The Latvian Epic Lacplesis: Passe-partout Ideology, Traumatic Imagination of Community

The literary epic Lacplesis, written in the nineteenth century, was a conscious attempt to create a cultural frame of reference for the emerging Latvian nation. In this article, which examines how poet Andrejs Pumpurs imagined his community, Kruks compares the Latvian epic hero with his Estonian counterpart, Kalevipoeg, who was invented at the same time under similar conditions of domination by Russians and Baltic Germans. Kruks's narrative analysis demonstrates the different frameworks through which social bonds are constructed for the heroes. Kalevipoeg is a pragmatic actor with an explicitly formulated duty; he errs, but he recognizes his personal responsibility. The Latvian hero Lacplesis, on the other hand, is not given a clearly formulated duty; he is simply a hero by destiny and definition. As a resource of symbols that feed contemporary discourses, the epic impedes the construction of a modern national identity capable of engendering a civic society through active pragmatic participation. For past generations, Lacplesis explained unjust foreign domination. Kruks argues that contemporary Latvian society now seeks a new frame of cultural reference that will permit the construction of a future-oriented national identity.