The Blaumanis Moment: National Literature Enters the Stage of Art

Abstract

My aim in this article is to discuss the literary field in Latvia slightly before 1900. More specifically, I want to focus on the particular situation when literature written in the Latvian language ceases to be a product of didactic intention and moralizing value, and makes the crucial step in recognizing its rights to submerge into primarily aesthetic issues. It is also the moment when the personality of the author cuts through the still mostly realistic surface of literary works, making him (or her) be perceived as unmistakably present, even if this move often remains unnoticed by most contemporary and even later observers.1 The author who in my article represents this departure, which undoubtedly is part of a broader tendency of the time period, is Rūdolfs Blaumanis (1863– 1908) whose literary career roughly covers about two decades since his literary debut in 1882, most of his works being written starting in the late 1880s.2 Along with him, the movement towards representation of modernity as it was first experienced by the late 19th century’s inhabitants of the Baltic countries is visible in works of other Latvian authors, most notably Jānis Poruks and Aspazija. What in this context singles out Blaumanis is the simple fact that his texts at first glance still belong to an earlier period of literary development. In most of his plays and novellas, the location is that of familiar country