The Foundational Integrity of Imants Ziedonis

“In other words, Ziedonis, knowingly or not, recognized that for a state to be free, its people must recognize a shared tradition and must be themselves free to build upon it.”

Introduction

Imants Ziedonis, the famed Latvian writer, was decorated as the National Poet of Soviet Latvia in 1977. This would seem to indicate Ziedonis’ complicity with Soviet ideals, or at least his disregard for the critical sentiment emanating from a select bastion in his home state. It might imply his acceptance of the status quo, so long as the trajectory of his career was preserved. Such a cursory take, however, is far from reality. Ziedonis, as a writer and as a man, coupled a zen-like introspective prowess with an unwavering commitment to his nation and to his means of expression. Through his uncompromising approach in the face of censorial authoritarianism, he provided an example of pride and self-knowledge from which his fellow Latvians and the world could learn.

Ziedonis, the Figure

Born in 1933, Ziedonis was—and remains—a Latvian poetic force. His first major publications were poetry collections and were written between 1961 and 1968. He published four, among them Motocikls (Motorcycle) and Es ieeju sevī (I Enter Myself), both works which dealt variably in both the tactile and the allegorical. If Motocikls presented the tactile, measurable world as experienced by a self to which that world arrived (at the speed of a motorcycle, the world perceived), Es ieeju sevī took the world and internalized it, turning experience inward. Ziedonis went on to publish more poetry collections, prose memoirs, and children’s fables. These included “Colorful Tales” (1973), for which he was awarded both the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Children’s Literature, and the Epifānijas (Epiphanies, 1971, 1974, 1994), a triptych of metaphysical, lyrical, genreless prose actualized as 1-3-page bursts of beauty; his work encouraged self-efficacy and introspection and reflected the man’s own scrutinizing and direct nature. His works, as the Latvian-American writer Rita Laima remarks in her memoir, Skylarks and Rebels, surrounding her move to and experiences in Soviet Latvia in the 1980’s, granted Ziedonis “Rockstar status” in Latvia.

Yet Ziedonis, who died in 2013, is perhaps as well-known and celebrated in Latvia for his writing—which is still widely quoted and set to music—as he is for his dedication to the Latvian independence movement during the final decades of Soviet occupation. The historian Aldis Purs notes in his book, Baltic Facades: Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia Since 1945, that “Ziedonis managed to be chairman of the Soviet Latvian Writers’ Union [and] also…a veiled opponent of Soviet rule.”