| Abstract [eng] |
2014 was the year in which the 300th anniversary of the birth of Kristijonas Donelaitis, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor and poet, was celebrated. In this article some of the scholarly and journalistic texts that appeared in this jubilee year are analyzed, namely those that help us understand the effects of the Enlightenment on 18th century expressions of culture in Europe and in the Kingdom of Prussia; the transformations of people‘s self-consciousness and their mental changes; and the evolution of relations between society and government, and society and church. The author observes that seriously discussing the period in which Donelaitis lived and the factors that shaped his creative and pastoral intentions, absolutely requires a full grasp of the entire context of the Prussian state‘s political, cultural, and general European environment wherein the sequence of three dominant segments Donelaitis – Prussian Lithuania – Kingdom of Prussia becomes clear, inasmuch as the history of Prussia had a direct influence on an integral part of that state, namely Prussian Lithuania, in which the Lithuanian-speaking inhabitants lived. The 18th century formed a Prussian Lithuanian who was loyal to his state, obeyed his government, carried out all of the king’s edicts, and was proud of his German kingdom. Hence the creative output of Donelaitis and its addressee ought to be analyzed against a background not of a “pure” Lithuanianism but of Protestant and German culture. We know that as a writer Donelaitis was shaped by his studies at the Theological Faculty of the University of Königsberg. There’s little doubt that if Donelaitis had not been an Evangelical Lutheran pastor he would not have become a poet. Yet this very important religious factor often was pushed to the margins of scholarly research because in the public perception our Donelaitis is usually thought of in the context of general Lithuanianness and in ignorance of the influence of German civilization, with its own distinctive political, economic, religious, and cultural reality. This article not only criticizes authors who give The Seasons a political coloring but also argues that Donelaitis’s works in the Lithuanian language are not an expression of resistance to Germanization but a typical manifestation of the activities of a man of the Enlightenment who was a writer and a Protestant minister. |
