Dionizas Poska

Born 1757(?), in what is now Ŝilalé Raion; died May 12, 1830, in the village of Bardžiai, now in Ŝilalé Raion. Lithuanian poet, ethnologist, and linguist.

Poŝka studied in the Jesuit collegium in the city of Kražiai and worked in a court of law. He studied the history and ethnology of the Lithuanian people and in 1812 founded a museum of antiquities. His chief poetic work was an ode close in form to a narrative poem, The Peasant of Žemaitija and Lithuania (1886; Russian translation, 1962). Written in alexandrines, it expresses antiserfdom sentiments and glorifies peasant labor. Poŝka began the compilation of a Polish-Latin-Lithuanian dictionary and published a number of articles in Polish on the history and ethnology of Žemaitija.