Jurgis Baltrušaitis
Template:Use dmy dates Template:Short description Template:For Template:Infobox writer Jurgis Baltrušaitis (2 May 1873 – 3 January 1944) was a Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator who wrote in Lithuanian and Russian, and was an exponent of iconology. He was the father of art historian and critic Jurgis Baltrušaitis Jr.
Writer
Template:Unsourced section Baltrušaitis was born to a family of farmers in Paantvardys village near Jurbarkas, which was then under Imperial Russian rule. In 1885, he entered Kaunas gymnasium, and graduated in 1893; he then entered the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at Imperial Moscow University. At the same time he attended lectures in the Faculty of History and Philology.
From 1895 onwards Baltrušaitis began to take part in editing Moscow-based literary magazines, and he began to work in Russian. He joined the Symbolist movement, and, in association with Sergei Polyakov, set up the publishing house Scorpio, which published the chief Russian Symbolist magazines such as Vesy and Severnyie Tzvety as well as collections of Russian Symbolist poets.
Baltrušaitis published three collections of poetry in Russian, and another three in Lithuanian. Authors he translated into Russian translations include Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg, Knut Hamsun and Gabriele D'Annunzio.
Politician
Between 1900 and 1914, Baltrušaitis lived in Italy and Norway and spent much time traveling in other countries in Western Europe. During World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution he was in Russia, where he actively participated in the Lithuanian political struggle for independence. In 1919 he was elected President of the Russian Union of Writers, and was known for his efforts to help and rescue many writers and intellectuals during the first years of the Bolshevik regime.<ref name="rescuer">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
After Lithuania regained independence in 1918, Baltrušaitis was appointed Lithuania's ambassador to Russia in 1920 and held this position until 1939. In 1932 he was honored with a doctorate by Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. In 1939, Baltrušaitis was appointed a counselor of the Lithuanian embassy in Paris. Following the annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, his son, Jurgis Baltrušaitis Jr., an art historian and art critic, served as a diplomat for the Lithuanian diplomatic service which continued to represent Lithuanian interests in some Western countries. Baltrušaitis Sr. died in Paris in January 1944; he is buried at Montrouge Cemetery.
See also
References
External links
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- Casimir Norkeliunas: the archival site of the works and scholarship, dedicated to Jurgis Kazimieras Baltrušaitis
- Template:Cite journal
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- Translated poetry of Jurgis Baltrušaitis
- Exhibition of Jurgis Baltrusaitis' furniture at the Lithuanian Art Museum; includes biography
- 1873 births
- 1944 deaths
- People from Jurbarkas District Municipality
- People from Rossiyensky Uyezd
- Ambassadors of Lithuania to Russia
- Lithuanian art critics
- Lithuanian diplomats
- Lithuanian male poets
- Symbolist poets
- Male poets from the Russian Empire
- Translators to Russian
- 19th-century Lithuanian poets
- 19th-century translators
- 19th-century Lithuanian male writers
- 20th-century Lithuanian translators
- Imperial Moscow University alumni