The reception of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)has been reconsidered in light of contemporarythought when, on the occasion of the 200th anniversaryof his death in 2003, his works were subject to anoutpouring of translations, conferences, writings, aswell as to exhibits and theatrical performances.Latvian and Baltic-German scholars since the inter-waryears of their independence (1918-1940) haveamassed a separate literature that elucidates aspectsof Herder’s stay in Riga from 1764 to 1769. As an

impressionableyoung pastor in aforeign land,Herder allegedlywitnessed thesinging of Latvianpeasants(undeutsche) butmore certainly inRiga he began alifelong interest inthe folk poetryand songs that heentitledVolkslieder in anessay published in1773.

That Herderbecome

‘Herderian’ in Riga (das Herdersche in Herder ist inRiga gewachsen) is an historical outlook whichoriginates centuries before Herder’s arrival in 1764 atwhich point the majority of Riga’s inhabitants wereGerman, and the powerful former Hanseatic businesscommunity took pride in sponsoring Germanscholarship.1 The merchant Johann Berens becamepatron to Herder’s teacher Johann Hamann (1730-1788), whose ideas on the history of language wereadopted by Herder in Riga. Published in Riga byJohann Friedrich Hartknoch, the works of Herder,Hamann, along with Immanual Kant’s Critique of PureReason in 1781, created a transition to post-Enlightenment German Idealism as well as serving asa conduit of Western European influence. Thus theideas elaborated in Riga on the origin of nations,particularly as they relate to the historical dimension oflanguage and song traditions, were fundamental todetermining East European nationalisms in thenineteenth century to the present day.

Within the Lutheran Pietest countermovement, towhich they were both allied, Hamann and to a lesserextent Herder felt obligated to ‘reveal’, in a biblicalsense, the hidden values of the native living culture.The excerpts I quote here were in effect ‘field notes’concerning their local circumstances in which theyreconciled their experiential knowledge to theintellectual environment of their age, as if acutelyaware of a juncture. They introduced a domain of the‘anthropological present’ in their theoretical outlooksthat adumbrates modern qualitative thought and

method and is contained in disciplines such asanthropology, comparative philology, andethnomusicology.

Journal of my Voyage in the Year 1769

Although he was only 20 when he arrived in Riga in1764, Herder was soon encumbered with work asassistant master of theology and classics at theCathedral School (Domschule) and as adjunct pastorat two of Riga’s principal churches.2 Separate disputesover ministerial duties, the controversial disclosure ofhis anonymous authorship and his discontent withnarrow colonial society forced Herder to resign fromthe ministry and to deliver a farewell sermon to thecrowded Gertrudkirche.

‘I departed from Riga and on May 23th, I went to seaon May 25th, to go I don’t know where.’ (SW IV: 399)

The immediate starting point of his 42 days at sea wasthe receding coastline of the Duchy of Kurland as seenfrom his ship. At this point also Herder began afamous travel-diary, his most political work in which heharbours an anti-colonial orientation. Herder wrote ofprophesies of reform and political reconfiguration in‘political sea dreams’ (politische Seeträume), areflection of his own class and origins, and those ofHamann, which were humbler than the Baltic Germanhegemony:

‘Kurland, the land of license, and poverty, of freedomand disorder, now a moral and literary wasteland. (SWIV: 401)

Published posthumously by Herder’s son in 1839, andwidely translated in Eastern Europe, the Journal is anintegral conclusion to the Riga period and foreshadowsHerder’s unfinished masterpiece, Ideen zurPhilosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91):

‘Ye deeply bowed, once so industrious and happypeoples, you will at last awake from your long indolentsleep, freed from your chains of slavery, and celebrateon them your ancient festivals of peaceful industry andcommerce.’ (SW XIV: 280)

Living Folklore

A scholarly consensus of opinion has gathered on theissue of Herder’s empirical knowledge of Latvian songculture, as determined from Herder’s puzzlingreferences such as ‘ancient festivals’. Regardless ofthese questions surrounding Herder’s role as a folklorecollector or ethnographer near Riga, or elsewhere, hiswork in acquiring Latvian song texts for the publicationof Volkslieder (1778-79) confirms his interest in thesetopics during the decade after he left Riga. Heinsisted upon this sample in January 1778 to hispublisher Hartknoch, and after intense correspondencea large sample of 79 Latvian song texts was sent toHerder and is preserved among the latter’s

the drouth 39

A Return To Herder’s Rural Idyll: Christina Jaremko-Porter

posthumouspapers.4

Herder’sacquaintance withthese materials inLatvian lands hadeffected a markedchange in hisevaluation ofpoetry and songin the conceptionof Volkslieder. Apresumedinitiation toLatvian folk poetrytook place at firsthand during 1765and 1766 when he allegedly encountered a localJohannisfest, the nocturnal midsummer ritual of St.John’s Eve.

The Gravenheide estate of the merchant familyJohann Christoph Berens (1730-1792) lies 10kilometers from Riga amidst dunes and meadowlandsthat encircle Lake Jugla (Jägelsee). In Berens’ guestbook (23 June 1765) Herder wrote a verse tocommemorate the most pleasure-filledsummer(genussreichste Sommer) where hediscovered Livonian country pleasure within a circle ofdear friends: (habe ich) zum ersten LiflandsLandesfreude im Zirkel lieber Freunde gefunden(Stavenhagen 1925: 13). As a native of rural EastPrussia (Mohrungen), Herder may have found theregion and its outdoor festivities attractive.5

The scenario of events of St. John’s Eve (zalu vakars)begins after women and girls have collected flowersand greenery (zali) and a procession of ritualparticipants or ‘St. John’s children’ (janu bernunaksanu) has gathered. Ritual customs of bestowingoak garlands, recitations to the hostess (janu mate),and song exchanges between the household partiesare punctuated with customary refrain ligo. Theevening culminates in singing and round dancingaround an ancient sun symbol, a tar barrel (januguns)which is lit atop a high pole (Stavenhagen 1925: 13).That Herder’s party would have overlooked thesesights is unlikely, as attested by the enormity of thespectacle documented in 1584: ‘The whole nationwould light fires around which there is joyous singingand dancing.’ (Apkalns 1977: 48)6

Herder’s contemporaries provide less speculativeevidence, for their ethnographic accounts provided hisvital bridge to Latvian song practices and were, in fact,reproduced in the collection of Volkslieder edited byHerder (SW XXV: 391-7). The Lutheran minister fromRubene Johann Jacob Harder (1731-1775) gavedetailed song practices of the Latvian wedding cycleand praised freely extemporised declaiming songs(teicamas dziesmas). His countryman fromKönigsberg, Theodor Gottlieb Hippel (1741-1796),wrote fiction based on country life and characters inKurland. August Hupel’s three-part TopographicalSurvey of Livonia and Estonia is a rich source ofmusical description in which he notated a St. John’sDay song (ligotne) in multiple vocal parts.

Containing nomention of thisvalued Latvianintellectual circle,Herder devoted anessay, in the formof letters to animaginedaddressee, to the‘genuine genesis ofhis enthusiasm’which was theconcrete reality ofhis directexperience (‘Extractfromcorrespondence on

Ossian and songs of ancient peoples,’ written in 1771and published in 1773, SW V: 169-70):

‘Please know, therefore, I myself had the opportunityof observing living remnants of this ancient primitivetype of song, rhythm, dance amongst living nations,whom our conventions have not yet succeeded incompletely robbing of language, songs, and customs,giving something mulitated or nothing at all in return.’

Recollections such as these inspire claims that Herderlived out his ‘Golden Age’ in Riga (Clark 1955: 53), andthat these years were indeed the happiest of hisunhappy life (Gillies 1945: 14). More than once hisdigressions direct the reader to a time when, as ayoung man, he was first able to ‘spread his wings in aforeign land’ (Berzins 1933: 121). In Riga Herdercame to know the recently published poems and epicsof the legendary Ossian (Gaskill 1996), whom hecompared to the bards of classical antiquity, and theEnglish folksongs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy(1765). The impulses of his environment added to aunifying current or momentum (das einheitgebendeMoment) resulting in an extraordinary literarybreakthrough. Pertaining to this state of exhilaratingliberation, Herder’s fellow East Prussian, the novelistTheodor Hippel, referred to his life in Kurland as aSeelenmanumission, as the ‘freeing of the soul’(Johansons 1975: 419).

Imaginative Understanding (Einfühlung)

A doctrine of empathy emerges in Herder’s referencesto an ‘imaginative understanding and feel for a culture’(Nisbet 1999: 116). It was Herder’s mentor JohannGeorg Hamann (1730-1788), however, who lived bythese principles and spent the majority of his life inLatvian-populated territories. Unlike Herder, he tooksteps to learn the native tongue: ‘In the Duchy ofKurland it will be easier for you to learn the nativelanguage’ (from Jelgava, 10 December 1766, Dobbek1959: 444). Hamann was the more activeethnographer; he observed farming communities atcountry estates in neighbouring regions that arecurrently in Latvia: in the Duchy of Kurland and in theLivonian region of Rubene where he was employed asa tutor. In his first major work, the PhilologicalCrusades (1762), Hamann asserts the principle thatfolk poetry was unique in the historical development oflanguage, but that these poetic elements had been

40 the drouth

sacrificed in prose. His attention was drawn to Latvianrural workers whose singing provided a Homericanalogy to the metric regularity of declaiming(eintönige metrische Eigenart):

‘My admiration or ignorance of the cause of themonotonous metre of the Greek poet is theconsequence of a trip through Kurland and Liefland.There in a certain area of this region one hears theLatvians (undeutsche) always singing by their work,but nothing more than a cadence of a few tones thatresemble a measure.’

Narrow-ranged and metrically monotonous, the art ofspontaneously stringing verses of the Latviandeclaimer (teiceja) has survived among exceptionalpractitioners to the present day. Near the close of theSoviet occupation these repertoires became studied asa valued source of Latvian ethnic individuality by giftedurban musicians such asviolinist Ilga Reizniece(1956) of the popular folk-rock group Ilgi:

‘We travelled onexpeditions and spoke withpeople, and worked tofinish their tasks, and inthis way we related closelyto the singing that is thefoundation of their life.’[Beitane 1996: 10]

As a counter-strategy toSoviet official folklorechannels, musicians suchas Ilga travelled acrossLatvia to collect songs.This reliance upon rural folkculture had an immediateprecedent in the ‘flowerchild movement’ of the1960s and 1970s whenyouths ‘returned to nature’and sought seclusion inorder to escape Sovietjurisdiction in cities. Withexaggerated intensity, a‘folklore movement of like-minded traditionalmusicians’ (kopas) learned to recreate the commonrural life according to traditional beliefs customs, crafts,beliefs, dances, games, and so forth. Theseensembles did not merely perform music, but wererecreating a life based upon folklore. They offered acomplete secondary culture which was placed centrallyin cities to challenge Soviet authority over Latvian arts.The resulting clash of ideals was witnessed duringearly recitations, in the first urban performances of Ilgiin the 1980s: ‘One could hear the truth, sincerity andthe feeling of depth hiding in the primitive scales, theuse of drone and violin solos one pitch.’ (Muktupavels2002)

Baltic ethnographic and regional styles of singing thatwere documented by Herder and his contemporaries inVolkslieder (1778, 1779) were not reproduced inperformances until this folklore revival movement. Atthe close of the nineteenth century a vast song-

collecting campaign had revealed the fragiledependence upon a rural idyll for Latvian nationalsymbolism. In the first monumental collection byLatvians of their oral song traditions, Latvju dainas (sixvolumes, 1894-1915), the principal classifier, KrisjanisBarons, observed that Latvians were departing fromrural ways. Barons created a national rural idyll byadvocating that his song collection would restoreingrained rural values:

‘Thus, for example, our girls no longer grind corn atthe mill by hand ... yet our songs dedicated to grindinggrain vividly teach and extol honest labour.’

The collection of Latvju dainas was in the hands ofnationalists however, who had transformed theindigenous rural idyll; their selective image of ‘Latvia’far exceeded the farmstead and the peasant’sworldview.

In 2003 statistics record some300 kopas who interact in anethnic community of severalfamilies and generations.The kopa interacts within theirself-made regional communityand school by learning songsdirectly collected from ruralpractitioners, and byconducting research inrelated Latvian topics such asarchaeology and mythology.They preserve ethnographicmeasures of authenticity anda regional outlook through theuse of dialectal languages(such as Latgalian, and theFinno-ugric Livonian) in songtexts and the regionalinterpretation of calendricalrituals. Latvia’s ‘return toEurope’ has initiated achallenging development ofcosmopolitan and universaltrends known as ‘post-folklore’ or ‘post-nationalism’in which the kopas havebecome bastions of Herderian

cultural relativism and pluralism.

An Apostle of Cultural Pluralism

In his late years Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), the Latvian-born British statesman, political historian andphilosopher, applied a demonstration of Herderianthought to emergent ethnic nationalism in post-communist Eastern Europe (Gardels 1991; Nisbet1999). Berlin interpreted the expressive culture of anon-aggressive nationalism to be the woundednational spirit of the Herderian Volksgeist. The non-violent sequence of events of the Baltic ‘singingrevolution’, culminated during the second Balticainternational folklore festival in July of 1988. In Riga’sfamous street processions the banned Latvian flagwas taken from hiding and carried by the members ofthe kopas, and not by dissenting political parties;perhaps they were one and the same (Putelis 1997).

the drouth 41

My fieldwork has demonstrated the evolving regionaland dialectal basis of the folklore movement whichremains the strength of the rural idyll. Marija Andina(1952) is a widow who manages a farm single-handedly, and is in demand as an accordion-player atdances and cultural events in the Makasani secondaryschool. In the eastern, Catholic province of Latgale,near the capital Rezekne, she leads a large kopa ofstudents (Kukleite). During my stay in September2002 she was often asked to sing late in the evening,and at times she lost her voice. She gained herstrength in living according to a ‘rural idyll’, which isher local knowledge of her musical family and theregion and believes she is able to heal the ills of hersociety, as did her ancestors, with exact folk dancesteps and rhythms: ‘We have the same sun, sea,forest and sky as our forebears.’ The spontaneity ofher re-enactment in the kopa is perceived as definitivecriteria for a good performance (Mellena 1995):

‘Every performance was enlivened by the whole group,either by clapping, by stamping feet or by simplysinging along, but that happens so organically that itattests to Marija’s bursting energy, and her joy ofsinging and music-making.’

The song activities in the life of the kopa retain theplay of spontaneous family musical traditions whichthey radiate to immediate families, to friends and toclosely-knit regional and national affiliation andinteraction. It would have been possible for Herder tohave chanced upon this distribution of groups, as hedid the extended families of serfs surrounding countryestates:

‘Knowing then, that the more barbarous a people is –that is, the more alive, the more freely acting (for thatis what the word means) – the more alive, the morefree, the more deep-feeling, the more lyrically dynamicits songs will be, if songs it has!’

Illustrations

1. Baltica International Folklore Festival 2003: Talka(Communal farmwork), Kopa: Perli, Druviena, Vidzeme.

2. Pastor August W. Hupel (1737-1819),TopographischeNachrichten volume II. 1777. An illustration of Estonianvillagers in Livonia, the text describes Latvian and Estonianplaying of bagpipes to accompany songs, and their rounddances.

Notes

1. At the close of the eighteenth century Riga’s populationcontained 45.7% German, 31% Latvian, and 14% Russianinhabitants (Strods 1983: 149).2. The site of the Jesus church, beyond the central marketand the Academy of Sciences, is in the Maskavas District; St.Gertrude’s church was rebuilt in stone after a fire in 1812, andthis structure survives on the original site today.3. The modified Julian (old style) dates were used by Herder;Suphan adds the Gregorian (new style) dates introduced inRussian lands only after 1918.4. Nachlass Herder, in the former Prussian Staatsbibliothek,Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.The handwritten manuscripts contain Latvian quatrains fromthe ritual wedding and St. John’s day song cycles, the longerpopular Germanicised zinges, and Catholic songs. Some 20of the texts are sung today.5. In addition to the Gravenheide Berens estate, Herder oftenvisited the Steinhauer family estate three kilometers from Riga

in Pardaugava (descriptions and illustrations of these are inBroce 1992), and on three occasions he visited the estate ofMaihof near Jelgava (Mitau) where Hamann was tutor.6. Balthasar Russow, Chronica der Prouintz Lyfflandt (1584).

Bibliography

Apkalns, Longins. 1977. Lettische Musik. Wiesbaden:Breitkopf & Härtel.Arajs, Karlis. 1985. Krisjanis Barons un Latvju dainas. Riga:Zinatne.Arbusow, Leonid. 1953. ‘Herder und die Begründung derVolksliedforschung im deutschbaltischen Osten.’ Im GeisteHerders. Herausgegeben von Erich Keyser. Kitzingen amMain: Holzner Verlag, pp. 129-256.Beitane, Anda. 1996. ‘Etnografiskas dziedasanas tradicijasLatvija’ (Ethnographic singing traditions in Latvia). InternationalConference on Ethnographic Singing. Edited by AndrisKapusts. Riga: Tautas M?kslas Centrs, pp. 10-13.Berlin, (Sir) Isaiah. 1980. Against the Current: Essays in theHistory of Ideas. Edited by Henry Hardy. New York: VikingPress.Berzins, Ludvigs. 1933. ‘Atrakta tautas dzeja.’ (Folk poesyunearthed). Filologijas Biedribas Raksti 13: 114-51.Bohlman, Philip V. 2003. ‘Herder’s Global Moment: LocalKnowledge and the Imagination of World Music.’ Unpublishedpaper read at the University of Glasgow, 30 April.Brotze, Johann Christoph. 1996. Zimejumi un apraksti II. Riga:Latvijas Vestures Instituts.Clark, Robert T. 1955. Herder; His Life and Thought.. Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press.Gardels, Nathan. 1991. ‘Two Concepts of Nationalism: anInterview with Isaiah Berlin.’ The New York Review of Books(21 November): 19-23.Gaskill, Howard, editor. 1996. James Macpherson, the Poemsof Ossian. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Gillies, Alexander. 1945. Herder. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.___, editor. 1947. Johann Gottfried Herder, Journal MeinerReise im Jahre 1769. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1877-1913. Sämtliche Werke. (SW)Herausgegeben von Bernhard Suphan, Carl Redlich, ReinholdSteig (u.a.) in 33 Bd. Berlin: Wiedmann’sche Buchhandlung.Reisssued 1967-1968, Hildesheim: Georg Olms.___. 1959. Herders Briefe. Herausgegeben von WilhelmDobbek. (Weimar): Volksverlag Weimar.Johansons, Andrejs. 1975. Latvijas kulturas vesture 1710-1800[Latvia’s history of culture 1710-1800]. [Uppsala]: Daugava,1975.Mann, Otto. [193-?]. Hamann: Magus des Nordens.Hauptschriften. Leipzig: Dietrichsche Verlagsbuchhandlung.Mellena, Mara, and Ernests Spics. 1995. ‘Tads dasnums,atvertiba un milums ir tikai Latgale.’ Rezeknes Vestis.Muktupavels, Valdis. 2002. Notes to Ilgi: Agrie gadi./Rami rami(Ilgi: Early years). Riga: Upe CD 032.Nisbet, H. Barry. 1999. ‘Herder’s Conception of Nationhoodand its Influence in Eastern Europe.’ In The German Landsand Eastern Europe. Edited by Roger Bartlett and KarenSchönwalder. New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 115-35.Stavenhagen, Kurt. 1925. ‘Herder in Riga.’ Abhandlungen desHerder Instituts zu Riga, pp. 1-22.Putelis, Aldis. 1997. ‘Folklore and National Identity.’ Folklore:An Electronic Journal of Folklore 4. Tallinn: Estonian FolkloreArchives.Wolff, Larry. 1994. Inventing Eastern Europe: the Map ofCivilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford,California: Stanford University Press.Zammito, John. 2002. Kant, Herder and the Birth ofAnthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago.

42 the drouth