though with some exceptions. The author recognizes certain desirable traits in the newcomers. For instance, he urges Lithuanian women to learn industriousness and other useful virtues from the German women. In the general picture portrayed by the poem it is evident that with the aging and passing of the exponents of the old patriarchal culture the Lithuanian village with its traditions is sinking in the maelstrom of immigrant culture. Style The Seasons does not have any single, simple plot, with characters described in detail. The narrative of the poem is often interrupted by asides, didactic passages and lyrical reflections. The characters are sketchy; they are simply good or simply bad, with few nuances. Donelaitis is not giving too detailed description of objects or persons. He shows them in the dynamic of life, acting and speaking, even larger than life. The poet, moreover, knows the psychology of peasant and serf. To this end the poet makes ingenious use of synecdoche. He also employs hyperbole, exaggerating tempo of action, distances, and results to the point of demolishing the bounds of reality and creating a new artistic world. Donelaitis has nature operating in terms which only a villager’s associations could attribute to it. The picturesque vocabulary of Donelaitis is akin to folklore. He never waters down a phrase, nor does he euphemize, but is able to recreate in words the substantiality of the world and the speech of the rustics he portrays. His diction is crisp and fresh, and - because of its authenticity - simple and dignified. On the other hand, the language is full of unique metaphors, personifications, analogies, and hyperbolas which make it highly poetical. It is in quantitative dactylic hexameters as often used for Latin and Ancient Greek poetry, but due to the nature of the Lithuanian language it has far fewer dactyls than in Virgil or Homer, and in more than half of the lines the only dactylic foot is the 5th. Literary context This poem of Donelaitis did not differ in literary form from fables, poems, and idylls then in vogue in Germany and Europe in general, nor did it depart from the fashion of writing in imitation of the ancient Greek and Roman poets. The Seasons, moreover, followed the literary tendency of the day to portray not cities and aristocrats but rather the natural setting of the village and its inhabitants (for example James Thomson, Albrecht