Poetry
Dziesmiņas, latviešu valodai pārtulkotas
Not translated into English
Juris Alunāns · 1856
Synopsis
A collection of European poems given in Latvian: translations, imitations and adaptations, where the border with personal creation remains blurred. Horace stands alongside German poetry, which supplies a good part of it; Heine's Lorelei becomes Laura, and the Rhine the Daugava. The whole aims to show that Latvian can carry the great poetry of Europe and modernise through contact with it.
Context
The volume appeared in 1856. At first neglected, it was later celebrated as a milestone of the national awakening. Reviewing the book the same year, Wilhelm Brasche used the expression Young Latvia in public for the first time, and the name stuck to the movement that formed around Juris Alunāns and his friends. Two years later, the translator argued that Latvian belongs among the languages of the cultivated nations, against those who said it was doomed to disappear. A facsimile edition, accompanied by the German texts, appeared in Riga in 1981.
Who it is for
A collection of translated and adapted verse, whose interest lies in the whole rather than in each piece. It is better to know that it aims to prove the literary worth of Latvian.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by a scholarly volume of the University of Latvia as the first book of translated poetry of high artistic value in Latvian literature.
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