#latvian literature

[cerehling]

Biruta Skujeniece as Laimdota, and Lilija Ērika as Spīdola in the 1911 premiere of the play "Uguns un nakts" ("The Fire and the Night").

[theaskew]

Velniņi (The Devils), a Latvian fairy tale by Rūdolfs Blaumanis, 1928. 

[unhonestlymirror]

Why is Lāčplēsis not popular on tumblr is gonna be the biggest mystery to me

[hana-loves-bumblebees]

Lāčplēsis the epic and that one Old Spice commercial have the same vibes, I can’t explain it

[beinahr]

Ārija Elksne "To Think Till the Sun" (tr. by Lau Beinahr)

[palemasked]

"Prison was the place where priests fished for souls day in and day out like pearl divers -- forever looking to take confession."

- Inga Ābele, High Tide (2013), translated by Kaija Straumanis

[bookcoversaroundtheworld]

The Lost Colony - Latvia

Until recently, Artemis Fowl was the only human to have discovered that magical beings do indeed exist. But now a second juvenile genius wants to capture a demon for scientific study. Only an ancient time spell separates the demons from humankind--and Artemis must prevent it from unraveling. If he fails, the bloodthirsty tribe will relaunch their quest to wipe humans from the planet.

[funkopersonal]

Here's your daily reminder that...

Jews are only 0.2% of the worlds population but...

Jews make up 14% of the World Total and 38% of the United States of America total winners for the Nobel Prize for Literature (source).

Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. (source)

Jews make up 14% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 18% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; 53% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (source).

Jews make up 39% of the total winners of the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play; 54% of the total winners of the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (with 62% of all Composers and 66% of all Lyricists of Best Musical-winning productions being Jewish) (source).

Jews make up 40% of the total winners of the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Original Screenplay; and 34% of the total winners of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (source).

Although Jews constitute only 3% of the U.S. population...

80% of the nation’s professional comedians are Jewish (source).

90% of American comic book creators are jewish (source)

38% of the recipients of the United States National Medal of Science are Jewish (Source).

Jews are very successful, with educational levels higher than all other U.S. ethnic groups with the exception of Asian Americans, and income levels the highest of all groups. Six out of ten Jewish adults have college degrees, and 41% of Jewish families report a household income of $75,000 or more” (source)

Jews are a minority across the globe. We've been historically opressed and hated. But these key figures from history are all Jewish and loved, yet many don't even know they're jewish (or they don't know these people in the first place!):

Stan Lee (birth name: Stanley Martin Lieber) - An American comic book writer and editor, Former executive vice president and publisher of marvel Comics, creator of iron-man, spider-man, and more.

Albert Einstein - a Theoretical physicist, Received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, developed the theory of relativity and the "worlds most famous equation"  (E = mc^2), and more.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, co-authored the initial law school casebook on sex discrimination, co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU in 1972, and more.

Jack Kirby (birth name: Jacob Kurtzberg) - an American comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America, one of the most influential comic book artists

Harry Houdini (birth name: Erich Weisz) - a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.

Emma Lazarus - An American author remembered for her sonnet "The New Colossus," Inspired by The Statue of Liberty and inscribed on its pedestal as of 1903.

Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise, and Henry Moskowitz - Jewish activists that helped form the NAACP along with W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell.

Mark Zuckerberg - Founder and CEO of Meta, a businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook, and within four years became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire Harvard alumni.

Joseph Pulitzer - a politician and newspaper publisher, his endowment to the Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917, he founded the Columbia School of Journalism which opened in 1912.

Jacob William Davis - a Latvian tailor who is credited with inventing modern jeans and who worked with Levi Strauss to patent and mass-produce them, died.

Irving Berlin - drafted at age 30 to write morale-boosting songs for military revues (including “God Bless America”). Many Berlin songs remained popular for decades, including “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and two celebrating Christian holidays: “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - received his doctorate in Berlin. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938, moved to the U.S. in 1940, and became an influential figure in the 1960s, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Elie Wiesel - Romanian-American writer and professor, holocaust survivor, nobel laureate, political activist. Authored 57 books including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps

Bob Dylan - an icon of folk, rock and protest music, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his complex and poetic lyrics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer - ran the Manhattan Project, considered the "father of the atomic Bomb," presented with the Enrico Fermi Award by President Lyndon Johnson.

Betty Friedan - co-founded the National Organization of Women and became its first president, wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963) and helped spark the second wave of feminism.

Gloria Steinem - one of the most prominent feminists of all time, launched Ms. Magazine and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers.

Sergey Brin - an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page, president of Alphabet Inc.

Judith Heumann - a founder of the disability rights movement, led a 26-day sit-in at a federal building in San Francisco. The protest spurred implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Larry Kramer - co-founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in response to the AIDS epidemic but was soon ousted over his confrontational activism. He went on to help launch a more strident group, ACT UP, and wrote a critically acclaimed play, The Normal Heart, about the early AIDS years in New York City.

Steven Spielberg - released his critically acclaimed epic film Schindler’s List, based on the true story of a German industrialist who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The movie won seven Oscars and led Spielberg to launch the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, which filmed interviews with 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust and genocides in Nanjing and Rwanda.

Calvin Klein - made designer jeans and the infamous ad starring Brooke Shields revolutionized the fashion industry, sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen (now PVH) for $430 million. Klein was the first designer to win three consecutive Coty Awards for womenswear.

Daveed Diggs - an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. he originated the dual roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with the main cast of Hamilton, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.

And so much more. (a pretty decent list is available here)

Not only that, but the following are all Jewish inventions...

The Teddy Bear - made by Morris and Rose Michtom in honor of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.

The Ballpoint Pen - *the first commercially sucessfull ballpoint pen was made by Lazlo Biro, a Hungarian-Jew, and his brother.

Mobile Phones - made by Martin Cooper, nicknamed the "father of the cellphone", and was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.

The Barbie - made by Ruth Marianna Handler, born to Polish-Jewish immigrants.

Power Rangers - made by Haim Saban, a Jewish-Egyptian

Video Games - made by Ralph Baer, a German-Jew

Peeps - made by Sam Born, a Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in 1909.

Cards Against Humanity - created by a group of Jewish boys from the same high school

Many Superheroes including Superman, Ironman, spider-man, batman, and more!

and more! (an illustrated list available here.)

Conclusion: If you're Jewish, be proud. You come from a long line of successful people. No matter what happened to them, Jews persevered, and they strived for sucess. Be proud of your culture, your history, these are your people. You're Jewish.

(feel free to reblog and add more, or just comment and i'll add it!)

Last Updated: June 25, 1:35 AM EST

[alcestas-sloboda]

I really hope Jack Edwards chokes. "Oh look we made Dostoevsky number one bestseller on Amazon!" as if that fucking guy needed any hype. Maybe you can spend all this time and energy promoting books and authors that truly are not represented? I don’t know, make a video on Georgian literature, spend hours trying to find at least one English translation of the biggest Lithuanian authors? Of course, it’s going to be hard, all of the money was spend on English translations of Russian authors and all of us had only last 33 years trying to do anything to promote our culture while you all were simping for chauvinists, who hated the bare existence of us. Google at least the names of prominent Polish and Latvian authors. What are their names? What were they writing about? Could they afford to write about some highly intellectual suffering while their nations were balancing between life and death? Read the names of modern Ukrainian writers that were killed in the last 2 years. Who killed them? What would they think of Dostoevsky? Were they the "trembling beast" or "did they have the right"? Literature does teach a lot and for some reason the countries that were (are) under Russian attacks don’t like Dostoevsky, why his philosophical thought is so pathetic in our eyes? Do some research, then we’ll talk.

[mapsontheweb]

Indoeuropean languages in Europe

Historical Roots: The Indo-European language family is believed to have originated in the Eurasian Steppe around 4000-2500 BCE. From there, groups of speakers migrated to various parts of Europe, contributing to the linguistic diversity of the continent.

by hunmapper

Language Diversification: Indo-European languages in Europe have evolved into numerous branches and sub-branches. Some of the major branches include:

Romance Languages: Descendants of Latin, including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian.

Germanic Languages: Including English, German, Dutch, Swedish, and others. Slavic Languages: Such as Russian, Polish, Czech, and Bulgarian. Celtic Languages: Including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. Hellenic Languages: Mainly Greek. Baltic Languages: Such as Lithuanian and Latvian. Indo-Iranian Languages: Including Hindi, Bengali, and Persian. Cultural Significance: Indo-European languages have played a pivotal role in shaping European culture, history, and literature. Greek and Latin, for instance, have had a profound influence on science, philosophy, and the development of the Roman Empire.

Language Revival: Some Indo-European languages in Europe, such as Irish and Welsh, have experienced language revival efforts in recent decades. These efforts aim to preserve and revitalize languages that were declining in usage.

Language Contact: Due to centuries of contact and migration, many Indo-European languages have borrowed words and phrases from each other. This phenomenon, known as linguistic borrowing, has enriched the vocabulary and expressions of these languages.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Vizma Belševica

Poet and translator Vizma Belševica was born in 1931 in Riga, Latvia. Belševica published her first poem in 1947, and her first book of poetry in 1955. Her work was censored under Soviet rule, and she was forbidden from publishing int Latvia for most of the 1970s. While Belševica was banned, she focused on translating Hemingway, Pushkin, and Shakespeare. She wrote seven poetry volumes, two short story collections, and two children's books, and her poetry and fiction have been translated into nearly 40 languages. Belševica was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1990, she was elected an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. She also received the Latvian state's highest honor, the Order of the Three Stars.

Vizma Belševica died in 2005 at the age of 74.

[cerehling]

Tija Banga and Lilija Ērika as Spīdola in 1911 performances of the play "Uguns un nakts" ("The Fire and the Night").

[theaskew]

How Laima Made Three Wishes Come True, from the Tales of the Amber Sea: Fairy Tales of the Peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Anatoly Belyukin (Illustrator), Irina Zheleznova (Translator): Progress Publishers, 1974.

[unhonestlymirror]

*after reading Lāčplēsis* So Latvia disliking Roman Empire is officially canon, huh

[nightsidewrestling]

D.U.D.E Bios: Zella Lum (2021)

Damien's Fifth Princess Zella Lum

The fourth daughter of Damian and Nicole, the athletic and easy-going Zella. She's the only one of Damian and Nicole's daughters to not have any vision issues.

"I'm making smoothies, you want one?"

Name

Full Legal Name: Zella Aelita Lum

First Name: Zella

Meaning: Meaning unknown, possibly an invented name.

Pronunciation: ZHE-lah

Origin: English

Middle Name: Aelita

Meaning: Created by Russian author Aleksey Tolstoy for his science fiction novel 'Aelita' (1923), where it belongs to a Martian Princess.

Pronunciation: ui-LYEE-ta

Origin: Literature, Russian, Latvian

Surname: Lum

Meaning: From Old English 'Lum' meaning 'Pool'.

Pronunciation: LUH-mb

Origin: English

Alias: N/A

Reason: N/A

Nicknames: Lita

Titles: Miss

Characteristics

Age: 18

Gender: Female. She/Her Pronouns

Race: Human

Nationality: British

Ethnicity: White

Birth Date: October 29th 2003

Symbols: None

Sexuality: Straight

Religion: Christian

Native Language: English

Spoken Languages: English, French

Relationship Status: Dating

Astrological Sign: Scorpio

Theme Song (Ringtone on Damian & Vi's Phones): Damian: 'Where Did The Party Go' - Fall Out Boy' Vi: 'Chocolate' - The 1975

Voice Actor: Natasia Demetriou

Geographical Characteristics

Birthplace: Bodmin, Cornwall, England

Current Location: Bodmin, Cornwall, England

Hometown: Bodmin, Cornwall, England

Appearance

Height: 5'5" / 165 cm

Weight: 140 lbs / 63 kg

Eye Colour: Blue

Hair Colour: Blonde

Hair Dye: None

Body Hair: N/A

Facial Hair: N/A

Tattoos: (As of Jan 2020) None

Piercings: Ear Lobes (Both)

Scars: None

Health and Fitness

Allergies: None

Alcoholic, Smoker, Drug User: Clean

Illnesses/Disorders: None Diagnosed

Medications: None

Any Specific Diet: None

Relationships

Allies: N/A

Enemies: N/A

Friends: Paulette Nye, Emperatriz Romero-Marino, Venetia Winter, Saraid Grady-Sullivan, Tegwen Pritchard, Wanda Llewellyn, Gardenia Rhydderch, Tabitha Griffiths, Tacey Rhydderch, Calanthe Mulrennan, Velvet Rhydderch, Tallulah Rhydderch,

Colleagues: N/A

Rivals: None

Closest Confidant: Voltaire Acker

Mentor: Nicole Lum

Significant Other: Voltaire Acker (19, Boyfriend)

Previous Partners: None

Parents: Damian Lum (62, Father), Nicole Lum (63, Mother, Née Yap)

Parents-In-Law: None

Siblings: Viola Nye (42, Half-Sister, Née Lum), Ulysses May (39, Half-Brother), Wanda Ott (36, Sister, Née Lum), Tristan Lum (33, Brother), Xavia Lum (30, Sister), Sullivan Lum (27, Brother), Yasmine Lum (24, Sister), Roger Lum (21, Brother)

Siblings-In-Law: Quentin Nye (43, Viola’s Husband), Kestrel May (40, Ulysses’ Wife, Née Coy), Heath Ott (37, Wanda’s Husband), Gardenia Lum (34, Tristan’s Wife, Née Day)

Nieces & Nephews: Adam Nye (22, Nephew), Paulette Nye (19, Niece), Benjamin Nye (16, Nephew), Olivia Nye (13, Niece), Charles Nye (10, Nephew), Earl May (19, Nephew), Jane May (16, Niece), Flint May (13, Nephew), Imogen May (10, Niece), Magnolia Ott (16, Niece), Laurence Ott (13, Nephew), Naomi Ott (10, Niece), Daisy Lum (13, Niece), Vance Lum (10, Nephew)

Children: None

Children-In-Law: None

Grandkids: None

Great Grandkids: None

Wrestling

Billed From: N/A

Trainer: N/A

Managers: N/A

Wrestlers Managed: N/A

Debut: N/A

Debut Match: N/A

Retired: N/A

Retirement Match: N/A

Wrestling Style: N/A

Stables: N/A

Teams: N/A

Regular Moves: N/A

Finishers: N/A

Refers To Fans As: N/A

Extras

Trivia: Nothing of Note

[beinahr]

Eduards Veidenbaums (tr. by Lau Beinahr)