RAKSTĪŠANA IR DALA NO ELPOŠANAS: IESKATS DZEJNIECES ANNAS DAGDAS DIENASGRĀMATĀS. (Latvian)

The poetess Anna Dagda (the real name Olga Taube; 1915-1996) turned to literature in her university years - she wrote book reviews and reflections. The first poems of the young poetess were published in 1942, but she did not have enough time to elaborate her literary skills on the Latvian soil. During the Indian summer of 1944, when WW II repeatedly reached Latvia, she left Rīga and came to Kurzeme - the western part of the country. In November 1944, A. Dagda boarded a refugee boat for a risky and unsafe travel across the Baltic Sea. First, she reached Gotland, then moved to Stockholm, where she spent the rest of her life. Stockholm at the time was home to the largest number of Latvian refugees. This fact allowed for Latvian environment to be maintained, by publishing Latvian newspapers and books, staging plays, while outside this circle one had to experi¬ence the hardships of the everyday work-life, loneliness, and the status of an alien (refugee). A. Dagda spent her life in Sweden working for the Staff Office of the Stockholm tram and metro (underground railway). The present article is based on archive studies. The manuscript collection of the Jānis Misiņš library of the Latvian Academic library holds the diaries and daily notes of A. Dagda (1944-1970): seven diaries and small calendars meant for taking notes (1944-1995), where the everyday life, events and thoughts, even the letters sent and received, the books read and films watched have been described. The first diary is started on 25 November 1944 at 22.15, when, after two days of travel, the refugee boat had finally reached Gotland. The diary starts with expressions of joy for being alive, having reached a free new land, but after facing the real life in a foreign land, the overall emotions very soon get sadder and darker. The letters and diaries of A. Dagda written while in exile reveal the everyday life of the poetess, her feelings and moments of life in Sweden. This extremely personal material provides an insight into the world of emotions of a creative person, her life outside the native Latvia, but with thoughts of it, the lost home, the lost dreams, her mother, and the previous life. The everyday life of the foreign land clearly dissonates with the time spent in Latvia. The diaries of A. Dagda, opening a very personal and emotionally rich world, at the same time provide a painfully acute view and story of the time and age destructive for a creative personality, bringing much pain and disillusion, inten-sifying the feeling of homelessness. The moments when A. Dagda feels able to write in the foreign environment and conditions were getting rarer. In 1950 she published her only poetry book Līdzības (Similitudes, 1950). Written in a classic form, it reveals the intimate experiences and drama of a proud and delicate personality, caused by encounters with the national tragedy of the age, as well as alienation and loneliness of a person. After 1950 only a few poems were published in the Latvian media. Between 2001 and 2005, her Raksti (Works) in 2 volumes were published in Latvia, including the correspondence. In any case the study of the poet's journals deepens the understanding of her personality and creative path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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