CHAPTER V
VYTAUTAS BERENIS
The past is the source of myths and ideologies, but it often turns into a myth itself. In Claude Levi-Strauss’s words, the Lithuanians can be called a "hot ethos", i.e., a community shaping its ideals according to the values of the past. It was Jonas Basanavicius (1851 - 1927) who declared in "Ausra" that the main principle of the nation’s cultural revival was expressed in an ancient sage’s simple words: those who are ignorant of history will always remain children.
For the Lithuanian nation formed on the basis of the peasantry in the second half of the 19th century ethnic consolidation and resistance were most important; therefore, history occupied a significant place in its ideology. Its interpretation was based on present realities. Thus, the following principle of selection regarding past events was formed: admiration for pagan Lithuania, glorification of Lithuanian Dukes, "Lithuanization" of the history and culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Realizing the necessity for methodological research in history, perhaps one of the most outstanding Lithuanian historians of the period between the two wars, Zenonas Ivinskis (1908 - 1971), wrote that "all this idolatry of the past shows what the real life has deprived the Lithuanians of". To be sure, it has deprived them of quite a lot — of the understanding of reality. Ivinskis’s efforts to rationalize history were directed against romantic ideology and the model of 20th century patriarchal culture taking shape on its basis. Generally speaking, the difference between a rational and a romantic consciousness lies in the attitude toward cognition. In the first case, the past presents only the historical limit of the subject’s perspective which is being conceptualized within the three modalities of time: the past, the present, the future. In the second case, the myth of the past becomes itself the object of cognition, thus refusing to comprehend the sequence of events in time and space and ousting the historical subject from real life and action. "The idea of an eternal return" is the major principle of this "mythologized" consciousness. Self-sacrifice (the myth of Pilenai), the nation’s charismatic leader (Vytautas the Great), heroism (the battle of Salgiris), and other didactic themes of history surviving from the early 19th century presented the nation with a wide field of action and a high level of national self-consciousness.
In the Soviet period Lithuanian "history" struggled against values of this kind cherished in independent Lithuania. "Real history" was said to have begun with the emergence of the proletariat, and the epoch of feudalism was merely an illustration of the peasants’ miserable life and their "inhuman" exploitation. Nevertheless, philologists, historians and art historians worked as best they could: investigations of the native language, studies of folklore, literature and regional ethnography embodied the precept most urgent to the Lithuanian culture in all times: to survive. At the same time it seemed that "workers on the ideological front" were "taking care of" folk culture and turned a blind eye to activity which was not quite acceptable to them. The motivation for this view, to my mind, is simple: the nation survives, but sooner or later it is bound to lose the power of cultural regeneration, being unaware of the signifying context of world culture. Yet this cannot be said about a nation whose ideologues are seeking to make a piece of its past absolute by assigning to the subject of this process — the nation — a universal significance in general history.
Messianism as an ideology of progress and eschatology came to thrive in the first half of the 19th century in groups of Polish emigrants. Whatever our assessment of the phenomenon of Messianism may be, we have to agree that its ideologues discerned certain signs of the spiritual crisis in Europe. Reaction against the philosophy of rationalism and its mundane equivalent — the necessities of life — formulated the problem of man’s disintegration in Western civilization. One constructs his life from individual fragments which, being predetermined by circumstances, turn against man’s universal nature, understood in a Christian way and separate knowledge from morality. It should be noted that the theory of Messianism failed to acquire a universal foundation, but rather manifested itself in certain theoretical statements which were defined but not expounded. Polish thinkers like A. Cieszkowski and Adam Mickiewicz, created and developed their notions of "Messianism" and "historiosophy"; in their theories they tried to reflect on the historical perspective of the occupied Polish nation. In their books issues of the nation’s fate and survival were raised. Certainly, these books and brochures were spread not only in Poland, but used to reach the regions of Russia’s western provinces, the former historic Lithuania.
The influence of old Polish literature and romantic ideology on Lithuanian writing is widely acknowledged. Before the emergence of Polish — Lithuanian political, social and cultural antagonism, the impact of Polish literature on the scanty group of Lithuanian cultured people was quite conspicuous. Ideology was no exception. On the whole, 19th century Polish literature exerted a strong influence on the consciousness of the generation at the time of "Ausra" (1884), while the concept of the purpose of the "Polish civilization" formulated by Messianists and later expounded by Polish scholars was reflected in the substantiation of the cultural subject of S. Salkauskis’s (1886 - 1941) theory "Lithuania as a synthesis of East and the West". This concept obviously represented the theories of interaction between the Eastern and Western civilizations and Slavonic Messianism; it has nothing in common with the theory of an organic Lithuanian culture. The school of Polish-speaking Lithuanian Romanticists which stirred up so many discussions on the tradition of history and literature was based on the German concept of nation (J. G. Herder), whereas in Poland the major values of classicism and "Jacobinic" Romanticism, extolling a society of free citizens, were still enjoying popularity. Part of society’s elite of that time, having faced the decline of the class isolation of life and the values it declared, made an attempt to coordinate three levels of self-consciousness of the liberated person: particular, regional and universal (recall the three cities dearest to A. Mickiewicz — Naugardukas, Vilnius and Rome), and in this way sought to conform to the context of values typical of European culture, sometimes affirming, but more often denying, the values of bourgeois civilization.
The key statement of the ideology of romantic Messianism was "exclusiveness in universality". Having failed to liberate itself from Russian oppression in 1794, 1812 and 1831, the Polish nation faced the issue of its survival as a political nation. Ordinary political and diplomatic means did not produce the anticipated success; thus in the face of the political, cultural and moral opposition of European nations to the Polish nation it acquired supposed exclusiveness and superiority in Messianism.
Let us read excerpts of A. Mickiewicz’s (1798 - 1855) book The Polish Nation and Piligrimage (a year later, in 1833, it was already translated into Lithuanian). The poet, referring to the principle of "struggle against everybody" and following the biblical rhetoric, in his aphorisms expressed a concept of the relation between politics and morality totally different from the West. "So the Frenchmen created themselves an idol and called it pride; this idol was called the golden calf in pagan times; the Spaniards created themselves an idol of strength and power, Baal; the Englishmen — an idol of ruling over the sea and trade, Mammon; the Germans — an idol of replete and good life, Moloch."1 Being a romantic personality, not recognizing a pragmatic interest in politics and seeing political hypocrisy and devaluation of words in bourgeois states, A. Mickiewicz warns his supporters: "Thus verily I say unto you: you must not learn the ways of the strangers’ civilization, but you must teach them the ways of the proper Christian civilization."2
The Polish nation to A. Mickiewicz in not an ethnic, but a synthetic element: this concept includes both a Pole, a Lithuanian and a legionary struggling against European monarchs. The absolutism of the "concept of nation" creates the evaluative norm for European history. Catholicism, being a source of hope and strength and having preserved the identity of word and deed remains the only pattern of culture worth following. Yet in the past the former Polish-Lithuanian state also was a country of good and honest historical patterns. A. Mickiewicz opposes them to the geopolitical arguments among European states: "And they were endowed by God, since the great Lithuanian nation was united with Poland, like husband and wife, like two souls in one body". Or: "Does a Lithuanian argue with a Pole about the Nemunas border, Gardinas or Baltstoge? This I say unto you: a Frenchman, a German and a Russian must be similar to a Pole and a Lithuanian."3
J.I. Kraszewski (1812 - 1887) stood apart from the ideology of Messianism, but in his work "Lithuania" he revealed the most important historic mission performed by the Lithuanian nation — stopping the Mongolian-Tartarian invasion into Europe. Without analyzing the historical validity of this statement, we should note that having accomplished its historic mission, a nation must disappear. In J.I. Kraszewski’s opinion, features of national character, the nation’s ideas, growth, maturation and decline constitute the meaning of Lithuania’s history. Pre-Christian civilization was distinguished for its maturity, and the pagan faith integrated the Lithuanians as a nation. After the eradication of this faith, the Lithuanian nationality as such was destroyed. Christianity turned the Prussians into Germans, and the Lithuanians into Poles or Russians. Though Lithuanian peasants have preserved the language, customs, legends and songs, they are not capable of creating new values, as they do not have their own concept of genealogy (history), they do not have inner passion (creative power) and recall "a polyp devoid of developed organs but notable for its mass."4
There has been a tendency to avoid recognizing that the Polish-speaking Romanticists of historic Lithuania. J. I. Kraszewski, T. Narbutas (1784 - 1864), Wl. Kondratowicz-Syrokomle (1823 - 1862) and others had a considerable impact on the problematic paradigm of Lithuania’s national history. Contrary to the majority of Romanticist noblemen, S. Daukantas’s (1793 - 1864) vision of the nation’s future recognized all sovereign rights of the Lithuanian peasant nation and claimed that power originated from a "civil treaty" — the state which was created had to defend people’s property and civil rights. Yet paradoxically, S. Daukantas’s idea of turning the nation into citizenry did not exceed the boundary of legal rationalism; having turned into a nation, people do not become a society.5
The outlook of Polish Messianism treats society as a spiritual substance. The concept of struggle of egoistic interests of individuals and social groups, and the search for compromises found in bourgeois society was alien to this outlook. Messianists who disparage the written law as "partial and incomplete truth" consider that the only possible outcome of the vision of perfect life is a charismatic leader crowned with the idea of justice (not law), a man capable of surpassing adherence to party principles and accumulating in himself the power of the whole nation. The great Polish poet A. Mickiewicz did not hold democratic views and — one more paradox — while struggling against the Russian empire, he secretly admired some features of administration in the Russian monarchic system.
Nearly the most dangerous feature of the Messianistic ideology is the absence of progression from the past to the future. Descendants of brave ancestors turn into an epitome of virtue, and the idealization of the past becomes a source of progress. Certainly, on the other hand, the nations of East and Central Europe, contrary to other European nations, have not yet learned to smile at their past due to the sequence of tragic events in their history. But it is not necessary to do it — there has been so much blood and treachery in our history that romantic heroism is but "a tale" with a tragic but happy ending. It also must be realized that history is an equation with many unknown quantities. Lithuanian philosopher A. Maceina (1908 - 1987) denies that history is a science. "Not being able to surpass the present, a person attributes the features of the present both to the past and to the future and in this way revives these dimensions of time, but not the way they were or will be."6 Therefore history always has been an interpretation of the subjective present in which the person lives. Every person who reflects on the cultured world having a dimension of time can become a historian to the extent to which he is interested in the problem of being in this world. To a citizen of Western Europe who has not read a single historical book in his life, the past is alive through historically-formed institutions, organizationally established markets and sensual festive-carnival traditionalism. Perhaps this is the reason why such words as "history" and "nation" are uttered with great respect, but never capitalized.
There is need for a deep and comprehensive analysis of the problems raised by the historian of Lithuanian literature, Pranas Augustaitis’s (1883 - 1941), in his study Elements of Lithuanianism in Polish Romanticism written in the early 20th century. In this sense it is hoped that the issue tackled in the present article — the influence of Polish historiosophy on Lithuanian political-cultural thought — will extend the investigations of Lithuanian cultural self-consciousness and the sources of its mentality.
Lithuanian Institute of Culture and Arts
NOTES
1. A. Mickiewicz, Ksiægi pielgrzymstwa narodu Polskiego (Krakow, 1911), p. 6.
2. Ibid., p. 29.
3. Ibid., p. 12.
4. J.I. Kraszewski, Litwa (Warszawa, 1847), vol. 1, p. 18.
5. V. Merkys, Istorija ir tautine kultura // Vakarines naujienos, 1992, lapkrièio 13 d.
6. A. Maceina, Asmuo ir istorija (Chicago, 1986), p. 85.
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