Kristijonas Donelaitis, A Lithuanian Classic

Abstract

Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-80) was the first major Lithuanian poet and an outstanding figure in Lithuanian letters for all time. Born in a small village in East Prussia (Lithuania Minor), he spent most of his life as the Lutheran pastor of another such place, a parish called Tolminkiemis. Accounts of his life testify that he preached eloquently to his parishioners in both German and Lithuanian, made musical instruments — a clavichord and a piano — and played them, fought with the neighboring estate over parish lands, and corresponded with fellow ministers on various friendly matters, including the writing of Lithuanian poetry. When Donelaitis died, his literary legacy consisted of several fables and the rural epic Metai (The Seasons), written probably between 1765 and 1775, but not published until 1818. Metai stands as a milestone of Lithuanian literature. It was the first extensive poetic text (2,969 lines of hexameters) in that language and a work of intrinsic quality and lasting influence. Donelaitis' achievement has been increasingly recognized in recent decades, not only in Lithuania but abroad. His stature appears all the more remarkable against the background of pioneering efforts to establish Lithuanian as a literary language by members of the Protestant clergy in Lithuania Minor and by some western Lithuanian country gentry during the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The sudden emergence of his epic talent, seemingly without adequate support from the cultural milieu of his own or any previous time in Lithuanian tradition, has produced an aura of mystery around Donelaitis, attracting poets, scholars, and hero worshipers alike.