literatūras mēnešraksts

Karogs

September 2000 • Summary

Perhaps, the most prominent feature of this issue is the publications of and about the Latvian writers whose age is about forty. Jānis Vēveris (1960) is among the most skillful Latvian fiction writers and we read here fragments of his forthcoming novel “Parent Language”. This will be the second novel of the writer whose works are marked with high sensitivity, precisely created atmosphere, and rich language which strain out and above the existenialist and postmodernist fiction patterns that are the framework of much of his work. Pēters Brūveris (1957), the author of five volumes of poetry and a profilic translator, offers his latest poems. As Vēveris in fiction, Brūveris is the master of poetic forms, especially of rigidly traditional rhymes and metres, which, in Brūveris’s case, work - because of his mastery of language which borders on magic.

Two essays from the afore-mentioned generation: Guntis Berelis (1961), the most influental contemporary Latvian critic and a brilliant short-fiction writer, has written an essay about the works of Gundega Repše (1960), the most popular among our post-modern novelists, whose novel The Apocripha of Shadows was translated and well-acclaimed in Germany. Mārtiņš Zelmenis (1956), the author of two books of short stories, has supplied an essay for the Karogs’ series “The New Latvian” on contemporary society. Another series of this year is continued: marking 60 years of Karogs, the scholar Arno Jundze analyzes our issues of the 1980s, the time of debuts of the above writers, also of Amanda Aizpuriete (1956), a poet whose first novel “The Night Swimmer” is reviewed here by the poet Inguna Jansone (1963).

Also in this issue: The story “Mummy” by Erna Lēmane (1919), a Latvian playwright and short-fiction writer, living in Australia. Previously unpublished poems by Ieva Roze (1971-1991), who was the most promising poet of her generation. A new volume of her selected poems is coming out this month (Karogs Publishers).

Karogs’s former critics editor Inese Treimane reviews the collection of articles “Text and Presence” by Ausma Cimdiņa (1950), one of the most prominent Latvian literary scholars and critics, now also the main introducer of feministic theories to the Latvian public. Kristīne Augstkalne (1971) reviews “Breakfast Honey”, a novel, written in Latgalian, the language (or dialect?) of the Eastern Latvia, by Oskars Seiksts (1973) and his co-author Līga Gagaine (1971).