(Probleme und Perspektiven, pp. 409–416) he surveys the current state of research into Baltic mythology and attempts to formulate its principal directions.

Magdalene Huelmann, who recently published a valuable monograph on Lithuanian and Latvian work songs (Die litauischen und lettischen Arbeitslieder. Ein Vergleich, München, 1996)², also summarizes the results of her research in the book under discussion (Aspekte des litauischen und lettischen Arbeitslieds, pp. 417–426).

The book concludes with an article by the distinguished German Balticist Rainer Eckert (Brauchtum und Folklore im Ostbaltischen: Zum Johannisfest (lett. Jāņi: lit. Joninės, und zu den Johannisliedern, pp. 427–455), which, after briefly surveying the principal problems in research on the folklore of the Baltic peoples, analyzes the reflections of the Midsummer festival in Latvian folk songs. Indeed, one would probably find no other people’s folk tradition with so many beautiful stanzas devoted to this festival.

One cannot help but rejoice in this valuable publication. All that remains is to offer sincere thanks to the conference organizer and editor of the volume, Professor Alfred Bammesberger of the Catholic University of Eichstätt, who, among other things, recalled in the book’s preface certain ties between his town and Lithuania in Lithuanian words: “After the war, a group of Lithuanians settled in our area. And now we want to continue contacts between Eichstätt and Lithuania, but this time only absolutely peaceful ones.”³

As we have mentioned, the work was published by the renowned Carlo Winter publishing house. It should be recalled that this publisher began publishing and distributing Lithuanian studies books in 1879. Thus, it has no equal in this field.

Algirdas Sabaliauskas

PIETRO DINI. THE BALTIC LANGUAGES

Looking at Pietro Dini’s shelf of books on Lithuanian and Baltic studies, one might think that the books arrive by hearsay. Alongside L’anello baltico (Genova, 1991), H. J. Lysius, Katekizmas (Vilnius, 1993), L’inno di Sant’Ambrogio di Martynas Mažvydas (Roma, 1994), Repubbliche baltiche (Milano, 1994), alongside the *zeminin-*

² Cf. L. Kudirkienė, Lituanistica, 1997, 3 (31), pp. 141–143.

³From 1945 to 1949, a Lithuanian gymnasium operated in Eichstätt. To mark the anniversary of the gymnasium, Professor A. Bammesberger appealed to former pupils and teachers in the Lithuanian press in the United States and Canada. After this appeal, “Very good responses began to come in: both former teachers and former pupils shared their impressions and recollections” (Darbininkas, 1998. V. 28). It should be noted that well-known Lithuanian language specialists Stasys Barzdukas, Izabelė Matusevičiūtė, and Sergejus Treigys worked at the Eichstätt Lithuanian gymnasium. The renowned Lithuanian architect Vytautas Žemkalnis (Landsbergis) taught art. Among the 55 graduates of the first class, on May 14, 1946, the diploma was also received here by the current President of the Republic of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus; cf. S. Rudys, Eichstaeto lietuvių gimnazija, Lietuvių švietimas Vokietijoje. Edited by V. Liulevičius, Chicago, 1969, pp. 322–341.

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Alongside poetry and other literary translations into Italian, another original work is now on the shelf: Le Lingue Baltiche (The Baltic Languages), Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1997, comprising XXII and 531 pages. If we count the days since Dini’s last book appeared in 1994, it works out that for nearly four years he must have written at least half a page every day. Of course, if he took breaks, he would have written even more per day.

Le Lingue Baltiche was conceived as one of the books in a series edited by Emanuele Banfi on the languages of Europe and published as the series’ fifth volume (after earlier volumes devoted to languages in general or to English and Russian). Dini’s book on the Baltic languages thus appeared before, say, anyone’s work on the Romance languages or on the so-called major languages in general—German, French, Polish, and so on. The self-esteem of today’s Balts, who wish not to be forgotten amid the currents of European culture, may be flattered.

In the preface, the author writes that “until now, more general works in Italian on Baltic philology and languages have been lacking” (p. XVII). It must be said at once, however, that a work of such comprehensiveness exists in neither Italian nor any other language, not even in the languages of the Balts themselves.

First, a word about the book’s structure. It consists of ten parts, each containing an average of 50 pages of text and thus comprising numerous subsections. The parts are: 1) “The Baltic Region and the Prehistory of Linguistics,” 2) “The Contours of Proto-Baltic,” 3) “The Linguistic Context,” 4) “Baltic Territory between Paganism and Christianity,” 5) “The ‘Minor’ Baltic Languages,” 6) “The Prussian Language and the Prussians,” 7) “The Baltic Languages between Catholicism and the Reformation,” 8) “National Revival, Independence, and the Sovietization of the Balts,” 9) “The Baltic Languages and the New Independence between Autochthons and Immigrants,” 10) “Texts.” In addition, there is a particularly detailed bibliography spanning more than sixty pages (pp. 445–515), itself a book within a book. Some of these chapters are simply synchronic snapshots of a particular period. One such snapshot reconstructed by Dini is the common period of Proto-Baltic (the second chapter). Here he describes Proto-Baltic vocalism, consonantism, prosody, distinctions between nouns and verbs, features of syntax, vocabulary, phraseology, and onomastics. The features of Lithuanian and Latvian are presented in much the same way in the seventh chapter. It is striking, though, that Proto-Baltic is given much more attention. This is entirely understandable: expanding the seventh chapter would mean embarking on grammars of Lithuanian and Latvian, whereas the author’s aims are quite different. This choice also makes the author’s unequivocal priority—history—plain.

In some respects, Dini’s book is somewhat reminiscent of Zigmas Zinkevičius’s seven-volume Lietuvių kalbos istoriją. Yet although both works assess theories about the relationships between the Baltic languages and other languages, and both authors discuss the development of writing, the emphases are different: Zinkevičius writes only a history of the Lithuanian language, focusing more on the development of the language itself than on the history of its study. Dini, by contrast, describes all three major (and other minor) Baltic languages in parallel; alongside the development of the languages, he is especially

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concerned with the history of research on those languages and the changing views of scholars. He delves into the history of research far more extensively than an introductory book on the Baltic languages would require. For example, Dini presents the etymologies of the name Baltijos (“Baltic”) proposed by at least three authors (Giuliano Bonfante, Gertrud Bense, and Vladimir Toporov, pp. 7–8). He does not settle for whichever one he finds more convincing, but seeks to discern the merits of all the etymologies and avoids imposing a single opinion. Nevertheless, Dini gently indicates that Toporov’s hypothesis is the most promising: drawing on the earlier ideas of Bonfante and Bense, Toporov “put forward the hypothesis that the original signification of the root **balt- was ‘the zone of a closed sea’, also understood as ‘white’ or ‘marshy, boggy’.” This way of presenting problems is no accident but a principle of the book. For instance, when discussing the reconstruction of Proto-Baltic vocalism and consonantism, Dini mentions traditional hypotheses and provides tables and diagrams, but also points to nontraditional views (pp. 55–72). The very fact that only the word hypotezė (“hypothesis”) is used reveals Dini’s position: he does not want to be a stern judge, but only to show the current state of research. Yet the selection itself is also an evaluation. This hierarchical presentation, distinguishing traditional conceptions from innovative ones, gives the work not only a historical dimension but also provides a good guide for a beginning Balticist.

It is said that the author of a good etymological dictionary must not etymologize while writing the dictionary’s entries. Otherwise, the temptation to draw hasty conclusions may be too great to resist. As we can see, Dini is sufficiently cautious and understands this danger. One sign of his caution may be that he continues to call the sixteenth-century manuscript Clavis Germanico-Lithvana, published by Vincentas Drotvinas, anonymous, even though Drotvinas’s view that Friedrich Prätorius was its author is already gaining ground in Lithuania. Dini’s caution is also evident in his account on pp. 301–303 of the discussion between Zigmas Zinkevičius and Jonas Palionis about whether a spoken koine of the cities of Vilnius and Kėdainiai, formed on an interdialectal basis, existed in the sixteenth century. Having presented two opposing views—that of Zinkevičius, who argues that it did, and Palionis, who argues that it did not—Dini merely says that “future research will make it possible to clarify various aspects, which may in turn confirm the interdialectal hypothesis or outline new explanatory models” (p. 303).

Dini is, in general, very interested in the historiography of the paleocomparative period in the study of languages. He has published studies on individual European authors’ conceptions of the Baltic languages: Konrad Gesner, P. F. Giambullari, Angelo Rocca, and others. These are new discoveries by Dini that will henceforth need to be included in introductions to Baltic philology. It is therefore natural that when these theories are presented, the word hipotezė (“hypothesis”) disappears from the text: Dini is now describing his own ideas. He is one of those who seriously analyze the once-popular theory that Lithuanians descended from the Romans. Dini has no doubt that the theory is worth investigating rather than being ridiculed as pseudoscientific (the last time I heard it mocked was by Dr. Jurgis Gerulaitis at the Newberry Library in Chicago, USA, on October 25, 1997, during his ceremonial lecture on the first Lithuanian book). According to Dini, the theory of Roman descent has the following aspects: a) in all known

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In the sources, the Roman origin of the Lithuanians is supported alongside other arguments by linguistic ones; b) priority is given to linguistic arguments (or, at best, they are assessed on an equal footing) over other arguments; c) efforts are made to explain the differences between Latin and Lithuanian not merely as those between related languages, but as those between identical languages (p. 309). Thus, this is above all a linguistic theory; moreover, it was most widespread only in central Europe and among the eastern Slavs. However, as Dini established, the Italian Rocca, who drew many ideas about the Baltic languages from the chronicle of Motiejus Miechovita, wrote nothing about the Lithuanian descent from the Romans, although Miechovita had discussed it. Evidently, Rocca found such a theory of Lithuanian origins too drastic, unconvincing, and perhaps even audacious to want to believe it. Dini also discusses theories of origin of a different kind (pp. 312–314). He distinguishes the semi-Latin theory of Mykolas Lietuvis (it is a pity that he does not give the surname of the generally recognized real author, Vaclovas Mikalojaitis) concerning a semi-Latin Lithuanian language; he also finds certain, unidentified reflections of this theory in the writings of Teodoro Bibliandier. The third is the theory Dini calls the fourfold language (linguarium quadripartitum) theory. The excerpt from Miechovita’s chronicle on pp. 277–278 shows that the fourfold character of the Baltic languages is symbolized by its four parts: Yotvingian, Lithuanian together with Samogitian, Prussian, and Latvian. The theory is familiar from the works of Miechovita, Bibliandier, Gesner, and Rocca. On the whole, this is an important perspective on the Baltic lands not only from within but also from outside, showing how the Baltic languages were imagined in foreign countries during the Renaissance. Nevertheless, it is clear that these theories arose mainly in central Europe and among the eastern Slavs; they were not original in western Europe.

In some places, one might wish for more precise formulations. For example, p. 273 refers to the entire long span of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s existence, 1236–1795. In theory, however, the Grand Duchy continued to exist into the early nineteenth century, since the Russian emperor Alexander I continued to style himself, among his other titles, Grand Duke of the GDL. Likewise, Vilnius University was closed not in 1865 by Alexander II, as the book states (p. 347), but in 1832 by Nicholas I. The journal Mūsų kalba is listed as if it were still being published, although in 1990 it had already become Gimtoji kalba. In presenting the main features of the Samogitian dialect on p. 289, the book says that Samogitians use d, t instead of standard-language č, dž, but this is a very approximate description, since by no means in all positions do all Samogitians use t, d instead of č, dž (primarily in word endings; coastal Samogitians do so most extensively, while central and eastern Samogitians do so only in some cases). In a work of this kind, it would have been enough to say that in certain or some positions Samogitians do not have the standard-language č, dž.

The book presents its maps, diagrams, and other illustrative material very beautifully. For example, the diagrams of different authors’ conceptions of the genetic relationship between the Balts and the Slavs are very simple and compelling (pp. 128, 130). The map of Lithuanian dialects on p. 290, however, could have been somewhat more consistent: if Lithuanian dialects beyond Lithuania, in Belarus (Rodūnia, Ramaškonys), are marked, it would be quite logical to expect other Lithuanian dialects to be shown as well—in Belarus, Poland,

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and Latvia. All the more so since the author himself devoted an entire subsection to describing Lithuanian language islands and traces in Belarus and Poland (pp. 386–388), where he mentioned the dialects that are not marked.

One could add to the minor observations that the exact spelling of Daukantas’s Būdas has not been preserved on p. 420: instead of Daukantas’s ī (a diacritic resembling a circumflex), which denotes a specific, widespread Samogitian sound, į [ę], į is used throughout (pirm gimimo). Evidently, the author did not dare to use a circumflex, and the corresponding diacritic was unavailable. For an Italian reader, however, this notation will not differ at all from the neighboring page’s (p. 421) song words Mėnuo saulužę vedė anksti, pirmą, marked with a grave accent. Also, in rendering the Samogitian text in the Aukštaitian dialect, the word jau (‘already’) has been omitted (p. 421, line 1). There are very few proofreading errors, though some do occur (on p. 296, Drotvinas appears as Drotivinas; on p. 440, Ramonienė instead of Ramonienė; on p. 511, Vanagieni instead of Vanagienė).

None of these observations should detract from the work; they will be important to take into account in future editions. Incidentally, among linguists specializing in Baltic studies, it is already becoming a commonplace to say that Dini’s work is crying out to be translated. Introductions to Baltic philology have been written by Ernst Fraenkel (in German, and Simas Karaliūnas also translated it into Lithuanian) and Jonas Kabelka. Dini’s book, however, is a much broader and more comprehensive work. As is already clear from what has been said, Dini is no stranger to a sociolinguistic perspective, as even the titles of some subsections show: “Limited linguistic purism,” p. 365; “Interference with Russian,” p. 369; “Language contacts,” p. 381. The book also includes presentations of cultural theories (those of Vytautas Kavolis and Tomas Venclova, pp. 298–300) and archaeological evidence (from Marija Gimbutienė, Rimutė Rimantienė, G. Česnys, and V. Šimėnas, pp. 12–16, 188–190). Today, lacking encyclopedias of the Baltic languages, we could also use Dini’s Le Lingue Baltiche as a handy reference encyclopedia. In keeping with the author’s own nature, the work is encyclopedic in scope. Just as it is impossible to survey everything when writing a review of any encyclopedia, so too all reviews of Dini’s Le Lingue Baltiche are doomed to remain incomplete. No book of this caliber on the Baltic languages has been published in any other language. Therefore, at the risk of sounding commonplace, one is tempted to say that it would be important to translate it at least into the languages in which research on Baltic studies is most often published: Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Polish, German, and English. This is a representative book of Baltic philological scholarship.

Giedrius Subačius

University of Illinois Chicago

IN MEMORY OF RŪDOL FUI GRABIS

Latvian linguists paid a fitting tribute to their senior colleague Rū dol fas Grabis on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday by publishing an interesting collection of articles, “Savajai

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