A vision of Lithuanian peasants in Jules Michelet (1798- 1874)

• In Event: Cultural Narratives in the Baltic: Legends and Heroes

Abstract

In his book Légendes démocratiques du Nord. Pologne et Russie. Kosciuszko (Democratic Northern legends. Poland and Russia. Kościuszko) (1854), Jules Michelet wrote in V, 1 about a collective vision that happened in several Lithuanian villages. A vision of a big army, speaking about the West, and going to the North. The vision was very clear, they declared to the magistrates, under oath. This fact sounds very Lithuanian, first at all because a vision is told; Lithuanian people was renown for its trend to vision, culminated in the pictures of M.K. Čiurlonis, whose wife, Sofija Kimantaitė, claimed that Lithuanian spirit is far from realism. Then, the vision happened in villages, and the Lithuanian village, kaimas, is emblematic for certain aspects of Lithuanian culture. J. Michelet in the following pages exalted Lithuanian spirit. We must remember J. Michelet was highly clever in researching in archives, and that is one of the causes of his fame, and of the importance of his works.
Michelet's interest is remarkable because it reveals Lithuania's fascination with the historian. The French historian had intuited the deep value of a culture such as the Lithuanian one, oppressed by Russification imposed after 1795. A deep interest for oppressed nations, typical of Romanticism, i.e. of 1800, had roots in France at this time. In any case, J. Michelet was against the division of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth by three powers, i.e. Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Short Bio

Claudio Barna, Research Assistant at the University of Milan, Italy, delivered presentations at Stanford University, Gdansk, Kyiv, Vilnius, Kaunas, Milan, etc. He speaks six languages (English, Lithuanian, French, German, Italian, Spanish). He is a specialist of ancient languages.
In 1992 he was Visiting Lecturer for three months at Vytautas Magnus University, in Kaunas. He was awarded a honor (padėka) from Lithuania’s Foreign Minister in 2017 in Rome.

Author

• Claudio Barna, University of Milan