Poetry
Sarkanās puķes
Not translated into English
Aspazija · 1897
Synopsis
Emotionally charged lyrical monologues, in which a voice of Faustian and Promethean vitality speaks of the endless change of the universe and of humanity, of each person's place in that movement, and of the desire for freedom and happiness. Simple things take on a romantic brilliance there, between light, reverie and revolt, in an elevated, aphoristic style rich in images drawn from European culture.
Context
The first poetry collection by its author, the book appeared in 1897, the year of her marriage to Rainis, when her plays had already made her known. It was reissued in Saint Petersburg in 1904 by the publisher A. Gulbis, then taken up in 1966 at the head of her complete poetry, in Riga. The researcher Eva Eglāja-Kristsone sees in it the work of a woman then “brilliant, explosive”, who had not yet measured its full significance. The Valmiera theatre made a production of it, staged by Reinis Suhanovs, which follows the voice of the poems from emptiness to the conquest of its inner strength.
Who it is for
Lyric poems in an elevated, aphoristic tone. It is better to know that they carry the momentum of the New Current of the 1890s.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the collection that opened a new era in Latvian literature, and later turned into a theatre production.
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