P. Dundulienė – a researcher of symbolism in Lithuanian folk art
The research works of the ethnologist Pranė Dundulienė (1910 – 1991) put a special emphasis
on symbolism in Lithuanian folk art.
Therefore, it is worthwhile to find out methodological singularities and their international
context applied in the research works on mythopoetic images in folk art carried out by P. Dundulienė. It
is relevant to get answers to the following questions: what was the concept of her cultural symbol and
what techniques she employed in her research on symbolism in art? Which field of science and scientific
method was the basis in her folk art studies: ethnology, folklore, mythology, religious explorations or
art explorations? Which research method did she use? Through the media of analytical and comparative
methods I will be trying to disclose the relationships between the research methods and approaches
used by P. Dundulienė and the works of foreign researchers in semiotics, and consequently I will be
seeking to highlight the originality and relevance of her interdisciplinary approach.
P. Dundulienė’s works in ethnology put the accent on semiotic investigations that determined
the role of tangible and intangible heritage of ethnic culture, which emerged in a traditional worldview.
She was to a large extent interested in the tradition of mythological worldview in the folk beliefs and
symbolically conceptualized artefacts and mythopoetic images in folk art. She was concerned merely
with mythological and archaic images and their retrospection as well as hunting for relics of those times.
In her scientific works Pranė Dundulienė gave special attention to investigations of images of the
traditional Lithuanian folk worldview in folk art and folklore, as well as researches on mythopoetic and
cosmological symbolism in customs and other spheres of culture. Additionally, she was analyzing the
problems of folk thinking, its worldview and philosophy.
Despite the fact that P. Dundulienė is considered to be a scholar in the field of ethnology, the
issues, methodology and objects of her investigations transcend a narrow concept of ethnology. The
scope of her interests and ideas includes the following areas of interdisciplinary studies: history,
archaeology, folklore as well as religious explorations (mythologies) and art explorations. Therefore, the
issues highlighted by the scientist, the selected objects and methods used for their analysis were similar
to the approaches developed by Western scientists.
Pranė Dndulienė did not discuss about the methodology of her research works and theoretical
approaches in more detail. P. Dundulienė did not establish an original research methodology of her own
– in part, she synthesized experiences of several schools.
Due to an insufficient accuracy of her scientific works, occasional absence of convincing
arguments and the lack of theoretical and methodological clarity and coherence, P. Dundulienė’s
opponents did not acknowledge the strengths of her research works – complexity and interdisciplinarity
that transcended a narrow historical-ethnological approach, which was a characteristic feature in a
number of works of ethnographers of those times. P. Dundulienė’s opponents failed to distinguish the
relationship between her research works and a broader context of problems and issues of science
existing in neighbouring countries and the world. Essentially, the works of P. Dundulienė were assessed
according to narrowly perceived criteria1 on ethnography as a branch of history (that explores the
peasant way of life, their daily life, holidays and economics in a short span of a few hundred year
historical perspective).
Despite some weakness, incompleteness and inconsistency or the lack of reference sources, the
works of P. Dundulienė revealed a possibility and expediency of using various research methods in
ethnology. Her investigations synthesized the data of such branches of science as ethnology,
folklore/mythology, history, archaeology and art history, and consequently combined the methods that
were applied in interdisciplinary studies.
Considering the fact that the scientist took an interest in ideological and symbolic aspects of
culture, it is not surprising that titles of most of her works are more suitable for publications on art
history, religious explorations or folklore. These include: “Eyes in the Lithuanian Folk Worldview” (1977),
“The Grass-Snake and its Symbols in Lithuanian Folk Art and Creative Works of Verbal Art” (1979), “Birds
in the Beliefs of Ancient Lithuanians and in Art” (1982), “Fire in the Lithuanian Folk Worldview” (1985),
“Lithuanian Folk Cosmology” (1988), The Ancient Lithuanian Mythology and Religion” (1990), ,”The Tree
of Life in Lithuanian Art and Folklore” (1994).
P. Dundulienė was a witness of proximate relationships between Lithuanian ethnology and art
explorations and museology, and similarly she was a participant of the problematic development
process that eventuated at Vilnius University in the post-war period. In 1945, shortly after completing
her studies in ethnology at S. Batoras University, with the assistance of J. Baldžius , she established the
Department of Ethnography at the restored Vilnius University, where she worked for the rest of her life.
When the art critic P. Galaunė proved the significance of museology for Lithuanian science, in 1947 this
Department was reorganised into the Department of Museology; P. Galaunė was appointed Head of the
Department. A. Mikėnaitė started teaching folk art. Unfortunately, in 1951 P. Galaunė was dismissed
from work due to an unacceptable ideological orientation - propagation 2 of Čiurlionis’ creative works
that involved symbolism and idealism; the latter Department was reorganised into the Department of
Archaeology and Ethnography accordingly.
The liberation of scientific thought in the Soviet Union after the end of the Stalin era primarily
affected Russian science (occasionally, researches on spiritual culture were carried out there); this could
be traced in major theoretical and methodological approaches that were applied by P. Dundulienė. It
should be noted that P. Dundulienė’s folk art research methods were focused not merely on the works
of ethnologists but also on folklorists, linguists, archaeologists and the scholars of religion. Essentially,
that was in line with the revival of semiotic studies in the Soviet Union, firstly in the fields of folklore,
language, literature and archaeology. She started to refer to the works of such authorities as V. Ivanovas
and V. Toporovas3 , V. Toporovas4 and B. Rybakovas5 likewise L. Šternbergas6, I. Gurėvičius7 and D.
Zeleninas8. It is important to remember that P. Dundulienė was one of the few Lithuanian ethnologists
who managed to get away from researches on the collective farm reality of those times, except when it
benefited to the issues of her own research (e.g., the chapter of the publication about bread9 “Bread in
Customs of the Soviet Times“). Uniqueness of P. Dundulienė’s methods was revealed through her efforts
to investigate not merely the history of ethnic culture and its traditions but also (especially in folk art)
their contemporary interpretations (e.g., the following chapters: “Grass-Snakes in Professional Art and
the Works of Verbal Creation“10, ”Birds in Professional Art and Fiction“ 11); this helped approach to the
problems of art explorations.
P. Dundulienė developed ethnology, which was based not merely on field studies and
ethnographic data collection. Seeking to reveal the meanings of folk culture symbols, she used to
examine separate specific objects and consequently, she came closer to the spheres of researches on
ideology and creative works: the paradigms of art history, religious explorations, mythology and folklore
likewise other fields of science that investigated cultural semiotics, approaches and research methods,
including reconstruction.
As maintained by P. Dundulienė, the key object of her research was considered to be the folk art
segment; moreover, she applied methods that were typical to semiotic researches on narrative and
visual arts (J. Basanavičius, V. Mansika12, D. Zelenin, B. Rybakov, A. Afanasjev13, V. Propp, L. Šternberg,
M. Gimbutienė, V. Toporov ir V. Ivanov, M. Eliade, A. Gurėvič14).
To some degree, P. Dundulienė was a successor of J. Basanavičius’ approach that involved
hunting for the origins of archaic and mythical folk art symbols through correlating the data of folklore,
customs and archaeology as well as accurately comparing them with the data
15
of other cultures that
was collected at different periods of time.
P. Dundulienė was well aware of the works
16
of L. Šternbergas – a Jewish ethnologist from
Russia, non-Marxist classic and evolutionist who extensively investigated the mythical worldview of
Siberian peoples and who was criticised by the Soviet historians due to some implications of the
idealistic worldview.
The school that best matched the spirit of P. Dundulienė was Tartu – Moscow Semiotic School,
the representatives of which were involved in an in-depth-study of semiotics of traditional culture
images of mythic origin in Eastern Europe and developed typological, historical, contextual and
comparative research methodologies on symbols of the mythic worldview. Her predecessors were
Russian linguists, mythologists, folklorists and literary critics (V. Propp, O. Freidenberg) likewise cultural
anthropologists and aesthetes (S. Eizenštein, M. Bachtin, L. Vygodskij). P. Dundulienė referred to the
works of V. Toporovas and V. Ivanovas pretty frequently. The latter authors developed structuralist
semiotics in their researches on culture, folklore and linguistics. V. Toporovas and V. Ivanovas focused
their attention on the structural semiotics analysis and interpretation17 of the facts of traditional culture
of the Balts.
The works of the Russian archaeologist and academician B. Rybakovas (Рыбаков 1965), namely
his interpretations on cosmological symbolism of the pottery decor of the Neolithic era (Ukraine), were
influential to P. Dundulienė. The author (B. Rybakovas) related archaeological materials to the
mythological data of other cultures that were existing in approximate periods of time, and discovered
their similarities with folk art symbolism of Eastern European nations, their ethnography and folklore. B.
Rybakovas was well aware of M. Gimbutienė’s research works.
P. Dundulienė referred to the works of M. Gimbutinė, especially to the approach regarding her
research on cosmological folk art symbolism of the ancient Balts and Lithuanians of the 19th century as well as
correlations drawn between folk art data and particularly extensive comparative mythology and art materials 18
on ancient civilizations. Similarly to Gimbutienė, the scientist was seeking to bound the approaches of an
ethnologist, folklorist-mythologist, archaeologist and historian, combine the data in archaeology, religious
explorations, Lithuanian mythology and folklore, and apply comparative and contextual methods and the
methods of historical analogy as well as hypothetical and interpretive reconstruction. P. Dundulienė’s works
were based on Gimbutienė’s perceptions, regardless the fact that her works have long been inaccessible to
Lithuanian science due to the ideological censorship. The comparative approach of M. Gimbutienė, that is,
interpretations of typological interfaces of visual symbolism and their relationship with mythologemes and
universal symbolism
19
of mythic images were related to the approaches20 of the American mythologist and
comparativist - Džozefas Kempbelas (Joseph Campbell) – one of the most famous researchers of archetypical
mythic images of the 20th century, who was in close contacts with M. Gimbutienė.
P. Dundulienė, as the successor of Gimbutienė, synthesized, correlated and generalized different
data on customs, beliefs, folklore, mythology and art that involved similar symbols; moreover she
thoroughly explained cosmological folk art symbolism and the foundations of the archaic traditional
mythological Lithuanian worldview.
P. Dundulienė’s perceptivity concerning the relationships between roof-poles and the
symbolism of the Tree of Life matches not merely with the findings of M. Gimbutienė and N. Vėlius21,
but also with the conclusions
22
contained in other contexts of intercultural researches made by the
Canadian cultural anthropologist J. Vaštokienė.
P. Dundulienė drew special attention to the archaic folk art symbolism, pre-Christian mythic
worldview, mythology of the Balts and Lithuanians (the concept of folklore) and its tradition. A
distinctive feature of most of her works is searching for archetypes. Through explaining and interpreting
traditions – customs, beliefs and worldviews - she was trying to describe their ideal and typical patterns
as the symbols of national identity. She was neither interested in distinctive and singular features of
ethnographic data collected in different locations of Lithuania, nor was she going deeper into the
problems of regionalism. She was concerned about the manifestation of hermeneutical, universal and
archetypical aspects in thinking and the worldview of people of traditional culture. She was original in
analyzing Lithuanian identity as the embodiment of the following archetype: nation-tribe-family-
ancestors. She paid her considerable attention to the archetypes of archaism as well as the paganism of
the Balts (or cosmology as its element) and ancient Lithuanians. This is reflected in the titles of her
works that sound mythological and poetic: “Paganism in Lithuania” (1989), ”Lithuanian Folk Cosmology“
(1988), “Trees in the Beliefs of Ancient Lithuanians“ (1979) and “Ancient Lithuanian Mythology and
Religion“ (1990). She was concerned about the means of expression for birds, grass-snakes, trees,
bread, an eye, the earth, the fire, the Tree of Life, celestial luminaries and space phenomena likewise
other archetypes that were considered ideal patterns and semantic universalities in Lithuanian ethnic
culture. Consequently, she studied the images of water and mythical personages (especially females) of
the Pre-Christian origin as well as the attributes of different customs and artefacts (e.g., Easter eggs,
gloves, the dowry chest decor, the upper part of iron crosses etc.) that were considered symbols 23 of
mythological poetic images.
P. Dundulienė’s attitude toward ethnic culture as a syncretic complex phenomenon, which
could be studied through distinguishing separate areas of semantic themes, e.g., describing the Tree of
Life that covers all the spheres of the World - vertical, horizontal and time dimensions as well as their
separate elements: the sky (cosmology), the air (birds), the earth (horses), the vault (grass-snakes and
other reptiles) - demonstrate her relationship with structural semiotics. Her major viewpoints are
similar to M. Eliadė‘s searches for universalism of mythical worldview, T. Gamkrelidzė and V. Ivanovas’
approach determining the common Indo-European field of archaic mythological-poetic images likewise
the reviving process of compilation of the common Lexicon on Semantics of Pro-Indo-European culture.
Gamkrelidzė and V. Ivanovas proved that it was possible to reconstruct the Indo-European worldview on
the basis of folklore and written sources. This is apparent in the following chapters of their work “IndoEuropean Languages and Indo-Europeans,”: “Living Creatures of the Vault: The Main Myth about “the
Snake” in “the Indo-European Mythology”, “Names of Domestic Animals of Indo-Europeans”; “Farming
Purposes of Domestic Animals of the Ancient Indo-Europeans and their Cult-Ritual Functions: From a
Ritual Point of View, Animals are Close to Human Beings: “The Cult 24 of the Horse in the Ancient Culture
of the Balts”.
P. Dundulienė‘s concept on multistageous cultural phenomena that approved the existence of
elements of the previous ideological systems in the subsequent cultural phenomena, was well-known to
most researchers in folklore, mythology and art history. This concept has been acknowledged by V.
Bagdanavičius25, M. Gimbutienė, A. J. Greimas and V. Toporovas likewise.
The systems of mythical approaches and searching for their relics in the phenomena of ethnic
culture as well as their historical retrospection that caught P. Dundulienė‘s attention, were the media
enabling to reconstruct Lithuanian mythological worldviews.
In addition, her investigations are
indirectly related to the objectives concerning national identity likewise searching for the signs of ethnic
symbolism and their design. The author was interested in the symbols that, in her opinion, were the
most important, distinctive and viable articles of the national culture. Since the written sources on the
Lithuanian Pre-Christian culture and people’s mentality were relatively modest – she tried to use
ethnographic data as a cultural memory and verbal sources of history that were meant for
“rehabilitating” and actualizing the memory of the Lithuanian Pre-Christian culture. These aspirations
helped her transcend a narrow ethnological approach and bring her viewpoints closer to mythology and
ethno-semiotics.
Thus, when at the beginning of her scientific career P. Dundulienė familiarized herself with
distinctiveness of Lithuanian School of Ethnology - namely its resilient relationships with art
explorations, archaeology and museology - she developed this concept in her subsequent research
activities. She used research methodologies that were characteristic not merely to ethnology, as a
branch of history; she also developed an interdisciplinary approach, applied the methods of folklore, art
explorations, religious explorations and cultural anthropology as well as expanded the network of
semiotic and comparative researches.
Since her major concern involved searching for mythological-poetic images and constructs in
ethnic culture, she maintained the approaches that were dominant in Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School
and the Russian School on Folklore and Ethno-Mythology Studies. Furthermore, she used M.
Gimbutienė’s methodology on the analysis of visual semiotics, which was in part intercepted from the
mythologist-comparativist J. Campbello, who was considerably impressed by C. G. Jungas ideas. P.
Dundulienė maintained the methodology of the archaeologist B. Rybakovas which he applied in his
research on ancient images, when the meaning of a symbol was analyzed through comparing and
correlating the data on archaeology, folklore and ethnology that was collected at the same territory at
different periods of time.
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24
25
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