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RUDOLFS BLAUMANIS – LATVIA’S SOCIO-CULTURAL DISCOURSE
Abstract
R?dolfs Blaumanis’ personality as well as literary works created by him lay a firm foundation for the Latvian classical literature. Writer’s views and texts reflect the rural and urban environment of the end of the 19th c. and the beginning of the 20th century, focusing on the juxtaposition of townspeople and countrymen, the patriarchal and industrial life rhythms, addressing family and marriage problems, as well as exploring the relationships between the Latvians, Baltic Germans, Russians, and Jews. Folklore is an essential segment of R. Blaumanis’ creative work. He widely employs testimonies of folklore and ethnography with the aim of bringing the texts nearer to Latvian readers, however, in his opinion folklore is a “lower” genre, and he has parodied folklore texts many times. R. Blaumanis’ nationalism (and understanding of folklore) corresponds to what could be actually seen in reality of Latvian rural districts in the 2-nd half of the 19th century, but the assessment is given from the position of an educated townsman whose views have developed in the space of the Russian language and culture as well as during his work as a journalist. Regardless of the ideological background of the epoch, R. Blaumanis is a favorite writer, “our own” for all categories of readers, including children and young people. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, his poetry (intimate emotional experience, contemplation of nature and socium, satire and irony) was popular among people. Some pieces of R. Blaumanis’ poetry received musicians’ attention and became texts of songs, other poems became folklore and transformed into popular songs.Text socialization is another essential section of the complex research on R. Blaumanis’ creative work. Through cinema and theatre performances, the code of Latvian identity embodied in works by R. Blaumanis brings into focus the discussion on the issues tackled by the author and vital when filming and staging his works.
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