Jurgis Savickis

His first work of fiction was published in Lietuvos žinios in 1910. It was a lyrical short story Dienos kančios (Day's Suffering) describing loneliness when a loved one chose to be with a wealthier man.[7] Until 1914, he also published works in Aušrinė and Laisvoji mintis. These early works were similar to the earlier Lithuanian literature – realist stories of social inequality, injustice, life's sufferings.[1]

During his lifetime, Savickis published three collections of short stories: Šventadienio sonetai (The Sonnets of Holy Days, 1922), Ties aukštu sostu (By the High Throne, 1928), and Raudoni batukai (The Red Shoes, 1951).[6] Šventadienio sonetai was one of the first modernist (Expressionist) works in Lithuanian literature that treated fiction as pure art instead of a semi-ethnographic treatise[9] or a tool to promote some noble cause.[5] It received negative reviews from Adomas Jakštas and Vytautas Bičiūnas, reserved comments from Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas and Kostas Korsakas, and praise from Balys Sruoga.[1] Leonas Miškinas surmised that Šventadienio sonetai was published a decade earlier than Lithuanian readers were ready.[9] The second collection, published after the modernist literary magazine Keturi vėjai, received more positive reviews, but was still criticized for being too urban and too detached from Lithuanian realities. The last collection received critical acclaim. It features works with simpler form and style, but with depth and human warmth as well as nostalgia for Lithuania[1] and hedonism.[7]

In 1952, he published his only novel, Šventoji Lietuva (Holy Lithuania), about Lithuania after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. It is a satirical work verging on a grotesque – a contrast to Lithuania depicted as unnaturally ideal or holy by other nostalgic Lithuanian authors. Critics regarded it as the weakest work of Savickis, more a draft than a complete work.[1] His war-time diary Žemė dega (Earth on Fire) was published posthumously in 1956.[6] It is more similar to works of fiction than a diary: it observes the chaos and destruction of war, but focuses on everyday life and the farm where nature brings back harmony and stability.[1] He also published four travel books: En rejse gennem Litauen (A Journey Through Lithuania, 1919, in Danish, with foreword by Georg Brandes),[5] Atostogos (Vacations, 1928), Truputis Afrikos (A Little bit of Africa, 1934), and Kelionės (Travels, 1938).[7] These are not typical travel books that describe nature or events. Instead, Savickis described various fragments and details of impressions, psychological nuances, curious situations.[1] Therefore, Savickis not as much describes his destinations as creates them.[7] In En rejse gennem Litauen, Savickis expressively renders Lithuanian cultural landscape and sketches the Lithuanian national identity.[10]

Svickis did not leave an autobiography – he started it, but decided it was too egocentric and destroyed it. He also started other works, including a collection of stories Sapnas (Dream) and a novel Šarlatanas (Charlatan), but the manuscripts were lost after his death. His collected works were published in six volumes in 1990–1999 in Vilnius.[1]

Savickis was a cosmopolitan person with an aristocratic disposition. He enjoyed moving around and a luxurious lifestyle, but would not become attached to property. He was known for some large impulsive and impractical purchases, including plots of land and houses in Kulautuva and Palanga.[1] He was a poor orator and disliked ceremonies and public events, but could start a warm and sincere conversation with a poor farmer or a foreign dignitary equally well. In general, Savickis avoided joining organizations or societies and never belonged to any political party. He was not governed by stereotypes and exhibited inner freedom and intelligence.[1] He developed his artistic taste in Western Europe among wealthy bourgeois.[9] Such traits were also reflected in his works which made them difficult to understand and foreign to a more narrow-minded Lithuanian reader. Lithuanians were more used to sentimental, moralized, or patriotic literature while Savickis' works do not neatly fit into any literary movement.[1]

Savickis developed a unique personal style.[9] His works often feature sharp and playful wit and irony, elegant and light writing, succinct and finely tuned sentences (he disliked verbose writers and chatty people). He used many international words and references to other works and employed symbols, metaphors, contrasts. His works were also influenced by his interest in art and theater: plenty of colors, interplay between light and darkness, contours and sketches instead of detailed pictures,[1] purposefully constructed sets and locations (nature is more a prop than something to be worshiped and admired), characters as actors in a play.[9] His works feature a series of fragments creating a dynamic, film-like montage.[5]

Most of Savickis' works take place in cities outside of Lithuania. In a few works that are set in rural Lithuania, the main character is an outsider – such a visiting city dweller, an artist, or aristocrat. His characters, conflicted and struggling with their passions, often seem like dolls played by the unpredictable and capricious life and fate. They are often incomplete sketches of symbolic figures, wearing masks and living in their own world of feelings and emotions.[1] They are small people blind to the enormity of life passing by.[11] Many characters openly display sexual desires breaking another taboo in Lithuanian literature. The plot usually revolves around unexpected promising meetings, painful separations, or failure of grand ideas, intentions, and intrigues.[5] Irony, prevalent in Savickis' works, is used to contrast moral and existential, banal and mystical.[12] His narrator is an observer who maintains a certain emotional distance and does not pass judgement, not an omniscient moralizing narrator typical of literary realism.[1] This distance is alluded to in the title of Ties aukštu sostu (By the High Throne).[5] Savickis leaves it to up the reader to finish the character sketches, to complete what is not said.[1] His works are ambiguous, open to interpretations, not governed by traditional moral values.[12] His works are not self-explanatory lectures, but riddles requiring active involvement from the reader.[7]