Poetry
Gadu gredzeni
Not translated into English
Vizma Belševica · 1969
Synopsis
The poet's fourth collection brings together many poems on Latvian history and closes with Indriķa Latvieša piezīmes uz Livonijas hronikas malām, Henry the Latvian's notes in the margins of the chronicle of Livonia. In trochaic quatrains preceded by extracts from the tenth chapter of the chronicle, the German crusade echoes the condition of the subject nations of the Soviet Union; Gunars Saliņš reads in it a guilty chronicler, a patriot who condemns his own people, and Nora Ikstena a meditation on truth, power and the freedom of the artist.
Context
Published in Riga in 1969, the book caused a scandal in the political circles of Soviet Latvia. Mirdza Ķempe attacked it on 20 June 1969 in a long article in Cīņa, where she reproached the poet with sowing double meanings in ancient history, and the chronicler's poem earned its author, two years later, a ban on publishing. Gunars Saliņš devoted a study to it in the spring of 1970 in the journal Lituanus, and The Baltic Times recalled the censorship of the poem in 2005.
Who it is for
Poems that are often historical, the last of which is better read with the chronicle of Henry of Livonia in mind.
Prizes and reception
Included in the Latvian Cultural Canon, the collection that earned its author several years of enforced silence.