Albina Bataitytė – liko darbai ir šviesus paveikslas

BENDRINĖ KALBA | 88 (2015) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 PRANAS KNIŪKŠTA ALBINA BATAITYTĖ – LIKO WORKS AND LIGHT ARTWORK We bid farewell to Albina Bataityte, a collaborator of Language Culture, a skillful editor and a sincere mother tongue promoter. Albina passed away a year after her eightyth birthday, so her greeting words for the Jubilee became a farewell and a reminder of a bright picture of her former colleague. A. Bataitytė was born on January 9, 1935 in the village of Pãantvardis in Jurbarkas district. He attended the first year of high school at Jurbarkas Gymnasium. After graduating, she studied Lithuanian language and literature at Vilnius University. After graduating, he taught for one year at Tverackis Secondary School, and worked in various institutions as an editor, publisher and archiver. As an experienced publisher and editor, A. Bataitytė was invited to the Language Culture Department of the Lithuanian Language Institute (hereinafter – the Department) in 1993, where she was tasked with preparing and publishing Language Culture. Until then, there was no one permanent editor of the publication, individual notebooks were prepared by other employees of the Department. This change of editors made it difficult to plan a longer-term work and maintain a consistent direction of the publication. A. Bataitytė was appointed permanent editor of the publication, her job was to collect articles written for Language Culture, submit them to the editorial board for consideration and prepare them for the press. As she has admitted: “It was a bit awkward and not easy, because the publication required both diligence and responsibility.” A. Bataitytė began her work in the Department with the 67th notebook of Language Culture, where her article “What became structures?” was published, and most importantly – she prepared this notebook for the press, although not yet her own. The next notebook, the 68th, was made by herself, on the second page there is the inscription: “The notebook was made and prepared for the press by A. Bataitytė.” In total, it has compiled and prepared for printing 16 notebooks of the publication (from 68 to 83), only the last two issues are no longer called notebooks – due to the increased volume of the notebook, the name did not suit them. During this period, the nature of the publication changed, from a publication of language practice and popularization of science, Kalbos kultūra became a scientific journal, examining various subjects of language usage and theory. As the editor of the notebooks, A. Bataitytė contributed considerably to these changes and helped to implement them. When collecting material for Language Culture, it was necessary to communicate with linguists from various academic institutions, and not only with linguists. For example, articles by Arvydas Juozaitis (77 pages) and Vytautas Landsbergis (83 pages) are published in the publication. As can be seen from the index of the 71-80 notebooks, about 90 authors published their articles or other publications in these notebooks, and in total they printed 100 articles. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 88 (2015) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Pranas Kniukšta. Albina Bataitytė – left works and a bright picture | 2 ta more than 230 publications. First of all, the compiler of those notebooks had to get acquainted with them. Since the articles were written by authors working on various linguistic works and evaluating linguistic phenomena in various ways, Kalbos kultūra received articles of all kinds, often of a completely new and unexpected theme. It was necessary to find ways to present them, how to combine them with each other and with the whole theme of the publication. For many years, the language culture had no established structure, the articles of the notebooks were arranged in a free order. Initially, the official language policy and management documents were usually presented, and the list of articles was usually completed with personalities. Other articles were presented as they came out. A. Bataitytė began to organize the structure of the publication according to thematic themes, distinguishing and naming individual sections. The 67th and 68th notebooks she prepared had only a “Personalities” section, the 69th had “Language and Society” and “Overview and Information”. In the eighth tenth class notebooks appeared variously named sections of language practice, which from the 74th notebook received the name "From the topics of language practice". From the 76th notebook, the structure of the publication has been formed, having the following main sections: "From the topics of language practice", "Language and society", "Overview and information" and "Personalities". It remained basically the same, but in some places it was given a different section or a different name, until the 86th issue. A more detailed picture of the language culture can be obtained from the indexes prepared by A. Bataitytė for 61-70 and 71-80 notebooks. In addition to Language Culture, A. Bataitytė also contributed to the preparation of other Institute publications for the press. He edited ten volumes of the journal Acta Linguistica Lithuanica (Lithuanian Linguistics Issues), three issues of Terminology, more than a dozen other books (monographs, collections of articles). The editor worked carefully, creatively, as she has written herself, it was interesting to follow the author's course of thought, linguistic expression, insights, summarizations, conclusions. A. Bataitytė herself has written and published informational and review articles in various publications, six of which have been published in Kalbos kultūra. In volume 76 of the publication is published the article “Language culture at the beginning of the fifth decade”, which reviews four decades of language culture and a conference dedicated to this anniversary. In closing the review, the author throws an anxious look at the future: “But time passes and inevitably brings innovations to which we have to get used, evaluate them in one way or another. We are constantly hearing: the age of knowledge, the information society. <...> And how is the language? What will it be in that society of improving technologies? Will it not become too standardized, dry, like a withered tree?“ A. Bataitytė not only defended living language in her statements and urged to cherish it, but her own texts are fluent, lively and powerful. She has also written poetry, some of her poems have been published in the Literatūros ir meno laikraštis (December 2000). It also talks about the word, its connection with life and with “the breathing of the heart”: Only don't come out of anxiety, out of a sleepless night. Painful word, painful thought. Come from Earth. From life. And stay out of the water. Blood. The breath of the heart. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 88 (2015) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Pranas Kniukšta. Albina Bataitytė – left works and bright picture | 3 However, everyday life and work was not poetry, but language culture matters and Language culture. This is also shown in her detailed article about the organizer of language culture and first responsible editor Kazys Ulvydas – “Kazys Ulvydas – the last representative of the classical linguistics school” (Literatūra ir menas, January 12, 2001). The last article by A. Bataitytė was published in the last paper (86th) issue of Kalbos kultūra. It is like a sign that one stage of Language culture, which was also important for us, is ending. It is a pleasure to recall the decade and a half of work done together with colleague Albina and it hurts that we will no longer hear her warm, wise and optimistic words. Received 20 November 2015 Updated on 20 January 2016