Latvia has no national epic (such as Finland's Kalevala), but an equivalent is the immense body of folk poems, the dainas--handed down orally over many generations, mostly by women. The dainas were first collected, written down, and published in 1894-1915, comprising more than 35,000 type texts; this definitive collection is in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Widely sung or recited, the dainas are a cornerstone of Latvian culture, and the basis for countless works of music, literature, and art. They have also played a political role, most recently in the "singing revolution" leading to the renewed independence of the three Baltic states.
Because of the difficulty in translating the dainas, English translations have been very rare; this is the first collection in contemporary spoken English. The poems here are bilingual, for readers of English, Latvian, or both languages.
The subject matter spans all aspects of human life and of the natural world, including social relationships, rites of passage, work, oppression by foreign overlords, war, mythology, and singing. Central is the expression of a deep, intimate interaction between the human world and nature. A dominant presence is the sun, personified as a female, who is an important participant in human life, notably as a mother figure.
Stylistically the dainas are very condensed, laconic, and restrained, somewhat comparable to Japanese haiku. Multifaceted, they can be viewed as folklore, ethnography, social history, poetry. The focus here is the unique and remarkable poetic imagination.
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