Born Aleksandrs Čadarainis in 1901, Čaks was destined to witness an era of upheaval and transformation. Riga, his lifelong muse, was no stranger to dualities—imperial grandeur and poverty, Baltic order and Eastern chaos. But while others wrote about Latvia’s landscapes or noble past, Čaks ventured into uncharted literary terrain. He saw poetry in factory workers’ calloused hands, in the sleep-deprived eyes of a city prostitute, in the defiant pose of a beggar feeding pigeons on a broken bench.

Čaks was among the first Latvian poets to write openly about the urban poor, the dispossessed, and the morally ambiguous. He did not flinch from themes that were, at the time, deemed unpoetic. In doing so, he elevated the everyday into something profoundly human and even heroic. His poems read like odes to cobbled pavements, flickering streetlamps, and lonely hearts.

Čaks’ deep affection for the capital did not prevent him from exploring national identity through more historical themes. One of his most powerful and enduring works, Mūžības Skartie (“Touched by Eternity”), stands as a monument in verse to the Latvian Riflemen—those young men who fought bravely in World War I and in the Russian Civil War.

In this epic poem, Čaks wove the tragic fate and valor of these soldiers into something larger than war: a meditation on sacrifice, memory, and destiny. He personalized their stories while still drawing out their symbolic resonance. They were no longer just names in dusty archives—they were men with mothers, dreams, and the silent understanding that history does not always reward the brave.

By the time World War II ended, Latvia had fallen under Soviet control, and Aleksandrs Čaks, who had spent his life speaking in his own voice, was now expected to conform to the imposed language of ideology. But Čaks, despite his past support for social justice and the working class, refused to become a mouthpiece for Soviet propaganda.

In 1949, he was accused of promoting "bourgeois nationalism" and “politically incorrect values”—a devastating blow. The state’s scrutiny, public shaming, and literary isolation took a heavy toll. His health deteriorated rapidly. On 8 February 1950, Čaks died of heart disease, his body worn down as much by sorrow as by illness. He was 48.

For decades after his death, Čaks’ name lived on mostly in whispers—quoted in private, studied in cautious circles. But with Latvia’s independence restored in the 1990s, his poetry surged back into the public realm with renewed reverence. Streets, schools, and even literary prizes now bear his name. A monument in central Riga, not far from the neighborhoods he once immortalized, commemorates his enduring bond with the city.

Today, readers revisit his poems not only for their literary merit but because they capture a side of Riga rarely chronicled—one that still exists in glimpses through tram windows, down narrow lanes, or in the resilience of a woman walking home with a broken umbrella.

Aleksandrs Čaks remains an irreplaceable figure in Latvian culture—not just as a poet, but as a witness to his city’s most intimate moments. His gift was not only in the language he used, but in what he dared to see: dignity in decay, romance in ruin, and eternity in the face of fleeting lives.

He may have lived in rooms with peeling wallpaper and written under flickering lightbulbs, but his words have endured—etched into the cultural heart of Riga like initials carved on an old park bench. And even now, when evening falls over the city, it’s easy to imagine Čaks somewhere nearby, still scribbling, still listening, still in love with the pulse of a city that never quite stops breathing.