Poetry
Varavīksna
Not translated into English
Andrejs Eglītis · 1939
Synopsis
Published in 1939, shortly after Zelta vālodze, this collection forms with it, according to the critics of the day, the two parts of a single whole. Jānis Andrups finds in it a more restrained and truer emotion, a richer content and the sincere, unadorned voice of a poet who still sings like a bird in a garden. It includes Savā zemē, where the road to the house ends up figuring that of several Latvian generations, and the Oktāvas tumsai, where shadow and light have no impassable boundary.
Context
The volume comes out in Riga from A. Gulbis in 1939, with illustrations by Niklāvs Strunke. Ofelija Sproģere writes in Tēvijas Sargs, on 9 February 1940, that it confirms its author's gifts but calls for a broader outlook; Jānis Andrups, in Daugavas Vēstnesis of 16 March following, ranks it among the best lyrical harvests. In 1942, Ēriks Raisters again recalls the publication of the two books of 1939. The first volume of Andrejs Eglītis's writings, edited by Dzidra Vārdaune when he was past ninety, reprints them with the texts written from 1934 to 1940.
Who it is for
Short, songlike lyrical pieces, best read alongside Zelta vālodze, published the same year.
Prizes and reception
Welcomed in the spring of 1940 by a critic of Daugavas Vēstnesis, who heard in it a sincere and unaffected voice.
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