Donelaitis, Kristijonas

▪ Lithuanian poet

also spelled  Kristijonas Duonelaitis  

born Jan. 1, 1714, near Gumbinnen, East Prussia [now Gusev, Russia]

died Feb. 18, 1780, Tolmingkehmen [now Chistyye Prudy]

      Lutheran pastor and poet who was one of the greatest Lithuanian poets and one of the first to be appreciated outside his country.

      Donelaitis studied theology and classical languages at the University of Königsberg (1736–40) and in 1743 became pastor of the village of Tolmingkehmen, where he remained until his death.

      His main work, Metai (1818; The Seasons), 2,997 lines in length, was written in hexameters (hexameter), which were never before used in Lithuanian verse. It depicts realistically and in their own dialect the life of the serfs and the countryside of 18th-century Prussian Lithuania. The poem was first published in an incomplete edition with a German translation (Das Jahr in vier Gesängen; “The Year in Four Cantos”) by Ludwig Rhesa in Königsberg in 1818. It has been translated into several other languages. Donelaitis' other literary works include six fables and a tale in verse, Pričkaus pasaka apie lietuvišką svodbą (1865; “Pričkus' Tale about a Lithuanian Wedding”).

* * *