page_title: Rainis
section_title: Foreign exile
hierarchical_section_title: Rainis / Foreign exile
caption_attribution_description: Pastmarku bloks Rainis un Aspazija
context_page_description: Rainis was the pseudonym of Jānis Pliekšāns, a Latvian poet, playwright, translator, and politician. Rainis' works include the classic plays Uguns un nakts and Indulis un Ārija, and a highly regarded translation of Goethe's Faust. His works had a profound influence on the literary Latvian language, and the ethnic symbolism he employed in his major works has been central to Latvian nationalism.
context_section_description: Rainis was also socially active and politically prominent, being one of the national leaders of the Revolution of 1905 in Latvia and the New Current that foreshadowed it. With the failure of the Revolution, he emigrated to Switzerland together with his wife Aspazija, settling in Castagnola, a suburb of Lugano. As an émigré, Rainis wrote:
  plays — Zelta Zirgs (The Golden Horse) (translated to English 2012), Jāzeps un viņa brāļi (Joseph and His Brothers), Spēlēju, dancoju (I Played, I Danced), Daugava (The Daugava, 1916), and Ģirts Vilks;
  poetry — Klusā grāmata (The Quiet Book), Vēja nesta lapas (Leaves Upon the Wind), Tie, kas neaizmirst (Those, Who Do Not Forget), Gals un sākums (The End and the Beginning), Ave sol, and Sveika, brīvā Latvija (Hello, Free Latvia).
  His dramatic ballad Daugava contained the first explicit demand for Latvian sovereignty:
  Land, land, what is that land demanded in our song? Land, that is a state.
  Those lines were removed by the censor when the work was first published in Moscow. After the defeat of Bermondt-Avalov's forces at Riga in November 1919, the ballad was given a performance at the National Theater to mark the first anniversary of Latvia's proclamation of independence; many soldiers carried this work into battle.
  "Zelta Zirgs" ("The Golden Horse") was translated to English in 2012 by Vilis Inde.
caption: Rainis and Aspazija on 2015 Latvian stamps
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