Lietuvių kalbos archeologija: Pranciškaus Vilčinskio laiškai Eustachijui Tiškevičiui

ENThe Manuscript Department of the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences contains ten letters by the Jasonys manor owner (Kaunas governorate, Vilkmergė district) and an intellectual from the provinces, Franciszek Wilczyński (1796-1859), to Eustachy Tyszkiewicz (1814-1873), the future founder of the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities and the Vilnius Temporary Archaeological Commission, written between 1844 and 1846. This fragment of their epistolary communication (the other side of the dialogue is unknown) reveals the basic interest in Lithuanian antiquities (in the fields of history, archaeology, numismatics and ethnography) that both correspondents had in common, and is part of the so-called scientific correspondence whose results were published in Tyszkiewiczs article “O kilku nowo odkrytych monetach litewskich” that appeared in the Athenaeum magazine in 1845. The analysed correspondence reveals the circumstances and ways through which the Lithuanian language was involved in the above-mentioned field of historical interests in the middle of the 19th century. The letters show the close relation between the historical and linguistic topics characteristic of the cultural discourse in Lithuania in the first half of the 19th century, which was initiated in the early-century works by Tadeusz Czacki (1765-1813) and Franciszek Ksawery Bohusz (1746-1820), and which should be explained by the identity features and the social portrait of the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.Wilczynski’s letters show how the historical research conducted at that time increased the cultural prestige of the Lithuanian language: the “archaeological” interpretation of the Lithuanian language (as a medium that has retained the relics of the early culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and a source of scientific research) gives way to a focus on its actual usage. A similar, although sometimes more moderate relation to the Lithuanian language in Tyszkiewicz’s works shaped the views on Lithuanian ethnography (Birže. Rzut oka na przeszłość miasta, zamku i ordynacyi, 1869) and Lithuanian literature (Archeologia na Litwie, 1872). Tyszkiewicz’s attention to the linguistic expression of Lithuanian culture from language archaeology to the first bilingual review of Lithuanian “regional literature” should be considered a significant symptom of the development of Lithuanian culture in the 19th century, whose traces can also be found in the milieu of the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities and the Vilnius Temporary Archaeological Commission (a discussion about the Lithuanian language between Michał Baliński and Mikalojus Akelaitis in the Teka Wileńska magazine in 1858). [From the publication]