The poet Juris Alunāns (Jaunkalsnava 1832 – Jostene 1864) through his translations and adaptations of classical and modern poetry codified the modern Latvian language, gave modern cultural currency to folk beliefs and was a central figure of the Romantic-Nationalist generation of Young Latvians.
Alunāns studied at the University of Dorpat (present-day Tartu) together with Barons and Krišjānis Valdemārs, whom he followed to St Petersburg. His journalistic career temporarily overshadowed his literary and philological interests, but the publication of Dziesmiņas (“Ditties”, 1856) stands as a milestone in the development of Latvian language and poetry. Besides some original verse, much of it of Latvian-patriotic intent, it mainly consists of imitations, translations and adaptations, between which it is not easy to distinguish: Heine’s Die Lorelei becomes Laura, while the original’s Rhine setting is moved to the local Daugava river. The collection contains translations from Ovid and Horace, but otherwise breathes a strongly Romantic spirit, represented by the older Sturm und Drang generation (Goethe, Schiller, Bürger and Herder), but also by Hölderlin and by younger representatives (Heine, Uhland, František Čelakovský, Pushkin and Lermontov). The volume was celebrated in later years as a landmark in the “national awakening”, but was initially neglected. Importantly, however, the term “Young Latvia” (Junges Lettland, analogously to Junges Deutschland) was publicly used for the first time in Wilhelm Brasche’s 1856 review of Dziesmiņas.
With mythological motifs already part of his poetry, Alunāns was also the first to introduce the Latvian readership to “old Latvian gods and goddesses”. In five articles published between 1856 and 1858 in the weekly Mājas Viesis (“Home Guest”) Alunāns liberally drew on Teodor Narbutt’s Mitologia litewska (“Lithuanian mythology”) to present a Latvian mythological pantheon. It was to prove highly influential for the poet Auseklis as well as for the development of Latvian national epics towards the end of the century.
Through his translations, verse and journalism, Alunāns contributed to the modernization of the Latvian language, coining about 500 neologisms and laying down a set of principles for language design and the adaptation of foreign words. He also published a manifesto on the language (in Mājas viesis, 1858), vindicating its status amongst other languages of “cultured nations”. He did so in opposition to some Baltic-German views that Latvian was destined to fade owing to its inability to represent modern reality and higher culture.