Walking through the text: The representation of mobility in late 19th-century Latvian fiction

Abstract

In 1879, the storyline of the first original Latvian novel, Mērnieku laiki (The times of the surveyors) by*Reinis and Matīss Kaudzīte, begins with a walk through the countryside. An aging woman, Annuža, accompanies a small orphan girl as they stroll toward a parish school which the little one is about to enter. This walk and its context provide a useful background for the reflection of bygone years that is further developed in their conversation with the teacher where some important events of the recent decades are touched upon retrospectively. In its turn the next chapter introduces the main plot line that follows those earlier events which are picked up once again at the moment when the peasant family to which Annuža belongs slowly wends its way towards its new household. The opening chapters of the novel thus directly link future prospects with a recollection of past experiences, employing the rhythm of walking through the countryside as the narrative basis. The two walks are also crucial for the framing of the plot as they span two different moments in time. Many social and economic transformations happen in the course of the action, while in reality they do not bring any major changes into the lives of some characters. This is the principal tension of the novel that is built on the reflection of different roles played by various social and ethnic groups amidst the change. 19th-century Latvian literature traces this complexity from various angles with some characters fluctuating among several identities and quite often finding themselves somewhere in-between, thus making these cases especially fascinating. The surveyors’ times in the title of the Kaudzītes’s novel refer to the 1850s, when there are major transformations taking place in the rural region of Piebalga (today’s northeast Latvia). The previous borders are being radically redrawn as peasants are provided an opportunity to start the long process of buying out farmsteads for themselves from the local landlords. This is accompanied by a radical change in morals as for some people any means to acquire better parts of the land now appear to be ac-