User:Mozzy66/Latvian/Fricis Bārda

Fricis Bārda (25 January 1880 - 13 March 1919) was a Latvian poet, particularly noted for his interest in philosophical and pantheistic themes.

Biography
Bārda was born in the Pociema district, on the rural estate of Rumbiņos. He studied at the local school in Pociema, in Umurgas, and at the Limbažu city school. From 1898 - 1901 he attended the Valkas teachers seminary, then located in Rīga.

From 1901 he worked as an assistant teacher in Katlkalna school, but in 1906 traveled to Vienna. There he studied philosophy, and followed concepts of idealism, and gained an enthusiasm for German Romantic writers.

After a year he returned to Latvia, and worked as a teacher at the A. Ķeniņa school in Rīga.During this period contributed to the magazines "Stari" and "Zalktis", he met and associated with the composer Emīls Dārziņš, and the painter Jānis Rozentāls. He also attended the drama lectures of Jēkabs Duburs.

In 1917 Bārda was a teacher at the high school he instituted in Valmiera, and later became a school inspector. He also became Reader in Latvian language and literature at the Baltic Technical Institute.

During most of latter part of the First World War, Bārda was a refugee in Russia, and whilst returning back to Latvia in 1918 he suffered the illnesses, from which he would eventually die, in 1919.

Main works
In 1911 he published his first collection of poems, Zemes dēls (Son of the Land), and his only collection to be published during his lifetime. His other major collection is Dziesmas un lūgšanas Dzīvības Kokam (Songs and Prayer for the Tree of Life) was published in 1919.

Bārda is considered a mster of romantic poetry, reacting to the prevalent realism of the preceding years. His treatments of traditional poetic themes - one's home land, love, nature, life, death, the soul, eternity - are given original imagery and rhythms, and presented in philosophic generalisations.

His poems have been translated into Russian, English, German and Polish. Some of his poems have also been set to music.