Latvian-Russian Parallels: Konstantin Balmont in the Sonnets of Edvarts Virza

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Latvian and Russian literary ties in the Silver Age. The work of Konstantin Balmont was very relevant for a group of Latvian poets, whom critics contemptuously called ‘decadents’. The poets themselves shared the aesthetic slogans of the Russian Symbolists (D. Merezhkovsky, V. Bryusov, etc.). The famous Latvian poet Edvarts Virza translated the Russian Symbolists into the Latvian language. The main attention is paid to Virza’s cycle of sonnets The Garden of Illusions, where a quote from Konstantin Balmont’s sonnet becomes a motto and a defining factor in Latvian poems. The poem by Balmont under consideration is titled after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Die Wahlverwandischalften (en. Elective Affinities, 1809), but Edvarts Virza was drawn to the original idea of the ‘alchemy of love’ in the Russian symbolist’s sonnet. For the first time, the article presents translations of Virza’s sonnets into the Russian language.