Aloyzui Vidugiriui – 80

ALGIRDAS SABALIAUSKAS Institute of the Lithuanian Language ALOYZAS VIDUGIRIS AT 80 To his friends, with whom he had worked at the same tasks for half a century, often shared the same joys, and grieved over real, and sometimes imaginary, misfortunes—for example, lost basketball games—Aloyzas Vidugiris always seemed very young. Perhaps there was a real basis for this impression. I remember how we three friends—the recently departed Kazys Morkūnas (1929–2008), Aloyzas Vidugiris, and the author of this article—once, during a dialectological field expedition, bought a single ticket and took turns enjoying ourselves one lovely Sunday afternoon at some dance pavilion in Zarasai. Aloyzas danced with a third-year student at the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute. When he told his partner that he, too, was from that institute and the same faculty, she explained that students in the upper years often did not remember their younger colleagues... And Aloyzas Vidugiris had by then not only graduated from the Pedagogical Institute, but had also been working successfully at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature for two years. Aloyzas Vidugiris was born on December 25, 1928—that is, on Christmas Day itself. His native village in Panevėžys District was then called Gakūnai, but in 1936 it was renamed Tauįvilai. Aloyzas was born on his grandfather’s land— 326 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 which his grandfather had received in return for his son, a volunteer who had died in the struggle for independence, and which he later gave to another son, Aloyzas’s father. Before starting at the primary school in Tiltagaliai, the future linguist had to spend a difficult summer with a young shepherd, tending his uncle’s large herd of cows, which had never been milked. Among Aloyzas’s childhood memories, one that remained especially vivid was a wooden bicycle made by his younger brother, who was mute and a master craftsman with golden hands. Its wheels turned almost like those of a real bicycle, and people who saw it would gasp in amazement. Aloyzas began his secondary education in Panevėžys and completed it in Subačius in 1950. There he not only studied well but also played the violin in the school orchestra. He had apparently inherited his inclination for music from his father, who not only worked the land exemplary well but was also a famous village musician. Among other things, before his death he insisted that a brass band play at his funeral. Aloyzas Vidugiris’s path into linguistics was not straightforward. Even on his school-leaving certificate, while all the other subjects were marked “very good,” Lithuanian and Russian were marked “good.” Seeing that his parents would be unable to contribute much toward his higher education, he decided to apply to the Military Medical Academy. It soon became clear, however, that a Baltic person had no hope of entering such a prestigious institution. The future linguist and a group of friends were sent to some military communications school in Arzamas, far to the east of Moscow. But after spending a couple of weeks in barracks housed in an old monastery, all desire to pursue military studies vanished. During the written examination, Vidugiris decided to reform Russian spelling, introducing so many Lithuanian letters that the examination committee concluded that this candidate could not be entrusted with responsible military service. So he managed to get to Vilnius. At the Pedagogical Institute, one place remained for first-year students specializing in Lithuanian language, pedagogy, and psychology, and Aloyzas Vidugiris secured it, not without difficulty. Here he already felt like a linguist. He enjoyed the lectures of Riĉardas Mironas and Jonas Kabelka. He wrote a paper on his native dialect under the guidance of the then young lecturer Zigmas Zinkevičius. As a future dialectologist, Vidugiris greatly benefited from the attentive support of Associate Professor Elzbieta Mikalauskaitė. Encouraged by her, he went on dialectological field expeditions. Even just before the state examinations, while his friends stayed glued to their books and notes, Vidugiris was recording speech samples in the Kybartai and Virbalis areas. From 1954 to 1989, Aloyzas Vidugiris worked at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature (from 1956 to 1959 he studied in its postgraduate program), and from 1990 to 2001 at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. Over those years he became one of Lithuania’s most prominent dialectologists and the most devoted rescuer of our dying dialects. A. SABALIAUSKAS. Aloyzui Vidugiriui – 80 327 In the history of Lithuanian linguistics, Aloyzas Vidugiris’s doctoral dissertation, defended in 1962 and entitled “The Zietela Lithuanian Dialect,” will probably always be remembered. The linguist published numerous articles on the dissertation’s subject. The dissertation gave rise to the important monograph The Zietela Lithuanian Speech (2004), the volume Texts of the Zietela Speech (Part I, 2005), prepared together with Danguole Mikulėnienė, and the substantial Dictionary of the Zietela Speech (1998). Because of its interesting phonetic, grammatical, and lexical features and its geographical position—far from the main Lithuanian-speaking area and surrounded on all sides by Slavic languages—the Zietela Lithuanian dialect had attracted linguists’ attention as early as the late nineteenth century. Perhaps the first to arrive there from St. Petersburg was Eduard Volter. At the time, he found more than a thousand people in the surrounding area who spoke Lithuanian, but he also saw a sign on the wall of the district office bearing the words Po litovski govorить strogo vospreščajetsia1. The local Lithuanian language was also studied by Kazimieras Būga, then a student at St. Petersburg University; Jan Rozwadowski, professor at the University of Kraków; Jurgis Gerulis, professor at the University of Leipzig; Christian Stang, professor at the University of Oslo; Pēteris Arumaa, professor at the University of Tartu; a group of younger Lithuanian linguists; and Russian linguists. But it fell to Aloyzas Vidugiris to synthesize the research of all these linguists and have the final word on this dialect, which has now completely disappeared. His works are in a sense an obituary for this Lithuanian dialect. Obituaries are always sad. This monograph, too, is sad. Vidugiris described in detail not only the Zietela Lithuanian dialect, but also the people who spoke it, perhaps the greatest of “our poor brothers.” After defending his dissertation, the linguist listed in one of its copies all the Lithuanian speakers he had met in the Zietela area, noting their first and last names and their years of birth (the oldest representative of the dialect was born in 1866) and death. The years of death had not yet been recorded for everyone. But gradually, more and more dates of death were added. The last such date was entered in 1988. Thus, we know the precise time when this Lithuanian dialect died. Even someone with no interest in linguistics could probably read and reread the introductory part of Vidugiris’s monograph like a sad story. In 1921, the Polish authorities expelled the last Lithuanian priest from Zietela and abolished Lithuanian-language services. The Lithuanian was removed from his post as elder. In 1928, the Lithuanian school was closed. Wars, successive occupations, fires, and collectivization eroded the dialect. The truth is, the last symbol of Lithuanian identity in Zietela—the chur- 1 Speaking Lithuanian is strictly forbidden. 328 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 ch—survived for a long time: just before his death, the Polish parish priest gave Aloyzas Vidugiris the Lithuanian prayer book that had remained there... in our own time. The Lithuanians of the Zietela region were very fond of their researcher: “when I see you, it’s like seeing a dear brother; I chatted with him, and it made me happy; when I saw you, it was like seeing a brother dearer than my own.”2 And the researcher would bring them bread, sweets, and medicine... In the area he studied, Aloyzas Vidugiris, one might say, even left traces of his blood. On August 23, 1987, when a group of dissidents gathered in Vilnius by the monument to Adam Mickiewicz to commemorate the tragic anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, our linguist was beaten by local hooligans near the great poet’s birthplace. The dialectological expedition ended for him in the Traumatology Department of Vilnius’s St. James’s Hospital, and was later continued in the court of the Voranava District of Belarus. Vidugiris was utterly devoted to dialectological expeditions. One in particular deserves separate mention. An elderly woman from the Zietela region, who still spoke Lithuanian quite well, told him that she knew of a Lithuanian church somewhere deep in Russia, near the Volga, in Samara Governorate; its parish priest was Lithuanian, and there were 122 Lithuanian homesteads close together there. Vidugiris learned that those Lithuanians were descendants of the rebels of 1863. How could he get there? The linguist knew very well that his dissertation supervisor, Academician Boris Larin, was himself an avid enthusiast of expeditions. It was thanks to him that Vidugiris was allowed to write a dissertation on the Zietela dialect, since some had argued that such a dissertation would amount to interference in the affairs of another republic. A wonderful opportunity arose: the centenary of the uprising. Aloyzas Vidugiris and Norbertas Vėlius (1938–1996), a researcher of our mythology, flew to Saratov. At the airport, they were to meet Academician Boris Larin, arriving from Leningrad. Unfortunately, a telegram awaited them there saying that the academician had fallen seriously ill. Both scholars returned from the expedition happy: of course, they no longer found the Lithuanian church or the Lithuanian parish priest, but 42 Lithuanian families were still living there. When, forty years later, the well-known United States businessman and Lithuanian community activist Juozas Kazickas (who had returned to Lithuania with his parents from this region in 1921) came to the settlement of Čiorna Padina with family members and lavish gifts to look around his homeland, he found not just a few Lithuanians but a group of Kazickases as well—though, sadly, no one there spoke Lithuanian anymore. Thus Aloyzas Vidugiris had to write an obituary for yet another Lithuanian dialect... And this was not the last one, either. 2 From texts recorded in the dialect. A. SABALIAUSKAS. Aloyzui Vidugiriui – 80 329 Kartu su iš šio krašto kilusiu žurnalistu Jonu Petrausku (1915–2006) Vidugiris išleido kitos kalbininkų numylėtinės, jau baigiančios išnykti Baltarusijos teritorijoje esančios lietuvių tarmės – Lazūnų tarmės žodyną (1985), vienas paskelbė Lazūnų tarmės tekstus (1987), minėto žodyno papildymus (1991). O netrukus turėtų pasirodyti ir monografija Lazūnų lietuvių šnekta. Together with Danguolė Mikulėnienė and Kazys Morkūnas, Vidugiris compiled a dictionary of the very archaic and fascinating Lithuanian dialect of Dieveniškės speech (vol. I, 2005). For several decades, Aloyzas Vidugiris worked on the most important work in Lithuanian dialectology, the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language (vols. I–III, 1977–1991). For this publication, he surveyed 40 inhabited locations (no one surpassed Vidugiris in this respect), and was one of its editors. Together with others, he received the Lithuanian Republic Science Award in 1994 for his work on the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language. Vidugiris was also one of the authors of the reader Lithuanian Dialects (1970). Tarp lietuvių kalbininkų Aloyzą Vidugirį, galbūt su Kazimieru Eigminu (1929–1996), reikėtų laikyti ir aktyviausiu mūsų kraštotyrininku. Šios srities jo darbai taip pat buvo gražiai įvertinti – kartu su kitais kraštotyros entuziastais 1994 metais jam buvo paskirta valstybinė Jono Basanavičiaus premija. Vidugiris wrote articles on bilingualism, historical dialectology, the history of Lithuanian language research, and matters of language culture. He compiled “A Program for the Study of Lithuanian Dialects and Their Interaction: Lexicon” (1995). Yet the dialect that was the great love of the linguist’s life was Zietela speech. Having already published books about this dialect and long since recorded the date of the last dialect speaker’s death, in 2005 he and his wife set out on another journey. They visited the homesteads where he had done most of his work. Here and there he left some of his books, even though he knew that nobody there would read them. But perhaps one or another person would look at photographs of their parents or grandparents, and of their poor cottages, that had found their way into scholarly books. For his contributions to the study of the Lithuanian language, Aloyzas Vidugiris was awarded the Order of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas in 2002. The account of our renowned dialectologist began with a meeting during an expedition in Zarasai. In fact, this meeting proved fateful for Aloyzas Vidugiris: there he first saw his future wife, Vita, a doctor of chemical sciences and a Siberian deportee. Throughout Aloyzas Vidugiris’s life and scholarly career, she was always a steadfast support3. The author of this account is inclined to claim some credit for bringing about that meeting. 3 Unfortunately, Vita Vidugirienė was not destined to live to see her husband’s jubilee: after a serious illness, she passed away when only three months remained before the celebration. 330 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81