Lokalinių mitų gyvybingumo atvejis: Druskininkų "kurortinė" pradžia XVIII a

ENThe article dwells on three nineteenth and twentieth century myths about Druskininkai as a spa. The first myth (the local peasant family of Suraučiai, Surowiec in Polish, healers and producers of salt) became established in Teodoras Narbutas’ texts, but the sources showed it was erroneous. It transpired that the family of Suraučius from Druskininkai (Narbutas Lithuanised the surname of the Slavic origin by turning it into Sūrutis) practised healing with water from local springs only after Karl von Schönvogel, a doctor of German descent, and his colleagues carried out an exhaustive analysis of the mineral springs in 1796. The second myth (analysis of the mineral springs in 1789/90) evolved when Narbutas’s information on the analysis of the mineral springs in Druskininkai was later exaggerated and modified by adding the ‘royal’ element to it: a visit to the above-mentioned village by the king’s personal doctor or the king himself, thus showing that as early as that even the king had paid attention to this location. The third myth (Druskininkai being declared a spa on 20 June 1794) appeared in reference literature of the second half of the twentieth century and, with the approaching ‘anniversary’ of the spa, was ‘adjusted’ by the writer Romas Sadauskas by employing the strategy of a ‘pseudo-event’: (a) resorting to the opinions of historians, (b) determining a ‘premature’ date, 20 June (prior to the appearance of the sources in which it will be mentioned), and (c) discovery of a quasi-source – Stanisław August Poniatowski’s memoir containing the accurate quotation in which Druskininkai is declared a spa. Research shows that such a source does not exist, and that 20 June 1794 is a fictitious date.A consistent sequence of these pseudo-dates and events – local healers (Sūraučius) → analysis of mineral springs (1789/90) → the status of a spa (the ruler’s decree of 1794) – points to the hidden public desire to have ‘an old’ (Lithuanian) spa that also masked political attitudes: a spa of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania versus a resort of the Russian Empire.