What names come to your mind when you hear the words “Latvian literature”? Rainis? Aspazija? Čaks? If none of them, don’t worry. As Latvia takes the presidency of the Council of the European Union from Italy this month  there will be plenty of time to find out more about Latvian literature and culture in our rich Latvian Collections, starting with the first anthology of Latvian poetry in English translations compiled by W.K. Matthews.

The first name which comes to my mind is Imants Ziedonis. When I first read him, he sounded so original, so fresh, and so different! He had nothing in common with the dreadful socialist realism of the time. He even looked as a real poet should look! “When Imants Ziedonis appeared as a poet, it was a shock, an explosion, not only in Latvia but throughout the Soviet Union”, Andrei Voznesensky wrote.

Imants Ziedonis (photo from The Drunken boat)

It so happened that my own literary debut in 1983 is linked to his work. As aspiring young translator from Latvian into Ukrainian I translated five of his children’s tales from Krāsainās pasakas (‘Coloured  tales’; the British Library holds the first edition with the beautiful illustrations by Aija Zīle; Riga, 1973; X.990/4018) and sent them to the publishing house Molod’ (Youth) where they appeared in the debutant almanac Vitryla (‘Sails’; some issues are held in our collections under the shelfmark ZF.9.a.10156)  Some of his ‘Coloured tales’ are translated into English. Here is the Yellow tale and the Green Fairytale.

A special project about the tales in Soundclouds was made by Lesley Moore in The Netherlands: https://soundcloud.com/colourtales.

Imants Ziedonis, born in 1933 to a family of fishermen in independent Latvia, established himself as a major poetic voice in the Soviet Latvia of the 1960s. The British Library holds first editions of some of his poetry books: Sirds dinamīts (‘Heart’s Dynamite’; Rīgā, 1963; 0111302.i.1); Es ieeju sevī (‘I Enter Myself’;  Riga, 1968; X.907/9436); Kā svece deg: Dzeja, 1967-1970 (Riga, 1971; X.989/12886); Poēma par pienu (Poem about milk; Riga,1977; YA.1991.a.24311) and others. Only some of his poems have been translated into English: Selected Poems and Prose (Riga, 1980; 81/20853); Flowers of ice, translated by Barry Callaghan (Toronto, 1987; YA.1989.a.18149).

The most frequently-translated of his prose poems are Epifānijas (‘Epiphanies’; published in three books in 1971-1994). The British Library holds the first Latvian editions, as well as translations into Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian (picture below). More translations are needed, and hopefully the Latvian Presidency will lead to better promotion of great Latvian poetry worldwide.

Ziedonis is also well known as a prose writer. His best-known prose works are Dzejnieka dienasgrāmata (‘A Poet’s Diary’, 1965; X.907/3490; it was translated into Russian in 1968 as Dnevnik poeta; Riga, 1968; X.907/10997), Pa putu ceļu (‘Along the Foamy Path’) and the collection of essays Garainis, kas veicina vārīšanos (‘Steam That Promotes Boiling’; Riga, 1976; YA.1991.a.24346).

In the 1970s Ziedonis started to collect rich Latvian folklore, especially folk songs and tales, and created other tales himself. Besides the already mentioned ‘Coloured Tales’ he published:  Lāču pasaka (‘Tales of Bears’, 1976); Blēņas un pasakas (‘Twaddle and Tales’, 1980) and others. It is to be hoped that one day we will fill the gaps in our collections, which lack a lot of books for children from Central and Eastern Europe.

During perestroika Ziedonis joined the struggle for the renewal of Latvian independence. He was an active member of the Atmoda movement  and was elected to the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia in 1990. His funeral in 2013 was organised by a special state committee.

The poet lives on in his poetry. The charitable foundation Viegli which bears his name released two albums of songs with words by Ziedonis. You can hear some of them here.

As snow falls in many parts of the world, here is the beginning of “The White Fairy Tale” in   Barry Callaghan’s translation:

Virgin snow fell last night. Now the world is white. So white it’s a whiteout. The white hen laid a white egg, losing it in the snow. The white rooster’s white song flew under the eaves and froze, a hanging icicle. The white squirrel had white little squirrels who leapt onto white branches, and the squirrel couldn’t find them any more. A blizzard of trees – a white tree lost in a white day in the woods.
A twirl of white chimney smoke, and even ink in the bottle is white – I don’t know whether you’ll be able to read what I’ve written….

                                              Illustration for the White Fairy tale by Aija Zīle.

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian Studies

References

Imants Ziedonis : bibliogrāfija, bibliogrāfiju veidoja Māra Izvestnija un Agra Turlaja. Rīga, 2013;   ZF.9.a.10156

All birds know this: selected contemporary Latvian poetry, compiled by Kristine Sadovska ; edited by Astrīde Ivaska, Māra Rūmniece. Rīga, 2001; YD.2006.a.1884

Contemporary Latvian poetry, edited by Inara Cedrins. Iowa City, c1984. YA.1988.a.11733

A century of Latvian poetry: an anthology, compiled and translated by W. K. Matthews. London, [1958]. 11589.b.23

W. K.Matthews, The Tricolour Sun: Latvian lyrics in English versions, an essay on Latvian poetry and critical commentaries. Cambridge, 1936. W29/3717.

Anglophilia in Spain is not the mirror image of Hispanophilia in Britain. The first is much older – in bibliographical terms – than the second.  One indication is the history of translations: Cervantes was first translated into English in 1612 and Shakespeare into Spanish (Romeo) in 1780.

For Hispanophilia in Britain, a resource is R. C. Alston, A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800, vol. 12, pt 2 (Ilkley, 1987;  British Library X.985/532.); partly supplemented by Foreign-language printing in London, 1500-1900 (Boston Spa, 2002; 2708.h.1059).

For Anglophilia in Spain the resource is Palau, Manual del librero hispanoamericano, Index IV, pp. 144-45, ‘Lingüística inglesa’. (RAR 090.98)

Alston and Palau show that the first Spanish-English grammar-phrase books and dictionaries were published in England, beginning with an anonymous Spanish Grammar in 1554.  They were usually written by exiles.  In Spain, the first books on English date from 1769.

Why? The status of English was low. It did not have an international role. No Spanish diplomat needed English, as it was not a transferable skill. Gondomar was ambassador to court of James I, and he bought some English books, but he and James conversed in French and got on mightily: they called themselves “Les deux Iacques”.

Spanish interest in English seems to date from the nineteenth century, presumably as an indication of growing British political and economic power.

One piece of evidence on this occasion is this reader for Spaniards.

Antonio Bergnes de Las Casas, Crestomatía inglesa, ó sea selectas de los escritores mas eminentes de la Gran Bretaña, así en prosa como en verso ...,  2nd edn (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipografico a cargo de don Juan Oliveres, [1846]).  RB.23.b.4208.

Antonio Bergnes de Las Casas (1801-1879) was a remarkable man: self-taught, he was the founder of Greek studies at the new University of Barcelona (refounded in 1837), and ran one of the first circulating libraries in the country.  His Quaker and Liberal views made him something of an outsider. As a publisher, he produced essentially utilitarian books on history, practical manuals (mostly translations), grammars and readers in Latin and Greek, and translations from Sir Walter Scott, Goldsmith and Gibbon.  

This book (first edition 1840) is a reader designed to take the Spanish student from the rudiments to Shakespeare in 259 pages. The first passages are specially written for teaching purposes and are comprehensively glossed in Spanish. The later texts are taken from works of literature chiefly of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and are lightly annotated in English. This second edition also includes a section on commercial correspondence.

                                               The first exercise in Bergnes’ Crestomatía inglesa.

The corpus of English literature here is formidable.  Items 1-53 are not signed.  Followed by prose selections: Dr Percival, Dr Benjamin Franklin, Various tales (3),  Dodsley 6, Dr Enfield 2, Robertson 2, Mackenzie 2, The Spectator 2, Watts, Gibbon, Hervey, The Correspondents, Sterne, Rambler, Edinburgh Review, Washington Irving, Walter Scott (incl. Scotticisms in The Antiquary), [J. F.] Cooper, Marryat, Bulwer [Lytton], Miss Edgeworth, Dickens, Teodore Hook; next The Beauties of English Poetry: Colley Cibber, Goldsmith 3, Thomson 2 (The Pleasures of retirement), Shakespeare 3 (Hamlet’s Soliloquy; Macbeth’s Vision), Pope 4 (1 Iliad), Cunningham 2, Addison 4, H. More, Gray 2, Cowper, Scott 4, Logan, Shenstone, Moore, Opie, Lowth, Horne, Collins 2, Ledyard, Burns, Charlotte Smith 3, Rogers, Langhorne, Dryden 2, Parnell, Milton 2, Bryon, Campbell.

                                                 By page 222 Bergnes’ students are tackling poetry.

English studies were not a feature of mainstream Spanish education until the 1970s.  This book is therefore a landmark in the history of the study of English, as well as a cross section of  the literary canon of the mid-19th century.

Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies


References:

J. A. Clua Serena, ‘Bergnes de las Casas, helenista del sexenio liberal español: semblanza intelectual’, Estudios Clásicos, 92 (1987), 59-74.
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