Cause and Effect

Fülszöveg

It is one of these long winter evenings. A large peasant family is gathered together. The men weave fishing nets or carve bowls and dishes out of wood, the women knit or spin. One of the youngest members of the family, one who has had somé schooling, reads to the rest of them by the light of a kerosene lamp. He reads, of all things, a calendar. Its weighty supplement contains stories of románcé and cruelty, tales of breath-taking adventures. How rapturous is the youngster's reading and how absorbing his listeners find this simple spiritual fare! The imagination of a village youngster-the future eminent author Andrejs Upits-was awakened by just such evenings as these. He felt inspired to teli his appreciative listeners, !n his own particular way, of something that was fascinating, true to life and genuinely moving. Young Upits* "calendar" stories were the beginning of his future extensive work. Andrejs Upits, a writer of the Latvian people, was born in 1877, and taught in a village... Tovább

Fülszöveg

It is one of these long winter evenings. A large peasant family is gathered together. The men weave fishing nets or carve bowls and dishes out of wood, the women knit or spin. One of the youngest members of the family, one who has had somé schooling, reads to the rest of them by the light of a kerosene lamp. He reads, of all things, a calendar. Its weighty supplement contains stories of románcé and cruelty, tales of breath-taking adventures. How rapturous is the youngster's reading and how absorbing his listeners find this simple spiritual fare! The imagination of a village youngster-the future eminent author Andrejs Upits-was awakened by just such evenings as these. He felt inspired to teli his appreciative listeners, !n his own particular way, of something that was fascinating, true to life and genuinely moving. Young Upits* "calendar" stories were the beginning of his future extensive work. Andrejs Upits, a writer of the Latvian people, was born in 1877, and taught in a village school for eleven years. He took to writing since 1898. Andrejs Upits worked in different genres during a literary career extending over almost sixty years: he
wrote nineteen large novels, about twenty volumes of short stories, many plays and much poetry. His work is an outstanding contribution to Latvian literature. The present selection of short stories is not large but it indicates the author's versatility. It includes satirical sketches pouring caustic ridicule upon the banality of the Philistine and his petty-bourgeois philosophy. Homo Sapiens is an unsavoury tale of a young idler, devoid of conscience, who has chosen to forget his home and its customs. Cause and Ejfect is a kaleidoscope of events in a small provinciai town. There is the awesome picture of little Lizina's tragic fate-the hired hand's baby daughter, so touchingly playing mistress in her world of toys, like a grown-up, in At HarvestTime. The Convert-a grotesquery-is an acrid and wrathful Indictment of "missionarism," while The Young Crane is a lyrical piece dedicated to youth's impetuous strivings. Only a small part of Andrejs Upits* work is given in this book, but in it you can feel the heart-beats of a gifted artist. Vissza