Lithuanian symbolist poet and translator, Jurgis Baltrušaitis, was born May 2, 1873 in Paantvardys, Russian Empire.

150th Birth Anniversary of Jurgis Baltrušaitis (1873-1944)
Issued by Lithuania in 2023
Designed by Ugnė Žilytė 
MO muziejaus kolekcija

For J. Baltrušaitis, the world existed in a seamless and harmonious harmony, where the smallest dust is part of universality. Land, sea, man – just sections of the “mysterious, joyful melody of the world”. This melody unites man with the star and the clump of the earth, with the flower blossom and infinity. The images of Russian romantic poetry (sea, depths, night, stars, wind, storm), transferred to the transcendental vision of the world, turned into signs of the infinity of the universe. The observation of cosmic infinity, the longing for eternity, the perception of the temporality of human existence, the opposition of divinity and earthly – characteristic motifs of symbolism – in the lyrics of J. Baltrušaitis were combined with the endurance of a farmer. His poems sounded like elegiac hymns, created in a painfully solemn tone and commanding rhythms of sacrifice and grandeur. The calm of concentration and the silence of the fields, the undisturbed noise of civilization, the restrained sense of the constancy of the world in the connection of universality between the flower of the fields, the man and the “weaver of days”, the philosophical symbolism of existence forged from the realities of the countryside (ploughman, spinner, sower, harvester), seemed to Russian poets and critics to be an expression of “Lithuanian wisdom”, full of Nordic ascetic beauty.

The Lithuanian lyrics of J. Baltrušaitis are a natural continuation of his Russian work, which repeated many themes, images, and moods. Man and the stinging, the buzzing bee and the blue of the sky are elements of an integral “universe sutartinė”. At the slightest moment, the “thread of the ages” shines. Everything that is born on earth must “decay, bend, and fade,” but it cannot perish in the end, “For what is sown does not perish.” J. Baltrušaitis writes hymns to the “weaver of days”, from whose enigmatic hands rise “the heat of the day, the shadows of the day and the stars”, constantly returns to the divine and earthly antithesis characteristic of Christianity, invites us to step across the threshold of death to eternal freedom and perfection.
rašyk.lt: Jurgis Baltrušaitis (translated from the original Lithuanian)