The Antinomies of Latvian Literary 
Realism
Benedikts Kalnačs
University of Latvia, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, Mūkusalas iela 3, Riga, LV-1423, Latvia
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6435-325x 
benedikts.kalnacs@lulfmi.lv
This article traces the social and literary contexts of Latvian literary realism. 
During its rise in the nineteenth century, Latvian realism was seen as developing 
along the general lines of European culture that helped to foster aesthetic 
diversity and innovative potential. These processes are the focus of the first part 
of the article. The subsequent reshaping and distortion of the concept of realism 
during the period of Soviet occupation are then scrutinized in some detail. The 
investigation follows in the footsteps of the current rise of interest in realism, 
considering its importance in a broad spectrum of contexts, and claims that 
realism is an innovative aesthetic practice of great historical and contemporary 
relevance. However, it has also frequently been misunderstood or consciously 
misinterpreted by representatives of other aesthetic trends as well as misused 
by political regimes. The article points toward the necessity of restoring a sound 
interpretation of realist aspirations and their social and aesthetic contributions.
Keywords: Latvian literature / literary criticism / realism / socialist realism / the Soviet 
regime
219
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 47.2 (2024)
This article sets out to explore the social and aesthetic contexts of the 
rise of realism in nineteenth­century Latvian literary culture and its 
initial as well as subsequent reception.1 Considering the recent revi­
talization of research on realism, this is a topical scholarly issue on 
an international scale. Significantly, the history of realism is partly a 
history of response to any kind of imposed restrictions; on the other 
hand, realism has also been instrumentalized as a tool of imposing 
and legitimizing such restrictions. The investigation of realism’s his­
torical misuses may help to understand the mechanisms employed by 
twenty­first­century totalitarian and populist ideologies. In this article 
I intend to trace controversies regarding the term and its application to 
1 This research is funded by the State research programme Letonika — Fostering a 
Latvian and European Society Project VPP­LETONIKA­2022/3­0003 Narrative, Form 
and Voice: Embeddedness of literature in culture and society.
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
220
literary practices in two different periods of Latvian realism: the early 
debates of the 1880s and 1890s that focused on social and moral is­
sues; and the highly biased interpretation of realism under Soviet ideo­
logical rule (in particular, in the 1950s and 1960s). In the conclusion, 
I link some of the research questions to the current revival of interest 
in literary realism.
There are many factors that caused the steady decline of inter­
est and the subsequent recovery of the concept of realism in literary 
scholarship. One of the main aspects of criticism has been the pre­
dominance of formalist approaches in the humanities in the second 
half of the twentieth century. As Pam Morris indicates, the aesthetic 
legacy of realism was challenged and significantly compromised by 
certain trends in Structuralism, Postmodernism and Deconstruction 
(Morris 24–44). With this kind of theoretical interventions in mind, 
even scholars who considered broader social contexts had at times been 
working along similar lines, which explains the continuous exclusion 
of realist practices from their primary focus. However, the scrupulous 
research done by numerous scholars interested in social and historical 
contextualization of aesthetic trends has in the long run directly or 
indirectly stimulated the reappearance of studies of literary realism. If 
we trace just one such line of development, Naomi Schor, in her 1993 
book, George Sand and Idealism, powerfully argued the importance 
of idealism within the rich texture of nineteenth­century aesthetic 
debates. While the relationship of Sand to her contemporaries such as 
Balzac was retained, the emphasis on idealism shifted the power bal­
ance away from realism. Explicitly referring to Schor’s thorough inves­
tigation, Toril Moi in her 2006 monograph on the Norwegian play­
wright Henrik Ibsen, often associated with nineteenth­century realist 
and naturalist interventions, argued that it is possible to propose a new 
interpretation of literary history where the main tension in the sec­
ond half of the nineteenth century is that between idealism and mod­
ernism, thus making the presence of realism superfluous. In his turn, 
Fredric Jameson, who in the 2010s continuously carried out studies of 
the poetics of social form, also refers to Schor’s monograph; however, 
his 2013 book The Antinomies of Realism (a title on which this article 
also capitalizes) already provides a striking attempt to re­address the 
complexity of realism as a literary and art form in nineteenth­century 
contexts and beyond. Jameson not only emphasizes the possibility and 
need to evaluate the full spectrum of classical realism with its narra­
tive power and the ability to showcase the affects of human behavior 
(for him, the most important of realism’s productive antinomies is that 
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
221
between telling and showing) but also its potential continuation and 
impact in later periods of literary production.
Jameson’s book is one important example among many that signal 
the interest in realism in the first quarter of the twenty­first century 
being on the rise. Having for a long time been looked upon with great 
suspicion, literary realism recently experiences a new wave of attempts 
in opening its innovations and challenges that reach well beyond 
the classical nineteenth­century period. These trends have even been 
described as a “new realist turn” (Esty and Lye 276). Significantly 
enough, both contextual and textual arguments are important here 
considering the opinion that realism responds to, investigates, ques­
tions, and reconstructs the complex ways human lives are lived in spe­
cific places and different conditions. In his introduction to the volume 
on literary realism, significantly titled Reclaiming Realism, Matthew 
Beaumont states that it is of vital importance for national as well as 
international scholarship to follow realism’s different trajectories and 
contexts tracing its “cognitive as well as imaginative access to a mate­
rial, historical reality” (Beaumont 2). Postcolonial Studies, Gender 
Studies, Trauma Studies, and New Historicism are among scholarly 
approaches to the concept of realism that contextualize its importance 
(Balaev). At the same time, textually oriented research provides an 
insight into realism’s aesthetic complexities.
An important scholarly milestone is the two­volume investigation 
Landscapes of Realism recently published in the series of comparative 
literary histories in European languages. The first volume, Mapping 
Realism, already goes beyond the previously established limits and sets 
out for rereading literary realism “from both a European­language and a 
global comparative perspective” (Göttsche, Mucignat and Weninger 2). 
This is further explained in more detail:
Rethinking realism as a transformative, multi­phased and multi­stranded liter­
ary­historical dynamic that started well before the programmatic realist move­
ments of the mid­nineteenth century reveals that nineteenth­century realism is 
not the result of one defining invention or one discreet origin, but rather a cumu­
lative effect of a range of interlinking developments in which inspired authors 
developed new ways of writing and, step by step, also a vocabulary for describing 
these innovations in terms that prepared ground for later realist theory. (104) 
Importantly, this multi­layered development indicates a potential dis­
crepancy between realist theory and practice: “It is obvious that realist 
literary practice was epistemologically more advanced than the emerg­
ing theory of realism with its baggage of philosophical idealism.” (165) 
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
222
Landscapes of Realism focuses on the multiplicity and diversity of realist 
efforts inviting further studies of various social and cultural contexts 
while at the same time suggesting a useful and widely conceived inter­
pretative pattern.
Another important trend in contemporary research is provided by 
the concept of worlding realism (Goodlad), with an emphasis on real­
ism’s willingness to explore the relations between individual and the 
world, and looking for a particular aesthetic approach. This leads to the 
recognition that the world is in crisis, and studies of realism might be 
considered as helping to understand literature’s potential interventions.
In recent years, Latvian scholarship also started to contribute to the 
interpretation of realism in local and comparative contexts. Among 
other attempts there is a new history of nineteenth­century Latvian lit­
erary culture (Daija and Kalnačs, A New History), studies of fin-de-siècle 
literary and cultural trends (Kalnačs et al., Fin de siècle), research on the 
nineteenth­century Latvian novel (Kalnačs, “The Genesis”), re­evalu­
ation of the literary oeuvre of the turn­of­the­century Latvian author 
Rūdolfs Blaumanis (Blaumanis; Füllmann; Füllmann et al.; Kalnačs, 
Pavērsiens) as well as a comparative analysis of realism in nineteenth­
century Baltic literatures (Kalnačs, “The Poliphony”). In this article, 
I build on these investigations to trace the role and interpretation of 
Latvian literary realism in two periods that for different reasons can be 
considered turning points in the reception history and have broader 
implications within international research: late nineteenth century as 
well as twentieth­century Soviet ideological rule.
The appearance and initial reception of nineteenth-century 
Latvian realism
The term ‘realism,’ first used by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in 
the late eighteenth century (Dierkes­Thrun 709), had during the first 
half of the nineteenth century already been well established in French 
literary scholarship. German authors and scholars made their own use 
of the term, conceiving it in a somewhat modified form of so­called 
poetic realism that preserved the ties with idealist aspirations. In turn, 
English and Russian theorists also had their take. These interlinked but 
at the same time distinctive traditions played a significant role in the 
understanding of the term in nineteenth­century Latvian culture.
Realism was first mentioned in Latvian literary space in an 1882 arti­
cle written by Jānis Puriņš­Zvīgulis who at the time studied mathematics 
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
223
at St. Petersburg University. The author argued that there is a cru­
cial difference between sentimental and romantic poetics, on the one, 
and realist literature, delving into the representation of the everyday, 
on the other hand (Knope 107). However, this and other articles 
with their emphasis on realism’s critical potential and demands for a 
direct involvement with topical social issues cover only a fraction of 
nineteenth­century realist aspirations that were significantly broader 
in scope. It is important to recognize that, contrary to what the late 
arrival of the term might suggest, realism in Latvian literary practice is 
of much earlier origin.
The nineteenth century was significant in the emergence of Latvian 
romantic nationalism that, relying on similar ideas and developments 
in other parts of Europe, brought with it ideas of the possibility of 
creating an elite culture (Ijabs). While opposing the Baltic German 
political hegemony, the Latvians at the same time were indebted to 
the main intellectual trends developed in the Baltic German cultural 
environment. From this perspective, the most important nineteenth­
century move was marked by turning away from the so­called popular 
enlightenment with its aim to guide and advise the ethnically different 
and lower social class of Latvian peasants (Grudule;  Daija, Literary). 
Instead, a conscious appropriation of the ideas of the most highly 
valued representatives of German Enlightenment as well as impor­
tant later poets became a declared aim of the New Latvian move­
ment that “created the contents for the concept of national identity, 
alongside language and literature, incorporating also an interpretation 
of national history and a positive self­image of the Latvian nation” 
(Mintaurs 107).
In an addition to these intellectually charged efforts, another sig­
nificant trend was the realist turn toward the inclusion of everyday 
situations and personal experience. The formation of realism was a 
logical step in the development of nineteenth­century Latvian litera­
ture. Early traces of this process can be observed in the emergence of 
the Latvian language newspapers leading to the creation of the public 
space and the rise of secular literature (Šemeta). The gradual growth 
of self­consciousness, stimulated by the spread of national romanti­
cism across different parts of Europe, encouraged ethnic Latvians to 
aspire to their agency, and the logical consequence of this develop­
ment was a more careful attention to the living conditions of the 
population. Nineteenth­century Latvian realism relied on the experi­
ence received from various trends in German literature, including 
popular culture and so­called Heimatliteratur, roughly translatable 
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
224
as homeland literature, as well as poetical realism. Those different 
strands were fused together by Latvian authors consciously search­
ing to attract broader audiences while at the same time remaining 
faithful to their poetic goals. Realist practices were already well devel­
oped before the term realism was first used in criticism in the 1880s 
(Kalnačs, “Walking”). Even if putting emphasis on shorter forms 
such as novellas instead of the traditional impact of nineteenth­cen­
tury novels (Buzard; Moretti; Watt), the efforts of Latvian authors 
matched other European literatures striving towards a complex rep­
resentation of ordinary living conditions, with those not only pro­
viding mere background, but creating “a source of action in its own 
right and a main factor that causes, defines and helps” to form indi­
vidual characters and to organize the plot (Pavel and Tihanov 46). 
The innovative potential of realist aesthetics also becomes evident 
in the tensions between idealism and realism in the Latvian press 
(Kalnačs, “Beauty”). This juxtaposition was somewhat later followed 
by a productive dialogue between realism and early modernism. Late 
nineteenth­century Latvian realism thus responded to the develop­
ment of both society and culture, and manifested itself in constant 
interaction with other literary and art trends.
The main objections to realism from the early 1880s on came from 
two sides, those arguing for heightened requests regarding literary qual­
ity, on the one hand, as well as from critics with a staunch idealist 
persuasion, on the other. The latter ones had already made their point 
when objecting to the first novel by ethnic Latvian authors, the broth­
ers Reinis and Matīss Kaudzīte, “Mērnieku laiki” (“The Surveyors’ 
Times”), in 1879. As formulated by the first reviewers, their negative 
response was mainly due to missing ideals, the authors being accused 
of getting too sceptical in the depiction of their Latvian compatriots. 
One of the reviewers, whose opinion was closely echoed by other crit­
ics, resolutely stated that “the author of a novel always has an obligation 
to idealise life, to show it more beautiful and chaste than it in fact is” 
(Haralds 87). Another important topic of this kind of moral criticism 
was the representation of women that were still considered by many as 
mainly capable to carry out only domestic activities.
From the perspective of the quality demands, the contributions of 
Janis Jansons from the early 1890s are characteristic and important 
(Jansons). However, the critical stance of the supporters of realism was 
also characterized by considerable simplifications. One aspect of this 
was the link to the tradition of Russian literature as juxtaposed to the 
German impact as well as that of other European literatures. The early 
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
225
theorists of Latvian realism were keen to turn away from the so­called 
poetical realism of German literature, bordering on aesthetic idealism, 
and look for Russian examples, in their eyes creating a true testimony 
of the existential hardships of the lower social classes. This early per­
spective with a particular emphasis on the importance of Russian lit­
erature turned out to be symptomatic for the later reception of realism 
during the Soviet era.
Altogether, however, in the late nineteenth century the decisive 
factors in Latvian literary culture were creative liveliness and aesthetic 
diversity. The vitality of late nineteenth­century realism benefited 
from ongoing discussions in literary circles. It was due to this fruitful 
exchange that realism was able to respond to the challenges of moder­
nity and retained its role alongside modernist innovations. One testi­
mony to this were the first novels dealing with the experience of the 
lower social classes in the city also emerging toward the end of the 
century, prominent among them Augusts Deglavs’s Zeltenīte in 1896. 
Other authors such as Apsīšu Jēkabs, Rūdolfs Blaumanis, and Andrievs 
Niedra were scrupulous in their investigations of daily conditions in 
the countryside. Under such conditions, even the highly subjective and 
somewhat restricted views of Andrejs Upīts, one of the most ardent and 
polemical supporters of realism, were relevant as valuable contributions 
to literary debates (Upīts, Latviešu). The representation of individual 
experience and existential reflection were among the characteristic fea­
tures of literature in the turn­of­the­century period.
This trend continued into the interwar decades following the estab­
lishment of an independent state in 1918, with prose writers Jānis 
Jaunsudrabiņš, Kārlis Zariņš, and Pāvils Rozītis being among those 
who insightfully reflected on the war experience and postwar condi­
tions in Latvian society. One of the most important modernist poets of 
the 1920s and 1930s, Aleksandrs Čaks, opined that the uniqueness of 
an artwork can only be achieved by observing two main principles, the 
use of appropriate poetic means and close observation of the conditions 
of everyday life (Kalniņa 186). Realist trends thus continued to live 
alongside modernist aspirations in an atmosphere of constant innova­
tion and aesthetic change.
During the subsequent period of Soviet communist rule, the cli­
mate of free exchange of opinions changed completely. By imposing 
strict ideological rules, realism was canonized, thus leading to an ideo­
logical distortion of its meaning. For decades to come, literary realism 
under the Soviet regime lost a great deal of its aesthetic appeal.
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
226
Literary realism within the constraints of Soviet ideology
The initial phase of Soviet rule in the aftermath of the 1940 occupation 
of Latvia was marked by an almost total neglect of earlier traditions. 
Gradual changes in the overall atmosphere only started to emerge after 
the death of the Soviet Communist party leader Iosif Stalin. In 1956, 
the first volume of a collection of articles of Latvian literary criticism 
comprising the period between 1874 and 1904 appeared. However, 
despite providing more complex insights into Latvian cultural history 
in comparison to the 1940s and early 1950s, the edition mirrored the 
ideological trends of the Soviet regime.
A crucial role in the implementation of strict ideological guidelines 
was played by the application of the term ‘socialist realism’ that referred 
to the ideological demands imposed by communist ideology. To grasp 
the process of implementation of the ideas of socialist realism we need 
to take a step back because the main ideological battles had already 
been fought in the early decades of the history of the Soviet Union. 
In the turbulent 1920s, avant­garde artists still had a considerable 
impact on different branches of culture, especially in cinema, theatre, 
and visual arts. However, the Soviet ideological conversion of the early 
1930s with the declaration of socialist realism as the main principle of 
representation turned the initial climate of vital experimentation into 
its direct opposite, starting long­term dominance of ideologically pre­
scribed art.
The rise of European realism was linked to the Enlightenment, when 
“for the first time the authority of metaphysical and divine came under 
challenge from a secular form of knowledge that claimed to reveal the 
truth of the material physical world” (Morris 3). The idea of socialist 
realism was a direct opposite suggesting an imaginary kind of revolu­
tionary development of society. It fostered the opinion that it is “not 
enough to represent life as it is; it is necessary to show where it is going, 
and that is toward the inevitable future of the communist society. In 
short, what is introduced here is a quasi­philosophical, quasi­religious 
theological doctrine” (Becker 21–22).
Such an approach was not reality grounded, and there was never 
any clarity as to what exactly socialist realism means. This was a conve­
nient situation for the authorities as they could turn against any artistic 
creation on the simple grounds of it not being adjusted to ‘socialist 
realist’ principles.
The ways the transfer of knowledge was supposed to work is exem­
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
227
plified by the First Congress of Soviet Latvian writers that took place 
in Riga in June, 1941, a year after the Soviet occupation, and a week 
before the intervention of Nazi Germany. Instead of earlier ways 
of acquiring knowledge through individual experience, the Soviet 
authors were requested to follow objectives declared by the guest del­
egates representing different republics with the whole process being 
orchestrated from Moscow, or the fourth Rome in Soviet leaders’ self­
perception (Clark).
In order to promote Soviet ideals, some well­known Latvian 
authors were mobilized and accepted the ascribed tasks. The most 
prominent example was that of Andrejs Upīts, born in 1877, who 
had been one of the most prolific Latvian writers and a staunch sup­
porter of realism and naturalism throughout his literary career. In the 
introduction to his book Reālisms literatūrā (Realism in Literature) in 
1951, Upīts declared that in the Soviet state realism had become the 
one and only possible aesthetic method (Upīts, Reālisms 3). However, 
a truthful depiction of different milieus, situations and characters, that 
was at the core of realist aesthetics, turned out to be incompatible with 
the ideological prescriptions given to the term ‘socialist realism’ by its 
founding fathers.
The historical rootedness in ideology was already characteristic 
of nineteenth­century Russian criticism that took literary realism 
as a weapon to promote social struggle (Göttsche, Mucignat and 
Weninger 151). Largely for this reason the tsarist rule considered real­
ism as threatening the very foundations of class society. Paradoxically 
enough, while following along the same lines and indicating the repre­
sentation of the battle of social classes as the primary target of realism, 
the Soviet regime overemphasized and instrumentalized its impact to 
a considerable extent stripping realism of its critical potential and aes­
thetic diversity.
In the orthodox take on the concept of socialist realism, it implied 
and even promoted the representation of everyday conditions, while 
at the same time this representation was never expected to be open to 
criticism and discussion. The long search for regaining art’s potential 
of poetic complexity was twofold; it either meant turning away from 
‘realism’ altogether, or implied an attempt to get rid of the label ‘social­
ist’ voluntarily attached to it. In the post­Stalinist period, there were 
two principal avenues for an authentic expression of the artist. Either 
authors tried to look for alternatives to ‘realism,’ a trend blurred in 
their eyes with the socialist connotation; or they started to rub off the 
‘socialist’ marker from realism and tried to come closer to the descrip­
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
228
tion of everyday experience. These processes are extremely rewarding to 
observe while literary practices gradually overcame ideological restric­
tions. The first post­Stalinist years brought some debates into the literary 
field which, however, remained rather wage (Gūtmane 223–262). The 
courage and ability to express bolder criticism was lacking as nobody 
knew exactly how far one would be allowed to go. From the second 
half of the 1950s onward, however, there was a slow but unstoppable 
move towards a more open approach in literary texts as well as in criti­
cal debates. In Soviet Latvia, the first steps of re­vitalizing culture were 
linked to the return of a more detailed display of individual experience, 
especially by young authors such as Visvaldis Lāms, Zigmunds Skujiņš, 
and Regīna Ezera born in the 1920s who started to enter the literary 
scene in the late 1950s.
One of the most characteristic cases was that of the prose writer 
Ēvalds Vilks. His example shows that even writers initially not fully 
antithetic to the Soviet regime faced insurmountable difficulties as soon 
as they started to express critical opinions. Vilks, born in 1923, worked 
for the Soviet press, and started to publish his short stories in the late 
1950s. His choice of genre already marked an attempt to turn away 
from the officially promoted Soviet monumental novel, exemplified in 
Latvian literature by the efforts of Andrejs Upīts and Vilis Lācis that 
glorified the socialist regime. Instead, Vilks focused on the description 
of minor details that were hardly compatible with the heroic success 
narrative promoted by the Soviet authorities. These early efforts were 
already met with sharp criticism. The most crucial case became that 
of Vilks’s short story Divpadsmit kilometri (Twelve kilometres, 1963). 
While working on this text, in a private letter Vilks stated: “In this 
story, I try to find an answer, how had it been possible for the personal­
ity cult to occur. This important question cannot be avoided.” (Vilks 
430) The plot is saturated by a meeting of three former classmates who 
in their conversations reflect on the last twenty years, thus bringing 
together the period of the first Soviet occupation with the early 1960s. 
The role of each of the three characters in earlier events, their poten­
tial guilt as well as the disillusionment about Soviet realities are the 
main points provided by Vilks’s narrative. To an extent, the author still 
respected official policies of the period that allowed certain criticism 
of individual actors as long as the very principles of the Soviet regime 
were not questioned. After rounding up the first version of his text, as 
the manuscript shows, he added some more explicitly critical remarks 
before the story was printed in the literary magazine Karogs. This pub­
lication was met with severe criticism of the author apparently having 
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
229
doubted the ‘socialist’ foundations of society. Vilks’s prose did not fit 
the demands of the time exactly, while he was moving closer to more 
sincere and truthful ‘realist’ observations. For the subsequent printing 
in a short story collection in 1968, the author was forced to make sev­
eral cuts that diminished the power of the message. This second pub­
lication of Twelve Kilometres almost directly coincided with the Soviet 
imperialist intervention in Prague.
Despite the significant setbacks and harsh criticism, Vilks’s career 
path shows in a nutshell how approaches to Soviet reality gradually 
started to change. First, there was an adaptation to the existing condi­
tions which in terms of Postcolonial Studies can be labelled mimicry. 
Secondly, some of the efforts displayed the phenomenon of hybridity, 
with more authentic elements already coming to the fore. And finally, 
in the discussion of the Soviet occupation and the restrictions imposed 
by the regime, the authors moved towards transculturation to express 
their thoughts more directly and freely, and from their own point of 
view. This was an attempt to revitalize realist aesthetics developed by 
early generations of Latvian writers, especially during the late nine­
teenth and early twentieth century. However, Vilks’s case is symptom­
atic for the Soviet period as even a relatively modest attempt of ‘realist’ 
representation could not escape the claws of rigorous ‘socialist’ critique 
with the author coming under direct ideological pressure.
Conclusion: The temporalities of Latvian literary realism
The above timeline indicates that there have been several turns in un­
derstanding and practicing realism in Latvian literature and criticism. 
Nineteenth­century realist aspirations were closely related to more gen­
eral European trends. Realist aesthetics gradually established itself in 
Latvian literature, reaching considerable maturity by the 1890s. The 
polemics of the period were productive and helped authors to sharpen 
their ideas and poetic tools. There was certainly an appeal of realist 
representations to the reading public that was preserved throughout the 
independence period of the 1920s and 1930s, when realist art could 
freely develop alongside other aesthetic trends.
The Soviet period, even if on the surface promoting realist repre­
sentations, in fact imposed considerable restrictions on the implemen­
tation of realist aesthetics, for which the term ‘socialist realism’ was 
invented. While the socialist component implied the utopian nature 
of the project, attempts at more detailed and truthful representation 
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
230
of the everyday were strictly censored. This ideological heritage left its 
mark on the literary scene at the turn of the twenty­first century when 
radical experiments tended to prevail, while realism was considered 
old­fashioned and outdated even from the perspective of literary his­
tory. Subsequently, a gradual re­evaluation of the possibilities of realist 
aesthetics took place in literary practice. This was also the case with 
literary scholarship providing new readings of realist texts and reformu­
lating theoretical issues.
The twenty­first­century reception of the history of Latvian real­
ism is inextricably linked to the heightened awareness of realism’s 
potential in international scholarship. Certainly, a significant aspect 
is the demand for reality effects (Morris 97–118). The historical 
importance of realist authors is also determined by their willingness 
and effort to communicate with readers touching on the most painful 
experiences of human lives. The diversity and openness of contem­
porary criticism allows for a return to productive discussions of the 
particularities of realist aesthetics with contrasting opinions still shar­
ing a common ground of recognizing the importance of the reality 
quest in literature.
In his book, Literary Studies in Reconstruction, Marko Juvan points 
toward the need to contextualize and locate every scholarly opinion:
Due to various histories of literary theorists’ personal socialization and their 
placement within the social­ideological heteroglossia, their metalanguages of 
literary phenomena are ‘contaminated’ with unconscious motives, shadows of 
cultural prejudices, ideas of the goals and purposes of scholarly activity, imagi­
nary identifications, political opposition and so on. (Juvan 27)
All of that is certainly true regarding the study of literary realisms of 
different periods and cultures. It is also obvious that there are some 
general trends that cross the borders, bringing areas of research with an 
international relevance to the fore. One such phenomenon is the cur­
rent spotlight on realism in literature.
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
231
WORKS CITED
Balaev, Michelle, editor. Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. Palgrave 
Macmillan, 2014.
Blaumanis, Rūdolfs. Frost im Frühling. Edited by Benedikts Kalnačs and Rolf Füllmann, 
Aisthesis, 2017.
Beaumont, Matthew. “Introduction: Reclaiming Realism.” A Concise Companion to 
Realism, edited by Matthew Beaumont, Wiley­Blackwell, 2012, pp. 1–12.
Becker, George J. “Introduction: Modern Realism as a Literary Movement.” 
Documents of Modern Literary Realism, edited by George J. Becker, Princeton 
University Press, 1963, pp. 3–38.
Buzard, James. Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century 
British Novels. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Clark, Katerina. Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the 
Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941. Harvard University Press, 2011.
Daija, Pauls. Literary History and Popular Enlightenment in Latvian Culture. Cambridge 
Scholars Publishing, 2017.
Daija, Pauls, and Benedikts Kalnačs, editors. A New History of Latvian Literature: The 
Long Nineteenth Century. Peter Lang, 2022.
Dierkes­Thrun, Petra. “Realism.” The Fin-de-Siècle World, edited by Michael Saler, 
Routledge, 2015, pp. 706–718.
Esty, Jed, and Colleen Lye. “Peripheral Realisms Now.” Modern Language Quarterly, 
vol. 73, no. 3, 2012, pp. 269–288.
Füllmann, Rolf. “Andrikson (lett. Andriksons) von Rūdolfs Blaumanis: eine transkultu­
relle Dorfnovelle und ihre didaktische Relevanz. Der zweisprachige Nationalautor 
Blaumanis im transkulturellen Raum des Baltikums der Jahrhundertwende.” Ost-
Geschichten. Das östliche Mitteleuropa als Ort und Gegenstand interkultureller lite-
rarischer Lernprozesse, edited by Mark­Oliver Carl, Sieglinde Grimm and Nathalie 
Kónya­Jobs, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 83–101.
Füllmann, Rolf, Antje Johanning­Radžienė, Benedikts Kalnačs and Heinrich Kaulen, 
editors. Rūdolfs Blaumanis (1863–1908). Lettische Moderne und deutschsprachige 
Literatur. Aisthesis, 2019.
Goodlad, Lauren. “Introduction: Worlding Realisms Now.” NOVEL: A Forum on 
Fiction, vol. 49, no. 2, 2016, pp. 183–201.
Göttsche, Dirk, Rosa Mucignat and Robert Weninger, editors. Landscapes of Realism: 
Rethinking Literary Realism in Comparative Perspectives. Vol. I, Mapping Realism. 
John Benjamins, 2021.
Grudule, Māra. “Zemnieku jeb tautas apgaismība Latvijā – jaunlatviešu kustības avots.” 
Meklējumi un atradumi, edited by Inguna Daukste­Silasproģe, Zinātne, 2005.
Gūtmane, Zanda. Totalitārisma traumu izpausmes Baltijas prozā. LU Literatūras, fol­
kloras un mākslas institūts, 2019.
Haralds [Vensku Edvarts]. “‘Mērnieku laiki.’ Romāns no Kaudzītes Matīsa un Reiņa.” 
Latviešu literatūras kritika, vol. 1, edited by Arvīds Grigulis and Vilis Austrums, 
Latvijas Valsts izdevniecība, 1956, pp. 85–90.
Ijabs, Ivars. “Another Baltic Postcolonialism: Young Latvians, Baltic Germans, and 
the Emergence of Latvian National Movement.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal 
of Nationalism and Ethnicity, vol. 42, no. 1, 2013, pp. 88–107.
Jameson, Fredric. The Antinomies of Realism. Verso, 2013.
Jansons, Janis. Literatūra un laikmets. Liesma, 1972.
PKn, letnik 47, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2024
232
Juvan, Marko. Literary Studies in Reconstruction: An Introduction to Literature. Peter 
Lang, 2011.
Kalnačs, Benedikts. “Beauty, Truth and Form. Idealism and its Others in Nineteenth­
Century Latvian Literary Debates.” CompLit. Journal of European Literature, Arts 
and Society, vol. 2, no. 4, 2022, pp. 15–35.
Kalnačs, Benedikts. “The Polyphony of Late Nineteenth­century Baltic Realism.” 
Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking Literary Realism in Comparative Perspectives. 
Vol. I, Mapping Realism, edited by Dirk Göttsche, Rosa Mucignat and Robert 
Weninger, John Benjamins, 2021, pp. 577–595.
Kalnačs, Benedikts, Pauls Daija, Eva Eglāja­Kristsone and Kārlis Vērdiņš. Fin-de-siècle 
literārā kultūra Latvijā. LU Literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts, 2017.
Kalnačs, Benedikts. “The Genesis, Ideology and Poetics of the Nineteenth­Century 
Latvian Novel.” A New History of Latvian Literature: The Long Nineteenth Century, 
edited by Pauls Daija and Benedikts Kalnačs, Peter Lang, 2022, pp. 149–169.
Kalnačs, Benedikts. Pavērsiens. Rūdolfs Blaumanis latviešu un Eiropas literatūrā. LU 
Literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts, 2022.
Kalnačs, Benedikts. “Walking Through the Text: The Representation of Mobility in 
Late Nineteenth­Century Latvian Fiction.” World Literature Studies, vol. 15, no. 
3, 2023, pp. 89–98.
Kalniņa, Ieva E. “Gastropoētiskie tēli Aleksandra Čaka dzejoļu krājumos.” Ēdiena 
reprezentācijas kultūrā, edited by Ieva Kalniņa, LU Akadēmiskais apgāds, 2023, 
pp. 184–205.
Knope, Elza. Latviešu literatūras kritika 19. gs. otrajā pusē. Latvijas PSR Zinātņu aka­
dēmija, 1962.
Mintaurs, Mārtiņš. “The New Latvians: Strategies for the Creation of a National 
Identity.” A New History of Latvian Literature: The Long Nineteenth Century, edited 
by Pauls Daija and Benedikts Kalnačs, Peter Lang, 2022, pp. 105–122.
Moi, Toril. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy. Oxford 
University Press, 2006.
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900. Verso, 1998.
Morris, Pam. Realism. Routledge, 2003.
Pavel, Thomas, and Galin Tihanov. “What is realism? Ideas and debates.” Landscapes 
of Realism: Rethinking Literary Realism in Comparative Perspectives. Vol. I, Mapping 
Realism, edited by Dirk Göttsche, Rosa Mucignat and Robert Weninger, John 
Benjamins, 2021, pp. 29–64.
Schor, Naomi. George Sand and Idealism. Columbia University Press, 1993.
Šemeta, Aiga. “The Media History of the Early Periodical Press in Latvian.” A New 
History of Latvian Literature: The Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Pauls Daija 
and Benedikts Kalnačs, Peter Lang, 2022, pp. 49–65.
Upīts, Andrejs. Latviešu jaunākās rakstniecības vēsture. Golts, 1911.
Upīts, Andrejs. Reālisms literatūrā. Latvijas Valsts izdevniecība, 1951.
Vilks, Ēvalds. Kopoti raksti. Vol. 2, edited by Harijs Hiršs, Liesma, 1982.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. University 
of California Press, 1957.
Benedikts Kalnačs:     The Antinomies of Latvian Literary Realism
233
Antinomije latvijskega literarnega realizma
Ključne besede: latvijska književnost / literarna kritika / realizem / socialistični realizem 
/ sovjetski režim
Razprava preučuje družbene in literarne kontekste latvijskega literarnega rea­
lizma. Latvijski realizem se je med svojim vzponom v 19. stoletju razvijal v 
skladu s splošnimi smernicami evropske kulture, ki so pripomogle k estetski 
raznolikosti in inovativnemu potencialu. Tem procesom je posvečen prvi del 
članka. Nato so podrobneje obravnavani poznejše preoblikovanje in izkrivlja­
nje pojma realizma v obdobju sovjetske okupacije. Raziskava sledi trenutnemu 
porastu zanimanja za realizem, upošteva njegov pomen v širokem spektru kon­
tekstov in pokaže, da je realizem inovativna estetska praksa, ki ima velik zgo­
dovinski, pa tudi sodobni pomen. Vendar so ga predstavniki drugih estetskih 
smeri pogosto napačno razumeli ali zavestno napačno interpretirali, prav tako 
pa so ga zlorabljali politični režimi. Članek opozarja na nujnost ponovne zdrave 
interpretacije realističnih teženj ter njihovih družbenih in estetskih prispevkov.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.174.09
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v47.i2.12