Res Humanitariae

The object of this publication is the anecdotes about famous people and personages of the movies and literature. The research helped to identify the most popular personages and describe the images of them. It can be done conclusion that in the anecdotes which are told in Lithuanian the personages of movies and literature are more popular than the real famous people (politicians, sportsmen or pop stars). The images of personages are ambivalent, they can be shown in positive situations but more often these personages are negative: the features of the characters are drawn ironically; the results of their activities are estimated in the mocking and even scornful way.

This article critically discuss and analize the predominant conception of Vydūnas as a representative of neovedantism. This predominant interpretation of Vydūnas religious identity was popularized by the most productive researcher of Vydūnas Vacys Bagdonavičius. Analysing methodological approach of V. Bagdonavičius and basing on hermeneutical view to fenomena of Vydūnas religious expression, it is indicated that the prime influence to Vydūnas religious identity formation was made by the junction and tension between Germanish liberal protestant theology and local, conservative ,,gathering crowd“ tradition, which impel Vydūnas to universal, confessionally neutral and sincretic interest for religions. Article reveals hypothesis, that Vydūnas creative- religious espression could be perceived as a development of basic liberal protestantic belief principles and its adaptation to concrete historical-cultural also political East Prussia lithuanians situation, in order to avoid confrontation between this two different religious traditions and politically consolidate nation.

The article deals with conceptual metaphors tied to the source domain SEA in Lithuanian political and economic discourse. The study is based on the dictionary compiled during the research project “Conceptual Metaphors in Public Discourse”, funded by the Research Council of Lithuania. The analysis refers to the traditional conceptual metaphor theory, theoretical problems relevant to metaphor analysis in discourse are considered. Features of the source domain SEA conceptualize the political and economic instability and insecurity. Although political and economic discourses are rather different, the analysis of metaphorical expressions related to the source domain SEA reveals that their linguistic, conceptual and communicative properties are basically compliant.

The article analyse Vydūnas reception in Lihuanian cultural memory, its features and problems of a topic after restoration of independence in Lithuania. Investigation reveals ambivalentic tendency of Vydūnas reception, which in caused by cultural “distance” of Vydūnas – his reflective and creative work relations with Indian and German cultures. Vydūnas in his creative work links Indian east with mythological identity of Lithuanian culture and religion, so that in reception this eastern cultural component in transformed as one’s own. German – protestantic part of Vydūnas identity, which is marked only as separate element or historical episode, come into public attention field very rarely. Article talks about couses, reasons and meaning under such circumstances and analyse its meaning for Lithuanian cultural memory formation.

The article deals with the issues related to the specifics of the incantation as a genre of oral folklore, history of collecting, publishing and the beginning of their studying in Russia. The main emphasis is put on the first monographic work dedicated to conspiracies. Scientific portrait of the author is represented, his work, translations and reprinting are analyzed. Features that have made the book classic are established.

One of the most important indicators of contacts between the specified related westbaltic tribes – finds of those types of brooches which have steady ethno-cultural coloring. As a result of studying of distribution of a row the brooches of Curonians in the earth of pruss was succeeded to establish that degree of the international contacts in the southeast Baltic before arrival of the Award was high. Earlier was considered that has begun Prussian-Curonians contacts treats not earlier than the 12th century. As the brooches of Curonians in a Prussian area shows the analysis, Prussian-Curonians contacts have begun no later than the X century and in the 11th century, after hypothetical destruction by Danes of the settlement of Kaup were rather intensive. This conclusion is confirmed, including, existence on Prussian burial grounds of this time the burials (on a ceremony and on types of things) of Curonians.

The purpose of this article is to find connections between two seemingly unrelated objects in art – the image of sea and the sound of organ. The author believes that an area of semantic overlapping exists between these phenomena: the properties of organ sound production, as well as the technical and artistic means of expression a priori hold certain properties that enable evocative and convincing reproduction of certain characteristics of the image of sea.The article analyses four main parameters for the comparison of the image of sea and the sound of organ: the infinite sense of time, the incomprehensible and vast sense of space, the broadness of dynamic scale and the multitude of diverse colours (richness of timbres). This research is based on the organ music oeuvre devoted to the image of sea by the Latvian composer Romualds Jermaks. However, similar interconnections could conceivably be discovered upon analysis of the sea-theme related organ works by other composers.

On the ground of conceptual metaphor conception, metaphor is discussed as thinking strategy, which is implemented in language by metaphorical expressions. Metaphorical expressions for which target domain is criminal and crime were gathered from texts which were published in two Lithuanian news portals in the years 2001–2015. It is important to reconstruct the conceptual metaphors not only because they reflect viewpoint of society regarding certain phenomenon, but also because implemented in the texts of media influence on the public opinion, inasmuch as the metaphor is not only some linguistic form and conceptual structure, but also manifestation of communicational function.

The article discusses problems connected with Balto-Slavic mythological parallels, including typology of mythological characters, lexical similarities resulting from genetic affinity and borrowing, as well as the influence of mythological systems of neighbouring peoples. Some new Balto-Slavic parallels have been suggested, viz. Rugių boba – Baba Ruga (Roga); Pikulas – pikulík; nelabais, and nelabasis – nelapši, nelapszy, with the focus on their ethnolinguistic aspect, both as mythological characters and as elements of the mythological lexicon. Special attention has been paid to the etymology of these words. The new parallels between the two groups of related languages provides additional material related to Slavic and Baltic ethno- and glottogeny.

The article is aimed to clear out the cognitive significance of the concept SEA for the Ukrainian mentality, and culture. Turning to the characteristics of Ukrainian cultural concept SEA, the author identifies two main aspects of it: “external” (related to the territorial and geographical self-identification of the Ukrainians) and “internal” (cognitively associated with the “external”, representing the emotional sphere of romantic personality). The study is based on the Ukrainian dooms of the XVI–XVII centures, collected and published in 1927–1931 by Ukrainian researcher Catherine Hrushevska, and on poems about the sea written by outstanding Ukrainian poetess Lesya Ukrainka and poets of the “Executed Renaissance” (A. Vlizko, J. Pluzhnyk and others).Comparison of two dimensions of the Ukrainian concept SEA (external and internal) gives an opportunity to carry out certain parallels between their cognitive and axiological characteristics. Both in its internal and external dimensions the concept SEA reveals the duality, axiological ambivalence, correlation with the idea of primary chaos, danger and overcoming.