Biography
a Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator, who wrote his works in Lithuanian and Russian. In addition to his important contributions to Lithuanian literature, he was noted as a political activist and diplomat. Himself one of the foremost exponents of iconology, he was the father of art historian and critic Jurgis Baltru?aitis Jr.
Writer
Baltru?aitis 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 Moscow University. At the same time, he attended lectures in the Faculty of History and Philology, and studied foreign languages; Baltru?aitis learned 15 foreign languages during his life.
From 1895 onwards, Baltru?aitis began to take part in editing Moscow-based literary magazines, and he began his own his creative 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 the greatest Russian Symbolist poets. A member of the city's cultural elite, Baltru?aitis was a close friend and colleague of such famous Russian writers and artists as Anton Chekhov, Konstantin Bal'mont, Valery Bryusov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maksim Gorky, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Mikhail Vrubel, and Aleksandr Scriabin; Boris Pasternak was the private home tutor of Baltru?aitis's children.
Baltru?aitis published three collections of poetry in Russian, and another three in Lithuanian. He authored many Russian translations of modern literature, including ones from Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg, Knut Hamsun, and Gabriele D'Annunzio. His translation of Hunger by Hamsun is considered a classical rendering of this work into Russian, and has been continuously republished right up to contemporary times.
Politician
Between 1900 and 1914, Baltru?aitis often visited and lived in countries of Western Europe, most of all Italy and Norway. He spent the years of World War I and the Russian Revolution 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 is known for his efforts to help and rescue many writers and intellectuals during the first years of the Bolshevik regime.
Baltru?aitis was appointed ambassador independent Lithuania's ambassador to Russia in 1920, and he held this position until 1939. In 1932 he was honored with the award of a doctorate honoris causa by Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Baltru?aitis was appointed a counselor of the Lithuanian embassy in Paris in 1939. His son, Jurgis Baltru?aitis Jr., an art and art critic, was also a Lithuanian diplomat during the Soviet annexation of Lithuania, when the Lithuanian diplomatic service continued to represent Lithuanian interests in some Western countries. Baltru?aitis died in Paris in January 1944; he is buried at Montrouge cemetery. ..
