Jurgis Savickis (4 May 1890 – 22 December 1952) was a Lithuanian short story writer and diplomat representing interwar Lithuania mostly in the Scandinavian countries.

Born to a family of well-off Lithuanian farmers, Savickis attended a gymnasium in Moscow and studied painting at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków.

22 April] 1890 in the Pagausantys [lt] village near Ariogala to a family of well-off Lithuanian farmers who owned about 80 hectares (200 acres) of land.

[1] His paternal grandmother was of Lithuanian nobility stock and the family took pride in this heritage, on occasion referring to their farm as a manor.

In fall 1915, he evacuated to Saint Petersburg and joined the Lithuanian Society for the Relief of War Sufferers which sent him as a representative to Kopenhagen, Denmark, a neutral country.

[2] On 1 January 1919, the newly established Ministry of Foreign Affairs recognized Savickis as the official representative of Lithuania to Denmark.

[2] After the coup d'état in December 1926, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augustinas Voldemaras, concentrated his attention on the main powers in Europe and paid a lot less interest to the Scandinavian countries and the legation in Finland was closed on 1 July 1927.

[1] In September 1929, Minister Voldemaras was ousted by President Antanas Smetona and Savickis was again offered a diplomatic position abroad.

[3] The Scandinavian countries showed little interest in Lithuanian politics or economy and Savickis concentrated on cultural exchanges.

[7] At the end of 1937, he was reassigned to Riga, Latvia, where he served for a little less than a year before moving to Geneva, Switzerland, to work as the Lithuanian representative to the League of Nations.

At the end of 1939, two Lithuanian legations in Geneva and Bern were consolidated, leaving Jurgis Šaulys in Switzerland and moving Savickis to Kaunas.

It was a lyrical short story Dienos kančios (Day's Suffering) describing loneliness when a loved one chose to be with a wealthier man.

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 [lt], reserved comments from Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas and Kostas Korsakas, and praise from Balys Sruoga.

[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.

It is a satirical work verging on a grotesque – a contrast to Lithuania depicted as unnaturally ideal or holy by other nostalgic Lithuanian authors.

[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.

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.

[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).

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.

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.

The plot usually revolves around unexpected promising meetings, painful separations, or failure of grand ideas, intentions, and intrigues.

In 1916, Savickis married Ida Trakiner, a dentist,[1] daughter of a wealthy Jewish factory owner in Saint Petersburg.