Linards Laicens 1924
Linard Laicens. Kuva: Wikipedia.
Linards Laicens (1883–1938) lived in Latvia when the country was in a political turmoil. In the year of the revolution, in 1905, Latvia was part of the Russian Empire, as was Finland, and because of his political activities Laicens lived in Mikkeli in 1906–1907, where he worked as a private tutor and wrote a collection of poems. Upon his return to Latvia, he was imprisoned in 1909 for two years. After being released, he focused on his work as a journalist and on his writing. Laicens propagated massively for the independence of Latvia – and this came true in November in 1918.
It is known that Linards Laicens was a political representative of the labour party and that he joined the illegal Latvian Communist Party in 1929. He emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 but was arrested and executed as early as in 1938 during Stalin’s prosecutions. Apparently, his nationalistic views made him unreliable in a time and place when unreliability was a danger to one’s life.
The Kalevala in the Latvian language
The Latvian translation of the Kalevala by Linards Laicens was published for the first time in 1924. According to Lauri Posti, professor of Finnic languages, the epilogue written by the translator shows the heartfelt admiration that the translator felt towards the Kalevala. Posti writes:
“The translator complains that he has not had the possibility to use more time for the translation, in order to thoroughly consider and study all the sayings and expressions. In its current form the translation has required constant work during almost a year. It is no wonder, the translator notes, if there are passages in the translation that could have been expressed in a better way.”
The Latvian translation corresponds in each verse to the “second, stereotypical text edition” of the Kalevala. Lauri Posti, who knew the Latvian language, had the ability to randomly check the accuracy of some samples of the translation and he concluded that the translation was totally acceptable. He states that Laicens has been able to understand the Finnish text, but that he has used other translations to help him in his work – Posti learned this by comparing the mistakes that Laicens had made, for example, with the mistakes by Schiefner and Beslkij. Posti made the conclusion, based on the repetition of the mistakes, that Laicens had mainly used the German translation by Schiefner and, more specifically, its first edition. He stated this as follows:
“Sometimes it is possible that different translators may, independently, end up using the same incorrect translation, but when there are this many identical mistakes, it can no longer be a coincidence. Laicens does not seem to have been aware of the revised edition of Schiefner’s translation that was published in 1914, and also not of the corrections that Schiefner himself had made in his own translation in 1855.”
According to Posti, regardless of Laicens’ own mistakes and of the transferred mistakes, the Latvian translation of the Kalevala presents a correct depiction of the work, the world of the Kalevala and its poetic values. It is also likely that it makes the Finnish national epic known in Latvia. “This gives us more reason to be thankful”, Posti underlines, “since the translator obviously has had to work in difficult circumstances and without sufficient help and resources.”
The translation of the Kalevala by Linards Laicens is, so far, the only Latvian translation of the Kalevala. It has been published in four printings. The first edition (1924) was followed by an edition in 1938, which included illustrations by Gallen-Kallela, and an edition in 1960 and 1964, which contained full page colour pictures by G. Vilks. In the latest edition, there is, besides the translation, also an abridged version of the foreword by Lönnrot in the New Kalevala, an epilogue by the translator and a preface that Otto Ville Kuusinen had written in the Kalevala that came out in Petrozavodsk in 1946. This preface is a part of several of editions of the Kalevala that have been published in the Soviet Union and its vicinities.
Lauri Posti: ”Latviankielinen Kalevala” – Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 46. Helsinki: WSOY. 1966.