LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987)

GIEDRIUS SUBAČIUS

ON THE GENESIS OF S. DAUKANTAS’S POLISH–LITHUANIAN DICTIONARIES

S. Daukantas’s lexicographic work has been little studied. J. Kruopas has presented a characterization of his dictionaries and lexicographic material.¹ This article will attempt to offer a somewhat broader overview of the history of S. Daukantas’s writing of Polish–Lithuanian dictionaries.

After returning to Lithuania in 1850 and settling in Varniai with M. Valančius, S. Daukantas, a historian by vocation, rarely took up his pen (he had dated his last historical work, “Pasakojimas apie veikalus lietuvių tautos senovėje,” to 1850). This was primarily because he could no longer access the historical sources he had used in St Petersburg. On the other hand, S. Daukantas was encouraged to abandon history and take up lexicography by his Lithuanian surroundings, where he came face to face with the cultural life of Lithuanians and saw its difficulties. In the nineteenth century, as the number of Lithuanian intellectuals grew, the lack of various Lithuanian dictionaries was felt ever more acutely. Polish–Lithuanian dictionaries were especially scarce. Polish was then the means of communication among Lithuania’s intellectuals, and the only Polish–Lithuanian dictionary printed up to that time was K. Sirvydas’s “Dictionarium trium linguarum,” last published as early as 1713. It had become a bibliographical rarity and was difficult to obtain for practical use. All this encouraged S. Daukantas to undertake a task of great relevance at the time—to write a Polish–Lithuanian dictionary.

While still young and studying in Vilnius, S. Daukantas had written a Polish–Lithuanian dictionary². From the year stamped on the paper, J. Kruopas determined that it was one of Daukantas’s earliest works, completed after 1820. J. Kruopas says that “having probably begun his literary activity, S. Daukantas felt the lack of a Polish–Lithuanian dictionary and resolved to compile one himself”³.

The small dictionary has not survived in its entirety; only about one twelfth remains. Examination has shown that its Polish headword list was compiled on the basis of J. Litvinskis’s trilingual Polish–Latin–French dictionary (Słownik polsko–łacińsko–francuzki na zasadach słowników Knapskiego, Danneta i Troca ułożony i pomnożony przez X. Litwińskiego. – Warszawa, Wilno, 1815, t. 1–2.). This is clearly indicated by the matching Polish headword lists, the common forms given, individual word combinations, and even sentences, among other things.

¹ Kruopas J. S. Daukanto leksikografiniai darbai. – Kn.: Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai, 1961, t. 4, p. 301–316.

² The dictionary has no title (it is held in the manuscript collection of LKLI, shelfmark SD 13); we will call it the small dictionary to distinguish it from another—the large Polish–Lithuanian dictionary (also untitled, shelfmark SD 12), which Daukantas wrote after 1850 (see below).

³ Kruopas J. Min str., p. 302.

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J. Litvinskis’s dictionary began to be printed in Vilnius and was completed in Warsaw after the author’s death. S. Daukantas was already living in Vilnius at the time and may have known something about the dictionary. We counted about 24,850 Polish headwords in J. Litvinskis’s dictionary. In general, J. Litvinskis’s dictionary is quite simple, containing little grammatical information. The dictionary often presents word combinations as separate entries, and sometimes even entire expressions. All this suggests that J. Litvinskis compiled the dictionary for educational purposes. Its publishers, Zavadskis and Venckis, also mention this. In the preface, they write that J. Litvinskis “has rendered a great service through this work, especially to schoolchildren and young people.”

S. Daukantas copied many, but not all, words from J. Litvinskis’s dictionary. It has been calculated that about 7.5% of J. Litvinskis’s words were omitted from the surviving portion of the text⁴. Daukantas avoided copying dictionary entries that were clearly educational in nature. For example, he omitted combinations presented as separate entries Dat im się Bóg łasa dorwać; Daw­szy zaś brać, obiecawszy nie dać; Gromnyczy sey­mek; Za nic sobie ważę, and so on. Sometimes he also did not copy forms of the same word that appeared as separate entries, e.g. czotgający się (although czotgam się is included), częściami (although częścią is included). Some words evidently seemed unnecessary to S. Daukantas, so he omitted them, e.g.: domek, domyczko (although he copied dom), domyślny (domyślnie is included), dopuszczenie (dopuszczam is included), fizyonomia (fizyonom is included), gębczaty (gębaty is included), gęstwa (gęstwina is included), and so forth. There are words whose omission is difficult to explain, e.g.: głuchy, godzina, gotowy, although their derivatives are included.

S. Daukantas did not limit himself to J. Litvinskis’s words alone. For example, among the words under the letter D, he added in small letters some that are absent from J. Litvinskis’s dictionary (and one under G), e.g.: dalowid, danny, dawacz, decydować, dedukcya, deficit, delegat, delikatny, gołysz, and others (38 in all). These additions, however, are very insignificant compared with the surviving text (2,244 entries remain).

Like Litvinskis, Daukantas would probably have intended his small dictionary for young students. But the dictionary would also have been useful to an educated person generally, whether interested in or learning Lithuanian. Unfortunately, the work was not fully completed (some Polish words have no Lithuanian equivalents). It may be conjectured that, after leaving Lithuania, S. Daukantas became preoccupied with other matters and abandoned this work.

Daukantas began writing the other, large Polish–Lithuanian dictionary after returning from St Petersburg and settling in Varniai with M. Valančius. J. Šliūpas mentioned it in 1883 in “Aušra,” saying that Valančius “laid upon Daukantas the burden of writing a Polish-Samogitian dictionary.” Šliūpas also says that “Daukantas had to copy out a Polish-French dictionary for the bishop”⁵. This latter remark seems rather strange (even bearing in mind that Šliūpas assessed the disagreements between S. Daukantas and M. Valančius in a biased manner). What could have prompted S. Daukantas to copy out such a dictionary? Evidently J. Šliūpas is inaccurate here. It has been established that, for his large dictionary, S. Daukantas copied the Polish section of S. Ropelewski’s Polish–French dictionary

⁴ On this basis, it can be calculated that the small dictionary contained about 23,000 words (J. Kruopas estimated the number at 24,000).

⁵ Šliūpas J. Selected writings. – V., 1977, p. 178.

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index (Słownik polsko—francuzki. — Berlin, 1843—1847, poszyt I—VIII, 3412 p.⁶). Thus what J. Šliūpas regards as the copying of a Polish–French dictionary was probably not a separate work at all, but rather the copying of Polish words for that same “Polish-Samogitian” dictionary.

That S. Daukantas used S. Ropelewski’s work is clearly shown by the entire structure of the large dictionary (especially the frequent cross-reference ob. = obacz “see”), almost identical illustrative examples, and the same unusually presented headwords (e.g., the entry w Lewo, na Lewo appears under L, the entry w Krotce — K under K; sometimes an entry is given in the present tense rather than the infinitive, e.g., Kradnę ob. kraść, and many others), as well as various errors (e.g., the word Wytryskać is placed by S. Daukantas among the words under B—instead of the word Buchać, he inadvertently copied the synonym listed next to it; in the same way, among the words under C, Pocieszyciel appears instead of Cieszyćciel). No Polish words absent from Ropelewski’s dictionary have been found in S. Daukantas’s manuscript.

The press of the time viewed S. Ropelewski’s dictionary favorably. “Przegląd Poznański” wrote that it was “incomparably better than all our dictionaries published up to that time and equal to foreign books of this kind”⁷. The dictionary’s value is also indirectly indicated by its popularity: by the end of the 19th century, apparently seven original and two plagiarized editions had been published.

S. Ropelewski’s dictionary is fairly scholarly, although it was “compiled in haste”⁸. Each word is grammatically characterized; several forms are often given, and a word is frequently illustrated with one, several, or sometimes dozens of examples; stylistic labels are also provided. S. Daukantas made little use of all this scholarly apparatus. The words in his dictionary generally have no grammatical descriptions (although occasionally one or another does, e.g.: Dłużen, żnia; I, conj. ir, bej; Ją, acc. sing. fem. je; Ks obie, contract. ku sobie; Kwita, indecl.). The structure of S. Daukantas’s dictionary is much simpler. Polish words are not distinguished from Lithuanian words in any special way. One or several Polish words are written, followed by one or several Lithuanian words after a comma. As a result, it is sometimes even difficult to tell from the form whether a word is Lithuanian or Polish (e.g., dictionary entries such as Apteka, Aptieka; Nagietek, ob. nogietek, nagatka; Piramida, pyramidą, ob. ostrosłup and the like can be interpreted ambiguously).

Of the 120 abbreviations in Ropelewski’s dictionary, S. Daukantas systematically uses only one: ob. It is very common, appearing several times on almost every page. S. Daukantas does not coin any new abbreviations, but is sometimes inconsistent in using ob. (e.g., the entries amalia, gredzidło, niedożierca are followed by cross-references to emalia, grązel, niedozor, but the latter are not in the dictionary—they were omitted when the Polish index was copied). Of course, this is merely an oversight that would have been corrected when preparing the dictionary for publication.

From among the frequent illustrative examples in Ropelewski’s dictionary, S. Daukantas would select only one or two. They are quite rare in the third and second volumes, and perhaps somewhat more numerous only in the first—

⁶ Autorius (Stanisław Ropelewski) žinomas tik iš veikalo: Estreicher K. Bibliografia polska XIX stólecia. — Kraków, 1878, t. 4, s. 88.

⁷ Przegląd Poznański. — 1848, t. 6, s. 230.

⁸ Ibid., p. 230.

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in the manuscript. D is illustrated with examples in the greatest number of entries—135 (in 124 dictionary entries). D contains 2,286 words in all, so only 5.4% have illustrative examples.

When providing illustrative examples, S. Daukantas generally leaves them unchanged, shortening only an occasional one. From S. Ropelevskis’s examples Być posądzo- nym, podejrzanym o dezm; Doniosłem mu przez kogoś z jego przyjaciół o tem co się stało; Doczekał się pociechy z dzieci, S. Daukantas made Być posądzonym o deizm; Doniosłem mu przez kogoż; Doczekał dzieci. In very rare cases, S. Daukantas reworks the examples somewhat; for instance, from Zdecydowany jestem wszystkiego się chwy- cić and Decydować o wszystkiem he makes a single example—zdecydowałem się na wszystko. Sometimes he also supplies his own, very simple illustrations, e.g.: Dycht i jest; dziedziniec przed stajniami.

S. Daukantas did not transfer all the Polish words supplied by S. Ropelevskis into his dictionary. He omitted some place names, e.g.: Genewa, Genua, Moldawia, Kaffa “a village in Taurida,” Kair (although he included Afryka, Chwalenskie morze, Dania, Francya, Galilea, Galicya, Niemen, Paryż). He also omitted many personal names (e.g.: Adam, Daszko, Elżusia, Jagiello, Julian, Kaifasz, Kain, etc.; although he transcribed Judasz, Jumona, Neptun, Paweł, Pitagor, etc.), some names from biological taxonomy (e.g.: agaryk “bracket fungus,” albatros, alka “penguin,” dra “a kind of long-tailed parrot,” dafnia, kablion “cod,” kaczyniec “marsh marigold,” etc.). S. Daukantas also left out certain international words (e.g.: alkohol, analyzować, archeologia, arytemetyka, automat, elektrometr, ewakuacya, kadr, etc.). He sometimes omitted feminine occupational titles, e.g.: aspirantka, autorka, kadzicielka, kalkulatorka, although he included the corresponding masculine titles.

In S. Ropelevskis’s dictionary, many derivatives are presented as separate dictionary entries. S. Daukantas omitted some of them (and sometimes non-derivatives as well)—apparently those he considered less necessary. For example, he included atom, elipsa, kącermistrz, kacerny, kajdany, but omitted atomiczny, eliptycznie, eliptyczny, eliptyczność, kacerstwo, kacerz, kacerować, kajdanki, etc.

S. Daukantas did not supplement the register of Polish words from any other source. However, not all the entries in his dictionary are identical to S. Ropelevskis’s. S. Daukantas sometimes made a separate entry of a word that S. Ropelevskis had listed together with another related word. For example, S. Ropelevskis listed the words danny and datliwy in a single entry, whereas S. Daukantas made datliwy a separate headword. S. Daukantas also separated the words abrewidcya and abrewidator, expens and expensować, kalamajka and kalamajkowy, etc. Still, there are very few such independent rearrangements by S. Daukantas.

It has been roughly calculated that S. Ropelevskis’s dictionary contains about 65,000 Polish headwords⁹. J. Kruopas calculated the number of Polish words in S. Daukantas’s dictionary as 56,567¹⁰. Thus, it can be said that, when copying S. Daukan-

⁹ This figure was obtained by calculating the average number of words per page, based on counting approximately one third of the words taken from different parts of the dictionary.

¹⁰ Kruopas J. Min. str., p. 305.

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he omitted about 8.5 thousand, or 13%, of the words in S. Ropelevskis’s dictionary. A comparison of various parts of the dictionaries shows that the omissions were not made uniformly. At first he transcribed fewer words (for example, 46.7% are missing from the A section, B—24.1%), whereas later he selected words less scrupulously (for example, 16.8% are missing from the C section, D—13.8%, F—16.5%, G—8.1%, H—14.3%, I,J—11%, N—4.7%, O—3.9%, Z,Ž,Ž—8.2%). It may be assumed that, over time, S. Daukantas became concerned that he had narrowed his dictionary too much and began omitting fewer and fewer entries. A further pattern is also evident: the Polish headword list is much more complete for letters under which few Lithuanian equivalents have been supplied (N, O, etc.). Another tendency was to reduce the number of international words, especially in sections where they were numerous (A, F, H).

The entries for most letters were written in a similar way: the Polish headword list from S. Ropelevskis’s dictionary was copied out, and Lithuanian equivalents were immediately added to some of the words. But the sections for the letters N, O, S, T, and U were written differently. For some of the O and S sections, and throughout the T and U sections, only the Polish headword list appears (with Lithuanian equivalents occurring very rarely). Here, in an effort to speed up the work, S. Daukantas must have decided to add the Lithuanian equivalents later, after completing the Polish headword list (but he added them only for words under N). It is worth noting that when writing only the latter, Daukantas refrained from including illustrative examples—he simply left no room for them.

S. Daukantas did little editing of his dictionary. In the first and third volumes, a Lithuanian word added later is found beside only an occasional Polish word—this can be established from the ink color. Only the second volume was edited more substantially, or, more precisely, the material under the letter N in that volume. It is clear here that many Lithuanian words were added later, in a different ink. But S. Daukantas did more than add words: while editing, he also checked the text against S. Ropelevskis’s dictionary (as shown by the slips inserted at pp. 88 and 99 of volume 2, bearing 12 and 14 dictionary entries: had S. Daukantas not compared the texts, he could not have noticed that on both occasions he had omitted one column of S. Ropelevskis’s dictionary). Thus, the author had begun editing the dictionary but did not finish.

S. Daukantas wrote the dictionary on large sheets of paper measuring 35.5 × 21.6 cm. He did not mark the pages, numbering only the gatherings in pencil (volumes I and II have 31 gatherings each, and volume III has 36). The gatherings usually consist of 6 folded sheets, sometimes sewn into 2 half-gatherings of 3 folded sheets each, and sometimes into a single gathering.

Several facts suggest that S. Daukantas also wrote the dictionary on sheets already folded into gatherings. First of all, this is indicated by the unnumbered leaves. Second, the ink stains in volume 2 point to this as well. At the beginning of gathering 4, ink spilled over the text under the letter N. The dictionary entry Nazdjurtz, ryta meta, which was covered with ink, and the fact that it was rewritten alongside in the same ink as the other edited words, show that the mishap occurred while the manuscript was being edited. Not only the 4th gathering but also others (5, 6, 7, 8, 10) were stained. However, the ink reached only the first and last pages of the gatherings, leaving the inner leaves untouched. This means that the text being edited had already been assembled into gatherings but had not yet been bound into books (the latter claim is supported by some words in the edited manuscript that would have been difficult to write in a bound book). Moreover, the watermarks on the dictionary paper indicate that, before being bound into books, the paper must have remained stacked (or sewn) in gatherings for some time. For the paper-mill mark was embossed into the paper,

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that is, it is raised, and it is much more distinct on the first leaves of each gathering than on the subsequent ones.

All this clearly shows that S. Daukantas wrote the dictionary not on loose leaves, nor on clean paper already bound into books, but on gatherings made up of 12 leaves. This fact may also help us refine the date when S. Daukantas’s great dictionary was written. In a letter of 1856. X.15/27 to M. Valančius, M. Akelaitis already mentions S. Daukantas’s dictionary: “How happy I would be if those folios of the Polish–Samogitian dictionary prepared by S. Daukantas (folijaty... do słownika polsko–żmudskiego) came into my hands!”¹¹ The fact that M. Akelaitis writes of separate dictionary folios already means that by then (late 1856) S. Daukantas had bound the dictionary. And since, as we have seen, the dictionary was written and edited before being sewn into three volumes, it must have been completed by the end of 1856 (although it is of course possible that S. Daukantas added or corrected a word or two later). This date also coincides with changes in S. Daukantas’s biography—in 1855 he left Varniai, leaving M. Valančius and taking refuge in Svirlaukas (Latvia) with the physician Petras Smuglevičius. From then on, a wandering period began in S. Daukantas’s life, and during the remaining eight years of his life he did not return to the dictionary. The decisive factor may have been that he quarreled with M. Valančius and probably lost hope of ever publishing the dictionary. It may therefore be assumed that S. Daukantas wrote his great Polish–Lithuanian dictionary between 1850 and the end of 1856 (it is known that the dictionary paper was made in the 1850s¹²).

In writing Daukantas’s biography, V. Merkys assessed his lexicographical work somewhat imprecisely. The biographer recounts an 1842 letter from S. Daukantas to Narbut, in which S. Daukantas says that he had undertaken to investigate the language itself. V. Merkys mentions the Polish–Lithuanian dictionary (the smaller one) that S. Daukantas wrote in his youth and concludes: “Apparently, S. Daukantas returned to preparing the latter dictionary when he wrote the aforementioned letters to Narbut. Three huge folios of this dictionary are held in the manuscript collection of the library of the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature”¹³. It seems that V. Merkys regards the two dictionaries by S. Daukantas as one and the same work (the second being a continuation of the first). He writes that “Daukantas, having begun to prepare this dictionary while still at Vilnius University, continued to supplement and revise it until his death”¹⁴. This conclusion cannot be accepted. The two Polish–Lithuanian dictionary manuscripts by S. Daukantas are entirely different works. He wrote the first in his youth, as a student living in Vilnius, and the second when he was about 60, in Varniai. The first was written using a simpler dictionary intended more for educational purposes, whereas the second was based on a substantial publication of its time, on a par with international standards. No evidence has been found that, while writing his great dictionary, S. Daukantas drew material from his youthful work. And when he says “below—

¹¹ Janulaitis A. M. Akelaičio laiškai. – Tauta ir žodis, 1925, kn. 3, p. 296.

¹² Клепиков С. А. Филиграни и штемпели на бумаге русского и иностранного производства XVII—XX вв. – М., 1959, с. 100. The same is stated in a letter from the Manuscripts and Rare Publications Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences Library, now kept with the dictionary manuscript. J. Kruopas’s claim (Kruopas J. Min. str., p. 305) that this paper was made specifically in 1850 is unfounded.

¹³ Merkys V. Simonas Daukantas. – V., 1972, p. 203.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 204.

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“to investigate language,” S. Daukantas can hardly have meant writing a dictionary; he was most likely interested in comparing languages or tracing word etymologies at the time. (Cf. also the conclusion reached by J. Kruopas after reviewing S. Daukantas’s lexicographic material: “It is evident that at that time [after 1845] S. Daukantas was concerned with the kinship between Lithuanian words and words in ancient languages”¹⁵.)

THE GENESIS OF S. DAUKANTAS’S POLISH–LITHUANIAN DICTIONARIES

Summary

The article provides a brief historical overview of two Polish–Lithuanian dictionaries by S. Daukantas, a prominent figure in Lithuanian culture in the first half and middle of the 19th century. The sources of the Polish headwords in both dictionaries are identified, helping to clarify their relationship. It is shown that the second Polish–Lithuanian dictionary (1850–late 1856) is not a continuation of the first (around 1820), but an independent lexicographic work. In addition, the method on the basis of which these dictionaries were compiled is identified.

¹⁵ Kruopas J. Min. str., p. 312.