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The publications that Algirdas Julius Greimas (1917–1992) produced from 1943 to 1992 provide a record of his ideas, opinions, and scholarly methodologies. Yet we have much less information and understanding of his early years. This article draws from archival documents, correspondence, published sources, and personal interviews with Greimas and others to describe the formative experiences inside and outside the classroom which had the greatest impact on fashioning his subsequent life of ideas.The essay describes the linguistic and cultural context in which Greimas grew up, indicates the intellectual traditions in which he was trained, and highlights the individuals, methods, authors, and books of his youth which proved particularly significant for him. A narrative relates his education in Lithuania, describes his university studies in 1930s France, and concludes at a time when much of Europe was engulfed in World War II. A discussion then synthesizes the experiences recounted and explores the ways in which they informed the ensuing evolution of his outlook, ideas, and career.Four traditions played a leading role in shaping Greimas’ s development. Lithuania fashioned his character and identity, afforded him a sound humanistic education, inculcated in him traditional European folklore and a poetical spirit, and instilled in him the commitment to help build the nation’s culture and society. The Slavic heritage provided him metaphysical perspectives, exemplified a holistic approach to inquiry, and developed his revolutionary spirit. Germanic cultures furnished him historical perspectives and methodologies, engaged him in fundamental philosophical inquiry, and provided him a method and an ethic for research on language. France inspired in him a second identity, cultivated in him classical and Enlightenment ideals, and moved him with pure poetry. The various traditions nurtured in Greimas productive tensions between fidelity and openness, historicity and universality, and between reason, affect, and sensuality.

As of his undergraduate days in Grenoble if not before, and up to 1992, Greimas maintained an ample and regular correspondence, notably with family, friends, collaborators, and students. In 1990, he told a compatriot that he mailed about thirty letters a week (Greimas, letter to Aleksandra Kašuba, 4 Sept. 1990, in Greimas and Kašuba (2008: 183)) – and he undoubtedly received as many. A number of correspondents saved his missives, sometimes along with a draft or carbon copy of their letters to him. Public and private collections hold a small portion of these exchanges, and a number of individuals have published a selection of his correspondence. Unfortunately, for his part, Greimas later burned most of the letters in French that he had received, as well as communications from family members. As he explained to Louis-Jean Calvet around 1988, “I was in the process of burning my correspondence. It’s the end of bringing everything to an end.” (Greimas, interviewed by Louis-Jean Calvet, ca. 1988, two cassette tapes.) On the other hand, Greimas did keep certain letters of intellectual or historical interest that he received from Lithuanians. He even edited the letters that the poet Henrikas Radauskas had sent him, which came out as an article in 1993 (see Greimas (1993) in the bibliography), and agreed with Aleksandra Kašuba to save the entirety of their epistolary exchanges for publication in book form, a project realized in 2008. Below, the reader will find a tiny sample of letters that Greimas sent colleagues.

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