Theorizing Latvian Lives: The Quest for Identity

Abstract

This article examines the nature of contemporary Latvian life stories. These accounts of the Soviet invasion and its long aftermath constitute a hybrid genre which unites personal and collective experience. They are intended by their authors to provide a literal representation ofthe past but in the process ofacquiring coherence they come to act as potent carriers of literary and cultural meanings, which confirm personal identity and national loyalties. The authors are engaged in a quest for meaning in often disrupted and chaotic lives. The common structure of the stories which result from this quest reflects large-scale historical events such as the post-war deportations ofthe Balts, as well as the incorporation of literary and folkloric paradigms. Life stories form the core of this article. Their central position was dictated by the insistence of my informants who transformed a modest research project on neurasthenia into one which addressed fundamental problems of violence and destiny.1 My research was carried out between 1992 and 1993 when the euphoria of independence united Latvians in a common cause. It seemed as though floodgates to the past had burst open. Wherever I turned I encountered stories of the past so powerful and compelling that it was difficult to know whether they were pursuing me or I them. Each spoke of an individual life and yet rested on a common structure. My argument in this article is that the similarities between these life histories derive both from Latvian history and from membership of a symbolic and textual community. The collective nature of these narratives derives from several sources. Undeniably, narratives reflect similar experiences. However, in so far as they claim testimonial status, these stories assume a responsibility for representing Latvian destiny generally Thus individuals frame their accounts as typical of other Latvian lives. Since 1990 extensive publication of the lives of deportees and prisoners has unwittingly provided literary models of story-telling. Finally, but not least, stories and histories familiar from childhood listenings and readings are borrowed to create coherence. Such borrowings have historical precedents. The National Awakening of the 1860s had as one of its goals the rehabilitation of Latvian peasant identity and Latvian literature was central to this project. Whereas literature had earlier been a distinguishing feature of the Baltic Germans, the pastoral literature of the second half of the nineteenth century rehabilitated and ennobled the Latvian peasant. The collection and publication of folk songs or dainas begun in the 1870s by Krisjans Barons consolidated national identity.2 Their classification according to the life