Lietuvišku katalikičku XVII-XVIII amžiaus giesmiu anonimiškumas: probleminiai svarstymai

The article deals with the issues of originality with respect to the Lithuanian Catholic hymns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I discuss problems of authorship, origin, and sources, which are comparatively complicated. The main difficulties lie in the determination of the authors and translators of the hymns, the origin of the hymns, the sources of the translations or the rewriting, or the attempt to decide if a concrete text is a translation or an original text. There are several reasons for that: (1) the authors, translators or editors of Lithuanian Catholic hymnals are not identified (an exception is a hymnal of Saliamonas Slavoèinskis of 1646); (2) the authors, translators or editors of other publications, which include Lithuanian Catholic hymns, are not identified; (3) the authors are not identified for separate hymns in hymnals and other publications (with three exceptions); (4) translators are not identified for separate hymns; (5) the sources used by the translators are not named; (6) the sources of rewritten hymns are not indicated. The omission of authorship, lack of information on origin and sources is to be related to the common concept of authorship and originality of the Middle Ages. One important peculiarity of Baroque literature is based on this concept-lack of originality. Plagiarism, borrowing, rewriting of a text was not perceived as ignorance but vice verse as superior ability to use the compositions of others.