Ķikures un Sarmas vēstules (The Letters of Kikure and Sarma).
Translated by Dzidra Mitchell
1. 2. 1954.
Yesterday’s letter remains un-posted. My postman still lies asleep in bed. The one who dipped her ear into the sea too long.
The Daugavpils exhibition was held in Ilūkste in the summer of 1939. I think my memory is correct. As I remember about that year’s show, my works were also at Daugavpils, only I couldn’t be there myself because I caught a cold during some drawing session in the spring. So I don’t know the where and the how of the Daugavpils exhibition space.
I think the first time I took part in the Daugavpils exhibition was one year before that, but I couldn’t be sure. Except that doesn’t quite gel with the fact that I wasn’t working at Ilūkste that year, as I was on my travels. Though I wasn’t away the whole year, so that I could have gone there from home. But I just can’t remember. Maybe I exhibited a year before that. That’s when I was actually there myself. I do remember the exhibition space — two rooms — one narrower, the other a bit wider with a built-in centre wall for paintings. In what street, I don’t know. Perhaps I didn’t know then, either.
So, if my memory serves me right, I exhibited in 1937 and 1939. The latter with a repeat show in Ilūkste.
Your letter brought me such pleasure. It was refreshing, enlivening, it gave so much. I read it on the road. I got the mail (we have to walk one and a half kilometres to get it) and went to catch the bus. I’ve read most of the “significant” letters I’ve ever received on the road, and this was one of them.
I haven’t managed to do anything. I’m tossed between drawing and writing. I want to do it all. I’d also like all my time to myself. Even just half. Even just a few, secure hours. But I don’t have such. I steal moments when I can. For ages I have been doing as you recommended: thinking constantly about what I want to write. In the middle of something, sometimes I have to run for a paper and pencil; other times I carry them with me, to catch some thought that otherwise would slip away again, like the fish from the fishermen. The same is starting to happen in my thoughts about drawing, while I draw. Movement, actions, come alive. But not at the moment. I need to escape somehow, and I can do it better through words. Otherwise I must self-destruct. Do I write only for myself? Or is there, even while writing for oneself, a feeling of communicating with some other, even if I don’t know whom? All my life it seems I have been looking for something, someone, a person’s ideas, their soul, to show them me, to know them, and to approach nearer to yet a third — Greater Still. That would be the sense of my writing.
Why do you say I shouldn’t hold you in too high regard? Your words please me, I feel them deeply, they help, they make things clearer, cheer me up. How could I regard you too highly? I read somewhere long ago that without connecting with another’s soul, one cannot live. I have a chance to live. But it’s not easy. Always heading off somewhere, searching, and finding, and while questing much, settling for little.
I have a good friend in the U.S.A. Her last letter before Christmas was very short. I’m worried about her, as she says she’s lost peace of mind. I’ve had some terrible moments of fear. Isn’t this a time of trials, trials and tribulations. In such times, not a single good word should be taken too lightly. It’s night already. You will have gone for your walk with Jusis by now.
Best wishes, E. Dzelme
7. 2. 1954.
I will await you on the evening of 14 February in Sydney at my exhibition.
Yesterday, I received Klauvert’s letter suggesting my show be on not at the end of February but in a week’s time. I haven’t printed etchings, nor lino cuts, but it looks like it won’t do to postpone it, because from what I could gather from the letter, the organisers prefer it now. I’ll find something to show. Maybe there will be nothing to sell, but that’s a rare pleasure anyway.
Well, give a lovely lecture on 12 February and then fly here. Only I’m not sure where the literary evenings will take place. Kārlis Freimanis will give a paper on the topic: “Restlessness in Literature”. It’s written just so in the letter.
Yes — there’s probably no hope of seeing you here. Though it would be lovely. To listen to the lecture, to have a look at the drawings, to talk. I would walk around Sydney, not go to bed, hang about in one of the world’s big cities, talking about a tiny country, big ideas. Yes, that’s how it was long ago. It’s a pity that you aren’t just a little bit closer. Then we could try to see if there isn’t yet some pure joy to be found somewhere in our tired hearts, whether we can’t still fly with our thoughts, words, and reality.
I read in your novel about the graphic artist, Eleanor Mika, and I had to laugh, because she reminded me of Mrs. M. I. It all fits. I went to the academy at the same time as M., visited her at Roja, and we sailed to Paris together in her ship. She was a decent girl, just with a particular taste, for material things, that came from her family. Our friendship gradually cooled over some quite female trifle. But remembering those days at her place, together with D. D. and I. brings back the happy laughter. I spent some lovely days in my youth with Big Maria, as we sometimes called her.
Now, going to Sydney — how I would love to meet friends! What a bounteous lot there was in those days! And now all is strangeness, just strangeness. I’ve begun writing you such long letters that they can’t be finished in one day. At the moment I am in Maitland, I escaped from home and raced here. Maybe I’ll be able to get some linocuts printed. I think the artist’s life is too difficult for me purely logistically. Just this small exhibition needs such effort, to get the works to Sydney and back. I’ve no easy means of transport. All of it is such a battle. But — so be it! Just let there be an ‘it’. I look forward to having you at my exhibition — if not in person, then in my thoughts. I’ve nothing else bright to say. I’ll wait for another letter.
All the best, E. Dzelme
21. 2. 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
Thanks for the letter. I find counsel there, wisdoms about life which help. Maybe you know more about my exhibition than I do myself. I heard that someone is going to write a critique. If so, then it’s probably already in your hands.
The exhibition, though hurried, and without the 4 etchings that I didn’t manage to get ready in time, nevertheless worked. At least I think so. I met all the Sydney artists, who’d been strangers before. In those brief moments, in the interval and before and after the lecture, when people could look at the show, I was able to make real contact with my colleagues. Maybe it was more in my imagination, but I felt the way I once did in the Cultural Fund’s and other exhibitions, when on one side Krastiņš came in, on the other there was Upītis, and in between were friends from Tukums, teasing and praising all at once. There wasn’t any teasing here so far, maybe that’s still to come, but I think they had a good time. At least they said they did, and it looked like they did. There were drawings of heads in red pastel, that I showed in Melbourne’s Culture Festival; then some landscapes in pastel (also red), two small etchings and five linocuts.
This time people went past the etchings, and seemed to like the heads and linocuts. They were actually some of my first works, not following any theory, but done with my feel for the material.
I was very happy to get a response, specifically from colleagues. Of course, just to be in a crowd after my loneliness lifted me up, but their words truly made me happy. I already told you that I long for friends. I got to bounce off them a bit, maybe a beginning of the luminosity friends can bring. I also met some acquaintances from refugee travels in Germany and other places. In the end there was even a hint of romance, (if only that word wasn’t so overused in this country).
Taking everything into account, my day in Sydney was very rich, and my energies are renewed. What I’ve done is just the beginning of what I’d like to do, but I’ve just got to manage somehow to do it all. But enough about that.
You broached a subject that I would be very willing to discuss — mostly I can just think about it, having no one to discuss with. About my daughters.
God has blessed me as a mother so far. They are both healthy and beautiful. I’m not referring to “beauty” — but there’s no shortage of that either. I think I have tried as hard as I could to prevent every harm that might come their way. But I can’t do it all. But about them.
The best thing in life both daughters are looking forward to is having children! That resistance to this has not built up in their minds is truly remarkable. The smaller one, Dzidra, was sitting with her back to me, as usual, busily drawing. It occurred to me to test her to see how much her drawing means to her. “What will you be when you grow up?” I ask. With no lift of the head comes the clear and very precise answer, “First I’ll be a Mum”. What can I say! But now I’m curious. Tentatively I continue to ask whether that wouldn’t be too hard, so much work, having to look after everyone and still it’s never enough, the Dad scolding … “I will marry a good Dad” was the reply, as laconic as the first. I have nothing more to say. They’ve not heard me sing the praises of motherhood, they’ve made up their own minds. Good. I used to think the same, and I haven’t changed my mind.
Yes, but about them — the older one is learning ballet, the younger one draws. They’re just young mites, but already there is some sort of assessing going on, which evaluates husbands and maybe also already shows signs of the future.
Inese dances beautifully. I didn’t think she would. She seemed too quiet, intelligent, too fragile for that. But when I saw her dancing at the student performance, I was surprised and quite moved. There was rhythm, surrender to the dance, and some sort of indefinable, graceful fragility, which was not only the external appearance, but somehow shone out of her tiny heart, from her feelings. I can’t describe it. In the humorous dance about a black doll, she suddenly throws her legs about with much temperament, and I wouldn’t put that in quotes, which flows like from a gushing spring. Of course a mother sees more and is blinder than others. But Inese’s dancing also received much attention from those others. There’s nothing particularly attractive about that thought. Maybe it won’t happen, but if it does, so be it. Then we dance. At least at the moment we can’t stop her. She has a well- shaped body, with fine, healthy limbs, appropriately defined muscles, a bit delicate, but healthy and agile. She’s developing slowly, and that’s very good.
When she was born in Madona, I really felt exalted, rendered closer to something higher.
Then immediately I had to ponder, each female cat has this? And had to acknowledge — that is how it is. And if a foot is kicking it, it doesn’t get to be exalted.
Once in my youth, I read or heard that a woman is closer to animals than a man and felt extremely offended. Now I probably wouldn’t feel that way. A woman and an animal have a secret in common. It’s unfathomable to herself, and also to the man. This is more or less the stuff about which I’d someday like to write a novel. The main character in it would be my mother. My father was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1919. My mother brought up my sister and me, providing us with everything we could wish for. She was my friend till the last in Germany. Starting from my earliest schooldays, she followed along with me, reading all the books that I read, knew all my male and female friends, some personally, others from my stories about them. She had a wonderful, bright personality. Much gentler, but not weaker, from life’s battles, than Aīdas Niedra’s female characters. Firmly woven through her were the old Latvian and Christian virtues. With the “progressive” spirit of the times, she had turned away from the formal church. I think that actually inside she was less religious than I, but she did not have one inch of her that was unChristian. I think Latvians had many such widows, and they brought up their children well.
This is my third page already! I don’t mean to burden you. But I’m all hyped up after Sydney, and have to let it out. At the moment I have no outlet other than letters. Soon I’ll start work, if nothing gets in the way.
I’m sending you a few small drawings by Dzidra, my youngest. They go on for pages and pages. As for big people, so too for little ones beautiful stuff happens on used, crumpled scraps of paper. Clean, large exercise books are rarely so beautifully filled. But I can’t lecture. I remember that Prof. Fedders, teaching composition and style, told us “Don’t take a clean, shiny, expensive page when you try to make some small composition. Take a sheet of newspaper, wrapping paper, something that already has some sort of pattern that can stimulate one’s imagination. Empty whiteness paralyses it.” It’s true, isn’t it?
I don’t want to talk about the “third girl”, at the moment. There’s nothing so grandiose as you imagine. It’s small, hidden behind a thousand layers of self-protection against [my husband’s] boastings, suppressions, drivenness, puffed-upness, and again and again, suppression. That’s the worst thing that can happen to anyone. The first rule, if we are to grow, is to realise we are small. To struggle all one’s life not realising, denying one’s lowly beginnings, with all that blustering self-protection, a person can nearly go crazy. But then, if he continues that way, he becomes dangerous to those around him. That would have been better left unwritten. But somehow things are often too much. I’ve been at the very edge, near physical and mental breakdown. So far, somehow, I’m surviving. But I am afraid of something happening and not surviving physically (I’m not afraid spiritually, because in the past year I’ve really come to understand what I’m up against — the arms of a windmill) yes, and if I don’t survive, my daughters are finished. It will also be too hard for my husband! That’s why I must pull myself through now. To get to some place where I could get spiritual and material support. Then things will be drastically different. When I work and earn for myself it’s so much better. But at the moment I can’t. And I am poor and weak. You know the formula for conquest behind closed doors: keep your captive in ignorance and poverty. That formula is working here.
You say you subscribe to “Esots” magazine. I would like to. But at the moment I haven’t even renewed “Signposts”. I don’t have the means. That may seem unbelievable to you, but I’m happy about the pound that “The Australian Latvian” sent me for the critique and commentary about the artists. Now, for the last two small articles, he doesn’t send any more. Why — I don’t know. The show in Sydney helps my financial situation, not a lot, but some. So you see how bizarre is my everyday life. But I don’t believe it’s uninteresting or boring. Only I need strength, strength to carry on. Yet one is so hungry for happiness. What all has not been sacrificed and stifled! Heaven forbid that it should be like that to the end. But — there’s no escape. I have to try to “rise above it”. Do forgive this letters lack of style. Even the sentences are awful. I hope others will be lighter — that is — clearer. In the end, I don’t like talking about something I must bear by myself. But to be the hero all the time is too hard.
Best wishes, E. Dzelme
5. 3. 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
Kind thanks for the gentle “Sunflower”. And a belated greeting for your milestone birthday.
May you not tire of this world for a long time yet, whether going to work in the fields, visiting friends, let your steps go lightly.
May you not tire of this world for ages yet,
For towards you, the sunflower would its blossoms turn
May you not tire of this world for a long time yet,
Before it can, from bad to good, all things turn.
Forgive this little bit of fun — but “songs” are sung and written for birthdays. For the second day already, everything is coming out in rhyming couplets. Though this began to rhyme only now, while I was sending you good wishes, so don’t look for real poetry. I haven’t had any luck with poetry. Only my diary, a must for every romantic woman, contains the odd one or two.
It’s been a day full of rushing about. There isn’t a single bloom in the garden that would be worth sending you, but the very best of wishes from me to you, even if there is not much sign of them.
Yours, E. Dzelme
9. April, 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
I haven’t heard anything from you for ages, but I’m not writing to get some such out of you, but just for the sake of saying something from this end. First of all, before I forget, I would like to ask you to please keep the article about The Lucky Ones by Anslavs Eglitis with you and don’t give it in for printing. I wouldn’t write that any more, and it wouldn’t be at all good if it were printed.
Recently there was some unpleasantness with an article in Laiks [Time]. Once when I was miserably lonely, I sent them some articles about life here, rather intimate, full of sentiment, etc. I was wanting some sort of connection with friends. Rabacs wrote back that the piece was lively and sincere, but inappropriate for publication. He would be very grateful if I would write something typical of farming life here. I imagined that gratitude would be in dollars, and agonised over a piece I didn’t even like myself. I sent it off, even adding that he should leave out whatever wasn’t suitable. The result was friends laughing at me. Yes, as soon as I do something for monetary gain, it rains down on me. Also I didn’t really say what I wanted to about Eglītis. If it has been handed in for publication, please get it back.
Now the mundane side of this letter is closed.
I trust you are well?
I went to Sydney again for a day. They organise lectures and art exhibitions one after the other. About 20 viewers have been trained to also buy paintings. When Felsberg-Bērziņa lectured on Herman Hesse, I wanted very much to send them your translation of Hesse’s poem. But without your permission I didn’t want to presume, and so I didn’t send it. May I do it now? There are many feisty people interested in every literary happening. They also have nothing but enthusiasm about the existence of your “Sunflower”, though they haven’t seen it.
At Easter, I took part in an Australian group show at Terrigal, a provincial town near here. I hope to go there in person to see what I’ve had victory over — those artists exhibited in Gosford where I won first prize. Only I haven’t seen the others myself.
Strange that it’s Easter! Don’t you think it’s a great loss that there aren’t proper seasons here? This monotony, alternating sun and rain, you can’t call seasons.
I wish you happy Easter. Yours, E. Dzelme.
22. 4. 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
Thank you for your long letter. You always say many good things! And in these times, we can never get enough.
I suppose I wrote so much because feelings of loneliness and abandonment demanded it. Maybe it’s also a desire to take another look at my experiences, my life, look at it from a distance, get it into perspective. Maybe I revealed too much. And yet – writing about Inese’s birth, for example, I held back. In a novel, I would add a manic page or two more. The theme of woman – mother – I find is fascinating and infinite.
I don’t quite understand why you call yourself a sinner. Usually those called sinners are the — “unfaithful”, but that word doesn’t frighten me much. If I were to write about marriage, the thesis would be that “unfaithfulness is only child’s play compared to other evils that one human can inflict on another”. Suddenly I felt frightened saying that. I don’t really know faithfulness or unfaithfulness profoundly. I can only talk about what I have experienced. Enough — the rest is for a novel.
Aren’t you plagued by arthritis? Is winter coming there already. Here, everything is very dry again. No, floods do not threaten me. In Greta we saw so much horror caused by flood that we sought out this house on top of a hill. Now the biggest problem is shortage of water for the garden. But here you have to get used to such extremes, you get given either too much or too little.
You don’t give credence to children’s literature, but what shall I give my 10, 11 and now 12 year old Inese? All the Uncle Tom’s Cabins were read already by the age of 9. We sometimes read ‘Staburag’s Children’ in the evenings. Both girls love it. But Inese is so used to the school library books, with Kidnapped etc. that I don’t know whether she would read ‘Staburag’s Children’ by herself. Together, when I read, they are both delighted. But really, without explanations, the Latvian language is not comprehensible to the children, a foreign language. What is an “ice breaker”? How does ice flow (‘Staburag’s Children’) — there are questions for every page, and they must be answered. It was also so lovely to read Brigadere’s ‘Fairytales’ together. But ‘God, Nature, Work’ remains half read because I haven’t been trying to read it to them, having to explain all the unexplainable. It’s like that with nearly all the Latvian books.
When I asked Inese what she would like to read now, her answer was clear:
“About the people there now, and what the Russians are doing to them.”
“About Latvian children in wartime, and all they go through.”
“About real winter.”
I don’t know books in the Latvian language which will answer these requests. Children’s literature is, after all, different from adult literature. When a writer writes about his own childhood, that is rarely children’s literature. And youth literature (that you mention) is perhaps something else again, and something that may not be necessary.
I read your story, but I won’t return it just yet (next time). I want to look at it again. Your business with book publishing in Germany really makes you want to laugh till you cry. Grown men and women!
Why do you protest so much against celebrations? Don’t you want people to enjoy themselves? However, for us, your admirers from afar, your book ‘Sunflower’ is even better. Instead of us giving you a present, you give one to us.
Your Ballad about a Redhead is — frightful. But how else could a man, and moreover a sinner, write?
You say, “Every day, the sin of a triolet”. No — that would be too much sinning! I don’t trust myself, and also don’t make demands on myself. When I’m moved by some potential rhythm floating past, then I note it in my diary. (But just now I can’t find it again. I had several “poems”.) I usually write poems when I’m feeling romantic — a kind of high school versifying. I enjoy reading poetry. Especially earlier, I used to be quite taken by it. Now I’ve been away from it for a while, and would like to get back to it. But, so that you won’t think that I am without sin — I’ll send you a verse from my pocket calendar. An innocent quartet, but since I was supposed to sin with triolets, I’m shoving it hastily into a different bag. But then what is the triolet form? Is it enough — rhymes and counting lines? (and can be read from both ends, like our high school teacher once jokingly explained to us)? Or are there some deeper secrets. I’m ignorant of the form a poem should take. I’ve read poetry and enjoyed it without theoretical analysis. My favourite was Skalbe; his poetical form is not complicated. I also loved Adamson – later …
Meanwhile I feel rather chastened — mentioning my favourite poets, I can’t manage to write my “sin” on this same page. I will write it on a separate page. I’m sending you another page (the last) of Vik’s story. It had been forgotten in some envelope, in which I’d meant to send you the story before, but I mucked up the address and put it in another envelope. Now, throwing away some envelopes I noticed that something was still in there. Please add this end to that story.
Best wishes, E. Dzelme
P.S. Sorry — the sin is still to come.
E. Ķikure.
… since we’re talking about triolets …
On a noisy train.
I fell in love with your left cheek,
riding on the electric train.
I found it soft next to me,
and silence with heavenly shimmering
blanketed me and your cheek
in the train going wildly.
I fell in love with your left cheek,
going to somewhere like hell.
3. 7. 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
I don’t know whether now you’re not writing to me, or I’m not writing to you, but letters have stopped coming and going …
If it’s that you’re not writing to me, then I’m looking for a reason: have I offended you with some flighty deed or word? Or has something very good happened, or something sad, that you don’t want to write? Or — is it just as it should be, because one can’t always be writing?
I, myself, am locked into farm work. Beans, peas — peas, beans. Plant and pick — pick and plant. It’s dreadfully absurd, because it doesn’t pay, but — my art also doesn’t pay.
My only 2 hours are in the evening. Then I play. There’s not enough light to do anything else. And I’m also too exhausted. I leaf through Chopin, untangling one after another of his un-untanglable passages — that is — my fingers haven’t yet untangled them. When I play every evening thus for an hour or more, fingers become more clever. They lead me into a new, wondrously beautiful world where it’s like coming home.
I know I waste time awfully. But I haven’t strength to “get a hold on myself” more than I am doing. Life is so nightmarishly black — I don’t have more strength to do more than I am doing.
How are you? I’m reading your article about the exiled writer. I think this same exiled writer has got to do what he’s got to do. It doesn’t matter at all whether he writes about what was, or what is, he has to do something big. Someone who has survived the torture of tortures, is even stronger that one who hasn’t. Of course — so long as he survived, didn’t cave in.
I would very much like to join your group of 12, discussing form and content, as a listener. I think — nowadays we shouldn’t be satisfied with only the classical form. Why? Why can’t form seek out something new for itself. Good is good, of course. But good is born of searching, and need. Form is the substance of art, the same as content. And content always remains the same — the same old human stuff. But always, with the changing times — different. It should be the same with form. I think that form can change, grow, evolve. Nowadays “chaos” poems can also evolve in form, as signs of the times which nevertheless are not only chaos.
I’m also interested to see what the magazine “The Visitor” looks like. I don’t like the name. Too mouldy. I can’t find justification in this day and age for such an old fashioned flavour.
How is it going with your new novel? And — will we soon see the new collection of short stories that you sent to Germany? Are you writing much? That’s a question one shouldn’t ask. The pace of work is the artist’s own secret.
I am, and will be for 3 more months, bogged down in farm work more than at any other time of year. It’s that season. Maybe occasionally a freer day will smile on me, but not often. You wrote (teasing me nicely) that I should send my unwritten stories to my friend, so that she could then send them back as written pieces. Possible, but then they will all look like they need more work. Then again I’ll never finish with them. So slowly, now and again I continue with those that are here. But progress is slow, so slow. Like a tortoise. Dreams and ideas grow and collapse, unable to wait long enough to be realised. Hope you are well. I’ll be waiting for yet another letter from you.
Greetings, E. Dzelme
2 10. 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
I don’t know why everything seems so hard today. Even this for a first line, as I turn to you, seems all wrong. One must think on it all, how tough is the human journey. In the paper here, it said that the Christmas lottery would be 30,000 pounds first prize. I wish I could be that lucky. Then, I would build a big, simple and beautiful house. Very big (with a big apple orchard!!!) And then all those who are finding things too hard would come and live there. Each one would have his own corner, and it would belong to them, and others wouldn’t be able to touch them … No, that wouldn’t work. I’d have to build lots of houses, with lots of apple orchards, and for that even 30,000 pounds would be too little.
Some student colleague, a friend from Tukums, once said that it doesn’t matter what a person struggles with in life, be it hunger, work, or love. That the struggle is the important thing, for to struggle is to live. While a person struggles, he lives. — Maybe. Then I’ve been awarded quite a lot of luck, I’m struggling with clenched teeth … only there is so very little hope that I will win, that the struggle will someday cease, and the way ahead will be sunny and clear.
I was just writing about a rather unusual incident from my youth, when we spent every summer at “Ķikuri” — sometimes 4 or 5 girls altogether. I, my sister, a friend, our maid (in her teens) who grew up together with us for many years, and sometimes yet another friend.
When I think about our later lives, it’s frightening to see what fate had in store for us, already then, when we spent such carefree days, as carefree as one could ever wish for.
My sister — in Siberia. Her three tiny children, who were taken along with her, now returned to Latvia. She alone is still there. Her husband in Canada. Re-married. (He was the best husband, and our mother acknowledged that his second marriage was a step he must take if he were to continue living. Still, from my sister’s point of view, it will always be as is in the first statement).
Alise, my friend, finished studying law, played the piano, was struggling to achieve something in that direction too, worked at a job, lived in garrets and having just married, died of tuberculosis.
Vilma, our third girl — our maid, married a sickly husband and her first child was crippled, unable to walk. I don’t know if it was polio or something else. She didn’t live with us after that, and I don’t know her fate afterwards.
The fourth — me. I’m at a dead end. Nevertheless, compared with the first three, perhaps I was accorded a bigger crack in the wall to let in some light. Only it is hard. I’m languishing and not amounting to much. But good fortune wouldn’t necessarily satisfy me. I need struggle and I also need constraint, otherwise nothing good would come of me either, except a happy woman, who could fulfil her role in life just by not doing anything bad. I’m very good at doing nothing too — just living, just doing what everyone else does. But that doesn’t satisfy that expectation which seems is my fate, and thus I must suffer to create something more. But — it’s hard. I could create in different circumstances too, perhaps much more, and better.
I went and did my jobs. Now I should have an hour to myself. But now I’ve got caught up with this letter. It gives me no peace and demands that I finish it. I feel like writing a few very personal things, and hope there won’t be any after effects.
It occurs to me, now as write, that my mother also sometimes used to sift through her memories about her childhood friends and sigh and reflect how gloomy were their fates. Maybe the way it is, the way it must be, is that life comes and tests — how much the human can withstand, and how he manages to do it.
Actually we spent the loveliest days of our youth at home, where most of our good fortune, sunshine, and freedom were provided for us by our mother, while she herself was so devastated that she wasn’t able to look at a lovely flower without tears springing to her eyes, but we didn’t realise it, and felt only happiness around, and thought that for her things were just as good as they were for us …
14. 10. 1954.
Dear Mr. Kalniņš,
… You admit, how much you sometimes want to talk. It’s like that with me too. When I recall what has been and gone, what has been lived, then I see that — there has been much talking, talking while wandering through the woods, through the meadows by the banks of the Aiviekste, going to Jaunkalsnava for the mail, then in Riga, Jugla meadows, Forest Park … What we talked about, how can one ever remember? But with each person there was a different language, always new. Maybe that’s missing now. Sadly missing, I know. Now it’s good to be able to exchange just an occasional letter. I have only partly read Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein, I haven’t had them for long, which you need to be able to read something properly. At the academy, T. Zeifert lectured us in the history of literature. I attended all three courses. He talked a lot about Goethe. I think I read the above-mentioned letters way back then. But that was still too early for me to properly understand them.
You say you don’t know how a girl grows into a woman. I think she keeps growing all her life. At least I don’t feel that I am really a grown woman. And that’s not even such a bad thing. I also think that when a girl first starts to grow into a woman is when she most needs her mother. My friendship with my mother began in my last years of high school. We wrote letters to each other whenever I was away from her. But that sort of friendship, between people so close, can also be a bit dangerous. There are things that one has to judge for oneself.
I don’t know whether I will manage to gain my daughters’ friendship and whether I will be able to keep up with them. If I’m allowed to keep growing spiritually and developing as I have up till now, then — maybe I’ll be able to do it. Because it’s also dangerous to give children too much from the old bygone days. Children must grow with their own, new truths, not with the old. That’s why I must not drag them into my era’s understanding and customs, I must try to go into their world, — as much as I am allowed. At the moment they need me very much, and I need them. But — they are mere children.
I understand Mrs. Tamuža very well. If it was her first husband she might be able to ask for alimony, but from the second, who isn’t the child’s father, she won’t be able to. Sad it is that our society accepts “cultural products” without paying for them. Why can’t Mrs. Tamuža receive a token payment payment for her lectures? — Because society is too proud to give a little, but too mean to give a lot. Everyone pays their dentist, even it they whinge afterwards about how expensive it was. Work in the service of nourishing the soul is taken as a gift, hiding behind the pretence that it can’t be paid for in money terms. Thanks for telling me about Mrs. Tamuža. That’s how it goes — all roads closed. It’s the same for me. But I wouldn’t be frightened of being in need, I’d only fear bodily harm. I can’t get free. Same as Mrs. Tamuža. She’ll survive, only she needs to be paid for her work. It’s awful though, that she’s sick …
Why do women choose the wrong partner, you ask? It’s not always like that. Often the “wrong” comes in when the man does not want to understand that a woman interested in the soul cannot be held back in her development just for his convenience. And yet again you ask — why choose a partner so blindly? I can’t give you a clever answer. So that “trees don’t grow through the sky”. So that the new mixture is a strong brew, not bland. And in the end maybe it’s that “those whom God wants to test, from them he take away their sagacity” Seems that’s what happened to me — Amen!
Yours, E. Dzelme