Anšlavs Eglītis

Anšlavs Eglītis.

Postage stamp for the 100th birthday of Anšlavs Eglītis (2006)

Anšlavs Eglītis (born October 14, 1906 in Riga , †  March 4, 1993 in Los Angeles ) was a Latvian writer.

Life

Origin and youth

The father of Anšlavs Eglītis was the writer Viktors Eglītis , his mother the teacher and translator Marija Eglīte . Eglītis first attended school in Riga. During this time he spent most of the summer in Cesvaine with his mother's relatives. When German troops advanced into the Baltic Governments during World War I , the Russian authorities evacuated parts of the Latvian population, including the Eglītis family, who ended up in a village near Moscow in 1915. The father worked there at the school as a teacher. Through his father, Anšlavs Eglītis became familiar with the heroes of Greek legends such as Odysseus , Orpheus and the Argonauts , as well as with Latvian mythological figures such as Kurbads and Niederīšu Vidvuds. From 1917 to 1918 the family lived in Sormowo near Nizhny Novgorod on the banks of the Volga .

In 1918 the family returned to Latvia and lived in Alūksne for some time . In 1919 she moved to Riga and lived in Valdemāra iela 23. Anšlavs Eglītis attended the 2nd high school (2nd Vidusskola) and was an art student with Valdemārs Tone (1892-1958). In 1923 he fell ill with tuberculosis and was sent to Lausanne on Lake Geneva . He spent a year there and discovered his love for the mountains.

Literary and artistic beginnings

On September 19, 1926, his first poem Lords was published in the magazine Brīvā Zeme . The writer Edvarts Virza (1883-1940) introduced Anšlavs Eglītis Eriks Ādamsons . Through the Adamsons he became acquainted with English literature and with the literatures of other European countries. Adamsons and Eglītis often discussed literature. From 1930 to 1935 Eglītis attended the Latvian Art Academy ( Latvijas Mākslas Akadēmija ). He then worked for three years as a drawing teacher at a private girls' high school (generally called Beķeres ģimnāzijs after the headmistress Marija Rogule-Beķere ). During this time he traveled extensively in Europe and wrote for various newspapers.

In 1936 the volume of short stories Maestro was published . From 1938 he worked for the magazine Jaunākās Ziņas . In 1939 his novel Līgavu mednieki was published as a serial in the magazine Atpūta , and in 1940 in book form. In 1940 and 1941 he worked for the magazine Atpūta . In 1941 he married the painter and writer Veronika Janelsiņa . From then on she designed almost all of Eglītis' books, he illustrated only a few himself. During the German occupation he published the story Ģīmetne and the novel Homo Novus , which was published in 1943/1944 as a serial in the magazine Tēvija . His play Kosma konfirmācija was played at the Daile Theater , and the Latvian National Theater , then called Rīgas dramatiskais teātris (Riga Drama Theater), performed Par purna tiesu .

Exile in Germany

In October 1944, Anšlavs Eglītis and Veronika Janelsiņa fled the advancing Red Army to Courland and from there to Berlin . He and his wife stayed with friends at Uhlandstrasse 16 and found work for the Latvian exile newspaper Latvju balss (Latvia's voice). Meanwhile, his wife illustrated a German book of fairy tales. On February 3, 1945, her home was destroyed by a bomb. Eglītis and his wife then moved to Tailfingen in Baden-Württemberg. His destination was actually Switzerland, which he knew from his long stay as a youth in the lung sanatorium. But the young couple liked it so much in Tailfingen that they stayed there for five years. Eglītis often met with friends and acquaintances who lived in a refugee camp in Esslingen am Neckar . At that time he wrote Teoduls Supersakso ( short stories); his novel Homo Novus was published in 1946 as an independent book and in the same year in Stuttgart Kazanovas mētelis (Casanova's coat): four novellas connected by a framework and linked by their leitmotifs . One episode, namely Casanova's legendary journey to Jelgava , was spun off by Eglītis in the play of the same name, Kazanovas mētelis . In 1948 Eglītis published the novel Čingishana gals ( Genghis Khan's End ), the first to be translated into German.

Exile in the USA

In 1950 Eglītis and his wife had to move to a camp for displaced persons in Pfullingen . In June of the same year they first moved to Hanover. In 1952 Eglītis and his wife emigrated to the USA by cargo ship. First they lived a few weeks in New York district of Brooklyn , then they moved to Salem , Oregon. Valdemars Karkliņš , Zinaīda Lazda and Aīda Niedra also lived there at that time . He processed life in Oregon in the novel Cilvēks no Mēness . He earned his living as a painter and transport worker, at times he hired himself as a laborer.

For health reasons, Eglītis moved to warm, dry California, in the Pacific Palisades district of Los Angeles . Gradually he was able to make a living from his main occupations: from literary work and from journalism. He became a member of the Hollywood Press Corps. He described his experiences in the story Trīsdesmit trešā eglīte . Eglītis' impressions of Hollywood are reflected in the novels Lielais mēmais and Ekrāns un skatuve (1992). During the emigration Eglītis wrote about 50 works.

From 1952 he wrote his novels for the magazine Laiks , whose editor was Helmārs Rudzītis. They were later published as books. In 1963 he made two tours of the USA and Canada with a group of actors and performed the play Cilvēks grib spēlēt . Among the actors were Ansis Tipāns and Maija Cukura. In the 1980s Eglītis published no more novels. However, he did not stop writing while his health allowed it.

Anšlavs Eglītis saw how his hope was fulfilled in 1990/1991: the liberation of his fatherland from the Soviet yoke. But his illnesses and his age no longer allowed him to settle back home. So after his death, his ashes were scattered in the Santa Monica Mountains .

plant

Eglītis wrote for a wide audience. Because he initially published his novels as serial novels, they are written in such a way that readers will want to buy the next issue of the newspaper. Eglītis did not join any literary movement. Sometimes humorously ironic, sometimes biting and always as an attentive observer, he sets out in his early works - e. B. in the novel Līgavu mednieki (The Bride Hunters) published in 1940 - social developments in his country open, for example the increasing tendency with increasing prosperity in the 1930s, the traditional delimitation of classes according to class and education through the “modern” distinction according to income and business ability to replace.

In the late 1930s / early 1940s, theaters in Riga lacked contemporary plays. Jānis Roze, the director of the Latvian National Theater, induced Eglītis to write a play without further ado. So within a week he rewrote one of his stories, Profesora Eipura orķestri , into a play. But Roze was dissatisfied with the result, so the play was instead performed under the title Kosma konfirmācija at the Daile Theater.

"No tā laika tā ir mana pārlieciba, ka labi aktieri un krietns režisors var nospēlēt teicamu komēdiju arī no telefona grāmatas."

(Since then I have been convinced that good actors and a competent director can play an excellent comedy from a telephone directory.)

Since his passions were chess, painting and mountaineering, Eglītis wrote a lot about them too. Art is thematized in Homo Novus , in Cilvēks no Mēness about the artists Ģedimins Kūrs and Bierants and in Galma gleznotājs , a play about Leonardo da Vinci and his students. Playing in the mountains: Divi kāpieni (1961), Bezkaunīgie veči and Adžurdžonga . Adžurdžonga (published in 1950) is set in Tibet and in the mountainous Golog , which is inhabited by Tibetans and whose young ruler Adžurdžonga gives the book its name. It is considered the "first adventure novel in Latvian literature" in which Eglītis "also makes the psychological processes in his heroes visible through a meticulous description of external events".

Eglītis keeps addressing Latvia , the fate of the Latvian legionaries , for example in Seržants Klaips , and the life of his compatriots who fled into exile due to the Sovietization of their homeland, for example in Sīkstā dzīvība (1950). His novel Laimīgie (1952) shows autobiographical features and deals with the restlessness and impatience of the Latvian Displaced Persons (DPs) in Germany. “You want to emigrate to America, Australia or Canada. Getting the travel documents and the ship ticket as quickly as possible is the only thought that fills the residents of the Eßlingen refugee camp - ironically called "Die Glücklichen" by the author. "

He dealt with the time of the Russian occupation in 1976 in the novel Piecas dienas .

His works move between different literary genres, between narration , novella and sketch . His later works mostly deal with subjects from life in the USA. Eglītis sometimes mixes real people and literary figures in his works: the story Izsalkuša zēna pavārgrāmata is about a boy named Arno who collects the most delicious recipes. This boy was a neighbor of Eglītis.

Works (selection)

Novellas and short stories

• Maestro (1936)
• Uguns pilsēta (1946)
• Kazanovas metelis (1946)
• Sīkstā dzīvība (1950)
• Pēdējais mohikāns (1969)
• Pasmaidot (1970)
• Kas izpostīja latvisko stūrīti (1977)
• Mana banka (1982)

Novels

• Līgavu mednieki (1940)
• Homo Novus (1946)
  • German: Homo Novus . Weidle Verlag, Bonn 2006. ISBN 3-931135-90-X .
• Čingishana gals (1948)
  • German: Genghis Khan's end . Harry v. Hofmann Verlag, Hamburg-Hamm 1968. ISBN 3-7636-3258-1 .
• G̦īmetne (1949)
• Adžurdžonga (1950)
• Laimīgie (1952)
• Cilvēks no mēness (1954)
• Es nebiju varonis (1955)
• Misters sorrijs (1956)
• Omartija Kundze (1958)
• Ilze (1959)
• Malahīta dievs (1961)
• Vai te var dabūt alu (1961)
• Bezkaunīgie veči (1968)
• Es nepievienojos (1971)
• Piecas dienas (1976)

trilogy

• Nav tak dzimtene (1966)
• Cilvēks mežā (1970)
• Vai zini zemi, citronas kur zied? (1980)

Poems

• Give me another heaven Poems . Translated from Latvian by Elfriede Eckardt-Skalberg, Rosemarie Steiner and Gerd Steiner. Harry v. Hofmann Verlag, Hamburg-Hamm 1964.

literature

• Berthold Forssman: Epilogue to Anšlavs Eglītis: Homo novus. An artist novel from Riga in the thirties . Weidle, Bonn 2006, pp. 522-525.
• Viktors Hausmanis: Latviešu rakstinieku portreti - trimdas rakstnieki , 1994, pp. 27-49.
• Anšlavs Eglītis: Anšlavs Eglītis - Pretskatā un profilā , 1996.
• Anita Rožkalne: Latviešu rakstniecība biogrāfijās , 2003, pp. 168–169.

Footnotes

1. ^ Berthold Forssman: Epilogue to Anšlavs Eglītis: Homo novus. An artist novel from Riga in the thirties . Weidle, Bonn 2006, p. 522.
2. ^ Berthold Forssman: Epilogue to Anšlavs Eglītis: Homo novus. An artist novel from Riga in the thirties . Weidle, Bonn 2006, p. 521.
3. ↑ Anšlavs Eglītis , biography on gudrinieks.lv, accessed on December 19, 2014 (Latvian).
4. ^ Berthold Forssman: Epilogue to Anšlavs Eglītis: Homo novus. An artist novel from Riga in the thirties . Weidle, Bonn 2006, p. 523.
5. ↑ Alfred Gater: Kazanovas mētelis . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . dtv, Munich 1974. Vol. 12, p. 5210.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Berthold Forssman: Epilogue to Anšlavs Eglītis: Homo novus. An artist novel from Riga in the thirties . Weidle, Bonn 2006, p. 524.
7. ↑ Alexander Schmidt: Līgavu mednieki . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . dtv, Munich 1974. Vol. 13, pp. 5718f.
8. ↑ Alexander Schmidt: Adžuržonga <sic!>. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . dtv, Munich 1974. Vol. 3, p. 785.
9. ↑ Alexander Schmidt: Laimigie . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . dtv, Munich 1974. Vol. 13, p. 5479.