LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987)

STASYS KEINYS

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF J. BALČIKONIS'S WORK

On March 25, 1985, 100 years had passed since the birth of the distinguished Lithuanian linguist, academician, and professor Juozas Balčikonis. For six decades he devoted himself zealously to matters of his native language and left indelible marks in various fields of language cultivation and research. In the dozen or so years since J. Balčikonis’s death, much has already been accomplished, both to preserve his legacy and make it readily accessible to everyone, and to try to assess his work impartially and determine its place and significance.

What has been done? In 1972, the collection of folk songs recorded by J. Balčikonis, “Songs of Druskininkai”¹, was published, most clearly demonstrating his boundless love for the people and their culture, and his respect for ordinary people, whom he cherished throughout his life and taught others to cherish as well. In 1978–1982, J. Balčikonis’s two-volume Selected Writings² was published, prepared and issued pursuant to a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the republic on commemorating J. Balčikonis (“Tiesa,” March 24, 1970). This collection includes all the linguist’s more important articles and shorter pieces on language issues, a selection of his lecture notes, and letters important to the study of language. New editions appeared of fairy tales translated by J. Balčikonis and of some other works of fiction. A number of articles about the professor’s life and work were published in scholarly publications, newspapers, and journals.

Numerous publications and events were devoted to J. Balčikonis, especially on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. A jubilee scientific conference marking the occasion was held in Vilnius, organized by Vilnius State V. Kapsukas University and the Lithuanian Language and Literature Institute of the Academy of Sciences. Ceremonial commemorations also took place in the republic’s capital, in other cities and districts, and in the professor’s native village of Ėriškiai. The entire 48th issue of “Kalbos kultūra” was dedicated to the occasion; besides several articles, it included many reminiscences about the linguist³. An anniversary article and a selection of reminiscences about J. Balčikonis were also published in “Mūsų kalba”⁴. The “Šviesa” publishing house issued for schools a booklet by V. Vitkauskas about the linguist’s life and scholarly and pedagogical activities⁵. The anniversary was widely commemorated by the republic’s press, including city and district newspapers, as well as by the republic’s radio and television.

¹ Druskininkų dainos / Užrašė J. Balčikonis. — V., 1972. — 216 p.

² Balčikonis J. Rinktiniai raštai / Sudarė A. Pupkis. — V., 1978, t. 1. — 408 p.; 1982, t. 2. — 332 p.

³ Kalbos kultūra, 1985, sąs. 48. — 80 p.

⁴ Mūsų kalba, 1985, Nr. 1(119), p. 3—31.

⁵ Vitkauskas V. Juozas Balčikonis. — K., 1985. — 112 p.

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All this enabled both linguists and the public to become better acquainted with and understand J. Balčikonis’s work and its importance not only for linguistics, the development and cultivation of the literary language, but also for the spiritual culture of the nation as a whole.

In the future, the unpublished portion of J. Balčikonis’s legacy should not be forgotten either. On the occasion of the anniversary, more than one person noted that it would benefit language studies to publish J. Balčikonis’s translation of J. Otrembskis’s “Grammar of the Lithuanian Language,” supplemented by the translator. Folklorists raised the idea that the narratives recorded by J. Balčikonis ought to be published. Perhaps it would also be worth considering the publication of his translations that remained in manuscript or were published long ago. A comprehensive bibliography of J. Balčikonis is needed. As time passes and efforts are made, no doubt more material worthy of publication will come to light. Thus both the publication of J. Balčikonis’s legacy and its thorough scholarly study and assessment should continue into the second century after the linguist’s birth.

J. Balčikonis began working on language early. While still a student, he met and began sharing the common concerns of language with the most prominent Lithuanian linguists of the beginning of this century, J. Jablonskis, K. Būga, and others. Without a doubt, this also turned his whole life toward the Lithuanian language, its study, cultivation, and development.

J. Balčikonis represents the last generation of Lithuanian linguists who had no opportunity to study Lithuanian language and literature at higher-education institutions, since, for understandable reasons, no such specialty existed at universities in tsarist Russia. Nor did it exist anywhere else. Linguists devoted to studying and cultivating their mother tongue had to pursue their language studies on their own; their Lithuanian-language universities were village cottages. Indeed, in the previous and this century, more than one linguist from other countries who wished to learn Lithuanian and become better acquainted with the language itself also graduated from such universities. Lithuanian linguists of the late previous century and early this century had to immerse themselves in the sources of the language, thoroughly acquainting themselves with its original sources—the living speech of the people, old writings, and the works of the best writers of more recent times. These things, together with the methodological skills acquired at real universities, determined the success of Lithuanian linguists’ work in that period. Finally, without a doubt, this was also one reason why these linguists valued, respected, and esteemed the language of the people, of ordinary rural working people, as no one else did. Contemporary Lithuanian linguistics received this outlook from J. Balčikonis as an injunction handed down by the old workers in language.

After graduating from the University of St. Petersburg, J. Balčikonis did practical language work in the editorial offices of Lithuanian newspapers and soon began teaching in Lithuanian gymnasiums, later continuing at the Panevėžys Teachers’ Seminary, the University of Lithuania in Kaunas, and Vilnius State University. J. Balčikonis entered the history of Lithuanian schools not only as a renowned teacher of the mother tongue, but also as an educational organizer. After the First World War, he was an active founder and director of Lithuanian schools in Panevėžys (first a boys’ gymnasium and then a teachers’ seminary). Since 1970, the secondary school named after him has served as a reminder of the years J. Balčikonis spent in Panevėžys (where he himself also graduated from a classical gymnasium).

J. Balčikonis was entrusted with work of exceptional scholarly and civic importance after the Second World War. He was charged with restoring the study of the Lithuanian language at the republic’s Academy of Sciences. From 1945 to 1952, J. Balčikonis was the Academy of Sciences’ Lithuanian Language Institute director—

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—and was especially devoted to the principal works of Lithuanian lexicography (in 1946 he was elected a full member of the Academy). J. Balčikonis also had to devote much time to training teachers of Lithuanian studies. He was one of the founders of the Department of Lithuanian Language at Vilnius State University (its head from 1944 to 1950; he received the title of professor in 1948) and, over 15 postwar years, worked very hard with others to train Lithuanian language and literature teachers, who were vital to the country. As the most authoritative linguist, J. Balčikonis also carried the heaviest burden in training Lithuanian linguists. More than 20 Lithuanian linguists who were among the first to defend doctoral dissertations in philology during the Soviet period had either been supervised by him or had him as their opponent. Together with a handful of colleagues from the younger generation, J. Balčikonis organized and developed the study of the Lithuanian language during the difficult postwar years, training and nurturing Lithuanian studies personnel. This activity of J. Balčikonis was particularly important and significant, as it helped the study of the Lithuanian language advance and develop rapidly, and enabled contemporary Lithuanian linguistics to grow and flourish.

J. Balčikonis’s teaching career spanned nearly five decades. It is therefore no wonder that, for most contemporary Lithuanian linguists and a considerable number of teachers of Lithuanian language and literature from the older generation, J. Balčikonis is their teacher and professor. The image of the professor will never fade from the memory of any of his students: his slow gait, calm, quiet voice… And love—the love of the mother tongue radiating from the professor’s whole being. Few university lecturers managed to maintain such a constant professional connection with their students. He alone continually drew his students’ attention to that inexhaustible source of vitality for the written language—the language of parents, elders, ordinary people. The professor’s briefcase was never without a supply of slips for the card index of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. Every student was taught how and which words to collect. Collecting words was not merely a contribution to the dictionary; it was also a living, unbroken connection between students and the living language, and a way of nurturing an active relationship with it. The only ones who did not like the professor were those who would not listen to him, those who, wishing to become specialists in Lithuanian language and literature, writers or editors, scholars or teachers, did not want to improve their own command of that language. They would spread stories about the professor’s oddities, mock the essay topics he assigned or even take offense at them; they did not understand that noble man and devoted teacher, whose greatest wish was to teach his students the most correct, most beautiful, most vibrant language, while they considered the style of newspapers or offices to be the ideal of language, the one to be pursued in every way. There were also students who learned nothing, or almost nothing, from J. Balčikonis and remembered only their nervous trembling outside the door of the classroom where the professor gave tests or examined them, or the scrape of their study booklet across the desk—“Come again next time.” But surely that is no basis for judging what kind of teacher J. Balčikonis was? Surely we must not forget that he was very tactful and never imposed his opinion on anyone! Surely not on students. And after all, there are always students who think they know more than any professor. J. Balčikonis said students did not necessarily have to think exactly as he thought and explained. But they did have to be able to prove that their reasoning was correct. The professor strove to support the things he explained with thorough and compelling evidence. He will always remain a man of integrity,

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an example of the ability to defend one’s opinion, selflessness, and, at the same time, high standards, fair severity, and principled conduct.

J. Balčikonis sincerely rejoiced at the achievements of his students. He delivered an unforgettable, moving speech at the defense of Z. Zinkevičius’s doctoral dissertation in philology. In general, as a member of the council that awarded academic degrees, J. Balčikonis often spoke at dissertation defenses. More than one doctoral candidate probably greatly feared these speeches, for the professor rigorously and without concessions demanded from everyone a good command of their native language. He was especially demanding of linguists seeking academic degrees. The professor’s words still ring out like a precept today: “A candidate of philological sciences must be able to give a precise opinion on every text—to say whether its language is good and what it lacks. To be able to say this, one must oneself make no mistakes in one’s own language and speak vividly”⁶ and “Lithuanian specialists should be the first to write correctly, vividly, and fluently”⁷.

J. Balčikonis’s creative legacy also includes articles on the teaching of the native language, as well as reviews of textbooks. They clearly show how seriously the professor regarded questions of language teaching, teachers themselves, and their training (“Can just anyone who can distinguish letters from harrows be a Lithuanian-language teacher?” J. Balčikonis asked, not without sarcasm, in his 1927 article “The Lithuanian Language at Our University”⁸). His own teaching activity, together with these articles, forms a notable chapter in practical Lithuanian pedagogy and methodology, important and significant for the various schools of today as well. To improve and advance the teaching of the native language, we need to study in depth the experience of its best teachers and take it into account. In this respect, it seems that contemporary methodology could still draw quite a lot from the pedagogical legacy of J. Jablonskis and J. Balčikonis.

Many Lithuanian specialists of the middle and older generations consider it a great honor to be able to call themselves students of J. Balčikonis. This is the finest appraisal of a teacher’s work. Such recognition is usually earned by teachers who have taught a great deal. J. Balčikonis opened up the true riches of language to his students, convincingly showing that the native language, too, must be studied with no less dedication than other languages and subjects.

J. Balčikonis had a special mission as a linguist and educator. A contemporary and fellow worker of the first professional Lithuanian linguists, he was like a bridge connecting the legacy of Lithuanian linguistics at the beginning of the century with contemporary language science. That bond between generations, respect for the legacy of one’s scholarly field and its careful scholarly evaluation, and the continuity of the best traditions seem to have been among the most important factors that ensured the rapid qualitative growth of Lithuanian linguistics in our time. J. Balčikonis cherished the memory of J. Jablonskis and K. Būga throughout his life. He constantly instilled respect and love for the great Lithuanian linguists in his students, set their work before everyone as an example, and was himself their most faithful and consistent successor. And now J. Balčikonis’s own name has also been inscribed, without sacrilege, in the history of Lithuanian language scholarship, alongside the names of the most distinguished practitioners of that scholarship and the professor’s fellow workers.

⁶ Balčikonis J. Selected Writings, vol. 1, p. 302.

⁷ Ibid., p. 362.

⁸ Ibid., p. 61.

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For nearly four decades, J. Balčikonis continued the work on the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language begun by K. Būga; for more than half that time he was also the dictionary’s editor-in-chief, director of the work, and principal organizer. The dictionary was destined to become J. Balčikonis’s greatest work.

The history of this dictionary has one distinctive feature: throughout, its compilers were pressed to hurry, to deliver the finished work to the public as quickly as possible, as the saying goes. In the early 1920s, J. Balčikonis himself was among those urging and hastening K. Būga. Later, from the end of 1930, when he took the helm of this work of Lithuanian studies, others spurred J. Balčikonis himself and in every way pressed him to hurry. Yet the vast undertaking that had been embarked upon—substantially supplementing the dictionary’s card index (in fact, creating it, since the earlier one held by K. Būga was surpassed several times over), establishing the foundations for compiling the dictionary (the dictionary J. Balčikonis set about compiling was entirely different in nature from the one K. Būga had barely begun, so in truth it was not its continuation; K. Būga’s dictionary is only the source of the great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language), and writing and editing the dictionary itself, as well as reading mountains of proofs—demanded far more strength and time than even the editor-in-chief had initially anticipated. The first volume of the dictionary took an entire decade. The work seemed to pick up speed, but J. Balčikonis managed to publish only the first two volumes (vol. I—in 1941, vol. II—in 1947). After that, when the third volume had been prepared and work begun on the fourth, others set out to change the organization of the dictionary somewhat, and this once again delayed its compilation for a time (volume III, newly re-edited without J. Balčikonis, appeared in 1956).

Fourteen volumes of the great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language have now been published. The dictionary has long been the largest, most impressive, and most important work in Lithuanian linguistics, having won wide recognition not only in Lithuania but also far beyond its borders. It is a matter of honor for lexicographers to strive to put the final volume of the academic dictionary into readers’ hands in this century.

Even today, the dictionary and J. Balčikonis remain inseparable, and the fruits of his many years of toil are abundant. J. Balčikonis entered the history of Lithuanian linguistics as one of its greatest lexicographers, and as the organizer, director, and compiler of the great dictionary. It is therefore both symbolic and fitting that everyone entering the Dictionaries Department room of the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature is greeted by a portrait of J. Balčikonis.

J. Balčikonis was also J. Jablonskis’s most faithful comrade-in-arms and, after his death, the most steadfast continuator of his work. This refers not only to the nearly complete collection of J. Jablonskis’s articles, carefully prepared by J. Balčikonis and published in five volumes⁹. Above all, what should not be forgotten here is J. Balčikonis’s own work to cultivate literary language and its culture. Throughout his life as a linguist, he was a steadfast guardian of the popular character of literary Lithuanian and was, without a doubt, the finest expert on the language of the people. Like J. Jablonskis, J. Balčikonis was alien to purist attitudes, which he resolutely condemned always and everywhere, both in terminological work and in language correction and teaching. Like J. Jablonskis, J. Balčikonis always had stern judges of his work. But he never lowered the flag; he always fought to the end and honorably.

⁹ Jablonskio Raštai / Redagavo J. Balčikonis. — K., 1932–1936, t. 1–5.

3. 1835

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Correcting language is a complex task that requires great expertise. In the history of modern literary Lithuanian, many people have taken up this work in one way or another. Language has been corrected by the most experienced linguists, who today can rightly be regarded as the classics of literary-language standardization, as well as by beginning language researchers and people with no linguistic training at all—by knowledgeable people and the wholly incompetent alike. There are various kinds of correctors even today. As in any work, it is easy to make mistakes here. On the other hand, by no means all the very good suggestions made by language correctors take hold. This applies both to J. Jablonskis’s work and to that of the linguists who gathered around Gimtoji kalba after his death. The same fate befell some of J. Balčikonis’s corrections. Some of them seemed strange to students, to certain linguists, and to people who actively voiced their opinions on all sorts of matters. Indeed, suggestions to change, for example, the established literary vocabulary by replacing svogūną cibulį, gandrą gužą, skėtį parasonu ar kolūkį kolchozu. must have seemed rather odd. Some of J. Balčikonis’s corrections were sharply criticized¹⁰. To be sure, in the heat of the debate, the critics too failed to remain objective on every point. Now, more than a quarter of a century after those days, it is much easier both to notice and to weigh this. Time is the best judge in this respect as well.

Today, both linguists and everyone interested in matters of language have easy access to J. Balčikonis’s works on language culture. They are collected in the aforementioned Selected Writings. It is clear from them that the overwhelming majority of those corrections are highly valuable and necessary. Every competent language standardizer would endorse them.

J. Balčikonis’s work to cultivate language cannot be confined to the aforementioned articles alone. Concerned that young people should have as many books as possible written in a living, correct language, he prepared M. Valančius’s Writings for publication and newly edited them (Kaunas, 1931). But most importantly, for all the children of Lithuania, J. Balčikonis is a beloved storyteller. In truth, he became that storyteller in his youth and remained one throughout his life. Several generations of Lithuanians have delighted in the tales of H. K. Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, W. Hauff, and Charles Perrault, retold in Lithuanian by J. Balčikonis. He also translated the Arabic tales One Thousand and One Nights, Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, not to mention a number of little-known translations he made in his youth of works by A. Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, and others.

J. Balčikonis’s translations, written in beautiful, correct language, are an excellent school of the mother tongue, which virtually every child attends today. When gathering material for all kinds of work from spoken language, the classics of Lithuanian literature, folklore, and other sources, linguists do not forget J. Balčikonis’s translations. These translations even have one very important advantage over many other sources: one can have no doubt about the popular character or correctness of a single word or sentence. If the professor measured nine times and cut on the tenth, then the expression is either from spoken language or entirely in accord with it.

¹⁰ Plačiau žr.: Kalbininkų pasitarimas. — Tarybinis studentas, 1959, gegužės 7 d.

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Through his translations, J. Balčikonis carried out substantial, constructive work in cultivating the culture of the native language. In truth, the most important school of language culture is not the correction of language, the admonitions and instructions of linguists about how one should and should not write and speak, but exemplary language—entire texts. The eminent teachers of the Lithuanian language, J. Jablonskis and J. Balčikonis, understood this well. In this respect, J. Balčikonis surpassed even J. Jablonskis himself. Only by considering together J. Balčikonis’s direct pedagogical work (especially his training of Lithuanian language and literature teachers), his translations, language editing, lexicographic work (including organizing and preparing the first edition of the Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian, published in Vilnius in 1954), the standardization of proper names, and the preparation and publication of J. Jablonskis’s writings can one grasp how much and how productively the professor worked to cultivate the literary language and its culture. In the history of Lithuanian linguistics, in this respect too, his name will always be written alongside those of its most distinguished contributors.

J. Balčikonis devoted considerable time to Lithuanian place names and personal names; he recorded many of them himself and actively worked to standardize them. He also published articles on the subject. In standardizing place names, the professor consistently adhered to the principle of authenticity himself and devotedly taught others to do likewise. In every case, he gave preference to the variants used by local people and actively opposed artificially coined new place names. He pointed out that the stream flowing into the Neris in Vilnius had long been called Vilnia in Lithuanian, not Vilnėlė, and that the name of the town near Vilnius is not Maišiogala but Maišiagala, and so on. J. Balčikonis also introduced into literary usage these and other authentic Lithuanian place names, although his recommendations were not accepted without reservation in every case, and some were even criticized. Holding that “every place name is a monument to our past, a document left by generations who lived long ago”¹¹, he repeatedly argued that the foremost task in the field of place names was to collect them all, from the largest to the smallest. The place-name researchers at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature, together with their many collaborators, are now bringing this work to completion.

J. Balčikonis was a linguist and philologist with broad interests. He was interested in the history of the Lithuanian language and its written tradition, and wrote articles about Lithuanian linguists and Russian scholars’ contributions to the study of Lithuanian. On various occasions, he wrote about scholars from other nations whose work was connected with Lithuanian studies, welcomed every new work on the Lithuanian language, and favorably introduced more than a few of them to the public. J. Balčikonis’s concern for monuments of the Lithuanian language is unforgettable. In a review of the collection of early Lithuanian-language texts prepared by J. Otrębski, “Teksty litewskie. I. Teksty dawne” (Warsaw, 1957), he stated clearly: “To know our language today well, we must know its history. At present, in general, we know little about our old language. Among the reasons for this lack of knowledge is the shortage of readily available texts, and, most importantly, the absence of commentaries”¹². Recognizing this, before the war he prepared a photographic edition of M. Petkevičius’s catechism; and, on the occasion of the tricentennial of the first Lithuanian grammar,

¹¹ Balčikonis J. Rinktiniai raštai, t. 1, p. 73.

¹² Ten pat, p. 278.

3*

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hundredth anniversary, he actively helped prepare an edition of that grammar and its abridgment, with a translation into Lithuanian. In addition, J. Balčikonis published a number of short articles about individual language monuments, especially their new editions.

Folklore occupies an important place in the professor’s philological legacy. Like many philologists of the older generation, J. Balčikonis not only cherished folklore and used it in his scholarly work and teaching, but also collected it. Introducing readers to “Druskininkų dainos” (Songs of Druskininkai), collected by the professor and prepared for publication, L. Sauka wrote that the collection was “a significant step in defining the geographical coordinates of Lithuanian folk songs. On the map of published vocal folklore, this volume is notable both for the abundance of material presented from a northern, unexplored region and for its authenticity”¹³, while also emphasizing the publication’s distinctive character and value owing to the linguistic transcription of its texts: “Few folklore publications with a linguistic profile are appearing at present. The interest in Lithuanian folklore shown in the nineteenth century by linguists—A. Schleicher, F. Fortunatov, F. Kuršaitis, A. Leskyn, K. Brugmann, J. Jablonskis, and others—produced fine results. Later, this line of work was abandoned. In this respect, too, Prof. J. Balčikonis’s ‘Druskininkų dainos’ is a significant book, reviving scholars’ interest in the language of songs”¹⁴.

J. Balčikonis’s work and activity should be assessed, as is customary in scholarship, first and foremost in terms of who he was and what he accomplished in the context of his time, whether his work and activity advanced scholarship, and what enduring value and significance they hold for present-day scholarship and language practice. Now, almost two decades after J. Balčikonis’s death, his exceptional contributions to Lithuanian linguistics and to the language itself are plainly evident. It is true that not everything is done exactly as J. Balčikonis proposed or as he initiated and envisaged. In his survey, “Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija” (A History of the Study of the Lithuanian Language), referring to aspects of J. Balčikonis’s work that were open to question, A. Sabaliauskas wrote: “Neither earlier nor present-day Lithuanian linguists agreed with all of his language corrections. The academic ‘Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language’ is edited not entirely according to the principles Balčikonis had adopted when he began it. His translations, although truly excellent examples of the vernacular, may not always accurately reflect the style of the original. These matters, however, can in no way diminish Balčikonis’s immense contributions to the Lithuanian language—to its study and practical use”¹⁵.

Most of J. Balčikonis’s scholarly ideas have taken firm root in Lithuanian linguistics and become an inseparable part of it. The major undertaking he initiated—the comprehensive Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language—is being carried forward successfully. J. Balčikonis’s legacy, both scholarly and intended for practical language use, has unquestionable enduring value; it has helped and continues to help advance the study of Lithuanian and cultivate and refine the literary language itself. His contributions to training native-language teachers and to developing and advancing contemporary Lithuanian linguistics will never be forgotten.

¹³ Sauka L. Prof. J. Balčikonio „Druskininkų dainos“. — Kn.: Druskininkų dainos / Užrašė J. Balčikonis, p. 7.

¹⁴ Ten pat, p. 8.

¹⁵ Sabaliauskas A. Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija. 1940–1980 m. — V., 1982, p. 42.

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The life of Professor J. Balčikonis was purposeful and significant. A keen amateur beekeeper, throughout his life he himself, like a diligent little bee, worked quietly and tirelessly for the benefit of his native language. His final journey was symbolic, too—a return to the soil of his homeland, to which he had grown inseparably attached and from which he had never become detached. Along the roads of his native land, white as the garments of fairy-tale princesses, a funeral cortege set out from old Vilnius; accompanied by a large group of the professor’s students and colleagues, it escorted their teacher, the eminent linguist, across Lithuania to his native village. There, among his parents, relatives, and neighbors, he had wished to return for good. There, in the family cemetery, as a bitter winter wind blew, a mound of earth rose on February 8, 1969, cherished by all Lithuania.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCHOLARLY WORKS AND ACTIVITIES OF J. BALČIKONIS

Abstract

J. Balčikonis (1885–1969), a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR and a professor, studied his native language tirelessly for six decades. Many of the linguist’s works have been published since his death (in 1972, a collection of Lithuanian folk songs collected and prepared for publication by the professor was issued. In 1978–1982, a two-volume selection of his scholarly works appeared; new editions of fairy tales and other works of literature that he translated into Lithuanian are also being published). A number of articles about J. Balčikonis’s life and activities have appeared in the scholarly and socio-political press. To mark the centenary of the linguist’s birth, articles on J. Balčikonis’s activities and works, as well as reminiscences by his relatives and students, were published in the journals „Kalbos kultūra“ („Speech Culture“, 1985, issue 48) and „Mūsų kalba“ („Our Language“, 1985, no. 1); V. Vitkauskas’s book „Juozas Balčikonis“ („Juozas Balčikonis“. — Kaunas, 1985. — 112 pp.) was also published. All this makes it possible to understand and appreciate more deeply the linguist’s creative legacy and activities.

The article highlights J. Balčikonis’s extensive pedagogical, scholarly, and organizational activities, beginning in the early twentieth century. After the Great Patriotic War, the organization of scholarly research into the Lithuanian language at the restored republican Academy of Sciences fell to him (until 1952 he was director of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language); for 15 years he actively took part in training native-language teachers at Vilnius State University, and his contribution to preparing scholarly and academic teaching staff was considerable. Most Lithuanian Soviet linguists and scholars of Lithuanian of the older and middle generations were J. Balčikonis’s students.

In his scholarly work, J. Balčikonis continued the undertaking begun by the renowned Lithuanian linguists J. Jablonskis (1860–1930) and K. Būga (1879–1924). From 1930, J. Balčikonis served as chief editor, organizer, inspirer, and director of the monumental multi-volume dictionary of the Lithuanian language, and later became Lithuania’s foremost lexicographer. Through his efforts, a large card index was compiled, principles for the dictionary’s preparation were developed, and its first two volumes were published. Today, Lithuanian linguists are successfully continuing the dictionary work begun by J. Balčikonis (14 volumes of the academic dictionary have been published).

Throughout his life, J. Balčikonis actively studied the Lithuanian literary language, working alongside and carrying forward the cause of J. Jablonskis, the classic figure in its standardization. J. Balčikonis’s pedagogical, scholarly, translation, and editorial work attests to his contributions to the Lithuanian literary language and its culture. He prepared J. Jablonskis’s writings for publication in five volumes (Kaunas, 1932–1936), wrote articles and reviews himself on questions of language culture, and gave related radio

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broadcasts, translated several books of fairy tales into Lithuanian, as well as works by Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift, and other writers, actively participated in preparing the first edition of the normative dictionary of contemporary Lithuanian („Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas“. — Vilnius, 1954) and more. J. Balčikonis also devoted much attention to collecting and standardizing Lithuanian onomastics.

J. Balčikonis had broad philological interests. He prepared some monuments of Lithuanian writing and linguistics for republication, collected folklore from a young age, and enjoyed fieldwork on the speech of peasants. He was destined to become, as it were, a bridge linking the classical legacy of Lithuanian linguistics from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with modern Lithuanian linguistics. Through his pedagogical, scholarly, and scholarly-organizational activities, J. Balčikonis contributed significantly to the formation and growth of Lithuanian Soviet linguistics.