The Monograph “Lithuanian Proverbs” by Kazys Grigas and Its Significance to the Paremiological Research
The Monograph “Lithuanian Proverbs” by Kazys Grigas and Its Significance to the Paremiological Research

Summary/Abstract: The contribution of Kazys Grigas to Lithuanian folkloristics cannot be overestimated; his theoretical works and publications of source materials made K. Grigas one of the most famous and prolific paremiologists of the second half of the 20th century. His lifework is worth a whole monograph and I sincerely hope that someone from the younger generation of Lithuanian folklorists would eventually write it. My paper aims at discussing only some particular problems that emerge from the fundamental monograph by K. Grigas, “Lithuanian Proverbs” (in Lithuanian Lietuvių patarlės, 1976; in Russian Литовские пословицы, 1987), which has not been done justice so far, as it deserved. Due to the limited space at my disposal I will only be able to touch upon just a few of those problems. The main problem raised in the monograph by K. Grigas is the relationship between the national and the international not only in the Lithuanian proverbs, but also generally in proverbs. It is discussed on two levels: in the first part of the work, the genetic relations and borrowings based on three Lithuanian proverbs (‘Don’t drive God into the forest / into the tree’; ‘The calves drink mead (honey) elsewhere, where we are not’; ‘The forest has ears, the field has eyes’) are considered; and in the second part, the analysis of poetical forms and the dynamics of verse and prose in Lithuanian proverbs, and in those of other peoples, is carried out.

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