The origins
As is often the case in the three Baltic states, oral tradition - legends, fairy tales and mythology - gave way to religiously inspired written literature. Within a very short space of time, in 1525, 1535 and 1547 respectively, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania saw a catechism printed. No copies are known to exist of the first, but it is thought to have gone to press in Germany, as did the second, compiled by Simon Wanradt and translated from Low German into Estonian by Johann Köll, of which a fragmentary copy exists. The third, on the other hand, has miraculously survived the centuries: two fascicles can still be admired, one in Vilnius, the other in Toruń (Poland). This Catechismusa Prasty Szadei(The Simple Words of the Catechism) is the work of a prolific author and editor, Martynas Mazvydas (1510-1563), who may have collaborated with Stanislovas Rapolionis, another major writer who is said to have begun a Lithuanian translation of the Bible after working on a Polish version. From a more reliable source, the Holy Book was transposed into Latvian in the 17th century by Johann Ernst Glück.
While the following century saw the development in Estonia and Latvia of national literatures strongly influenced by German models or written in that language, such as Die Letten (1796), which earned Helwig Merkel both success and exile for denouncing the fate of his country's serfs, Lithuania saw the secret composition of a major poetic work by Kristijonas Donelaitis, born in 1714 in Lasdinehlen (East Prussia or Lithuania Minor): Metai(The Seasons). This collection, compiled by Professor Ludwig Rhesa, was published posthumously almost forty years after the author's death in 1780. Although the first version was drastically expurgated, its perfect meter made it the first masterpiece written in Lithuanian. A realistic portrayal of peasant life, it is also the precious testimony of a future pastor who grew up in a modest environment.
On March 14, 1801, Kristjan Jaak Peterson was born, another poet whose genius went unrecognized during his lifetime. His birthday was chosen to celebrate the Estonian mother tongue, despite the fact that he was born in Rīga, then under Russian domination, for it was in the language of his parents that the young man wrote his most beautiful poems, though unfortunately very few of them, as tuberculosis took his life at the age of twenty-one. Freed from versification, he dedicated his odes to nature and the human spirit - in which the influence of the German pre-Romantics is apparent - but he also took an interest in the Finnish gods, giving a German translation of the Mythologia fennica by Finn Cristfried Ganander. In this, in turn, he inspired Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882), the "father of song" of Estonian literature, who witnessed the "awakening" of his people during his lifetime. In his search for a national identity, Kreutzwald set out to collect the vestiges of oral tradition, and to discern in them, perhaps, a forgotten epic. Kreutzwald continued the work of philologist Friedrich Robert Faehlmann after the latter's death in 1850, and completed what has become a cultural landmark: the Kalevipoeg. In almost 20,000 verses, it tells the story of Kalev and Linda, who gave birth to a boy of superhuman strength. The Latvian equivalent, written some twenty years later, is the Lāčplēsis(Bear Slayer) by Andrejs Pumpurs, because Latvia has also been looking for references since it too experienced a revival driven by young intellectuals as early as 1850. Folklorist Krisjānis Valdemārs (1825-1891) collected traditional Daina songs, as did Krisjānis Barons (1835-1923), Juris Alunāns (1832-1864), linguist and writer whose nephew Ādolfs (1848-1912) is considered the father of Latvian theater, or Kārlis Baumanis (1835-1905), who composed the Dievs national anthem , Sveti Latviju.
The contemporary era
Alas, this search for an identity of their own by three nations hitherto considered "without history" was gradually interrupted by a 19th century that already foreshadowed how devastating the following century would be for the Baltic states as a whole. In 1832, the University of Vilnius was forced to close its doors, and in 1864 the Latin alphabet used to write the national language was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. The situation was tense in every corner of the country, but little by little the idea of independence took hold. Independence would be hard-won, however, costing the exile of Jānis Plieksāns (1865-1929), known as Rainis, who had been involved in the Latvian revolution of 1905. It was in Switzerland that this protean author composed some of his most famous plays: Cheval d'or in 1909, Je joue, je danse! in 1915, and his famous poem Daugava. He eventually returned home after independence was proclaimed in 1918.
A period of relative calm followed, with the signing of the Baltic Entente pact in September 1934, which respected the multiculturalism of each of its signatories, but also recognized fraternal similarities. A number of literary talents came to the fore, notably Estonian poet Marie Under, who published Une pierre ôtée du cœur in 1935, and fellow Estonian Anton Hansen Tammsaare, who made history with his cycle Vérité et Justice (Truth and Justice ), five volumes of which were published between 1926 and 1933. In Latvia, it was the highly committed Jānis Akuraters who caused a stir in 1905 with his poem Des cris de guerre sur les lèvres, and Kārlis Skalbe who astonished with his fairy tales that weren't just for children. Finally, Lithuania had a worthy representative in Paris in the person of Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz-Milosz, a poet of evocation, while his sister Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė traveled, experimented and gained recognition especially as a playwright. However, war once again interrupted this emulation, and the Russian annexation meant exile, censorship... and even deportation, as Estonian Jaan Kross, whose Le Fou du tsar (The Czar's Fool ) is passionately read by Robert Laffont, underwent for many years in Siberia. It wasn't until the Baltic States gained independence in the early 1990s that literature began to flourish again, embodied in names that gradually became familiar to us: Andrus Kivirähk, Tõnu Õnnepalu, Inga Abele, Elena Selena..
