Amvrosii Metlynsky was a Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, ethnographer, and professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

, and publisher.

Metlynsky was a professor of Russian Literature

Russian literature

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...

 at Kharkiv University

Kharkiv University

The University of Kharkiv or officially the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University is one of the major universities in Ukraine, and earlier in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union...

 from 1843–49, and again from 1854–58. From 1849–54 he was a professor at Kiev University

Kiev University

Taras Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv , colloquially known in Ukrainian as KNU is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is the third oldest university in Ukraine after the University of Lviv and Kharkiv University. Currently, its structure...

. During the 1830s, the city of Kharkiv

Kharkiv

Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

 became the center of Ukrainian Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

. Metlynsky and other authors such as Izmail Sreznevsky

Izmail Sreznevsky

Izmail Ivanovich Sreznevsky was a towering figure in 19th-century Slavic studies.His father, Ivan Sreznevsky, was a prolific translator of Latin poetry who taught at the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl before moving to Kharkov University. It was in Kharkov that Sreznevsky graduated in philology and...

 and Mykola Kostomarov published ethnographic materials, native interpretations of Ukrainian history, and collections of folk legends

Ukrainian folklore

Ukrainian folklore is the folk tradition which has developed in Ukraine and among ethnic Ukrainians. The earliest examples of folklore found in Ukraine is the layer of pan-slavic folklore that dates back to the ancient Slavic mythology of the Eastern Slavs. Gradually, Ukrainians developed a layer...

 and Cossack

Cossack

Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

 chronicles

Chronicles

Chronicles may refer to:* Books of Chronicles, in the Bible* Chronicle: Medieval historical histories, like those in :Category:Chronicles* Holinshed's Chronicles, the collected works of Raphael Holinshed...

. In 1839, he published a collection of poetry called Dumky i pisni ta shche deshcho (Thoughts and Songs and Some Other Things) under his pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Amvrosii Mohyla. In 1848, he published an anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 of works by other Kharkiv poets called Iuzhnyi russkii sbornik (Southern Russian Anthology).

Metlynsky's poetry contains his nostalgia

Nostalgia

The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...

 for the glories of the Ukrainian past, which he believed were destined never to return. He described his poetry as "the work of the last bandurist

Bandurist

A bandurist is a person who plays the Ukrainian plucked string instrument known as the bandura.-Types of performers:There are a number of different types of bandurist who differ in their paricular choice of instrument, the specific repertoire they play and manner in which they approach their...

 who passes on the song of the past in a dying language". He did not believe in the possibility of a renaissance of the Ukrainian people, which led him to embrace Slavic unity

Pan-Slavism

Pan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...

 and to place hope in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. His nostalgia prompted him to collect Ukrainian folk songs which he published in 1854. Much of this collection was previously unpublished.

In his autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi mentions collections of Ukrainian folk songs published by Metlynsky as works that influenced him.