Rūdolfs Blaumanis nacionālās literatūras un modernitātes kontekstā 19. un 20. gadsimta mijā

The article aims at a conceptual positioning of the Latvian writer Rūdolfs Blaumanis's (1863-1908) literary oeuvre in the context of European modernity and the fin-de-siècle. The authors of the paper discuss previous research on Blaumanis, which has predominantly been based on detailed studies of local contexts and possible foreign influences on his literary texts, and then they sketch out a new interpretative paradigm which tackles two major issues. Firstly, in the discussion of the formation process of Blaumanis's creative personality the paper focuses on the multiethnic and multicultural milieu in which he matured as well as on his bilingualism; he started his career by writing in German, but has become one of the iconic figures of Latvian literary culture. He acquired the experience of modern life through his constant shifts between the country and the city. Blaumanis grew up in a historically contested field between several ethnicities and languages, various religious confessions, and different social classes. He approached the portrayal of the mostly rural Latvian population as an experiment in modernity which resulted in a highly self-reflective and auto-ethnographic mode of writing. Blaumanis made use of the study of ethnographic materials and the daily life of his compatriots, but self-consciously distanced himself from full immersion into the local milieu. His literary works thus provide a combination of immersion and specularity, close-up observation and reflective distancing, looking at the represented reality simultaneously as if from inside and outside of it. Blaumanis's writing, which at a surface level has often been characterized as a realist mode of interpretation, was in fact a highly self-conscious manifestation of the analytical style of thought, as discussed by the Latvian historian Andrejs Plakans. Secondly, Blaumanis's literary oeuvre is dealt with in the context of German and European literature of the fin-de-siècle. The segment of Baltic German culture was important for the writer due to his many personal contacts, although he was looking for considerably broader horizons with regard to aesthetic experience. The writer had an excellent knowledge of both contemporary and classical German literature, and from time to time used specific texts as his sources. However, this approach is mostly observable during the initial stage of his career, and even then he added distinct local characteristics to his plots and character portrayal. Representation of the Latvian milieu became a real challenge for him, and on occasion he used the image of an artist or writer in order to reflect on distinct features of the creative process. In some of his mature works the writer employed motifs of world literature as a starting point for his own innovative and challenging interpretations. In the process of evaluating the writer's literary texts, the paper argues that, contrary to the way they are usually perceived, Blaumanis is not satisfied with only following certain trends in the development of European literature of the time. Rather, he is either a contemporary of major stylistic trends in fin-de-siècle literature such as naturalism and impressionism, or he even anticipates radical aesthetic challenges, such as expressionism and neue Sachlichkeit. The above observations lead to the conclusion that Rūdolfs Blaumanis can be considered one of the major literary figures of the fin-de-siècle, a typical representative of the highly fascinating phenomenon of border-textuality (Text-Ränder) and an aesthetic innovator on a European scale.