Padomju kara romāna apokalipse latviešu literatūrā: Visvalža Lāma “Kāvu blāzmā”
Apocalypse of Soviet War Novel in Latvian Literature: In the Glow of Northern Lights by Visvaldis Lāms

Summary/Abstract: Military fiction is a genre relatively little explored in Latvian literature. Novel Kāvu blāzmā (In the Glow of Northern Lights) by Visvaldis Lāms offers a gratifying matter for the analysis of genre transformations in confrontation with the ideological and aesthetic platform of the 1950s Soviet war novel. The novel was published in 1958 in five sequels in the literary monthly magazine Karogs (No. 7–11). It came under the spotlight of Soviet ideological censorship and politically charged criticism, was harshly condemned, and the printing of the novel was discontinued. In contrast to the grand narrative of the Soviet war novel, based on heroization of Soviet people and the Soviet soldier, Visvaldis Lāms presents an image of a Latvian legionnaire and a viewpoint of World War II from the perspective of Latvian people, thus showing a rather heterogeneous and contradictory worldview, untypical for the Soviet war novel. The writer assigns a narrowed-down time segment to the war events, exploring in depth the final phase of the German occupation in the territory of Latvia. In order to reveal the dilemma faced by Latvia and the emotional, social and psychological tensions linked with it, Visvaldis Lāms has chosen a manner of narration which is close to the existentialist fiction.

• Details
• Contents