ruskies.’”

I should add here that neither Prof. A. Salys nor I thought there was anything blameworthy about being a party member. It seemed to us simply a fact of life that anyone wishing to keep Lithuanian culture alive in the Soviet Union had a better chance of doing so as a party member. I remember trying, in the 1970s, to encourage some of my Lithuanian friends to join the party. On the other hand, do not think that I was ever a communist or agreed with communist views. I think many of my colleagues at Pennsylvania State University consider me extremely conservative.

On April 5–6, 1968, a conference on Baltic linguistics—the first ever on the North American continent—was held at Pennsylvania State University. I invited many distinguished speakers: Antanas Klimas, Leonardas Dambrūnas, Gordon B. Ford, Eric P. Hamp, B. Jėgeris, Alfred Senn, Calvert Watkins, Warren Cowgill, Valdis Zeps, Henning Andersen, James W. Marchand, Joseph Lelis, David Robinson, Jonas Kazlauskas, Vytautas Mažiulis, and Antanas Salys. All those invited came, except D. Robinson (who was not in the United States at the time) and J. Kazlauskas and V. Mažiulis, who were not granted permission to travel to the United States. A. Salys delivered a paper, “A Few Remarks on the Development of Lithuanian Dialects,” but unfortunately did not submit it for publication, so it is not in the book *Baltic Linguistics* (University Park and London, The Pensylvania State University Press, 1970), a book dedicated to Alfred Senn, whom we called the Nestor of Baltic studies in the United States in the preface. On the other hand, however, we were happy to be able to publish J. Kazlauskas’s article, “On the Balto-Slavic Dative Plural and Dual” (p. 87–91). Several other articles not presented at the conference were also included in this book. Later we were delighted to receive a very favorable review by V. Mažiulis.

I noticed that the letters Prof. A. Salys wrote to me by hand are in Lithuanian, whereas those typed on a typewriter are in English. This is explained by the fact that the secretary of the Pennsylvania University department would type his English letters but not his Lithuanian ones. Before my first trip to Lithuania, he wrote in English (August 2, 1968): “I think you will meet many of my former colleagues and students, for example, J. Balčikonis, J. Kruopa, K. Ulvydas, J. Senkus, and many others. Give them my greetings. Convey my best wishes also to the Institute’s

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director, K. Korsak.”

I had written to A. Salys about J. Kazlauskas’s book, and he replied in a letter dated August 9, 1968 (in English): “Kazlauskas’s book is very interesting and stimulating. I entirely agree with his research method: a philologist’s first task should be to explain forms on the basis of the language’s internal development, and only then to draw conclusions relating to Baltic or Indo-European languages in general.

However, the book’s title is misleading and incorrect. It should be ‘Questions of the Historical Grammar of Lithuanian’ or, as correspondents would say, ‘Beiträge...’ The work is in fact a doctoral dissertation in philology. He defended it this spring, and in the Soviet Union a doctoral dissertation is very significant for one’s salary. The misleading title is actually more impressive than ‘Questions,’ and perhaps that was more important for J. Kazlauskas’s career.”

I had sent Prof. A. Salys a copy of a rather illiterate letter dated March 10, 1970. The letter was sent by L. Bažanovas to Professor Paul Althouse, then Vice President of Pennsylvania State University. It said: “In connection with the academic workload (академической загруженностью), Professor Jonas Kozlauskas (sic!) of Vilnius State University will be unable to come to Pennsylvania State University in the near future to deliver lectures for a Lithuanian-language course. Respectfully, L. Bažanovas, Head of the Department of Foreign Relations, Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education of the Lithuanian SSR.”

Having received a copy of this letter, Professor A. Salys wrote in a letter dated March 30, 1970: “Conclusion: Rector Kubilius failed to break through Moscow’s ‘iron’ curtain. And, of course, you can’t break down a wall with your forehead. The only good thing is that Moscow finally replied. That phrase в ближайшем (!) будущем seems to allow for the possibility that something may work out later. Or perhaps they are only trying to console you in your disappointment.”

In a letter dated April 10, 1970, A. Salys wrote: “Don’t worry about Bažanovas’s letter. You can take it and show it to Kazlauskas (the original itself!). You can also now greatly regret that Bažanovas informed you that Kazlauskas is so ‘overwhelmed’ with work in Vilnius. Advise him to take care of his health and not overwork himself, since there are so few good linguists.”

Prof. A. Salys helped me prepare for my first visit to Lithuania in 1968, and later, in a letter dated June 1, 1970, asked me to take several illegal books to Prof. K. Korsak. At the time I was a novice, inexperienced with Soviet customs, and very anxious, but since I was Prof. A. Salys’s student, I felt obliged to do it. So I slipped the books into my suitcase beneath some English-language books. After landing at Sheremetyevo Airport, I panicked when a customs officer, inspecting my suitcase, picked up the Lithuanian books and looked them over. It seems to me that he thought these books were in English, because they used Latin characters. Then he looked me straight in the eye and asked: “Есть у вас книги на русском языке?” I could answer truthfully: “У меня нет никаких книг на русском языке”. Later I became quite accustomed to smuggling illegal Lithuanian books into the Soviet Union, and it seemed to me that I was continuing, at least in a small way, the tradition of the old Lithuanian book smugglers. Prof. A. Salys also gave me a toy model of a U.S. military aircraft (Sabre Jet airplane) to take to his relative’s son. I was anxious about it too, because I thought that even the sight of such a toy might alarm Soviet customs officials. Finally, I resolved to compromise-

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… [unclear source fragment], removing the U.S. Navy emblem, which showed that the toy was indeed a model of a military aircraft.

Later, I carried several volumes of Prof. A. Salys’s collected writings through Soviet customs without incident. I even enlisted my daughter Roxana for this noble task. In 1986, neither she nor the Soviet customs officer inspecting her luggage realized where the third volume of A. Salys’s “Writings” had been published, although even the cover clearly stated Roma. Fortunately, neither Roxana nor the customs officer was much of a polyglot, and after a conversation in halting English she was allowed to take the book and finally deliver it to Vilnius.

In the aforementioned letter of June 1, 1970, Prof. A. Salys also wrote: “I feel awkward even imposing on you with that parcel. But perhaps when I visit Lithuania again (in about a couple of years) I will be able to bring you something”.

Prof. A. Salys mentioned that he had received, albeit quite belatedly, an invitation to the conference of Baltic scholars to be held in Vilnius in 1970. He suspected that the department secretary had mislaid it somewhere. He wrote that Prof. J. Kazlauskas was inviting him to the same conference. I had been asked to thank him very much. However, Prof. A. Salys’s pocketbook did not allow him to fly to Lithuania every year. He wrote that he would have to wait and save up for a trip at a later time. He would write to me about everything soon. He also asked me to convey his best wishes to them (the Kazlauskas family): they were both so kind, unassuming, and warm-hearted. If I managed to invite them to America in one way or another, he wrote, tell them they would be welcome guests at our home. He went on to write that K. Korsakas ran his Institute with a very “firm hand.” “If you need anything, go straight to him.”

Po prof. J. Kazlausko mirties aš gavau laišką (1970. XII. 28), kuriame prof. A. Salys rašė: ”Kazlausko laidotuvių kalbėtojų sąrašas ypatingas[...] Nebuvo rektoriaus Kubiliaus nei Korsako, taip pat nė vieno ruso, kur dirba lituanistikos srityje (o jų juk yra keletas) [..] Juk ir apskritai Kazlausko mirtis norėta negirdomis praleisti. Tik, matyti, kaip gandai ėmė plisti, nebegalėjo tylėti, ir ”Tiesa” XII. 4. paskelbė tą sufabrikuotą mirties versiją. Taigi, tylėjo ištisus du mėnesius”.

I sent Prof. A. Salys an obituary that I had written for the journal “General Linguistics.” Regarding it, he wrote: “I do not think your obituary article is satisfactory. It gives the impression that you believe the version of the death published by ‘Tiesa.’ That would be grist to the Soviet mill. They would say that Americans take the official version of the death at face value, and only ‘bourgeois nationalists’ publish slanders and fabrications.”

In a later letter, dated March 11, 1972, he thanked me for the dictionary “Lithuanian-English Glossary of Linguistic Terminology” (Dept. of Slavic Languages, The Pennsylvania State University, 1971), which Prof. A. Klimas and I had prepared. Prof. A. Salys found quite a few errors in it, including the rendering of the meaning of priedzukis (‘person living close to the Dzukish dialect area’). He explained that it did not mean a person living near the Dzūkians, but a place located near them.

I had the opportunity to visit Prof. A. Salys perhaps a week before his death, at the University of Pennsylvania hospital. That time I had brought along a whole packet of letters that I had recently received from various Lithuanian linguists—A. Sabaliauskas, Z. Zinkevičius, V. Mažiulis, J. Palionis, S. Karaliūnas, and many others. He read

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all these letters with interest, but I could see that he was growing tired and wanted to rest, so I did not stay long. Although the loss of his homeland was hard for him, he never complained. I formed the impression then that he sensed death approaching, but was content with his life. As a teacher, scholar, author, and contributor to Lithuanian culture, he had managed to accomplish so much.

Translated from English

A. Sabaliauskas

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