[extropy-chat] Latviju Dainas: Singing through History

[Amara Graps]

A discussion of a few things Latvian-related, which I think
are interesting. 

Latviju Dainas

New Years Day, yesterday, I opened a box of books that have been
sealed since 1994, 12 yellowed and dusty hardback books, stored
with the rest of my boxes because I had no bookshelf space and
because they were in a language that I couldn't understand very
well. Yet, I have moved these particular books through three
countries and six residences. So then why have I kept such a box?
The books are a keepsake from my father: 12 volumes of _Latvies<caron>u
Tautas Dziesmas_ (Chansons Populaires Lettonnes), Imanta
Publishers, Copenhagen, 1952-1956, ed. A. S<caron>vabe, K. Straubergs
and E. Hauzenberga-S<caron>turma. I knew these books were special
because Dad used to read from the books at bedtime to my sisters
and I when we were little, but I didn't know how special were the
books, until I spent some time yesterday learning about them from
other books at home and on the Internet. The Dainis form a sacred
cultural record. 

My twelve volumes contain a quarter of a million folk songs:
"Dainas", ancient song texts originally intended to be sung,
passed down over the millennia by oral tradition, and songs that
relate loosely weave the fabric of Latvian values, philosophy,
and way of life. The Dainas comprise one of the largest body of
oral literature in the world (1). Comparable to the Dainas
outside of the Baltic, are perhaps only those found in ancient
Mesopotamia.

How old are the Dainas? One scholar, Robert Payne, in "The Green
Linden, Selected Lithuanian Folk-songs", Voyages Press, N.Y.,
1964, wrote: "The dainas...represent a form of poetry as ancient
as anything on this earth.... They have a beauty and pure
primitive splendor above anything I know in Western literature,
except the early songs of the Greek Islanders. They seem to have
been written at the morning of the world, and the dew is still on
them." Hermanis Rathfelders, in Acta Baltica, wrote that the
Latvian Dainas were extremely ancient, preceding the milling of
grain, so that the mythological and astronomical Dainas may reach
back many thousands of years in time. A number of lines in the
Sumerian-Akkadian Agushaya Hymn bear strong similarity to texts
found nearly unaltered in the Latvian Dainas. Another of the
Dainas speaks of "ice hills" - perhaps glaciers of the most
recent glacial period - so that the Dainas may be among the
oldest human records.

"Latvju Dainas" contain not only song texts, but also description
of customs, games, riddles, proverbs, fairy tales, legends,
anecdotes, dances,  magic spells, and other folk traditions. The
Dainas depict every aspect of the ancient Latvian life; that is,
their mythology (2): coordinating the person with the cycle of
his/her own life, with the environment in which he/she's living,
and with his/her society. As an example of mythology in the
Joseph Campbell sense, the interpretation of the Dainas requires
metaphors and the recognition of symbols.

Ancient Latvian Religion

If you guessed by now that the ancient religion of the Latvians
was paganistic, pantheistic and polytheistic, then you would be
right. The Latvians have traditionally been an agricultural
society, and the ancients thought that the highest aim of human
life was to live in harmony with Nature and other members of
society. They maintained that all natural phenomena are
intricately dependent on each other and that social interactions
cannot be isolated from their physical counterparts in an
inseparable web of dynamic relationships. Every person holds
their own god(s); A person who holds or possesses Dievs (God)
according to the ancient Latvian tradition, is a Dievturis.
Therefore, a Dievturis, is literally a God-keeper or possessor.
Personal worth and integrity was expressed in terms of possessing
the many virtues, and there was no need for metaphors as sin,
atonement or redemption. The Dainas stress the awe, enchantment
and inexplicable mystery of 'existence'. Moreover, according to
the ancient Latvians, our well-being is not determined by its
inherent and immutable absoluteness, but our culturally
determined response to it. In addition, they viewed the world and
the universe as value-neutral. (3)

>From (3) we learn: "Although officially christianized in the
thirteenth century, the ancient Latvians did not accept
Christianity until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — and
then only superficially. The main reason for this was the
non-acceptance of the indigenous population as equals by the
ruling German nobility. The language used in the churches for
many centuries was either Latin or German and the Latvians could
not understand what was being preached. These factors, along with
the many punitive acts inflicted by the ruling German landowners,
forced the indigenous population to keep their old traditions,
deities and basic social structure. The cement for this
continuity was the Dainas. With their strict metric and tonic
structure, the Latvian folk songs helped memorization and
prevented unchecked substitution of new words and phrases."

[My note: Baltic song festivals were also key to the success of
the Baltic people in keeping their culture during the 50 years of
Soviet occupation.
See: http://www.amara.com/Independence/LestWeForget.html  ]

Latvian Language

With such an ancient oral tradition, do the Latvians have an
ancient written language too? The answer is yes. Lithuanian and
Latvian are the oldest Indo-European tongues, living or dead, and
the some linguists have said (4) that Sanskrit, Latin and ancient
Greek derive from them. Kaulins suggested (4) that the "original"
Indo-European language can be reconstruced in near entirety from
the current Latvian language. The Latvian language is spoken by
about 1.5 million inhabitants of Latvia, by several hundred
thousand Latvians in other former Soviet republics,  and
elsewhere, and by several hundred thousand WWII refugees (my
father, for example) and their descendants all over the world.

I didn't get very far in my Latvian language studies when I
finally found  a Latvian teacher in 1995 in Palo Alto, because
German language and Germany move preparations suddenly 
became a high priority. I wrote some things about the Latvian 
language on my web page though:
http://www.amara.com/aboutme/latvian.html#language

and I even try to sing:
http://www.amara.com/aboutme/latdidley.html

References
-----------------

(1) Latvia - Cabinet of Folksongs - as a Part of the Archives of
Latvian Folklore
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=4842&URL_DO=DO_TOPI
C&URL_SECTION=201.html

(2)  Mythology for Transhumans (Graps)
http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/th/more/318/

(3) Ancient Latvian Religion
http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_3_06.htm

(4) Kaulins, Andis, _The Baltic: Origain of the Indo-European
Languages and Peoples_, quoted in: _Latvian Language_ by Antonia
Millers, Echo Publishers, Menlo Park, California,  1979, pg. 2.

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Other fun links 
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Nera¯tna¯s (shameless, naughty, erotic, or bawdy) Dainas 

http://faculty.stcc.edu/zagarins/sveiks/2002/AABS/AVB_doctoral_thesis/1
1.htm

Introduction on the web page:

"In his description of a Kurland wedding in 1649 Paul Einhorn in
Historia Lettica is horrified: "They sing such unchaste,
debauched, and profligate (nes<caron>k¸i¯stas, netiklas un
vieglpra¯ti¯gas) songs day and night without stopping that even
Satan himself couldn’t conceive of anything more immoral and
shameless (nes<caron>k¸i¯stas, bezkauni¯gas). His descriptions are
informative, though his opinion is that Latvian peasants are
uncouth savages. He describes mumming and Yule log evening in
Reformatio Gentis Letticae in Ducatu Curlandiae (1636) as being a
shameless celebration with eating, drinking, dancing, jumping,
shouting, and making terrible noise going from one house to
another."

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The Ancient Latvian Festivals

http://theoldpath.com/website/iceheart/page4.html

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Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folksongs	
Edited by Vaira Vikis-Freibergs

http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=848

Introduction on the web page:
Latvian folk songs or dainas make up one of the largest bodies of
oral literature in the world. Vaira Vikis-Freibergs has assembled
a distinguished group of scholars from eight countries who apply
a broad spectrum of research approaches to the study of dainas.
The result, Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folksongs, is a
balanced overview of this active field of inquiry.

Note: Vaira Vikis-Freiberga (proper feminine Latvian names always
have 'a' at the end) was elected in 1999 as the president of
Latvia, and she is one very remarkable lady:
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/vikefreiberga/

A biography of Vi¯k,e-Freiberga: _In the Name of Freedom_
http://www.balticshop.com/item.msql?item=2471&cat=0301&title=Book
s_About_Latvia
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A Fantastic Closet

[From the Toronto-based Latvian-English newletter:
http://www.torontozinas.com/index.php?id=arh&nr=41#AR6]

http://www.dainuskapis.lv

"In honour of the Latvian folk song collector Krisjanis Barons,
the virtual dainu skapis (folk song closet) was officially
unveiled. Now anyone can scan through thousands of Latvian folk
song verses - from the comfort of their own home. Looking for a
verse on the sun? Enter the word "saule" and in .011 seconds
you'll see 970 "dainas" featuring the word sun! How about cows?
Write in "govs" and get 44 verses about cows! Many verses are
also accompanied by scanned in verses hand-written by K. Barons.
Krisjanis Barons started collecting dainas at the end of the 19th
century. One hundred years later in 1994, professor Imants
Freibergs started inputting the dainas into a database - which is
now accessible by anyone with Internet access. To date, the
system contains 35,000 verses, 64,000 variants and 119,000
variations. It will take another two years until all the dainas
have been placed in the "closet". In addition, the real closet
contains thousands of never-published verses (also many which
Barons considered unacceptable - but which now we'll at least be
able to view)."

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Happy Sunday...

Amara
www.amara.com