Dėl XVIII a. raštų kalbos

LITHUANIAN KALBOTYROS QUESTIONS XXXIX (1998) Mr Juozas KARACIEJUS Lithuanian Language Institute, Vilnius ON XVIII a. LETTER The 18th century is the most difficult and controversial period in the history of Lithuania, since almost the entire century was marked by the agony of the united Lithuanian-Polish state, accompanied by constant wars and quarrels between rival factions. It goes without saying that in such a situation, cultural life also declined considerably. But it is not easy to talk about it so far, because this period is the least studied by philologists, historians and historians of culture.! It is true that, in recent times, historians and scholars of ancient Lithuanian literature have paid more attention to this period, while linguists continue to hold to the opinion, which probably emerged in our philological literature in the first decades of the 20th century, that the Lithuanian written language degraded in the 18th century, that Lithuanian writings at that time were written in a certain Lithuanian-Polish language jargon (cf. Zinkevičius 1990: 15) and that most of the “Catholic priests, authors of Lithuanian writings, who detached themselves from the people and surrendered to the “pony” culture of the Polish nobility, abandoned the beautiful traditions of Daukša and Sirvydas and did not care about further development of the Lithuanian written language” (Palionis 1995: 112). In fact, the language (specifically their vocabulary) of Lithuanian writings that appeared on the territory of Lithuania in the 18th century differed considerably from the language of writings of the 16th-17th centuries, because the 18th century writings used much more borrowed words (especially polonisms) than were used in earlier writings. For this reason, 18th-century Catholic writings are still marked by a sort of “curse”, especially in the Soviet years, in order to emphasize the negative role of the Catholic Church in Lithuanian culture. In addition, two terms are now used in our philological literature to designate the language of the 18th century Catholic writings: the traditional written language (Z. Zinkevičius) and the ecclesiastical language (J. Palionis). This is not a good thing. This difference in terms is a source of considerable confusion. We would think that the first is better and more convenient, because the second, among other shortcomings, has a negative connotation. It is true that J. Palionis, defending the second term, argues for its use in the “History of the Lithuanian written language” as follows: “In many other 18th-century religious writings it was also translated-! This is most clearly shown in J. Jurginio and I. Lukšaite’s “Features of Lithuanian Cultural History” with the subtitle “The Feudalism Era. Until the eighteenth century”, although I. Lukšaitė here, discussing the art of the Baroque era, indicates that it continued until the 1720s (see Jurginis, Lukšaitė 1981: 330-331). 134 si a certain dialect mixture, a certain coine, which was based on the phonological morphological genders of the middle highland speakers, more or less replaced by ir lowland or eastern dialects” ar (Palionis 1995 : 120). But many more arguments for the suitability of this term J. Palionis has submitted Z. Zinkevičiaus The History of the Lithuanian Language, Volume 4 “Lithuanian language XVIII-XIX a.“ review, stating that Z. Zinkevičius’s “presentation of the traditional written language term is too general to perform the functions of a special term (ferminus specificus)”, because "any prior written language can be called traditional..." therefore ir “the term traditional written language is [...] neither "more accurate" than generally better už church foot term" (Palionis 1994: 97). By the way, the same J. Palionis says that a possible object “better than this už would be a medieval writing shoe, because it would emphasize that The a. 18th-century phonology and ir morphology in the syllables more generalized the dialectal basis of the written language, but it is longer than the church coine term and therefore less už convenient." Thus, the latter ir thought would suggest that J. The term "Church of the Holy Spirit" is used to describe it. Ir the clarification proposed here is acceptable, since the term Mediterranean writing soine, although longer, would, we believe, emphasize the ir ghttinumaZ of the tradition. But, ending the “terminological discussion” with Z. Zinkevičius, J. Palionis adds: “It would be possible to argue whether the medieval writing coine was a continuation of Zinkevičius’s “middle variant of written language” or a new creature. However, this is another, more important problem, which is related both to the linguistic transformation of the text of the Gospels in 1705, and in general to the further dialectal direction of religious and non-religious writings, and requires further special historical and linguistic investigations” (Palionis 1994: 97). The latter statement not only explains why Palionis is reluctant to accept the term traditional written language, but at the same time raises the most doubts, because to consider the 18th-century Catholic written language as some new phenomenon, without linking it to the traditional written language, seems to me to be unfounded for two reasons. First of all, after the extinction of the eastern variant of the written language, all authors of the first half of the 18th century began to focus on the middle variant of the written language, which, as we know, was used in the bishopric of Žemaitija since the end of the 16th century. Therefore, jų the Gospels of J. Jaknavičius, written in the Eastern version, were also centralized in 1705. The second reason why the 18th-century written language cannot be regarded as a new creature is that the genders of the middle variant of the written language were in a sense codified in an anonymous 1737 grammar entitled “The whole of Lithuanian languages according to the laws of the main dialect of this principality described and prepared for the zealous neopalemonians” (translation by K. Eigminas). Her? * The fact that this tradition was not broken has also been emphasized by J. Lebedys in fragments of his monograph on the use of Lithuanian in public life in the 17th-18th centuries (Lebedys 1976: 20). 135 unknown author begins as follows: “The title of this poor work shows that the ši dialect (as far as is known) is accepted throughout Lithuania. Although the language varies in some places due to the diversity of places, but so little that the speaker about the great works of God will be understood everywhere (as written here) and gladly listened to. Therefore, it would be unnecessary to discuss other dialects here" (Universitas 1981: 61). Although the author of the above-mentioned grammar does not specify what dialect it is, its researcher K. Eigminas has determined that “the basis of the University dialect is that area of Lithuania, where the peculiarities of the western Highlander Šiauliai dialect and the eastern Highlander southern Panevėžys dialect begin to mix” (Eigminas 1981: 38) and there are no Žemaitijos forms (see Jonikas 1952: 111) in it. Thus, according to P. Jonikis, the genders of the middle written language variant presented in this grammar “were merely certain guidelines, pointing to a general dialectal direction, primarily for the language of the religious writings of that age” (Jonikas 1987: 128). But it is a separate question how representatives of other dialects managed to keep the genders presented here, especially since most of the authors of 18th century religious writings came from Žemaitija. It is understandable that it was difficult for them to avoid the peculiarities of the native dialect, although in the first half of the 18th century they also tried to orient themselves to the middle variant of the written language, which had already had a tradition of a good century. That is why, I think, the 18th century. the written language can be called a traditional written language. At the beginning, it was mentioned that the most striking feature of the 18th century written language is the increase of Slavisms (especially Polonisms), usually explained by the Polishization of the nobility and Catholic clergy. And it is asserted that “the Polish language lacked at that time more capable writers who knew Lithuanian well and who could have contributed to the upliftment of Lithuanian language culture and its progress” (Jonikas 1987: 126). It seems that statements of this kind can only be accepted in part. Of course, assessing the language of the 18th century writings only by the criteria of correctness and purity, it will actually turn out to be poor. But the abundance of lexical borrowings does not indicate that the authors of the 18th century had forgotten the Lithuanian language. If they had forgotten or had a poor knowledge of their mother tongue, we should immediately notice this in the morphology. Unfortunately, there are no obvious signs of forgetfulness or poor language skills in this area. Furthermore, until we have thorough studies of the syntax of ancient scripts, it is not possible to claim (and even less to believe) that a number of non-Lithuanian innovative syntax constructions appeared in 17th-century scripts (cf. Palionis 1995: 164), because only by examining non-Lithuanian constructions used in 16th-17th-century scripts and comparing them with non-Lithuanian constructions in 18th-century scripts it would be clear whether and how much they increased. Perhaps missing similar research and avoiding a priori statements, P. Jonikas is more cautious. Discussing the increase of visits in 18th-century writings, he writes: “Most of the visits are dictionaries, both in religious books and in the aforementioned publicistic, political writings, where, when the Lithuanian language was not yet as adapted to various special concepts of cultural and political life as it was then in the Polish language, a considerable number of Polish words were used to describe such concepts. For the vocabulary layer of a language is much more easily influenced by foreign languages than its grammatical structure." 136 (Ionic 1987: 127). So, without ruling out the influence of Polish, it seems to me that one can ask, couldn’t there have ar been other reasons for such an influx of polonisms? ir For researchers of ancient Lithuanian literature have indicated that in Poland XVII a. ir At the a. beginning of the 18th century, pasta „lived in the early Enlightenment period“ (Patiejūnienė that the 1992: 217), ir first attempts of this creation were already XVI a. Thus, the pasta creation popularized in Poland coincides chronologically with the Lithuanian su script language. „degradation“, all the more so since the intensive penetration of polonisms into the Lithuanian į language probably In the a. second half of the 17th century. It's over. du — three In the 1800s, a. there could jų not have been so much. Therefore, it seems that the popularization of pasta creation during this period could be considered one of the reasons for the influx of polonizants. iš mų į to Lithuanian writings of the period. Of course, religious The 18th a. century literature differed considerably to from the pasta-style creation of the time, but, as recent studies of ancient Lithuanian literature show, the 18th-century Lithuanian a. religious writings have been more or less influenced by the “literary fashions” of the time (see Radzevičius 1997: 319-327; Tereškinas 1992: 104-163). In addition, there is another fact that might allow us to think so. In the largest surviving 18th-century manuscript collections of Lithuanian sermons “Contiones litvanicae” (about 1720) and “Pamoksle isz Prisakimu Diewa” (1797) by K. Lukauskas, which are intended for the ordinary believer, the peasant, we find Latin quotations from the Bible, patristics and the works of more prominent theologians. Of course, the ordinary listener could not understand them. The preacher was therefore obliged to either translate them, or to summarize their meaning. This is what is done in the above-mentioned collections. But between these two sources in this regard there is a very marked difference. The unknown author of “Contines litvanicae” uses Latin quotations several times more than K. Lukauskas. In the latter’s sermons, written at the end of the 18th century, there are relatively few of them. Therefore, it can be suspected that, as Latin lost its previous positions, its place in Lithuanian writings, especially in the lexical field, was in a certain sense taken by Polish, which was more popular and closer at the time, due to the influence of macaroni writing. This is partly shown by M. Alšauskas (Olševskis)’s “Broma atverta ing viečnasti”, in which we find not only Latin quotations, but occasionally the Lithuanian equivalent used next to the borrowed word. However, whether this assumption is justified will be revealed only after more detailed philological and cultural-historical research. Once again returning to the influence of Polish, or rather its variant, “polszczyzna litewska” used in Lithuania (see Zinkevičius 1988: 115-127), on Lithuanian writing in the 18th century, it should be noted that at that time it had become a prestigious language — everyone tried to learn it. Therefore, with this status of Polish as a prestigious language, the requirements of “high” and “low” styles may be associated. It is quite possible that the authors of Lithuanian writings in the 18th century might have felt that writing about spiritual matters in the way spoken by ordinary peasants was not appropriate, because they spoke the despised “chlopek language”, which belonged to the “Žemejam” style. 137 To create Lithuanian fonts The authors of the 18th century a. could deliberately add prestigious Polish words. But these are also things to be studied. In summary, these remarks had one aim: to draw the attention of researchers į In the 18th a. century Catholic ir writings attempted ti tą to mitigate the negative opinion about them prevailing in our literature. Juk XVIII a. writings are also part of our culture ir jų development of iš Lithuanian writing cannot be deleted. XVIII a. Catholic writings should be assessed ne iš from the current positions of language culture, but in the aspect of language history ir ne only to state the abundance of debts in them, but first try to find out all the reasons that led to the appearance. jų Received 17/03/1998 LITERATURA Eigminas K. 1981: Language sources and dialectal basis. —Universitas Lingvarum Litvaniae. London: Routledge, 1981. 23-38. 1952: The History of the Lithuanian Language, Chicago. 1987: Lithuanian Language and Nation in the Ages, Chicago: Lituanistikas instituto leidykla. Jurginis J, Lukšaitė I. 1981: Lithuanian Cultural History: The Feudalism Era. 18th century, London: Oxford University Press. Lebedys J. 1976: Lithuanian Language in the Public Life of the 17th-18th Centuries, Vilnius: Mokslas. Palionis J. 1994: [Rec.] The 1990s and the 2000s. History of the Lithuanian language IV. In Lithuanian language XVIII-XIX a. —Baltistica 27(2), Vilnius, 96-100. Palionis J. 1995: History of the Lithuanian written language, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla. Patiejūnienė E. 1992: P. Roizijaus makaronas "Apie kelionę per Lietuvą". —Early Lithuanian literature 1. 2000. The Genres of Ancient Literature, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla, 216-222. Radzevičius A. 1997: Horizons of Old Lithuanian Literature and Culture, Kaunas: Aesti. Tereškinas A. 1992: Problems of style and genre in the sermons of M. Alšauskas and K. Lukauskas. — Ancient Lithuanian literature 1. Genres of Ancient Literature, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla, 104-163. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press, 1981. Zinkevičius Z. 1988: History of Lithuanian Language 3. The Language of Ancient Writings, Vilnius: Mokslas. Zinkevičius Z. 1990: History of Lithuanian Language 4. 18th-19th centuries, Vilnius: Mokslas. About the Writing Language of the 18th Century JAHRHUNDERTS Summary In this paper two problems are explored. First, it is pointed out that daB fir the designation of the written language of the 18th. In the 20th century, two terms were used in contrast: die, Kirchenkoine®/„bažnytinė koinė“ (J. Palionis) and „die traditionelle Schriftsprache®/- „tradicinė raštų kalba“ (Z. Zinkevičius). In doing so, we take the position that 138 daB the term "traditional written language" is preferable, since it corresponds to the essence of this language cher. Furthermore, we try to point out that the presence of many polonisms in the Lithuanian written language of the 18th century is not a of the 20th century is not to be explained by the unsuitable Lithuanian language skills of the authors but by the prestige of Polish as a fashion language of the Literature. 139