Laurynas Ivinskis

Laurynas Ivinskis was born into a Samogitian noble family, Ivinskis attended gymnasium in Kolainiai. His studies were interrupted by the Uprising of 1831. He did not have funds for a university and worked as a tutor for various local noble families. In 1854, Ivinskis managed to get a job at a government-run primary school and taught in Rietavas and Joniškėlis. In 1864, Tsarist authorities enacted the Lithuanian press ban which prohibited publishing Lithuanian texts in the Latin alphabet. Ivinskis joined a government commission which worked to publish Lithuanian texts in the Cyrillic script. He came to oppose the press ban and left the commission in 1866. He returned to tutoring. His students included Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė, brothers Gabriel and Stanisław Narutowicz, and Vladimir Zubov. In 1874–1879, Ivinskis worked as a teacher at a music school established in Rietavas by Bogdan Michał Ogiński. During his life, Ivinskis published only two works – his annual calendars and Genovaitė, a translation of the sentimental story Genovefa by Christoph von Schmid. The calendars were the first periodic Lithuanian publication in the Russian Empire. They included articles with practical medical, agricultural, etc. Advice to Lithuanian peasants. The calendars are valued for including a literary section which published examples of Lithuanian folklore, didactic stories, and original and translated poems. His translations of Night-Thoughts and A Poem on the Last Day by Edward Young were published in the 1890s in the United States. In 1856, he worked on establishing Aitvaras, the first Lithuanian newspaper, but the project was not approved by the Tsarist authorities. Ivinskis wrote many other works, including three unfinished Lithuanian dictionaries and a Lithuanian grammar. His illustrated mushroom atlas was to be exhibited at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair but was lost in transit. He established contacts with the Russian Geographical Society and sent them a collection of Lithuanian proverbs and riddles.

• Name — Laurynas Ivinskis • Born — 15 August 1810 • Birthplace — Šilalė parish, Russian Empire • Died — 29 July 1885 • Place of death — Milvydai (Šiauliai), Russian Empire • Occupation — Teacher, publisher, translator, lexicographer, botanist • Notable Works — Calendars of Laurynas Ivinskis • Movement — Lithuanian National Revival

Ivinskis was born on in the parish of Šilalė to a family of landless Samogitian nobles. Before researcher Vytautas Merkys discovered his baptismal records in 1988, his place of birth was indicated as Bambalai (Kelmė) near Užventis based on memoirs of Ivinskis' friend Aleksandras Moras. Since his parents did not own land, they rented farms from nobles and moved frequently. Ivinskis grew up in Dargiai (Šilalė) near Laukuva and Kaupos near Tverai where his parents rented a farm from bishop Juozapas Arnulfas Giedraitis. Around 1820, the family moved to Bambalai (Kelmė) and Ivinskis enrolled at a gymnasium in nearby Kolainiai in 1824. The gymnasium was maintained by the Carmelites. Ivinskis was a good student and chose to study all languages that were offered as electives. In 1830, he graduated from the 3rd grade and was supposed to continue studies at the 4th grade. However, due to the Uprising of 1831 and a lack of students, the school canceled the 4th grade.

Due to the uprising, Vilnius University was closed and Ivinskis had no money for Russian universities. Therefore, he worked as a tutor of local noble children near Kuršėnai. This period of Ivinskis' life is poorly documented. In 1841, Ivinskis passed exams and received an official home teacher's permit. Around 1842, he moved near Rietavas. He continued to work as a teacher until about 1854. In his free time, he collected examples of Lithuanian folklore, attempted to write poetry, and described local plant and fungus species. He prepared the first Lithuanian calendar in 1845, but lacked funds for publication. He borrowed 60 Russian rubles from Ireneusz Kleofas Ogiński, the owner of the Rietavas Manor, and published the calendar at the Zawadzki printing shop in Vilnius. His calendar was published annually until 1867. Ivinskis also worked on various other publications. In 1846, with the help of Ogiński, Ivinskis applied for a teaching job at a parish school in Rietavas. However, he was rejected, probably due to Russification policies which required Lithuanians to have at least five years of experience teaching in Russia. In 1847, Ivinskis passed exams for an official city teacher's license, but still could not get a job at a government school. In 1851–1854, he taught noble children in Pavirvytė (Mažeikiai), Naciūnai (Jurbarkas), Zabieliškis.

In 1863, the Tsarist government decided to establish Drug Naroda, a bilingual Belarusian–Lithuanian newspaper in Vilnius. Ivinskis was invited to become the editor of the Lithuanian section. Despite the promised salary of 600 rubles, he refused and the newspaper was not established. After the Uprising of 1863, Tsarist authorities implemented a broad Russification policy. Hoping to bring Lithuanians into the Russian cultural sphere, they prohibited publishing Lithuanian texts in the Latin alphabet but encouraged Lithuanian publications using the Cyrillic script. Ivan Petrovich Kornilov, newly appointed administrator of the Vilna Educational District, established a commission to publish such Lithuanian Cyrillic texts in Kaunas. Ivinskis, despite an initial refusal, joined the commission in fall 1864. Ivinskis worked to publish his calendar in Cyrillic and write a Lithuanian Cyrillic primer. He also worked to transcribe the popular Lithuanian prayer book Senas auksa altorius into Cyrillic, but his work was harshly criticized as sloppy and inaccurate. He was tasked with transcribing gospels, Russian–Lithuanian grammar, texts from Russian history. However, his superiors complained that he did not have sufficient philological knowledge and that he purposefully delayed work. He realized the harm of such publications on the Lithuanian identity and started to oppose Lithuanian Cyrillic. He left the commission in the spring of 1866. He claimed that the government owed him 875 rubles for work performed, but it was never paid.

After 15 years of service in government jobs, Ivinskis resigned due to unspecified health reasons and was granted an annual pension of 30 rubles in April 1866. He felt cheated and claimed that his pension should be 50 rubles. He moved back to Joniškėlis where he found shelter in the clergy house and received some assistance from Felicjan Stefan Karp. He struggled financially and would go days without food, but continued his academic work. He became acquainted with the town's pharmacist Leonas Petkevičius and began tutoring his daughter Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė. In 1868, Ivinskis briefly moved back to Rietavas to work at the library of Michał Mikołaj Ogiński. In January 1869, he moved to Renavas. Anton Rönne, owner of the Renavas Manor, took in widowed Wiktoria Narutowiczowa and her two sons, Gabriel and Stanisław Narutowicz, both future prominent prominent politicians in independent Poland and Lithuania. Ivinskis taught them and other children of local nobility in Renavas and Lubiai. He continued his academic work, spending summers collecting samples of plants and mushrooms. He drew over 2,000 pictures of the collected specimens. He established contacts with the Russian Geographical Society and sent a copy of 2,133 Lithuanian proverbs and 353 riddles that he had collected over the years. About half of the proverbs were taken from other published sources, but the other half was collected by Ivinskis from the people. For this, he was awarded society's silver medal. In 1871, Ivinskis moved to Šiauliai to teach Vladimir Zubov who started learning the Lithuanian language under his influence. Despite his difficult financial situation, Ivinskis attended the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, for which he prepared two exhibits: a mushroom atlas and a model of brakes for railway cars. However, the exhibits were lost in transit and were not displayed. Around 1874, Ivinskis moved to Rietavas where he worked for five years as a teacher at a music school established by Bogdan Michał Ogiński. In 1879, Ivinskis moved to Milvydai (Šiauliai) near Kuršėnai where his old acquaintance Ignas Gružauskas agreed to provide shelter and support. Ivinskis never married and had no children. In early spring 1881, Ivinskis traveled to Rietavas for a meeting and caught a cold which turned into a kidney disease. Even in his last days, he continued to write and work on his dictionaries. He died on 29 July 1881 in Milvydai and was buried in Kuršėnai.

• Illustration — Front page of Ivinskis' calendar for 1861 Calendars, or rather almanacs, compiled by Ivinskis were the first periodical Lithuanian publication in the Russian Empire. In total, Ivinskis published 21 issues of his calendar in Russia: calendars for years 1846–1852, 1855–1864, and 1878 were printed in the Latin alphabet, while the 1865–1867 calendars were printed in the Cyrillic due to the Lithuanian press ban. Due to Russian censorship, the calendars for 1853 and 1854 were not published. Due to the press ban, Ivinskis published at least five calendars (1870, 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879) in Tilsit, East Prussia, from where it was smuggled into Russia. Until the press ban, the calendars were printed by the Zawadzki printing shop in Vilnius. Until 1855, Ivinskis financed the publication from his personal funds. It was not a profitable undertaking and, in total, Ivinskis lost about 1,000 rubles publishing the calendars. When the calendars became more popular, the Zawadzki printing shop agreed to finance the publication. The calendars were aimed at Lithuanian peasants. The calendars included astronomical information, lists of religious feasts and important historical events, including from the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The calendar was then followed by supplements which included articles on agriculture, medicine, veterinary science, and housekeeping. From 1849 to 1855, the calendars included a religious section. In 1849, Ivinskis published the first literary work (translation of A Poem on the Last Day by Edward Young). In 1851, the literary section became a firmly established part of the calendar. The calendar ended with a list of fairs and markets held in various Lithuanian towns, table of sunsets and sunrises, and weather and harvest predictions. The content was original and not borrowed from similar Polish or Russian calendars. They are valued for including a literary section which published examples of Lithuanian folklore, didactic stories, and original and translated poems. In 1860–1861, the calendars were first to publish the epic poem The Forest of Anykščiai by Antanas Baranauskas which has become a classic work of Lithuanian literature. Other notable published authors included Silvestras Valiūnas, Dionizas Poška, Karolina Proniewska, Antanas Strazdas, and Jurgis Pabrėža.

In 1853, Ivinskis wanted to publish a book of translated poetry. He translated excerpts from Night-Thoughts and A Poem on the Last Day by Edward Young and from Paradise Lost by John Milton. Ivinskis translated not form the original, but from the 1803 Polish translation by Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski. Russian censors particularly attacked Sūdna diena (translated A Poem on the Last Day) and order Ivinskis to delete 88 lines due to perceived antigovernmental sentiments. Ivinskis' translation of Young's poems, shortened and edited, were published as separate booklets by Jonas Žilius-Jonila in the United States in 1897 and 1898. Manuscripts of these translations were exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Ivinskis' translation of Paradise Lost was not published. The shortened poem was translated into Lithuanian by Lionginas Pažūsis and published only in 2022. In 1859, Ivinskis published Genovaitė, a translation of the sentimental didactic story Genovefa by Christoph von Schmid. It is an adaptation of the medieval legend about Genevieve of Brabant. Ivinskis translated the work from Polish, but adapted it to Lithuanian audiences. For example, he changed character names to Lithuanian names, inserted scientific explanations for nature, anatomy, and astronomy, added footnotes for Polish and Latin names of plants and mushrooms. The work became popular and a second edition was published in 1863, becoming the first work of fiction in Lithuanian to be republished. It was later republished by Martynas Jankus in Bitėnai in 1896, 1899, 1903, and 1904. It popularized the names Genovaitė and Sigitas (from Siegfried) in Lithuania. It is believed that Ivinskis also translated Boleslevas, the second part of Genovaitė about Genevieve's son who participated in the Crusades. It was first published in Vienybė lietuvninkų and as a separate book in 1889 in Plymouth, PA. In 1847, Ivinskis translated Robinson Crusoe from a shortened Polish edition. It included didactic lessons and a 195-word dictionary of less common words. It remained unpublished and its manuscript was discovered only in 1961. In 1853, Ivinskis translated the History of the Old and the New Testaments and dedicated the manuscript to bishop Motiejus Valančius. Its two parts had 1,079 pages.

Ivinskis started compiling several Lithuanian dictionaries, but they were unfinished and unpublished. His largest dictionary work is the 2,688-page Polish–Lithuanian dictionary up to the letter S. The 2,060-page manuscript of 23,621 words up the letter R was discovered by Witold Armon in 1959 at the library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków. It was gifted to the academy by Maria, wife of Bohdan Ogiński, with hopes that it could be published. It is unknown what happened with the 628 pages devoted to the letter S, though they were part of the Ivinskis' manuscript collection once owned by Petras Kriaučiūnas. Ivinskis used the two-volume Polish dictionary Słownik wileński published in 1861 as his primary source for the Polish words. However, there are differences that reflect the variations between the standard Polish and the local Polish used in Samogitia. The Lithuanian words mostly reflect Ivinskis' native Samogitian dialect, but he also attempted to include elements of the Aukštaitian dialect. The dictionary is an important source for researchers of both Lithuanian and Polish languages. It was published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language in 2010. Ivinskis also compiled a Russian–Lithuanian dictionary and sent 1,193 pages (up to the word Дешевый) to the Russian Geographical Society. He also started compiling a Russian–Lithuanian–Latin–Polish dictionary. He sent the first 96 pages with 358 words up to Ay to the Geographical Society. This sample contained 145 terms, mostly related to the natural sciences – names of minerals, plants, birds. The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences holds two manuscripts by Ivinskis related to Lithuanian grammar: Polish tables with descriptions of Lithuanian declension and verb conjugation and 82-page Lithuanian grammar written in Polish.