Do you know that one of the most impressive poems of Gunaras Salinas is “An Adventure in Riga”? / Script

Today, 12:14 p.m

Authors:
Kārlis Verdins (Writer)

Saliņš is one of many Latvian authors in exile who wrote about occupied Latvia, but in poetry he is one of the few who does not fall into sentimental admiration and aestheticized nostalgia, aware that he will most likely have to pay for his freedom as a poet with disfavor from the Soviet cultural institutions.

The culmination of the book “Encounter” is the two-part poem “An Adventure in Riga / A Strange Incident with a Monument”, in the second part of which the female figure placed on top of the Freedom Monument becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy who soon mysteriously disappears.

The poem is silent about the circumstances of this child’s conception, we can only guess that they might have something to do with the sensual meeting of the exiled poet and the Latvian poetess on the roofs of Riga in the first part of the poem, when the scarred body of the Latvian woman is associated with the image of Freedom in the monument.

At the end of the poem, we hear a rumor that the boy has fallen in love with the female poetess. Saliņš’s vision is quite clear: the future of the new, independent Latvia will be born from the free spirit of exile and the mutilated, yet still vital body of the homeland.

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