ISSN 1323-4633

PEKKA HAKAMIES & ARVO KRIKMANN

MATTI KUUSI AND THE PROJECT OF BALTIC-FINNIC PROVERBS

On January 16, 1998 the course of Matti Kuusi's industrious life, rich in accomplishments, came to an end. In Finland, Kuusi was generally known as an active social and cultural figure, an active publicist with pointed pen, a man of letters having qualified and learned opinion in various matters, a brilliant orator. Finnish and Estonian folklorists respected him foremost for being a paramount folklorist, researcher of old epic poetry and a paremiologist, the man who applied the so-called typological methodology that proceeded from the Finnish method, who tried to outline the historical layers of epic tradition based on style characteristics, who pointed out the fundamental role of the Kalevala metre and form as the unified code of Baltic-Finnic folklore, and so on.

The wider academic world knew Kuusi mainly as a paremiologist, because Kalevalaic runo songs are a specific Baltic-Finnic phenomenon about which the outsiders have little knowledge or reflection. Even Kuusi's theoretical research in paremiology have mostly been written and published in Finnish, being therefore unfamiliar to the international academia until the last jubilee publication of selected articles in English (Kuusi 1994). And yet, even the best translation could never render the original's excellence in style. Kuusi is one of the greatest names in the 20th century paremiology, where he will always remain a classic. It will be guaranteed by fundamental publications like Regen bei Sonnenschein (Kuusi 1957), an analysis of a situational paraphrase of global dissemination and rich belief background, and by his books discussing Ovambo minor genres (Kuusi 1970b, 1974). But the most important are his three major international projects in paremiology that will be described in the following (see also Krikmann & Sarv 1996).

1. Matti Kuusi's three bridges to the future of paremiology

1.1. The journal Proverbium

Proverbium, a journal of proverb research edited by Matti Kuusi, was published during the period 1965 till 1975. All in all twenty five issues surmounting to 1008 pages were printed and later on reprinted in a compact form as volumes 9/1 and 9/2 in Wolfgang Mieder's Sprichwörterforschung series (Mieder 1987a, 1987b). Kuusi himself recalled that the original idea of publishing a proverb journal had been initiated by Archer Taylor. The matter was discussed in 1959 in Kiel by Taylor, Julian Krzyzanowski, Démétrios Loukatos, and Matti Kuusi, who jointly came to the conclusion that Finland, situated between the East and the West, appeared to be the best place for publishing it. The idea was put to practice in the spring of 1964 when the Finnish Literature Society (FLS) had agreed to finance the publication. Taylor rendered a lot of advice concerning technical and organizational details, including the proposition to xerox the ready pages provided by the authors, which made the whole process swifter and cheaper, although at the expense of the design. The journal could not be subscribed, it was distributed with no charge to approximately 500 research institutions, libraries and individuals (as rendered by W. Mieder). There was a global range of authors and the amount of manuscripts submitted grew faster than the financial capacities of FLS: the yearly number of pages was 80 in the 1960s, 96 in the 1970s. Only the issue no. 15, celebrating Archer Taylor's eightieth birthday had exceptionally 136 pages. Neither the editor nor his assistants received additional payment, although more than often their work had to be done outside the office hours. On the other hand, the editor was donated paremiological literature in great quantities from all over the world, now deposited at the ethnological library of FLS (Kuusi 1987, XIX ff.). In the editorial board occurred changes, but the name of the editor-in-chief, Matti Kuusi, always remained in its alphabetical position among the rest without any separate display. Proverbium published articles practically in all paremiological themes possible, and practically all those having anything to say about proverbs in the 60s and 70s put in a word.

In 1980 Vilmos Voigt made an attempt to continue issuing an international paremiology journal. Its title was Proverbium Paratum, the years 1980--1982 saw three editions, and after several years followed the fourth and last copy -- A. Tóthné-Litovkina's study of Hungarian and Russian proverb parallels. The second regeneration of Proverbium took place in the United States in 1984, when Wolfgang Mieder started editing and publishing Proverbium. Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship. During the past thirteen years exactly thirteen copies have been issued and the range of contributors has grown both in numbers and in geographical scope. Mieder's Proverbium has likewise suffered from economical difficulties (especially during the end of the 80s, when the yearbook appeared in a considerably thinner form), but his energy in continuing with Proverbium, and Mieder's personal input together with his general paremiological productivity are quite enviable. Mieder has undeniably become a leading figure in international paremiology during the final decades of our century.

Paremiologists obtained their international E-forum in 1995: Teodor Flonta's journal De Proverbio, published at the University of Tasmania, and from now on the current authors enlist themselves among the grateful users of that tribune. De Proverbio has adopted a pleasant tradition of dedicating whole issues (at the beginning as a special rubric The Masters) to prominent paremiologists, and it appears to be quite symbolic that the first in the series was dedicated to Wolfgang Mieder and the latest, not yet completed seventh issue is dedicated to the late Matti Kuusi (the third and fourth issues were devoted to Archer Taylor, sixth to Grigori Permyakov, etc.).

 

1.2. The international type-index of proverbs

The idea to compile an international type-index and work out an international classification system of proverbs evolved step-by-step, Kuusi put them into practice together with social scientist Outi Lauhakangas (his daughter). The latter has by now finished a survey introducing their grand achievement, The M6* international type-system of proverbs that will shortly be published in the FFC series. Mainly during the 60s and 70s the pink card-index that Kuusi had originally intended as a personal databank to support his memory developed into an extensive data source of global range. Outi Lauhakangas (in print, chapter 2) recalls that up to the 70s Kuusi registered only proverb types with Finnish parallels, but further on he documented everything interesting from the international point of view. The type-index globalized in accordance with the expansion of Kuusi's interests and sources.

In case of a massive amount of any data one has to solve problems of systemizing. When the first major works about proverb systematics were published by G. Permyakov in the end of the 60s and at the beginning of 70s (Permyakov 1968, 1970), they gave Kuusi a strong impulse to study more deeply the different systematics occurring in (particularly international) proverb publications, and to come up with his own presentation system. Kuusi criticized the deductive, "downwards" approach in Permyakov's system, its claims to universality, etc., and issued excerpts of his own attempts, which were still oriented to binary oppositions as Permyakov's were (see Kuusi 1970a, 1972a, 1972b). One of the authors of the present article had sufficient youthful snap to criticise the systems of both prominent scholars (see Krikmann 1974c). In general, semantic classifications of proverbs were hot stuff in the paremiology of the 70s. It is undoubtedly fascinating to observe the conduct of a bunch of proverbs, tied by a certain oppositional pair or any other characteristic, but such classifications are rigidly one-dimensional and therefore inefficient. They are helpless if there arise competing alternatives, and if applied to parts of material that are typologically sparse or fragmentary. Kuusi's disappointment in the options provided by the distribution system departing from oppositional pairs or other invariants was therefore unavoidable and clearly imminent (cf. also Lauhakangas, in print, chapter 3). In case of extensive international material, the problem of semantic interpretation of the texts arises even before any substantial classification. In cultural anthropology this problem is generally constantly on the agenda: there is always the risk that a researcher comprehends material that is temporally and/or culturally distant according to his personal -- though inadequate -- worldview (categories, qualities).

In order to apply more than one classifiers in determining the semantic status of a particular proverb type, Kuusi's index was transformed into Paradox-system database in the late 80s. It is a magnificent, relational database of international proverb material, a combination of several systems which can provide wonderful global aerophotos from various different dimensions (e.g., productivity, distribution range, form and structure, modalities, image semantics, etc.). It is an information source of fundamental weight that has longingly been awaited for by the paremiological public. If it were attainable to an international user -- say, via Internet, on a CD-ROM, or some other electronical form -- it might turn out to be revolutionary in global paremiology. The index as a scholarly product might never be published as a book, but relying on the source material, Kuusi and Lauhakangas have already published a hefty volume of proverbs of the world in Finnish translation, under the title Maailman sananlaskuviisaus (Kuusi & Lauhakangas 1993), where proverbs are presented in a most original semantic rubrication.

 

1.3. Common proverbs of North European peoples: the antecedents

In an unpublished manuscript Matti Kuusi recalls the background of this idea which, while looking back, appears both funny and serious at the same time. It reminds an idea frequently occurring in proverbs that practically nothing may cause the destruction or the beginning of a very big something. In the winter of 1962 the then president of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, made a short surprise visit to Tallinn on his way back from a trip to Moscow. Having arrived back home, he summoned a meeting of supporters of the nationalist ideology of the thirties and also scholars of Finno-Ugric studies, the board of Finland -- Soviet Union Society, and members of the unofficial brotherhood of intellectuals called Kesäyliopisto (summer university). His message to the meeting was the following: if the Estonian spirit is destined to preserve, it will only happen in Estonia, therefore friends of Estonia should promote friendship with Estonians living in Estonia and not with those living in exile. The professors of Kesäyliopisto caught the idea and selected Kuusi, the youngest among them, as their guinea pig. Kuusi describes the next events as follows: "Someone had to travel to Estonia to find out, what could be done. Whereas I was working with proverbs at the time, I drew up a magnificent plan to inventory, compare and publish the common proverbs of the Baltic Finns and their neighbours of Germanic, Baltic or Slavic origin. Toivo Vuorela, the secretary of FLS provided me with letters of recommendation and credentials with impressive stamps and prominent signatures. /.../ A week later we signed a cooperation plan at the Institute of Language and Literature in Tallinn, as well as applications to the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and to the Committee of Scientific and Technological Cooperation between Finland and the Soviet Union." (Kuusi 1996a). Hereby that much should be mentioned about the further development that thanks to Matti Kuusi's energy, diplomatic capacities and personal charm the project carried through more than twenty years, despite all the taboos and obstacles of the period. The project managed to produce its first fruits and it ranks among the most successful of Finnish--Estonian collaborations in the humanities even today. From the Estonian point of view, Kuusi's enterprise stood for neither more or less than the founding of Estonian paremiology. In short -- and without exaggerating -- we may say that Matti Kuusi is the father of Estonian paremiology.

 

2. The project of Baltic-Finnic proverbs

2.1. Preliminary work and Proverbia septentrionalia

Thus, in the autumn of 1963 the Finnish--Estonian collaboration project, initiated and mediated by Matti Kuusi, was started as the first stage of the North European proverb project. The goal was to explore the common proverb heritage of Baltic-Finnic peoples, with an additional task of comparing them to Sámi, Russian, Latvian (or Baltic in general), Swedish (or Scandinavian in general), or German (or Germanic in general) material, i.e. to the proverb lore of the close neighbours of the Baltic Finns.

The work demanded profound preparations: first, the material had to be transformed into an appropriate form for processing, and in case of some peoples additional material had to be collected. In the folklore archive of FLS a card-index of proverbs was compiled, including approximately 300,000 texts, and it was arranged according to the so-called two keyword system, adding thus about 40,000 reference cards which help to find the variants of each proverb. Later on a big anthology of Finnish proverbs, including approximately 16,000 texts, was compiled (Laukkanen & Hakamies 1978). A representative scientific anthology was published on Karelian material (Miettinen & Leino 1971). The task of the Estonian team (E. Normann, V. Pino, I. Sarv and A. Krikmann, joined somewhat later by R. Saukas and A. Hussar) was to publish scholarly collections of proverbs of other Baltic Finns who lived in the territory of the then Soviet Union. During the period 1977--1992 such collections of four Baltic-Finnic peoples were compiled, edited and published in Estonia: an extensive publication of Estonian proverbs with three volumes of proverb texts (Krikmann, Sarv et al. 1980--88), based on about 84,000 original archive texts; publications of Votic, Livonian and Vepsian proverbs (Mälk et al. 1977, 1981, 1992). All in all -- including surveys, introductions, indexes, translations and other appendixes -- it amounted to approximately 5,600 pages in print. (About the agonizing process of compiling the Estonian edition and about other volumes edited in Estonia see Krikmann & Sarv 1996).

The entire Baltic-Finnic stage of the project is therefore grounded on a corpus of about half a million texts.

The work of mapping and analysing the common Baltic-Finnic proverbs started in the second half of the 1970s. The most intensive working period began in 1979 and ended with the coming out of Proverbia septentrionalia that was edited by Matti Kuusi and a number of co-authors (Kuusi et al. 1985).

This book presents a summarized information about 900 common favourite proverbs of the Baltic Finns.

Each proverb type presentation consists of an English translation of the standard form, parallels with neighbouring peoples (Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, incl. Scandinavian) if such have been registered, a certain number of model texts in each Baltic-Finnic language that represent different wording forms with frequency data, references to printed sources.

The three larger Baltic-Finnic proverb stocks -- Finnish, Estonian and Karelian -- are exceptional (in a positive sense of the word) in their amount on the global background of paremiographic sources, which enable quantitative estimations of the material (rather detailed in places). Furthermore, Proverbia is a collection of most popular proverbs and its 900 proverb types represent quite a massive archive material: altogether more than 144,000 source texts, incl. more than 83,000 Finnish, nearly 47,000 Estonian, and about 10,500 Karelian ones, the rest remain between the numbers 900 and 1,700. The sequence of texts follows the quantitative (frequency) principle both in the book in general as well as inside individual groups (combinations of peoples), which is quite unique in current paremiographic practice. In his tribute to Proverbia septentrionalia, Wolfgang Mieder (1986) has regarded particularly the presenting of frequency data as the most praiseworthy feature of the work.

The book begins with an extensive introduction. It provides a short survey of previous comparative editions of proverbs, starting from the 16th century and up to the present, at the same time pointing out that there exists a gap concerning the North European peoples which Proverbia septentrionalia tries to fill. There are full fourteen lines listing the peoples residing in northern Europe with additional information about language groups represented. Given are also the major proverb sources of each Baltic-Finnic people, existing archives and numerical data about proverb quantities in them. The next longer paragraph gives a versatile outline about the ethnic history of the Baltic Finns (starting with archaeological periods), about contacts with non-Baltic-Finnic neighbours, and how these relations might be reflected in proverbs. There is also information about the nature and size of the proverb sources of non-Baltic-Finnic neighbours. In the end of the book is presented the technical description of the edition.

A separate introductory part comprises the statistic evaluation of the connections between Baltic-Finnic peoples themselves and with their non-Baltic-Finnic neighbours, based on the 900 common proverb types published in the Proverbia septentrionalia (cf. Krikmann 1985).

A significant component of the book is the so-called analytical table at the beginning, which provides a large amount of additional information in concise form about each Baltic-Finnic proverb type: its relative frequency by each Baltic-Finnic people; neighbouring peoples knowing the proverb; occurrence by more distant Finno-Ugric peoples (Sámi, Komi) and by Oriental peoples (relying on G. Permyakov); references to synonymical, equiformal, etc. related types; characteristics of the poetic, logical, syntactic and modal forms of the type; thematic relevance and trope structure.

At the beginning of the 80s there were some disputes between Kuusi and his collaborators about both the introduction and the analytical table, whether those parts should be as exhaustive and as scrupulously worked out as he insisted. For example, whether the ethnic historical background should be as extensive as Kuusi had planned it. In general, Kuusi accepted justified arguments but in this case he held firmly his ground: presumably a Brazilian bookseller happens to leaf through the book, sees entry words 'Finland' or 'Estonia', etc., and asks himself where are these places and what are they like. He should then be able to find answers to such questions in the very same book.

To the end of the book a dozen of indexes and other appendixes are added.

Proverbia septentrionalia did not mean, though, that all common Baltic-Finnic proverb material had been published. Far from it, published was only the most stereotype, international and "general European" part of it, where the percentage of proverbs loaned from neighbouring big nations was particularly great. From Proverbia septentrionalia were discarded all less productive "non-favourites", but these might appear the most expressive and interesting in a distinctly Baltic-Finnic folklore field.

When Proverbia septentrionalia came out, Matti Kuusi was already 71 years old and he had decided that the volume of Baltic-Finnic favourite proverbs would be his swan song in that project. The lesser collaborators held a naive opinion at the time (1985--1986) that, despite of Kuusi's resignation, they would manage to continue the work soon because the logic of the matter demanded it, and sent several memoranda on the subject to relevant institutions in both countries. It should have been easy to continue the Baltic-Finnic edition also technically as its general principles, the pattern of type article, etc., had already been worked out and tested in the volume of favourites. But apparently Kuusi's retirement deprived the project of its previous radiance, there occurred a change of priorities in Finnish folkloristics, and also in the Estonian team the interest shifted towards riddles by the second half of the 80s. Therefore, by the change of decades the prospect of continuing the project had decreased to being purely theoretical. The ex-participants from Estonia were particularly sad about it, because the preparatory work for Proverbia septentrionalia had been especially extensive on the Estonian side, and a lot of it had not been put into proper use yet -- for example, a vast amount of confirmed parallels in Votic, Livonian and Vepsian editions, the card-indexes of Estonian--Finnish and Estonian--Russian proverb equivalents, and so on.

 

2.2. The second coming

In the autumn of 1993 consultations concerning the continuing of the Baltic-Finnic edition were fortunately revived. The preliminary dialogue was held by the Finnish language professor of Helsinki University Pentti Leino and Arvo Krikmann, who came to the conclusion that the Estonian side stands a realistic perspective in taking up the work, though one-sidedly for the time being, with the follow-up volumes of Proverbia septentrionalia by applying the preliminary work carried out so far. The Tartu paremiology group (Arvo Krikmann, Ingrid Sarv, Rein Saukas and Anne Hussar) commenced working, provided with praiseworthy support from the Open Estonia Foundation in 1994 and 1995.

In May 1995 the perspectives to continue Proverbia septentrionalia were discussed in Tartu at the initiative of Pentti Leino and the undersigned. The Finnish colleagues became convinced that the Estonians were quite earnest and that the prognosis of the results tended to look optimistic. It was agreed that it would not be right to limit ourselves to merely publishing the common Baltic-Finnic material, therefore the meeting decided to draw a project Pohjois-Euroopan kansojen yhteisten sananlaskujen vertaileva tutkimus (the comparative study of the common proverbs of North European peoples), and submit it to be financed by Suomen Kulttuurirahasto (Finnish Cultural Foundation). On the Finnish side Pentti Leino, the head of the folklore archive of FLS, Pekka Laaksonen and Pekka Hakamies were elected to supervise the planning of the project and to secure the scholarly standard of the work carried out. On the Estonian side, Arvo Krikmann was elected for the same purposes. It was agreed upon that Estonian paremiologists would continue the preparatory work of the follow-up volumes of Proverbia septentrionalia, and give the results of their work (in fact, a draft manuscript) as computer database to their Finnish colleagues for augmentation.

During the years 1996 and 1997 Suomen Kulttuurirahasto has provided praiseworthy scholarships in support of the work carried out by the Estonian side of the Baltic-Finnic proverb project. In the autumn of 1996 the Finnish team of the project (Pekka Hakamies, Outi Lauhakangas, Eija Hukka) was donated a scholarship from the Finnish Academy of Sciences. Thus were restored all the preconditions for continuing the Finnish--Estonian proverb project with full devotion.

In 1997 the Estonian team completed all the preliminary work in their capacity, and the Finnish team set forth in full swing to get the follow-up volumes of Proverbia septentrionalia published. While preparing the material in the current revival stage, a special attention is directed to the geographical distribution of the recordings of a proverb type, and also to the correlation occurring between the wording pattern and the geographical origin of texts (the so-called redaction analysis). After the basic analysis of Baltic-Finnic material is completed and the list of types included is final, they will be provided with Scandinavian, German, Baltic and Russian equivalents. An analytical table will be drawn also for the follow-up volumes and it will follow the model worked out by Kuusi for Proverbia septentrionalia, presenting condensed data about the syntactic and modal structure, poetics, metaphorics, content, etc., of proverbs.

During 1997 we have constantly exchanged information and discussed problematic cases via E-mail, we have arranged two working meetings in Tartu and a symposium in Helsinki with five contributions on the topic. We expect the two follow-up volumes of the Baltic-Finnic proverb edition to be printed in the year 2000. In that case the common paremic heritage of the Baltic Finns will be published in full. There is also a plan to issue a CD-ROM version of the database of common Baltic-Finnic proverbs.

 

2.3. Research

The completed publication and electronic database open perspectives of new quality in Baltic-Finnic proverb research.

The work concerning Baltic-Finnic proverbs has not been limited only to publications up to now either. We should mention here, e.g., some studies where proverbs are precisely treated as a Baltic-Finnic subject, including the aspects of genesis, distribution and loan relations, etc., and not simply as proverbs among proverbs. Matti Kuusi (1978) made a significant attempt himself to apply proverbs as evidential material in solving the prolonged argument in Finnish folkloristics about the place of origin of the Kalevala tradition. He found some evidence supporting the hypothesis of the Finnish, not Karelian origin of the Kalevala metre. Pekka Hakamies (1986) has studied the influence of Russian proverbs on the Karelian and Finnish proverb heritage. He has pointed out that paremic identicals in different languages may be caused not only by loans but by parallel genesis (generatio aequivoca or generatio spontanea). In studying genesis relations he relies also on the analysis of the content and of the linguistic and stylistic characteristics of sayings. Kari Laukkanen (1988) has discussed the dynamics of Estonian and Finnish influence on the proverb repertoire of Kuusalu parish on the northern coast of Estonia. As a whole this repertoire has very strong Finnish impact, and in his explanations Laukkanen provides an extensive background information about migration between Finland and Estonia. In the introduction of the Votic, Livonian and Vepsian proverb editions (Mälk et al. 1977, 1981, 1992) Vaina Mälk has made several observations about the folklore relations between the Baltic-Finnic and other neighbouring peoples, and she indicates that the cultural area of south-eastern Finland has played a significant role as a transit territory of Baltic-Finnic folklore loans (including directions from Estonia to Finland and vice versa).

In all those works tackling genesis and loan relations also quantitative methodology has been applied. For instance, Arvo Krikmann (1985 and elsewhere) has tried to do statistic calculations to estimate, based on proverb material, the density of folkloric connections between different Baltic-Finnic peoples, between Baltic Finns and non-Baltic-Finnic peoples, between different regions in Estonia and neighbouring peoples. As already mentioned above, the proverb archives in Finland and Estonia, but also in Latvia and Lithuania, are well arranged and unique in size in the whole world, therefore the frequency methodologies can be easily applied to study several other aspects as well. In Pentti Leino's doctoral dissertation about the alliteration characteristic of the so-called Baltic-Finnic Kalevala-form (Leino 1970) the statistic methodology predominates and the main research material are especially proverbs. In general, quantitative methods have been applied in paremiology mainly in demoscopic and paremio-sociological studies which aim at determining the popularity of proverbs today (see, e.g., Levin 1968; G. Permyakov's works about paremiological minimum (1971, 1985, 1988, 1989), cf. also Kuusi 1981, Krikmann 1986; good surveys in this respect are Grzybek & Chlosta 1993, and Mieder 1994/1995). The completing of the Baltic-Finnic edition and the compiling of the database provide better perspectives also in applying quantitative methods. A separate theoretical question worthwhile discussing is the representativeness of archive material -- to what extent the law of large numbers works in it, and to what extent does the archive material in general reflect the actual folklore processes or serve as their model.

The practical work with the parallel Baltic-Finnic material requires at every step decisions in distinguishing text sets typologically -- sorting out texts that are variants of a type from those belonging to different types, i.e. the determining of type borders. The principles of proverb-type formation is in the focus of the project, too, as a general theoretical methodological problem. Some articles have appeared discussing the type problems in paremiology (e.g., Kuusi 1963, 1966, 1970a, 1972a, 1972b, 1996b; Krikmann 1974c; Permyakov 1979; Hiiemäe & Krikmann 1992; Grigas 1996), but it continues to be in dispute. Furthermore, the whole concept of proverb type acquires new dimensions if the material studied originates from several languages and cultures.

It appears fruitful to approach the problem of proverb type, and to the nature of proverb as a whole, from a cognitive position and interpret proverbs as a sort of schematic or prototype information. Thus each proverb type could be regarded as a certain schema, experiential collective comprehension of how does something happen or how is a problem solved typically, or how should one react in various cases (see Lakoff 1987). Proverbs have been specially discussed from a cognitive point of view (Lakoff & Turner 1989; cf. Krikmann 1994; see also Honeck 1997), but the development of this viewpoint is still at an initial stage. As Lakoff's cognitive approach has dwelled on developing metaphor theory, it might lead to a new contact with metaphor research, which is significant also from the point of view of paremiological theory.

The third research aspect besides dissemination and type problems is the exploration of the poetic, structural and semantic similarities/differences of the proverbs of the Baltic Finns. That could provide also additional information about linguistic and cultural contacts. The main info about these aspects will be assembled in an analytic table adherring to the principles of Proverbia septentrionalia.

In conclusion, the aim of the project is to produce a systematic, statistic and synthesizing description of the common proverbs of the Baltic-Finnic peoples. In addition to the list of the common Baltic-Finnic paremic repertoire, the description provides data about the frequency of each proverb type in the usage of different Baltic-Finnic peoples and about the parallels in the usage of neighbouring peoples. It includes also estimations of the similarity/difference in Baltic-Finnic proverb repertoires based on quantitative analysis, treatments of individual types and bunches of material appearing more interesting theoretically; at least in case of larger repertoires (Finnish, Estonian, Karelian) are intended surveys about the occurrence of various stylistic features, syntactic and modal stereotypes, metaphoric and other rhetoric patterns, thematic dominants, etc., by different peoples. Hopefully such synthesis might provide additional information about linguistic and cultural contacts in the Baltic Sea region, about the similarities and differences appearing in the mentality of different peoples, and it might assist in exploring the cultural-ecological factors that could have favoured or hindered the dissemination of particular proverbs to particular cultural territories. Added will be also separate articles about the concept of proverb type and about the relations between archive materials and folkloric reality.

The analysis will be provided with a number of commented distribution maps that will illustrate the origin, history and distribution directions of proverbs, and conclusions drawn about linguistic and cultural contacts.

Consequently, the ultimate output of the project are the two follow-up volumes of Proverbia septentrionalia and a database on CD-ROM, plus an edition of substantial articles and summaries on the problems referred to above.

Both sides of the Gulf of Finland are living in the IT era and computers make technical editing of manuscripts comparatively easy, they enable operative quantitative analyses, the search and comparison of the geographical distribution of proverb types or other phenomena, produce dissemination maps, analyse texts according to stylistic, structural, content or other features.

To conclude, we would like to recall that the Baltic-Finnic project was intended as the first stage of the North European megaproject, and that Kuusi's initiative has apparently stimulated paremiological activities during the recent decades not only in Finland and Estonia, but indirectly in Latvia and Lithuania too (see Kokare 1967, 1980, 1988, and especially Grigas 1987). The international layer in those works has been incorporated into the global databank of Kuusi and Lauhakangas, but let's hope that it will find its place also in the context of the North European project. But this takes us too far into the future.

We deeply regret that we could not manage to present our work in spe as a gift to our great colleague and teacher while he was still among us. Matti Kuusi has erected himself a monument aere perennius during his lifetime. Perhaps our work may serve as a few additional lines to its epitaph?

 

Note

* Matti Kuusi's usual pseudonym was M6 which is a play of words: Finnish kuusi = 'spruce' but also 'six'.

 

References

 

Grigas, Kazys 1987: Patarliu paraleles. Vilnius.

Grigas, Kazys 1996: "Problems of the Type in the Comparative Study of Proverbs." - Journal of the Baltic Institute of Folklore. Vol. 1, no. 1. Tartu.

Grzybek, Peter & Chlosta, Christoph 1993: "Grundlagen der empirischen Sprichwortforschung." - Proverbium. Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 10 (1993).

Hakamies, Pekka 1986: Venäläisten sananparsien vaikutus karjalaiseen ja suomalaiseen sananparsistoon. Mänttä.

Hiiemäe, Mall & Krikmann, Arvo 1992: "On Stability and Variation on Type and Genre Level." In: Folklore Processed. In Honour of Lauri Honko on his 60th Birthday 6th March 1992. Studia Fennica I. Ed. Reimund Kvideland. Helsinki.

Honeck, Richard P. 1997: A Proverb in Mind. The Cognitive Science of Proverbial Wit and Wisdom. Mahwah.

Kokare, Elza 1967: Divu tautu dzíves gudríba. Ríga.

Kokare, Elza 1980: Latviesu un lietuviesu sakámvárdu paraléles. Ríga.

Kokare, Elza 1988: Latviesu un vácu sakámvárdu paraléles. Ríga.

Krikmann, Arvo 1974a: On Denotative Indefiniteness of Proverbs. Preprint KKI-1. Tallinn.

Krikmann, Arvo 1974b: Some Additional Aspects of Semantic Indefiniteness of Proverbs. Preprint KKI-2. Tallinn.

Krikmann, Arvo 1974c: "Some Difficulties Arising at Semantic Classifying of Proverbs." - Proverbium 23 (1974). Helsinki.

Krikmann, Arvo 1984: "1001 Frage zur logischen Struktur der Sprichwörter". - Kodikas/Code, Ars Semeiotica 7 (1984).

Krikmann, Arvo 1985: Some Statistics on Baltic-Finnic Proverbs. Preprint KKI-36. Tallinn.

Krikmann, Arvo 1986: Paremiologicheskie eksperimenty G. L. Permyakova. Preprint KKI-40. Tallinn.

Krikmann, Arvo 1994: "The Great Chain Metaphor: an Open Sesame for Proverb Semantics?" - Proverbium. Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 11 (1994).

Krikmann, Arvo & Sarv, Ingrid 1996: "The Tartu Research Group of Paremiology." - Proverbium. Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 13 (1996).

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