Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The article discusses the conscious choice of Kristijonas Donelaitis to become a priest of a Lithuanian rural community and to take care of the parishers’ faith and morals. The Enlightenment-related position of the poet predetermined the expression of his poetical vocation to a great extent. By recognizing the significance of each element of the world created by the will of God, Donelaitis consciously turned his glance towards ‘minor’ things or the ‘lowest’ substances. He consciously chose to write about the most deprived, the most backward peasant-boor of the remotest Prussian periphery: about him and for him, in the declining language of the minority. One might ask whether the choice of that conservative addressee, the ‘smallest’ in the Kingdom of Prussia, did not paradoxically account for the modernity of Donelaitis‘ works in the context of the that time poetry. By the violation of the aesthetical standards of his time, Donelaitis unexpectedly forced his way into the ranks of the best poets of Europe and not only became one of them, but far surpassed them. A rural priest of a Pussian province with his weak voice and poor health, unknown to Europe, for a wink of an eye became perhaps the greatest European poet. For a wink of an eye, as Europe at the time did not learn about him. However, he remained great for us, representatives of a small, declining, and emigrating nation, and stayed with us to remind us of the true values of life.