Latvian Literary Histories from 1812 to 1940: Popular Enlightenment, Romantic Nationalism, and Political Independence

After the publication of the first Latvian-language texts in the sixteenth century, the literary process long continued to develop without the involvement of native speakers. (Our principal sources in this chapter are Zimmermann (1812), Dı̄rikṃis (1860), Plūdons (1908–1909), Upı̄ts (1911), Zeiferts (1922–1925), Bērzinṃš (1935–1937)) The unfavorable political conditions that determined a strictly divided class society ruled out the potential input of ethnic Latvians, who belonged to the lower social classes. Their participation in intellectual life on equal terms was impossible, even if some native manuscript texts survive from the eighteenth century. Historical conditions thus from the very onset determined the strong imprint of politics on the use of written Latvian. The texts created by Baltic German pastors, on the one hand, served the purpose of providing texts for religious functions, such as sermons. On the other hand, written Latvian texts published by humanists and literati between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries mirror European trends, closely following German models in terms of topic and literary genre.