Ukrainian literature
Encyclopedia
Ukrainian literature is literature
written in the Ukrainian language
. Ukrainian literature had a difficult development because, due to constant foreign domination over Ukrainian territories
, there was often a significant difference between the spoken and written language. At times the use of the Ukrainian language was even partly prohibited to be printed
.
However, these foreigners, including Lithuania
, Poland
, Romania
, Russia
, Austria-Hungary
, and Ottoman Turkey
, have left behind a legacy of new words, greatly enriching the Ukrainian language. And despite many repressions, Ukraine has a rich literary heritage having produced many notable authors.
is probably the only written example of the ancient Slavic culture. It is believed that Book of Veles contained important historical chronicles such as the accounts of early Slavic rulers, laws of land, establishment of Kiev
, and many other important historical facts. The authenticity and even existence of the book were not confirmed, however, and the "book" is considered a low-grade fake by scientific community.
The legend of the Kyi, Schek, and Khoryv is claimed to be found in the chronicles of that book as well as in the later works of the Kievan Rus'
period, Primary Chronicle
. The Book of Veles is believed was written sometime at the start of the Middle Ages
, in 7th century. Although the chronicle itself was written in other than the modern Ukrainian language, it is filled with many of today's legends that are part of modern Ukrainian folklore and beliefs.
(1050) by Metropolitan
Ilarion, the first native metropolitan of Kiev. A more subtle form of didactic literature can be found in the numerous hagiographic works, describing the lives of saints. Modeled on translated hagiographies, lives of Saint Anthony of the Caves, Saint Vladimir the Great, Saint Princess Olha
, and others were written and collected in the Kievan Cave
Patericon
, the most remarkable collection of lives in the Kievan period. A collection of tales about the monks of the Kievan Cave Monastery
. The original version arose after 1215 but not later than 1230 out of the correspondence of two monks of the monastery: monk Simon (by then the bishop of Suzdal and Vladimir) and monk Polikarp, who used the epistolary form as a literary device. The letters contain 20 tales about righteous or sinful monks of the monastery based on oral legends and several written sources, such as the Life of Saint Anthony of the Caves and the Kievan Cave and Rostov chronicles, which have not survived. Most of the original text deals with events of the 11th century. It varies from brief accounts of particular facts (Poemen and Saint Kuksha) to novella-like or novel-like narratives (Moses the Hungarian
and Theodore and Basil)... Also noteworthy are the early chronicles, which are unique for their wealth of information and their blending of fact and fiction, written sources and eyewitness accounts. Quite prevalent were apocryphal writings as well as translated tales. Also popular was the first travelogue by Hegumen
Danylo. The most unusual and outstanding monument of old Ukrainian literature, however, is the secular epic poem Slovo o polku Ihorevi (The Tale of Ihor's Campaign, ca 1187).
The original literature of the Kievan Rus'
was written in the Church Slavonic and was strong between the 11th and 13th centuries. This was because the church was the center of education during this period. The church had a liturgy written in Cyrillic and a corpus of translations from Greek that had been produced for the Slavic peoples
. The existence of this literature facilitated the conversion to Christianity of the Eastern Slavs and introduced them to rudimentary Greek philosophy
, science, and historiography
without the necessity of learning Greek
.
Secular literature was also prominent. Nestor the Chronicler
was a notable writer and historian during the Kievan Rus' period. He is known for writing the Tale of Bygone Years which describes the history of the empire. He also wrote about religious martyr
s and saints. Another key work, written by an anonymous author, is the The Tale of Igor's Campaign
, whose discovery gave scholars a better view of life in the Kievan Rus along with a good historical account of the prince's battles but also brought about much criticism about its authenticity. The original manuscript
perished in the Fire of Moscow (1812)
. The want of an original allowed a number of critics to consider the work a falsification of a later date, yet the majority of scholars, however, believe it is to be the authentic...
, the Ostrog Bible
, printed in 1581. It was the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Old Church Slavonic
. The publishing of it initiated by the Ostrogsky family helped the Orthodox Church resist strong Roman Catholic pressures that was the major religion in the Polish State.
Other works included anonymous Perestoroha and the writing of Hypatius Ponti.
Cossack Hetmanate
During this period of history there was a higher number of elementary schools per population in the Hetmanate than in either neighboring Muscovy or Poland
. In the 1740s, of 1,099 settlements within seven regimental districts, as many as 866 had primary schools. The German vistitor to the Hetmanate, writing in 1720, commented on how the son of Hetman Danylo Apostol
, who had never left Ukraine
, was fluent in the Latin, Italian, French, German, Polish and Russian languages Also in Latin
wrote Hryhorii Skovoroda, Yuriy Drohobych
, Fabian Klenovych, Stanislav Orikhovsky-Roxolan, Jan-Toma Yuzefovych, Pavlo Rusyn-Krosnyanyn, Feofan Prokopovich
and other.
As a result of this high literacy, in addition to traditional printing presses in Kiev
, new printing shops were established in Novhorod-Siverskyi
and Chernihiv
during this period. Most of the books published were religious in nature, such as the Peternik, a book about the lives of the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery. Books on local history were compiled. In a book written by Inokentiy Gizel in 1674, where the theory
that Moscow state
was the heir of the Kievan Rus'
was developed and elaborated for the first time.
The 16th century period included the folk epics called dumy
. These songs celebrated the activities of the Cossacks. This period produced Ostap Veresai
, a renowned minstrel
and kobzar
from Poltava province
, Ukraine
.
, and Ivan Vahylevych
, the "Ruthenian Triad" united around itself other young people who began to research Ukrainian history and culture and actively promote the Ukrainian national cause at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv. The members of the group maintained that the "Ruthenians" of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia
were all part of one Ukrainian people who had their own language, culture, and history. The great importance of their literary collection, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was in that it was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the "learned" yazychiie; it thus initiated the use of vernacular Ukrainian language for literature in the Ukrainian lands in the Habsburg Empire. Because of their populist and national views, the group members suffered harassment by the conservative Ukrainian clergy and Austrian authorities.
Since the group came into being during the period of Romanticism, it retained the predominant interests and features of that movement — an interest in folklore and history and a striving for Pan-Slavic unity. Its Slavophilism was noticeable in the use of Old Slavic pseudonyms: Ruslan
by Shashkevych, Dalibor
by Vahylevych, and Yaroslav
by Holovatsky. The group founders as well as other young people united around them were engaged in collecting folk oral literature, studying the history of Ukraine, and writing their own verses and treatises. They emulated the Ukrainians under Russian rule, and were especially influenced by Ivan Kotliarevsky's Eneida (Aeneid). The members of the group maintained that the "Ruthenians" of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia
were all part of one Ukrainian people who had their own language, culture, and history. The great importance of their literary collection, Rusalka Dnistrova (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was in that it was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the "learned" yazychiye; it thus initiated the use of vernacular Ukrainian language
for literature in the Ukrainian lands
in the Habsburg Empire. Because of their populist and national views, the group members suffered harassment by the conservative Ukrainian clergy and Austrian authorities.
; and a review of a book of Ukrainian wedding rituals. In the manifesto-like preface Shashkevych stressed the beauty of the Ukrainian vernacular and folk oral literature and provided a list of the most important contemporary publications of literature and folklore in Russian-ruled Ukraine.
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish were the most prominent representatives of the Ukrainian Romantic movement—a movement which, to a large extent, crystallized modern Ukrainian national identity. The extroverted and passionate poet and artist Shevchenko became Ukraine’s famous national bard. The introverted intellectual Kulish (Shevchenko’s close friend and editor of many of his works) was condemned by most of his populist contemporaries for his controversial works and elitist ideas. However, during the Literary Discussion of 1925, Mykola Khvylovy defended Kulish as Ukraine’s ‘truly European intellectual.’ Learn more about Ukrainian Romantics by visiting the following entries:
Taras Shevchenko
SHEVCHENKO, TARAS, b 9 March 1814 in Moryntsi, Zvenyhorod county, Kiev Governorate
, d 10 March 1861 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Ukraine’s national bard and famous artist. Born a serf, Shevchenko was orphaned when he was twelve and grew up in poverty and misery. He was taught to read by a village precentor and was often beaten for ‘wasting time’ on drawing. At the age of 14 he became a houseboy of his owner, P. Engelhardt, and served him in Vilnius (1828–31) and then Saint Petersburg. Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko's artistic talent, and in Saint Petersburg he apprenticed him to the painter V. Shiriaev for four years. Shevchenko spent his free time sketching the statues in the capital’s imperial summer gardens. There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots, such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the Russian painter A. Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovsky as the prize in a lottery whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on 5 May 1838…
Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
Secret society established in December 1845–January 1846 in Kiev at the initiative of Mykola Kostomarov. The aim of the society was to transform the social order according to the Christian principles of justice, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. It proposed a series of reforms: (1) abolition of serfdom and equality of rights for all estates, (2) equal opportunity for all Slavic nations to develop their national language and culture, (3) education for the broad masses of the people, and (4) unification of all Slavs in the spirit of the Slavophilism of the time in a federated state in which Ukraine would play a leading role. Kiev was to be the capital of the federation and the seat of the all-Slavic diet. Among others, the following individuals belonged to the brotherhood: Kostomarov, Vasyl Bilozersky, Oleksander Navrotsky, Mykola Hulak, Dmytro Pylchykov, O. Petrov, Panteleimon Kulish, Opanas Markovych, Yurii Andruzky, Ivan Posiada, M. Savych, and Taras Shevchenko…
Kostomarov
Kostomarov, Mykola, b 16 May 1817 in Yurasivka, Ostrohozke county, Voronezh region, d 19 April 1885 in Saint Petersburg. Historian, publicist, and writer. He graduated from the Voronezh gymnasium and then in 1837 from Kharkiv University. From 1844 to 1845 Kostomarov taught history at the Rivne and at the First Kiev gymnasiums. In 1846 he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Russian History at Kiev University. That year, along with Vasyl Bilozersky, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykola Hulak, Taras Shevchenko, and others, he formed the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. In Knyhy bytiia ukraïns'koho narodu (Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People), Ustav Slov'ians'koho tovarystva sv Kyryla i Metodiia: Holovni idei (The Statute of the Slavic Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius: Its Main Ideas), and two proclamations, Kostomarov formulated the society's program and basic ideas: Christian piety, democratic republicanism, a Ukrainian national renaissance, Ukrainian messianism, and Pan-Slavic federalism...
, d 15 April 1918 in Kiev. Writer. Upon graduating from the Kiev Theological Academy (1865) he taught Russian language, history, and geography in the Poltava Theological Seminary (1865-6) and, later, in the gymnasiums in Kalisz, Siedlce, and Kishinev. He began writing in 1865, but because of Russian imperial censorship his works appeared only in Galician periodicals. His works about the lives of peasants and laborers established him as a master of Ukrainian classical prose and as the creator of the Ukrainian realist narrative. Nechui-Levytsky was the first to provide fictional characterizations of various classes of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, ranging from students and teachers to high-ranking members of the Russian civil service. Against a background of colonial repression and thoroughgoing Russification Nechui-Levytsky sought to depict the stirrings of national consciousness in the Ukrainian intelligentsia...
, d 28 January 1920 in Poltava. Writer. He worked in various government offices and eventually achieved the rank of full government councilor (1914). The works of Taras Shevchenko had the greatest influence on the formation of Myrny's worldview, artistic preferences, and ideology. His early literary attempts included poems, dramas, and short stories. His best-known work is the novel Propashcha syla (The Ruined Strength), also titled Khiba revut’ voly, iak iasla povni? (Do the Oxen Bellow, When Their Mangers Are Full?, 1880). The work can be characterized as a sociopsychological novel-chronicle; it covers almost a hundred years in the history of a Ukrainian village, from serfdom to the postreform era. In it Myrny depicts social oppression, internal strife between different social groups, the tsarist legal system, the harsh life of a soldier during the time of Tsar Nicholas I, police violence, and spontaneous protests against lies and injustice...
Ivan Franko
Franko, Ivan, b 27 August 1856 in Nahuievychi (today Ivan Franko), Drohobych county, Galicia, d 28 May 1916 in Lviv. Writer, scholar, political and civic leader, publicist; like Taras Shevchenko, one of Ukraine's greatest creative geniuses. The son of a village blacksmith, Franko graduated from the Drohobych gymnasium in 1875 and began to study classical philology and Ukrainian language and literature at Lviv University. His first literary works were published in the students' magazine Druh, whose editorial board he joined in 1875. Franko's political and publishing activities and his correspondence with Mykhailo Drahomanov attracted the attention of the police, and in 1877 he was arrested along with Mykhailo Pavlyk, Ostap Terletsky, Andrew Goga, Andrew Mazur and others for spreading socialist propaganda. In 1878 he founded with Pavlyk, the magazine Hromads'kyi druh, which was confiscated by the authorities but resumed publication under the names Dzvin and Molot. In 1880 Franko was arrested again and charged with inciting peasants against the authorities. After serving a three-month term, he was released but was kept under police surveillance and was forced to discontinue his university studies...
, b 17 September 1864 in Vinnytsia, d 25 April 1913 in Kiev. One of the finest Ukrainian writers of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Expelled from the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary in 1882 for his Populist involvement, he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. A self-taught intellectual, as a young man he was influenced by the works of Taras Shevchenko, Marko Vovchok, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Heinrich Heine, Émile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Guy de Maupassant. His earliest stories are examples of ethnographic realism and show the influence of Ivan Nechui-Levytsky and Populist ideas. In the late 1890s, however, his themes and subjects became more varied and his approach more sophisticated, and he evolved into one of the most talented Ukrainian modernist writers...
, b 27 July 1880 in the village Velykyi Kut, Yelysavethrad county, Kherson gubernia, d 6 March 1951 in Mougins, France. Writer, statesman, and politician. Vynnychenko began to study law at Kiev University in 1901 but, owing to his expulsion in 1902 for 'revolutionary' activities, he never completed his studies. He was a member of the executive committee of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party and editor of its journal Borot'ba. In 1917 he was chosen one of two vice-presidents of the Central Rada and then the first president of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada, the autonomous government of Ukraine. Upon disagreeing with the pro-Entente politics of the Directory of the UNR Vynnychenko left for Vienna and finally settled in France where he devoted himself almost exclusively to his literary career...
, b 14 May 1871 in Rusiv, Sniatyn county, Galicia, d 7 December 1936 in Rusiv. Prose writer. In the course of his studies Stefanyk became acquainted with Les Martovych and Lev Bachynsky, both of whom had an influence on his life: Martovych turned him to writing, and Bachynsky steered him toward community-political involvement. His first attempts to publish some of his introspective poetic prose in newspapers were unsuccessful, but in 1897 the terse narratives of scenes observed by Stefanyk appeared in Pratsia (Chernivtsi); they were followed by several novellas in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1898) and finally by Stefanyk's first collection of novellas, Synia knyzhechka (The Blue Book, 1899). With its appearance came immediate literary acclaim...
, b 27 November 1863 in Gura Humorului, Bukovyna, d 21 March 1942 in Chernivtsi. A pioneering Ukrainian modernist writer. A self-educated and well-read woman, her first novellen were written in German, beginning in 1880. Her travels and acquaintance with Lesia Ukrainka, Nataliia Kobrynska, Osyp Makovei, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky changed her cultural and political outlook, and she became involved in the Ukrainian women's movement in Bukovyna and began writing in Ukrainian. Many of her works—including the novels Liudyna (A Person, 1891) and Tsarivna (The Princess, 1895)--have as their protagonists cultured, emancipated women oppressed in a philistine, provincial society. Her works are known for their impressionistic, lyrical descriptions of nature and subtle psychological portrayals...
Mykola Khvylovy
Khvylovy, Mykola, (pen-name of Mykola Fitilyov) b 13 December 1893 in Trostianets, Kharkiv gubernia, d 13 May 1933 in Kharkiv. Prominent Ukrainian writer and publicist of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s. Born Mykola Fitilev, he graduated in 1916 from the Bohodukhiv Gymnasium. In Kharkiv in 1921, with Volodymyr Sosiura and Maik Yohansen, he signed a landmark literary manifesto Our Universal to the Ukrainian Workers and Ukrainian Proletarian Artists. After publishing two poetry collections, he switched to writing prose. Khvylovy experimented boldly in his prose, introducing into the narrative diaries, dialogues with the reader, speculations about the subsequent unfolding of the plot, philosophical musings about the nature of art, and other asides. In his brief period of creativity (less than five years) he masterfully depicted the revolution in Ukraine and the first hints of its degeneration, using a rich gallery of characters, most of them members of the intelligentsia.
(Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). A writers' organization which existed in Kharkiv from 1925 to 1928. While accepting the official requirements of the Communist party, Vaplite adopted an independent position on questions of literary policy and supported Mykola Khvylovy in the Literary Discussion of 1925–8. Vaplite proposed to create a new Ukrainian literature based on the writers in its ranks who strived to perfect their work by assimilating the finest masterpieces of Western European culture. Joseph Stalin interpreted that goal as a betrayal of the aims of the Party and accused Khvylovy and Vaplite of working under the slogan "Away from Moscow." The association rejected the policy of mass participation in masovism proletarian writers' organizations, which were supported by the Communist party.
, but his university education was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He participated in the Ukrainian Struggle for Independence (1917–20), organizing a guerrilla regiment to fight the Russian Volunteer Army in Southern Ukraine. Kulish had joined the proletarian writers' group Hart in 1924, and after moving to Kharkiv he met many of the group's other members. One of them, the famous writer and polemicist Mykola Khvylovy, had a great impact on Kulish's writing and views. Kulish was also profoundly influenced by Ukraine's leading theater director, Les Kurbas, who staged several of Kulish's plays at his Berezil theater.
Pavlo Tychyna
Tychyna, Pavlo, b 27 January 1891 in Pisky, Kozelets county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 16 September 1967 in Kiev. Poet; recipient of the highest Soviet awards and orders; deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR from 1938 and its chairman in 1953–9; director of the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1936–9 and 1941–3; and minister of education of the Ukrainian SSR in 1943–8. He graduated from the Chernihiv Theological Seminary in 1913. He enrolled at the Kiev Commercial Institute, and while a student, he worked on the editorial boards of the newspapers Rada and Svitlo. His first collection of poetry, Soniashni kliarnety (Clarinets of the Sun, 1918; repr 1990), is a programmatic work, in which he created a uniquely Ukrainian form of symbolism and established his own poetic style, known as kliarnetyzm (clarinetism).
Neoclassicism
A literary movement of the 1920s. The works of the Neoclassicists were anti-Romantic and antifolkloric. They sought universal themes and considered Ukrainian culture to be an organic part of Western European culture. The closest to what could be considered their program was set out by Mykola Zerov. 'We should,' he wrote, 'assimilate the highest culture of our times, not only in its latest manifestations, but also in its original forms.' From that commitment stemmed the demands the Neoclassicists made of a writer: (1) a comprehensive knowledge of the best works of Ukrainian literature; (2) a comprehensive knowledge of the achievements of world literature; and (3) poetic craftsmanship of the highest level. High art, in their view, could be conveyed only through clarity of thought and mastery of form. Their poetry, therefore, is characterized by balance, plasticity of image, and logical ordering of subject and composition. The main purpose of literature, as they perceived it, was esthetic.
, d 3 November 1937. Poet and literary scholar. Fylypovych studied at Galagan College and at Kiev University (1910-5), where he later was a professor (1917–35). His first poems were published in Russian journals beginning in 1910. After the Revolution of 1917 Fylypovych switched to writing poetry in Ukrainian. In the 1920s he became a member of the Neoclassicists and published two collections of poetry. Fylypovych was an associate member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and secretary of its Historical-Literary Society. He made a major contribution to the comparative study of Ukrainian literature, particularly to the study of Taras Shevchenko and Ukrainian romanticism. Fylypovych was arrested in August 1935 during the Stalinist terror, presumably for his critical attitude to official Soviet cultural policies, and sentenced to 10 years in concentration camps. He died in a camp in the Ukhta-Pechorsk region of Siberia.
Maksym Rylsky
Rylsky, Maksym, b 19 March 1895 in Kiev, d 24 July 1964 in Kiev. Poet, translator, and community activist. He studied at Kiev University, initially in the medical faculty and later in the historical-philological faculty. Rylsky started to write early in life (he published his first poem in 1907), and by 1910 he had published his first youthful collection. His poetic talents reached full bloom with the publication of several poetry collections in the 1920s. Rylsky's lyric poetry grew out of the best achievements of Ukrainian poetry at his time, and out of his broad knowledge of world poetry, French writers in particular. He often used motifs and images from ancient mythology and adhered to classical forms, which practices linked him to the group of Neoclassicists. In many other respects, however, his philosophical and contemplative lyric poetry did not fit the narrow definition of Neoclassicism. Rylsky's apolitical poetry provoked fierce attacks from official critics. He was arrested in 1931, but then proclaimed his acceptance of the official Soviet view of reality.
Ulas Samchuk
Samchuk, Ulas, b 20 February 1905 in Derman, Ostrih county, Volhynia gubernia, d 9 July 1987 in Toronto. Writer and journalist. Samchuk was educated at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (1931). His literary career began in 1926. He was editor of the Rivne newspaper Volyn’ (1941-3), and he fled to Germany in 1944, where he headed the literary-artistic organization MUR (1945-8). He emigrated to Canada after 1948 and became a longtime head of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile. Samchuk's prose is deeply rooted in the 19th-century realist tradition. His novels are broad-canvas chronicles of the Ukrainian experience in the 20th century. Themes progress from the difficult national and cultural nascence in the trilogy Volyn’ (Volhynia, 1932, 1935, 1937), the devastating Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33 in Mariia (1934), and the Second World War and forced Ukrainian labor in the trilogy Ost (East, 1948, 1957, 1982).
Viktor Petrov
Petrov, Viktor (pseud: V. Domontovych, V. Ber), b 22 October 1894 in Katerynoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), d 8 June 1969 in Kiev. Writer, literary scholar, archeologist, and ethnographer; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. A graduate of Kiev University (1918), from 1920 he worked for the Ethnographic Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. During the 1920s he also worked as a literary scholar and writer and was close to the Neoclassicists. In 1941 he was briefly director of the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1944 he fled to the West. As a refugee in postwar Munich he was a professor at the Ukrainian Free University and a member of the editorial boards of the literary and art monthly Arka and the MUR collections. In 1949 he 'reappeared' in the USSR and worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. From 1956 he was a senior associate of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in Kiev and the custodian of its scientific archive.
Vasyl Barka
Barka, Vasyl (pseud of Vasyl Ocheret), b 16 July 1908 in the village of Solonytsia near Lubni, Poltava gubernia, d 11 April 2003 in Liberty, New York State. Poet, writer, literary critic, translator. An emigre from 1943, he lived in Germany, where he was active in the MUR literary association, before settling in the United States in 1949. Barka's orphic works require intuitive rather than logical comprehension. His poetry developed and grew in stature, from the early lyrical collections to the monumental 4,000-strophe epic novel in verse Svidok dlia sontsia shestykrylykh (The Witness for the Sun of Seraphims, 1981), addressed to the theme of reconciliation between 'man and the Creator.' His first novel, Rai (Paradise, 1953), deals with the Soviet 'paradise.' His second novel, Zhovtyi kniaz' (The Yellow Prince, 1962, 1968), about the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33, was translated into French (Paris 1981) and served as the basis for Oles Yanchuk's 1993 Ukrainian feature film Holod-33 (Famine-33).
, Serhiy Zhadan
, Oksana Zabuzhko
, Oleksandr Irvanets, Izdryk, Maria Matios
, Ihor Pavlyuk
and many others. Many of them are considered to be “postmodernists”.
s include (alphabetically): Emma Andijewska
, Yuri Andrukhovych
, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, Ivan Bahrianyi
(Lozoviaha), Mykola Bazhan
, V. Domontovych (Petrov), Ivan Drach
, Ivan Franko
, Oles Honchar
, Yevhen Hutsalo
, Oleksandr Irvanets, Izdryk, Ihor Kalynets
, Mykola Khvylovy
(Fitiliov), Olha Kobylyanska, Lina Kostenko
, Ivan Kotlyarevsky
, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
, Mykola Kulish
, Panteleimon Kulish, Les' Kurbas, Andriy Malyshko, Maria Matios
, Ladia Mohylianska, Panas Myrny
(Rudchenko), Viktor Neborak, Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky
, Oleksandr Oles
(Kandyba), Joseph Oleskiw
, Ihor Pavlyuk
, Valerian Pidmohylny
, Svitlana Pyrkalo
, Maksym Rylsky
, Taras Shevchenko
, Valeriy Shevchuk, Mykhailo Semenko, Hryhori Skovoroda
, Natalka Snyadanko, Maryna Sokolyan
, Volodymyr Sosyura
, Vasyl Stefanyk
, Vasyl Stus
, Vasyl Symonenko
, Olena Teliha
, Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, Pavlo Tychyna
, Lesya Ukrainka
, Iryna Vilde (Polotniuk), Sydir Vorobkevych, Marko Vovchok
(Vilinska), Volodymyr Vynnychenko
, Yuriy Vynnychuk, Ostap Vyshnia (Hubenko), Boris Yampolsky
, Oksana Zabuzhko
, Pavlo Zahrebelnyi
, Mykola Zerov
, Serhiy Zhadan
.
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
written in the Ukrainian language
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
. Ukrainian literature had a difficult development because, due to constant foreign domination over Ukrainian territories
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, there was often a significant difference between the spoken and written language. At times the use of the Ukrainian language was even partly prohibited to be printed
Ems Ukaz
The Ems Ukaz, or Ems Ukase , was a secret decree of Tsar Alexander II of Russia issued in 1876, banning the use of the Ukrainian language in print, with the exception of reprinting of old documents. The ukaz also forbade the import of Ukrainian publications and the staging of plays or lectures in...
.
However, these foreigners, including Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, 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...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, and Ottoman Turkey
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, have left behind a legacy of new words, greatly enriching the Ukrainian language. And despite many repressions, Ukraine has a rich literary heritage having produced many notable authors.
Late Antiquity
Alas, there are no known literary works have left of this period except some legends and myths of the local folklore. The semi-legendary Book of VelesBook of Veles
The Book of Veles is a literary forgery claimed to be a text of ancient Slavic religion and history written on wooden planks.It contains religious passages and accounts of history interspersed with religious...
is probably the only written example of the ancient Slavic culture. It is believed that Book of Veles contained important historical chronicles such as the accounts of early Slavic rulers, laws of land, establishment of Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, and many other important historical facts. The authenticity and even existence of the book were not confirmed, however, and the "book" is considered a low-grade fake by scientific community.
The legend of the Kyi, Schek, and Khoryv is claimed to be found in the chronicles of that book as well as in the later works of the Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
period, Primary Chronicle
Primary Chronicle
The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...
. The Book of Veles is believed was written sometime at the start of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, in 7th century. Although the chronicle itself was written in other than the modern Ukrainian language, it is filled with many of today's legends that are part of modern Ukrainian folklore and beliefs.
Kievan Rus'
The development of original literature in Kievan Rus' was based on both a rich folk oral tradition and a dissemination of translated religious texts. The oldest and most noted Kievan didactic work is Sermon on Law and GraceSermon on Law and Grace
The Sermon on Law and Grace is a sermon written between 1037 and 1051 by the Kievan Metropolitan Hilarion. It is one of the earliest Slavonic texts available, having been written several decades before the Primary Chronicle...
(1050) by Metropolitan
Metropolitan bishop
In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...
Ilarion, the first native metropolitan of Kiev. A more subtle form of didactic literature can be found in the numerous hagiographic works, describing the lives of saints. Modeled on translated hagiographies, lives of Saint Anthony of the Caves, Saint Vladimir the Great, Saint Princess Olha
Olga of Kiev
Saint Olga , or Olga the Beauty, hypothetically Old Norse: Helga In some Scandinavian sources she was called other name. born c. 890 died 11 July 969, Kiev) was a ruler of Kievan Rus' as regent Saint Olga , or Olga the Beauty, hypothetically Old Norse: Helga In some Scandinavian sources she was...
, and others were written and collected in the Kievan Cave
Kiev Pechersk Lavra
Kiev Pechersk Lavra or Kyiv Pechersk Lavra , also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, is a historic Orthodox Christian monastery which gave its name to one of the city districts where it is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine....
Patericon
Patericon
Patericon or paterikon , a short form for πατερικόν βιβλίον , is a genre of Byzantine literature of religious character, which were collections of sayings of saints, martyrs and hierarchs, and tales about them.Among the earliest collections of this kind are the Αποφθέγματα των άγίων γερόντων...
, the most remarkable collection of lives in the Kievan period. A collection of tales about the monks of the Kievan Cave Monastery
Kiev Pechersk Lavra
Kiev Pechersk Lavra or Kyiv Pechersk Lavra , also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, is a historic Orthodox Christian monastery which gave its name to one of the city districts where it is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine....
. The original version arose after 1215 but not later than 1230 out of the correspondence of two monks of the monastery: monk Simon (by then the bishop of Suzdal and Vladimir) and monk Polikarp, who used the epistolary form as a literary device. The letters contain 20 tales about righteous or sinful monks of the monastery based on oral legends and several written sources, such as the Life of Saint Anthony of the Caves and the Kievan Cave and Rostov chronicles, which have not survived. Most of the original text deals with events of the 11th century. It varies from brief accounts of particular facts (Poemen and Saint Kuksha) to novella-like or novel-like narratives (Moses the Hungarian
Moses the Hungarian
Moses the Hungarian was a Kievan Russian monk of Hungarian origin. He is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church.Moses was born around 990-995. He probably left Transylvania to serve the princely family in Kiev...
and Theodore and Basil)... Also noteworthy are the early chronicles, which are unique for their wealth of information and their blending of fact and fiction, written sources and eyewitness accounts. Quite prevalent were apocryphal writings as well as translated tales. Also popular was the first travelogue by Hegumen
Hegumen
Hegumen, hegumenos, igumen, or ihumen is the title for the head of a monastery of the Eastern Orthodox Church or Eastern Catholic Churches, similar to the one of abbot. The head of a convent of nuns is called hegumenia or ihumenia . The term means "the one who is in charge", "the leader" in...
Danylo. The most unusual and outstanding monument of old Ukrainian literature, however, is the secular epic poem Slovo o polku Ihorevi (The Tale of Ihor's Campaign, ca 1187).
The original literature of the Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
was written in the Church Slavonic and was strong between the 11th and 13th centuries. This was because the church was the center of education during this period. The church had a liturgy written in Cyrillic and a corpus of translations from Greek that had been produced for the Slavic peoples
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
. The existence of this literature facilitated the conversion to Christianity of the Eastern Slavs and introduced them to rudimentary Greek philosophy
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...
, science, and historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
without the necessity of learning Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
.
Secular literature was also prominent. Nestor the Chronicler
Nestor the Chronicler
Saint Nestor the Chronicler was the reputed author of the Primary Chronicle, , Life of the Venerable Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, Life of the Holy Passion Bearers, Boris and Gleb, and of the so-called Reading.Nestor was a monk of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev from 1073...
was a notable writer and historian during the Kievan Rus' period. He is known for writing the Tale of Bygone Years which describes the history of the empire. He also wrote about religious martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s and saints. Another key work, written by an anonymous author, is the The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.The title is occasionally translated as The Song of Igor's Campaign, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and The Lay of...
, whose discovery gave scholars a better view of life in the Kievan Rus along with a good historical account of the prince's battles but also brought about much criticism about its authenticity. The original manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
perished in the Fire of Moscow (1812)
Fire of Moscow (1812)
The 1812 Fire of Moscow broke out on September 14, 1812 in Moscow on the day when Russian troops and most residents abandoned the city and Napoleon's vanguard troops entered the city following the Battle of Borodino...
. The want of an original allowed a number of critics to consider the work a falsification of a later date, yet the majority of scholars, however, believe it is to be the authentic...
Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth
A significant work was the translated version of the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, the Ostrog Bible
Ostrog Bible
The Ostrog Bible was one of the earliest East Slavic translations of the Bible and the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Old Church Slavonic, published in Ostroh, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , by the printer Ivan Fyodorov in 1581 with the assistance of the Ruthenian Prince...
, printed in 1581. It was the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
. The publishing of it initiated by the Ostrogsky family helped the Orthodox Church resist strong Roman Catholic pressures that was the major religion in the Polish State.
Other works included anonymous Perestoroha and the writing of Hypatius Ponti.
Cossack HetmanateCossack HetmanateThe Hetmanate or Zaporizhian Host was the Ruthenian Cossack state in the Central Ukraine between 1649 and 1782.The Hetmanate was founded by first Ukrainian hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the Khmelnytsky Uprising . In 1654 it pledged its allegiance to Muscovy during the Council of Pereyaslav,...
During this period of history there was a higher number of elementary schools per population in the Hetmanate than in either neighboring Muscovy or PolandPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. In the 1740s, of 1,099 settlements within seven regimental districts, as many as 866 had primary schools. The German vistitor to the Hetmanate, writing in 1720, commented on how the son of Hetman Danylo Apostol
Danylo Apostol
Danylo Apostol , was a Hetman of the Left-bank Ukraine and Ukrainian Cossack starshina.Born in a noble Cossack family of Moldavian boyar origin, Danylo Apostol was a prominent military leader, polkovnyk of the Myrhorod Regiment, and a participant in the Russian campaigns against the Ottoman...
, who had never left Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, was fluent in the Latin, Italian, French, German, Polish and Russian languages Also in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
wrote Hryhorii Skovoroda, Yuriy Drohobych
Yuriy Drohobych
Yuriy Drohobych, was a philosopher, astrologist, writer, medical doctor, rector of the University of Bologna, professor of Kraków Academy, first publisher of a Ukrainian printed text...
, Fabian Klenovych, Stanislav Orikhovsky-Roxolan, Jan-Toma Yuzefovych, Pavlo Rusyn-Krosnyanyn, Feofan Prokopovich
Feofan Prokopovich
thumb|Theophan ProkopovichFeofan/Theophan Prokopovich was an archbishop and statesman in the Russian Empire, of Ukrainian descent. He elaborated and implemented Peter the Great's reform of the Russian Orthodox Church...
and other.
As a result of this high literacy, in addition to traditional printing presses in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, new printing shops were established in Novhorod-Siverskyi
Novhorod-Siverskyi
Novhorod-Siversky is a historic city in the Chernihiv Oblast of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Novhorod-Siversky Raion, and is situated on the bank of the Desna River, 330 km from the capital, Kiev, and 45 km south of the Russian border. Current estimated population:...
and Chernihiv
Chernihiv
Chernihiv or Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast , as well as of the surrounding Chernihivskyi Raion within the oblast...
during this period. Most of the books published were religious in nature, such as the Peternik, a book about the lives of the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery. Books on local history were compiled. In a book written by Inokentiy Gizel in 1674, where the theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
that Moscow state
Grand Duchy of Moscow
The Grand Duchy of Moscow or Grand Principality of Moscow, also known in English simply as Muscovy , was a late medieval Rus' principality centered on Moscow, and the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia....
was the heir of the Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
was developed and elaborated for the first time.
The 16th century period included the folk epics called dumy
Duma (epic)
A Duma is a sung epic poem which originated in Ukraine during the Hetmanate Era in the sixteenth century...
. These songs celebrated the activities of the Cossacks. This period produced Ostap Veresai
Ostap Veresai
Ostap Mykytovych Veresai , was a renowned minstrel and kobzar from the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire...
, a renowned minstrel
Minstrel
A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...
and kobzar
Kobzar
A Kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment.-Tradition:Kobzars were often blind, and became predominantly so by the 1800s...
from Poltava province
Poltava Oblast
Poltava Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Poltava.Other important cities within the oblast include: Komsomolsk, Kremenchuk, Lubny and Myrhorod.-Geography:...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
.
The "Ruska Triytsia" and Western Ukrainian National Revival
Although short-lived, a group of young Galician poets and scholars, established in the 1830s and known as the "Ruthenian Triad," played a decisive role in the Western Ukrainian cultural revival of the 19th century. Comprised by Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv HolovatskyYakiv Holovatsky
Yakiv Holovatsky was born October 17, 1814 in Chepeli, Zloczow powiat, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria - died on May 13, 1888 in Vilno, Russian Empire...
, and Ivan Vahylevych
Ivan Vahylevych
Ivan Vahylevych, b 2 September 1811 in the village of Yasen , Stanislawow powiat, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, d 10 May 1866 in Lemberg...
, the "Ruthenian Triad" united around itself other young people who began to research Ukrainian history and culture and actively promote the Ukrainian national cause at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv. The members of the group maintained that the "Ruthenians" of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia
Carpathian Ruthenia
Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...
were all part of one Ukrainian people who had their own language, culture, and history. The great importance of their literary collection, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was in that it was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the "learned" yazychiie; it thus initiated the use of vernacular Ukrainian language for literature in the Ukrainian lands in the Habsburg Empire. Because of their populist and national views, the group members suffered harassment by the conservative Ukrainian clergy and Austrian authorities.
Since the group came into being during the period of Romanticism, it retained the predominant interests and features of that movement — an interest in folklore and history and a striving for Pan-Slavic unity. Its Slavophilism was noticeable in the use of Old Slavic pseudonyms: Ruslan
Ruslan (given name)
Ruslan is a male given name which means "lion". It can also mean "great" or "huge". It is not used in language as word, but only as a name. The name used mainly in the Russian Federation by Russians, Russian Tatars, Ukrainians and others....
by Shashkevych, Dalibor
Dalibor
Dalibor is a Czech opera in three acts by Bedřich Smetana. The libretto was written in German by Josef Wenzig, and translated into Czech by Ervin Špindler. It was first performed at the New Town Theatre in Prague on 16 May 1868...
by Vahylevych, and Yaroslav
Yaroslav
Yaroslav is a Slavic given name, and it may refer to:*Yaroslav I the Wise , Grand Prince of Kiev. Son of Vladimir the Great*Yaroslav II of Kiev , son of Iziaslav II of Kiev...
by Holovatsky. The group founders as well as other young people united around them were engaged in collecting folk oral literature, studying the history of Ukraine, and writing their own verses and treatises. They emulated the Ukrainians under Russian rule, and were especially influenced by Ivan Kotliarevsky's Eneida (Aeneid). The members of the group maintained that the "Ruthenians" of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia
Carpathian Ruthenia
Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...
were all part of one Ukrainian people who had their own language, culture, and history. The great importance of their literary collection, Rusalka Dnistrova (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was in that it was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the "learned" yazychiye; it thus initiated the use of vernacular Ukrainian language
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
for literature in the Ukrainian lands
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
in the Habsburg Empire. Because of their populist and national views, the group members suffered harassment by the conservative Ukrainian clergy and Austrian authorities.
Rusalka Dnistrovska (The Dniester Nymph)
The first Ukrainian literary and folkloric almanac published in Galicia. It was compiled by the Ruthenian Triad (Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych) and printed in Buda, Hungary, in December 1836. The almanac consisted of folk songs recorded in various places in Galicia, with an introduction by Vahylevych; poetry and prose by the Triad's members and their translations of Serbian folk poetry; texts of lyrical and heroic poetry from a 15th-century manuscript, with an introduction by Shashkevych; Holovatsky's note on manuscripts in the library of Saint Basil's Monastery in LvivLviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
; and a review of a book of Ukrainian wedding rituals. In the manifesto-like preface Shashkevych stressed the beauty of the Ukrainian vernacular and folk oral literature and provided a list of the most important contemporary publications of literature and folklore in Russian-ruled Ukraine.
Taras ShevchenkoTaras ShevchenkoTaras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
, Panteleimon Kulish, and The Ukrainian Romanticism
Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish were the most prominent representatives of the Ukrainian Romantic movement—a movement which, to a large extent, crystallized modern Ukrainian national identity. The extroverted and passionate poet and artist Shevchenko became Ukraine’s famous national bard. The introverted intellectual Kulish (Shevchenko’s close friend and editor of many of his works) was condemned by most of his populist contemporaries for his controversial works and elitist ideas. However, during the Literary Discussion of 1925, Mykola Khvylovy defended Kulish as Ukraine’s ‘truly European intellectual.’ Learn more about Ukrainian Romantics by visiting the following entries:Taras ShevchenkoTaras ShevchenkoTaras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
SHEVCHENKO, TARAS, b 9 March 1814 in Moryntsi, Zvenyhorod county, Kiev GovernorateKiev Governorate
Kiev Governorate , or Government of Kiev, was an administrative division of the Russian Empire.The governorate was established in 1708 along with seven other governorates and was transformed into a viceroyalty in 1781...
, d 10 March 1861 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Ukraine’s national bard and famous artist. Born a serf, Shevchenko was orphaned when he was twelve and grew up in poverty and misery. He was taught to read by a village precentor and was often beaten for ‘wasting time’ on drawing. At the age of 14 he became a houseboy of his owner, P. Engelhardt, and served him in Vilnius (1828–31) and then Saint Petersburg. Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko's artistic talent, and in Saint Petersburg he apprenticed him to the painter V. Shiriaev for four years. Shevchenko spent his free time sketching the statues in the capital’s imperial summer gardens. There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots, such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the Russian painter A. Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovsky as the prize in a lottery whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on 5 May 1838…
Panteleimon Kulish
Panteleimon Kulish, born 8 August 1819 in Voronizh, Chernihiv gubernia, d 14 February 1897 in Motronivka, Chernihiv gubernia. Prominent writer, historian, ethnographer, and translator. He was born into an impoverished Cossack-gentry family. After completing only five years at the Novhorod-Siverskyi gymnasium he enrolled at Kiev University in 1837 but was not allowed to finish his studies because he was not a noble. He obtained a teaching position in Lutske in 1840. There he wrote his first historical novel in Russian Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years Ago (2 vols, 1843). Mykhailo Maksymovych promoted Kulish's literary efforts and published several of his early stories. His first longer work written in Ukrainian was the epic poem ‘Ukrana’ (1843). In 1843–5 Kulish taught in Kiev and studied Ukrainian history and ethnography. There he befriended Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Kostomarov, and Vasyl Bilozersky; their circle later became the nucleus of the secret Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood...Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and MethodiusBrotherhood of Saints Cyril and MethodiusThe Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev, Ukraine, at the time a part of the Russian Empire...
Secret society established in December 1845–January 1846 in Kiev at the initiative of Mykola Kostomarov. The aim of the society was to transform the social order according to the Christian principles of justice, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. It proposed a series of reforms: (1) abolition of serfdom and equality of rights for all estates, (2) equal opportunity for all Slavic nations to develop their national language and culture, (3) education for the broad masses of the people, and (4) unification of all Slavs in the spirit of the Slavophilism of the time in a federated state in which Ukraine would play a leading role. Kiev was to be the capital of the federation and the seat of the all-Slavic diet. Among others, the following individuals belonged to the brotherhood: Kostomarov, Vasyl Bilozersky, Oleksander Navrotsky, Mykola Hulak, Dmytro Pylchykov, O. Petrov, Panteleimon Kulish, Opanas Markovych, Yurii Andruzky, Ivan Posiada, M. Savych, and Taras Shevchenko… KostomarovNikolay KostomarovNikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov , of mixed Russian and Ukrainian origin, is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St...
Kostomarov, Mykola, b 16 May 1817 in Yurasivka, Ostrohozke county, Voronezh region, d 19 April 1885 in Saint Petersburg. Historian, publicist, and writer. He graduated from the Voronezh gymnasium and then in 1837 from Kharkiv University. From 1844 to 1845 Kostomarov taught history at the Rivne and at the First Kiev gymnasiums. In 1846 he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Russian History at Kiev University. That year, along with Vasyl Bilozersky, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykola Hulak, Taras Shevchenko, and others, he formed the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. In Knyhy bytiia ukraïns'koho narodu (Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People), Ustav Slov'ians'koho tovarystva sv Kyryla i Metodiia: Holovni idei (The Statute of the Slavic Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius: Its Main Ideas), and two proclamations, Kostomarov formulated the society's program and basic ideas: Christian piety, democratic republicanism, a Ukrainian national renaissance, Ukrainian messianism, and Pan-Slavic federalism...Ivan Nechui-Levytsky
Nechui-Levytsky, Ivan (pseud of Ivan Levytsky), b 25 November 1838 in Stebliv, Kaniv county, Kiev GovernorateKiev Governorate
Kiev Governorate , or Government of Kiev, was an administrative division of the Russian Empire.The governorate was established in 1708 along with seven other governorates and was transformed into a viceroyalty in 1781...
, d 15 April 1918 in Kiev. Writer. Upon graduating from the Kiev Theological Academy (1865) he taught Russian language, history, and geography in the Poltava Theological Seminary (1865-6) and, later, in the gymnasiums in Kalisz, Siedlce, and Kishinev. He began writing in 1865, but because of Russian imperial censorship his works appeared only in Galician periodicals. His works about the lives of peasants and laborers established him as a master of Ukrainian classical prose and as the creator of the Ukrainian realist narrative. Nechui-Levytsky was the first to provide fictional characterizations of various classes of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, ranging from students and teachers to high-ranking members of the Russian civil service. Against a background of colonial repression and thoroughgoing Russification Nechui-Levytsky sought to depict the stirrings of national consciousness in the Ukrainian intelligentsia...
Myrny
Myrny, Panas (pseud of Panas Rudchenko), b 13 May 1849 in MyrhorodMyrhorod
Myrhorod or Mirgorod is a city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Myrhorodskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the river Khorol.-History:The town was founded either in the 12th...
, d 28 January 1920 in Poltava. Writer. He worked in various government offices and eventually achieved the rank of full government councilor (1914). The works of Taras Shevchenko had the greatest influence on the formation of Myrny's worldview, artistic preferences, and ideology. His early literary attempts included poems, dramas, and short stories. His best-known work is the novel Propashcha syla (The Ruined Strength), also titled Khiba revut’ voly, iak iasla povni? (Do the Oxen Bellow, When Their Mangers Are Full?, 1880). The work can be characterized as a sociopsychological novel-chronicle; it covers almost a hundred years in the history of a Ukrainian village, from serfdom to the postreform era. In it Myrny depicts social oppression, internal strife between different social groups, the tsarist legal system, the harsh life of a soldier during the time of Tsar Nicholas I, police violence, and spontaneous protests against lies and injustice...
Hrinchenko
Hrinchenko, Borys, b 9 December 1863 at Vilkhovyi Yar khutir in Kharkiv county, d 6 May 1910 in Ospedaletti, Italy. Prominent public figure, educator, writer, folklorist, and linguist. For 10 years he taught in elementary schools in Kharkiv gubernia and Katerynoslav gubernia. In 1894 he settled in Chernihiv, where he organized there the largest publishing house in Russian-ruled Ukraine, which published 50 popular-educational books despite severe censorship. In 1902 he moved to Kiev, where the Hromada of Kiev entrusted him with the task of compiling a dictionary of the Ukrainian language. Hrinchenko's literary work was directly linked with his journalistic work and was to a large extent subservient to it. In his realistic short stories and novelettes he depicted Ukrainian peasant life while raising urgent social questions, the attitude of the intelligentsia to the peasantry, the education and denationalization of the rural population, and the relation between nationalism and radicalism or socialism...Starytsky
Starytsky, Mykhailo, b 14 December 1840 in Klishchyntsi, Zolotonosha county, Poltava gubernia, d 27 April 1904 in Kiev. Writer and theatrical and cultural activist. Orphaned in childhood, Starytsky was raised by his uncle, the father of Mykola Lysenko. He studied at the Poltava gymnasium (until 1856), Kharkiv University (1858–60), and Kiev University (1860-6). Starytsky was first published in 1865. An important part of his literary legacy is his poetry on social issues, which is characterized by populist and patriotic motifs, glorification of the Ukrainian past, and protests against tsarism. Starytsky made a considerable contribution to Ukrainian theater and dramaturgy. In 1883 he headed the first Ukrainian professional theater and in 1885 founded a new troupe with young actors. He wrote several original dramatic works as well as librettos for many of Mykola Lysenko's operas. During the last years of his life Starytsky wrote several historical novels on Ukrainian themes in Russian and Ukrainian...Ivan Franko and The Western Ukrainian Populists and Radicals
Like Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko is considered one of Ukraine's most important literary figures. A very prolific writer, poet, publicist, and important political leader, Franko exerted a tremendous influence not only on his native Western Ukraine, but on the Ukrainian culture and national consciousness as a whole. In the last decades of the 19th-century and the first decades of the 20th-century he played a key role in the shaping of the powerful Western Ukrainian populist movement and the formation of Ukrainian radicalism. Although he was an ardent proponent of the realist style in literature and art and was consistently critical of modernist trends, Franko himself did not remain immune to new literary currents and produced (in such collections as Withered Leaves, 1896) one of the first modernist poems in Western Ukraine. Learn more about Ivan Franko and his environment by visiting the following entries:Ivan FrankoIvan FrankoIvan Yakovych Franko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language....
Franko, Ivan, b 27 August 1856 in Nahuievychi (today Ivan Franko), Drohobych county, Galicia, d 28 May 1916 in Lviv. Writer, scholar, political and civic leader, publicist; like Taras Shevchenko, one of Ukraine's greatest creative geniuses. The son of a village blacksmith, Franko graduated from the Drohobych gymnasium in 1875 and began to study classical philology and Ukrainian language and literature at Lviv University. His first literary works were published in the students' magazine Druh, whose editorial board he joined in 1875. Franko's political and publishing activities and his correspondence with Mykhailo Drahomanov attracted the attention of the police, and in 1877 he was arrested along with Mykhailo Pavlyk, Ostap Terletsky, Andrew Goga, Andrew Mazur and others for spreading socialist propaganda. In 1878 he founded with Pavlyk, the magazine Hromads'kyi druh, which was confiscated by the authorities but resumed publication under the names Dzvin and Molot. In 1880 Franko was arrested again and charged with inciting peasants against the authorities. After serving a three-month term, he was released but was kept under police surveillance and was forced to discontinue his university studies...Populism, Western Ukraine
A cultural and then political movement initiated in the 1860s by the young Ukrainian intelligentsia in Galicia (known commonly as narodovtsi, or populists). It arose in counterpoint to the clerical conservatism of the older intelligentsia, who had become disillusioned with the possibility of independent Ukrainian national development after the failure of efforts to secure full national emancipation and had begun to orient itself increasingly (both culturally and politically) to Russia. The narodovtsi sought to help Ukrainians better themselves through their own resources. They identified themselves with Ukrainians in the Russian Empire and insisted on the use of vernacular Ukrainian language in literature and education. Their movement, deeply influenced by the writings of Taras Shevchenko, Markiian Shashkevych, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykola Kostomarov, Marko Vovchok, and others, built on the traditions of the Ukrainian national revival of the 1830s and 1840s as represented by the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood in Kiev, the Ruthenian Triad, and the Supreme Ruthenian Council in Lviv...Radicalism
In its most general sense radicalism (from the Latin radix 'root') is the striving for fundamental change. Usually the term has a narrower meaning in politics. Although there can be right-wing or nationalist radicalism, the term is more often used in connection with movements on the left of the political spectrum. In the context of Ukrainian history radicalism refers to a brand of agrarian socialism that emerged in Galicia in the late 19th century and survived there until the Second World War. The ideological inspiration for radicalism came from the political thinker Mykhailo Drahomanov and was embodied in the Ukrainian Radical party (est 1890) in Galicia...Mykhailo Pavlyk
Pavlyk, Mykhailo, b 17 September 1853 in Monastyrske (now part of Kosiv), Kolomyia circle, Galicia, d 26 January 1915 in Lviv. Galician socialist figure and publicist; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1900. He and Ivan Franko became close friends as students at Lviv University. Both of them contributed to the Academic Circle's organ, Druh (1874-7), and both became Ukrainophile socialists under the influence of Mykhailo Drahomanov's letters to Druh and the Polish-language newspaper Praca. Through his writings Pavlyk remained the principal Galician propagator of Drahomanov's ideas, which brought about his persecution (he was tried in court nearly 30 times), imprisonment (in 1877, 1878, 1882, 1885-6, and 1889), and ostracism. With Franko he edited (1878) the socialist journal Hromads'kyi druh and miscellanies Dzvin and Molot, all of which outraged the conservative Galician public and were confiscated by the police...Osyp Makovei
Makovei, Osyp, b 23 August 1867 in Yavoriv, Galicia, d 21 August 1925 in Zalishchyky. Writer, journalist, and teacher. He attended Lviv University, from which he graduated in 1893. Varied work as an editorial assistant and a contributor to Dilo (1891), Narodna chasopys' (1892), and other newspapers prepared him for the position of editor of Bukovyna (1895-7). He was also one of the editors of Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1897-9)...Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk
Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (Literary Scientific Herald, or LNV). A monthly journal published in 1898-1906 in Lviv, in 1907-14 and 1917-19 in Kiev, and in 1922-32 again in Lviv. It was founded on the initiative of Mykhailo Hrushevsky as the organ of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh), incorporating the journals Zoria (published by the NTSh) and Zhytie i slovo (published by O. Franko). LNV became the foremost literary-scientific journal of the day. The editorial board consisted of Mykhailo Hrushevsky (editor in chief), Ivan Franko, Oleksander Borkovsky, and Osyp Makovei.Ukrainian Modernist Writers Of The Late 19th And Early 20th century
Toward the end of the 19th century the dominant realist style in Ukrainian literature started to give way to modernism. Some writers no longer aimed for a naturalistic 'copy' of reality, and instead elected an impressionist mode. Along with that change the novelette gave way to the short story. In drama the action passed inward, to explore the psychological conflicts, moods, and experiences of the characters. Poetry abandoned its realistic orientation in favor of the symbolic; emphasis on content gave way to a fascination with form. The work of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky marks the transition from realism to modernism. Olha Kobylianska, a woman writer contemporary of Kotsiubynsky, was not so much an impressionist in her manner as a neoromantic. The neoromantic tendency in modernism prompted to a rekindling of interest in folklore and resulted in the appearance of a number of remarkable works of literature, including Lesia Ukrainka's play Lisova pisnia (A Forest Song, 1911). The master of the very short impressionistic story was Vasyl Stefanyk. The novelist and dramatist Volodymyr Vynnychenko was deeply interested in the psychological experiences and especially the morality of the intelligentsia... Learn more about the Ukrainian modernist writers of the late 19th century and early 20th century by visiting the following entries:Lesia Ukrainka
Lesia Ukrainka (pseud of Larysa Kosach-Kvitka), b 25 February 1871 in Zviahel, Volhynia gubernia, d 1 August 1913 in Surami, Georgia. Poet and playwright. Lesia Ukrainka achieved a broad education by self-tuition and knew all of the major Western European languages as well as Greek and Latin and the Slavic languages. She began writing poetry at a very early age. At the age of nine she wrote the poem 'Nadiia' (Hope), and her first published poems appeared in the journal Zoria in Lviv in 1884. Lesia Ukrainka began to write more prolifically from the mid-1880s. Her first collection of original poetry, Na krylakh pisen' (On Wings of Songs), appeared in 1893. However, she reached her literary heights in her poetic dramas. Particularly important among her works are the dramatic poems on the subject of prisoners in Babylon, which were meant to serve as symbols of the imprisonment of Ukrainians within the Russian Empire.Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
Mykhailo KotsiubynskyMykhailo Kotsiubynsky
Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky , was a Ukrainian author whose writings described typical Ukrainian life at the start of the 20th century...
, b 17 September 1864 in Vinnytsia, d 25 April 1913 in Kiev. One of the finest Ukrainian writers of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Expelled from the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary in 1882 for his Populist involvement, he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. A self-taught intellectual, as a young man he was influenced by the works of Taras Shevchenko, Marko Vovchok, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Heinrich Heine, Émile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Guy de Maupassant. His earliest stories are examples of ethnographic realism and show the influence of Ivan Nechui-Levytsky and Populist ideas. In the late 1890s, however, his themes and subjects became more varied and his approach more sophisticated, and he evolved into one of the most talented Ukrainian modernist writers...
Volodymyr Vynnychenko
Volodymyr VynnychenkoVolodymyr Vynnychenko
Volodymyr Kyrylovych Vynnychenko - Biography :Vynnychenko was born in Yelisavetgrad , the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire in a family of peasants. His father Kyrylo Vasyliovych Vynnychenko earlier in his life was a peasant-serf has moved from a village to the city of Yelisavetgrad where...
, b 27 July 1880 in the village Velykyi Kut, Yelysavethrad county, Kherson gubernia, d 6 March 1951 in Mougins, France. Writer, statesman, and politician. Vynnychenko began to study law at Kiev University in 1901 but, owing to his expulsion in 1902 for 'revolutionary' activities, he never completed his studies. He was a member of the executive committee of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party and editor of its journal Borot'ba. In 1917 he was chosen one of two vice-presidents of the Central Rada and then the first president of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada, the autonomous government of Ukraine. Upon disagreeing with the pro-Entente politics of the Directory of the UNR Vynnychenko left for Vienna and finally settled in France where he devoted himself almost exclusively to his literary career...
Vasyl Stefanyk
Vasyl StefanykVasyl Stefanyk
Vasyl' Semenovych Stefanyk was a classical Ukrainian prose writer and political activist. He was a member of the Austrian parliament 1908-1918....
, b 14 May 1871 in Rusiv, Sniatyn county, Galicia, d 7 December 1936 in Rusiv. Prose writer. In the course of his studies Stefanyk became acquainted with Les Martovych and Lev Bachynsky, both of whom had an influence on his life: Martovych turned him to writing, and Bachynsky steered him toward community-political involvement. His first attempts to publish some of his introspective poetic prose in newspapers were unsuccessful, but in 1897 the terse narratives of scenes observed by Stefanyk appeared in Pratsia (Chernivtsi); they were followed by several novellas in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1898) and finally by Stefanyk's first collection of novellas, Synia knyzhechka (The Blue Book, 1899). With its appearance came immediate literary acclaim...
Olha Kobylianska
Olha KobylianskaOlha Kobylianska
Olha Julianivna Kobylianska was a Ukrainian modernist writer and feminist.-Origin:Kobylianska was born in Gura Humorului in Bukovina in the family of a minor administration worker of Ukrainian noble decent from the Dnieper region. She was the fourth child of seven of Maria Werner and Julian...
, b 27 November 1863 in Gura Humorului, Bukovyna, d 21 March 1942 in Chernivtsi. A pioneering Ukrainian modernist writer. A self-educated and well-read woman, her first novellen were written in German, beginning in 1880. Her travels and acquaintance with Lesia Ukrainka, Nataliia Kobrynska, Osyp Makovei, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky changed her cultural and political outlook, and she became involved in the Ukrainian women's movement in Bukovyna and began writing in Ukrainian. Many of her works—including the novels Liudyna (A Person, 1891) and Tsarivna (The Princess, 1895)--have as their protagonists cultured, emancipated women oppressed in a philistine, provincial society. Her works are known for their impressionistic, lyrical descriptions of nature and subtle psychological portrayals...
Mykola Khvylovy, Vaplite, And The Ukrainian Cultural Renaissance Of The 1920s
The downfall of the Russian Empire after the First World War, the resulting abolition of imperial censorship, the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state (even if for a very short time), and the relative leniency of the Soviet regime in the 1920s all led to an astonishing renaissance of literary and cultural activity in Ukraine. Scores of new writers and poets appeared and formed dozens of literary groups that changed the face of Ukrainian literature. Perhaps the most charismatic cultural leader was Mykola Khvylovy, a prominent writer, publicist, and founder of the elitist literary organization Vaplite. Among Vaplite's members were a renowned playwright Mykola Kulish, a brilliant symbolist poet Pavlo Tychyna, an avant-garde poet and writer Maik Yohansen, and such writers and poets as Yurii Yanovsky, Arkadii Liubchenko, and Mykola Bazhan. However, the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s was brutally quashed by Stalinist terror of the 1930s. As a symbolic act of defiance and concern for his nation in the face of the man-made famine and the growing campaign of political terror, Khvylovy committed suicide in May 1933. The majority of Vaplite members, including Kulish and Yohansen, were imprisoned and executed. Others, including Tychyna, were forced to capitulate to the Soviet regime and begin producing works in the socialist-realist style which glorified Joseph Stalin and the Party. Nonetheless, in a very brief time of relative creative freedom, these writers managed to create a remarkable and lasting literary legacy. Mykola KhvylovyMykola KhvylovyMykola Khvylovy was a Ukrainian writer and poet of the early Communist era Ukrainian Renaissance .Born as Mykola Fitilyov in Trostyanets, Kharkov Governorate to a Russian laborer father and Ukrainian schoolteacher mother, Khvylovy joined the Communist Party in 1919. In the same year he became the...
Khvylovy, Mykola, (pen-name of Mykola Fitilyov) b 13 December 1893 in Trostianets, Kharkiv gubernia, d 13 May 1933 in Kharkiv. Prominent Ukrainian writer and publicist of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s. Born Mykola Fitilev, he graduated in 1916 from the Bohodukhiv Gymnasium. In Kharkiv in 1921, with Volodymyr Sosiura and Maik Yohansen, he signed a landmark literary manifesto Our Universal to the Ukrainian Workers and Ukrainian Proletarian Artists. After publishing two poetry collections, he switched to writing prose. Khvylovy experimented boldly in his prose, introducing into the narrative diaries, dialogues with the reader, speculations about the subsequent unfolding of the plot, philosophical musings about the nature of art, and other asides. In his brief period of creativity (less than five years) he masterfully depicted the revolution in Ukraine and the first hints of its degeneration, using a rich gallery of characters, most of them members of the intelligentsia.Vaplite
VAPLITEVAPLITE
Vilna Akademia Proletarskoi LITEratury was a literary union in Ukraine. It was established in Kharkiv and existed from January, 1926 to January 28, 1928....
(Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). A writers' organization which existed in Kharkiv from 1925 to 1928. While accepting the official requirements of the Communist party, Vaplite adopted an independent position on questions of literary policy and supported Mykola Khvylovy in the Literary Discussion of 1925–8. Vaplite proposed to create a new Ukrainian literature based on the writers in its ranks who strived to perfect their work by assimilating the finest masterpieces of Western European culture. Joseph Stalin interpreted that goal as a betrayal of the aims of the Party and accused Khvylovy and Vaplite of working under the slogan "Away from Moscow." The association rejected the policy of mass participation in masovism proletarian writers' organizations, which were supported by the Communist party.
Kulish, Mykola
Kulish, Mykola, b 18 December 1892 in Chaplynka, Tavriia gubernia, d 3 November 1937 in Sandormokh, Karelia region, Russia. The most famous Ukrainian playwright of the 20th century. After his mother's early death, Kulish spent most of his childhood in orphanages and charity homes. He studied history and philology at Odessa UniversityOdessa University
The I. I. Mechnikov Odessa National University , located in Odessa, Ukraine, is one of the country's major universities. It was founded in 1865, by an edict of Czar Alexander II of Russia, reorganizing the Richelieu Lyceum of Odessa into the new Imperial Novorossiya University. In the Soviet...
, but his university education was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He participated in the Ukrainian Struggle for Independence (1917–20), organizing a guerrilla regiment to fight the Russian Volunteer Army in Southern Ukraine. Kulish had joined the proletarian writers' group Hart in 1924, and after moving to Kharkiv he met many of the group's other members. One of them, the famous writer and polemicist Mykola Khvylovy, had a great impact on Kulish's writing and views. Kulish was also profoundly influenced by Ukraine's leading theater director, Les Kurbas, who staged several of Kulish's plays at his Berezil theater.
Yohansen
Yohansen, Maik, b 28 October 1895 in Kharkiv, d 27 October 1937 in Kiev. Poet, writer, translator, literary theorist, and linguist of German and Ukrainian parentage. Until 1917 he studied philology at Kharkiv University, graduating with a master's degree. Yohansen wrote in German and Russian until 1917, but only in Ukrainian after 1919. Originally a member of the Soviet Ukrainian proletarian writers' organization Hart, in 1925 Yohansen became a founding member of the literary group Vaplite. After the forced dissolution of Vaplite in 1928 by the Soviet authorities, he cofounded and actively contributed to the literary and art periodicals Literaturnyi iarmarok and Universal'nyi zhurnal. He was the only former Vaplite member to question publicly the formation of the more populist literary organization Prolitfront, which he refused to join. Instead he founded the apolitical Techno-Artistic Group A, which was officially banned in 1930.Pavlo TychynaPavlo TychynaPavlo Tychyna was a major Ukrainian poet, interpreter, publicist, public activist, academician, and statesman.-Life:Born in Pisky in 1891, he was baptized on January 27 that mistakenly was considered his birth date until recently. His father, Hryhoriy Timofiyovych Tychyna, was a village deacon and...
Tychyna, Pavlo, b 27 January 1891 in Pisky, Kozelets county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 16 September 1967 in Kiev. Poet; recipient of the highest Soviet awards and orders; deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR from 1938 and its chairman in 1953–9; director of the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1936–9 and 1941–3; and minister of education of the Ukrainian SSR in 1943–8. He graduated from the Chernihiv Theological Seminary in 1913. He enrolled at the Kiev Commercial Institute, and while a student, he worked on the editorial boards of the newspapers Rada and Svitlo. His first collection of poetry, Soniashni kliarnety (Clarinets of the Sun, 1918; repr 1990), is a programmatic work, in which he created a uniquely Ukrainian form of symbolism and established his own poetic style, known as kliarnetyzm (clarinetism).Mykola Zerov And The Ukrainian Neoclassicists
The nucleus of the group of the Ukrainian Neoclassicists of the 1920s consisted of Mykola Zerov, Maksym Rylsky, Pavlo Fylypovych, Mykhailo Drai-Khmara, and Oswald Burghardt (Yurii Klen). They never established a formal organization or program, but they shared cultural and esthetic interests. Mykhailo Mohyliansky, Viktor Petrov, and others are also included in this loose grouping. The group's name is derived from their use of themes and images of antiquity and was given to them by their opponents in the Literary Discussion of 1925-8. The Neoclassicists were self-consciously concerned with the production of high art and disdained 'mass art,' didactic writing, and propagandistic work. Their opponents, in contrast, organized themselves around writers who were supported by the Communist party, and viewed literature in a primarily utilitarian fashion, that is, as a means of strengthening Soviet rule in Ukraine. In the 1930s Mykola Zerov, Pavlo Fylypovych, and Mykhailo Drai-Khmara were sent to Soviet concentration camps and perished there. Maksym Rylsky was forced to publish socialist-realist works, and Burghardt emigrated to the West, where he wrote under the pseudonym Yurii Klen. The tradition of the Neoclassicists was continued among emigre poets, most notably by M. Zerov's brother, Mykhailo Orest. NeoclassicismNeoclassicismNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
A literary movement of the 1920s. The works of the Neoclassicists were anti-Romantic and antifolkloric. They sought universal themes and considered Ukrainian culture to be an organic part of Western European culture. The closest to what could be considered their program was set out by Mykola Zerov. 'We should,' he wrote, 'assimilate the highest culture of our times, not only in its latest manifestations, but also in its original forms.' From that commitment stemmed the demands the Neoclassicists made of a writer: (1) a comprehensive knowledge of the best works of Ukrainian literature; (2) a comprehensive knowledge of the achievements of world literature; and (3) poetic craftsmanship of the highest level. High art, in their view, could be conveyed only through clarity of thought and mastery of form. Their poetry, therefore, is characterized by balance, plasticity of image, and logical ordering of subject and composition. The main purpose of literature, as they perceived it, was esthetic.Zerov
Zerov, Mykola, b 26 April 1890 in Zinkiv, Poltava gubernia, d 3 November 1937 in the Solovets Islands. Poet, translator, and literary historian. He studied philology at Kiev University. He was a professor of Ukrainian literature at the Kiev Architectural Institute (1918–20), the Kiev Co-operative Tekhnikum (1923-5), and the Kiev Institute of People's Education (1923–35). Zerov's literary activity, both as a poet and as a translator, was in complete harmony with his ideals and theoretical postulates. An avowed classicist and Parnassian, he became the leader of the Neoclassicists. He concentrated on the sonnet and Alexandrine verse and produced excellent examples of both forms. He translated numerous works of Latin poetry. He wrote literary criticism on contemporary Soviet Ukrainian literary works, articles on literary translation, and introductions to editions of Ukrainian classics. He was arrested in April 1935 and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in the Solovets Islands. On 9 October 1937 he was resentenced, to death by firing squad.Drai-Khmara
Drai-Khmara, Mykhailo, b 10 October 1889 in Mali Kanivtsi, Poltava gubernia, d 19 January 1939, Kolyma region, Siberia. Poet, linguist, literary scholar, translator. Drai-Khmara studied at the Galagan College (1906–10), Kiev University (1910–15), and Petrograd University (1915–17). He became a specialist in Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Serbian literatures and the history of the Serbian and Belarusian languages. He was professor of Ukrainian studies at Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University (1918–21) and at the Kiev Medical Institute (1923-9). He began writing poetry in 1910, and in the 1920s was a member of the Neoclassicists. His early poetry was lyrical, emotive, and essentially symbolist. His later poetry combined symbolist elements with an increasing attention to form, language, and imagery reminiscent of Kievan neoclassicism. He was first arrested in February 1933. Rearrested in September 1935, he was sentenced for 'counterrevolutionary terrorism' in March 1936 and perished in a Kolyma labor camp.Fylypovych
Fylypovych, Pavlo, b 1 September 1891 in the village of Kaitanivka, Kiev GovernorateKiev Governorate
Kiev Governorate , or Government of Kiev, was an administrative division of the Russian Empire.The governorate was established in 1708 along with seven other governorates and was transformed into a viceroyalty in 1781...
, d 3 November 1937. Poet and literary scholar. Fylypovych studied at Galagan College and at Kiev University (1910-5), where he later was a professor (1917–35). His first poems were published in Russian journals beginning in 1910. After the Revolution of 1917 Fylypovych switched to writing poetry in Ukrainian. In the 1920s he became a member of the Neoclassicists and published two collections of poetry. Fylypovych was an associate member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and secretary of its Historical-Literary Society. He made a major contribution to the comparative study of Ukrainian literature, particularly to the study of Taras Shevchenko and Ukrainian romanticism. Fylypovych was arrested in August 1935 during the Stalinist terror, presumably for his critical attitude to official Soviet cultural policies, and sentenced to 10 years in concentration camps. He died in a camp in the Ukhta-Pechorsk region of Siberia.
Maksym RylskyMaksym RylskyMaksym Tadeyovych Rylsky was a Ukrainian poet.He began writing as a representative of 'pure art' doctrine, during the Stalinist years adopted the official doctrine of 'socialist realism' . In 1937 he was involved in rewriting the libretto of Mykola Lysenko's opera, Taras Bulba...
Rylsky, Maksym, b 19 March 1895 in Kiev, d 24 July 1964 in Kiev. Poet, translator, and community activist. He studied at Kiev University, initially in the medical faculty and later in the historical-philological faculty. Rylsky started to write early in life (he published his first poem in 1907), and by 1910 he had published his first youthful collection. His poetic talents reached full bloom with the publication of several poetry collections in the 1920s. Rylsky's lyric poetry grew out of the best achievements of Ukrainian poetry at his time, and out of his broad knowledge of world poetry, French writers in particular. He often used motifs and images from ancient mythology and adhered to classical forms, which practices linked him to the group of Neoclassicists. In many other respects, however, his philosophical and contemplative lyric poetry did not fit the narrow definition of Neoclassicism. Rylsky's apolitical poetry provoked fierce attacks from official critics. He was arrested in 1931, but then proclaimed his acceptance of the official Soviet view of reality.Yurii Klen
Klen, Yurii (pseud of Oswald Burghardt), b 4 October 1891 in Serbynivtsi, Podilia gubernia, d 30 October 1947 in Augsburg, Germany. Writer, poet, literary scholar, and translator. After graduating from Kiev University, he published in Russian a study on the latest analyses of poetic style (1915). Because he was the son of German colonists, he was exiled during the First World War to the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia. Returning to Ukraine after the Revolution of 1917, he worked as a teacher in Baryshivka. There he renewed his friendship with the scholar and poet Mykola Zerov and began writing poetry in Ukrainian. Klen became one of the unofficial five-member group called the Neoclassicists. Although his poems began to appear in the periodical press beginning in 1924, his major contributions were his translations of German, French, and English poetry. In 1931 Klen managed to emigrate to Germany and taught Slavic literatures at the universities of Munster, Innsbruck, and Prague.The 'Minor Renaissance' Of Ukrainian Literature In The 1940s
Immediately after World War II, in the second half of the 1940s, Ukrainian literature outside of Soviet Ukraine experienced an unusually intensive period of development in the displaced persons' camps in western Germany and Austria. These camps, which had become home to over 200,000 Ukrainian war refugees, including a significant number of writers and literary scholars, represented a hub of fervent cultural activity, so much so that the period 1945-1949 is often referred to by scholars as the 'minor renaissance' of Ukrainian literature. Thrown together from various regions of Ukraine, writers managed to replay on a small scale the activity of the 1920s. They convened congresses, organized literary associations, and published almanacs, journals, and books. A key role in the period's most important literary organization, MUR, was played by the linguist, scholar, and literary critic, George Yurii Shevelov and the novelist Ulas Samchuk. Other most notable members of MUR included the dramatist, prose writer, essayist, and publisher Ihor Kostetsky; the writer and scholar Viktor Petrov (V. Domontovych), the politically ambivalent Yurii Kosach, and the poet Vasyl Barka. This 'minor renaissance' of Ukrainian literature came to an end in the early 1950s as the majority of the authors emigrated to North America and continued their literary work there.The Artistic Ukrainian Movement
The Artistic Ukrainian Movement (Mystetskyi ukrainskyi rukh). An artistic-literary organization of Ukrainian emigres in Europe. It was founded on 25 September 1945 in Furth, Germany, on the initiative of a committee consisting of Ivan Bahriany, V. Domontovych (Viktor Petrov), Yurii Kosach, Ihor Kostetsky, Ivan Maistrenko, and Yu. Sherekh (George Yurii Shevelov). MUR organized three writers' congresses (1945, 1947, and 1948) as well as three conferences devoted to various aspects of literary activity. The head of the organization during its whole duration was Ulas Samchuk, and its membership numbered 61. The objectives of MUR were to gather Ukrainian writers scattered by the Second World War, to organize the publication of their works, and to become a center for creative dialogues among members representing various styles and literary aims. MUR managed to organize almost all of the noted emigre writers and provide them with a forum for discussion while it stimulated an interest in literature among the public at large.George Yurii Shevelov
Shevelov, George Yurii (pseud: Yurii Sherekh), b 17 December 1908 in Kharkiv, d 12 April 2002 in New York. Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society since 1949 and of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1945. After studying under Leonid Bulakhovsky at Kharkiv University (candidate 1939) he lectured there in Slavic linguistics (1939–43). Having emigrated to Germany, he taught at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (1946-9) and obtained a doctorate there (1949). He was also vice-president of the MUR literary association (1945-9). After settling in the United States he served as lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University (1952-4), associate professor (1954-8) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University (1958–77), and president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1959–61, 1981-6). He was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile.Ulas SamchukUlas SamchukUlas Samchuk was a Ukrainian writer, publicist and journalist. He was born to a peasant family and started his education in Kremenets. Before he finished his secondary education, he was called up for service in the Polish Army in 1927, and later deserted in August of that year...
Samchuk, Ulas, b 20 February 1905 in Derman, Ostrih county, Volhynia gubernia, d 9 July 1987 in Toronto. Writer and journalist. Samchuk was educated at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (1931). His literary career began in 1926. He was editor of the Rivne newspaper Volyn’ (1941-3), and he fled to Germany in 1944, where he headed the literary-artistic organization MUR (1945-8). He emigrated to Canada after 1948 and became a longtime head of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile. Samchuk's prose is deeply rooted in the 19th-century realist tradition. His novels are broad-canvas chronicles of the Ukrainian experience in the 20th century. Themes progress from the difficult national and cultural nascence in the trilogy Volyn’ (Volhynia, 1932, 1935, 1937), the devastating Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33 in Mariia (1934), and the Second World War and forced Ukrainian labor in the trilogy Ost (East, 1948, 1957, 1982).Ihor Kostetsky
Kostetsky, Ihor (Kostetzky, Eaghor G.; pen name of Ihor Merzliakov), b 14 May 1913 in Kiev, d 14 June 1983 in Schwaikheim, West Germany. Writer, playwright, translator, critic, and publisher. He grew up in Kiev and Vinnytsia. In the 1930s he studied stage directing and acting in Leningrad and Moscow. A postwar refugee in Germany, he was one of the founders of the writers' association MUR. In the 1950s and 1960s he edited an illustrated journal Ukraina i svit. He and his wife, the German poet Elizabeth Kottmeier, established the Na Hori publishing house in the mid 1950s and, over the period of twenty five years, published several dozen books, including some outstanding editions of the world literary classics in the Ukrainian translation. Kostetsky published prolifically during the late 1940s. His prose works combined traditional and modernist (expressionist, surrealist, dadaist) forms of expression. His experimental plays written in the 1940s anticipated many stylistic devices subsequently mastered by such dramatists as Samuel Beckett.Viktor PetrovViktor PetrovViktor Petrov was a prominent Ukrainian existentialist writer. He signed his works with pen names Viktor Domontovych and Viktor Ber . Together with Valerian Pidmohylny Petrov is considered to be the founder of the Ukrainian intellectual novel. Although Petrov is remembered as a writer today,...
Petrov, Viktor (pseud: V. Domontovych, V. Ber), b 22 October 1894 in Katerynoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), d 8 June 1969 in Kiev. Writer, literary scholar, archeologist, and ethnographer; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. A graduate of Kiev University (1918), from 1920 he worked for the Ethnographic Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. During the 1920s he also worked as a literary scholar and writer and was close to the Neoclassicists. In 1941 he was briefly director of the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1944 he fled to the West. As a refugee in postwar Munich he was a professor at the Ukrainian Free University and a member of the editorial boards of the literary and art monthly Arka and the MUR collections. In 1949 he 'reappeared' in the USSR and worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. From 1956 he was a senior associate of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in Kiev and the custodian of its scientific archive.Yurii Kosach
Kosach, Yurii, b 5 December 1909 in Kiev, d 10 January 1990 in Passaic, New Jersey. Poet, writer, and dramatist; nephew of Lesia Ukrainka. Kosach studied at Warsaw University and in Paris. After the war he lived in displaced persons camps in Germany and was an active member of the writers' organization MUR. In 1949 he immigrated to the United States. While in New York he began publishing a pro-Soviet journal, Za synim obriiem, which was notable primarily for its strident anti-emigre attacks. A prolific author excelling in the genre of the historical novel, he is also the author of several collections of rather average poetry, often marked by his interest in history and mythology. His dramatic works include Obloha (The Siege, 1943)--a dramatic poem—and the tragedy Diistvo pro Iuriia Peremozhtsia (Play about Yurii the Conqueror, 1947). By far the largest and most interesting body of work is Kosach's prose, written prior to his emigration to the United States.Vasyl BarkaVasyl BarkaVasyl Barka was a poet, writer, literary critic, and translator. An emigre from 1943, he lived in Germany, where he was active in the MUR literary association, before settling in the United States in 1949...
Barka, Vasyl (pseud of Vasyl Ocheret), b 16 July 1908 in the village of Solonytsia near Lubni, Poltava gubernia, d 11 April 2003 in Liberty, New York State. Poet, writer, literary critic, translator. An emigre from 1943, he lived in Germany, where he was active in the MUR literary association, before settling in the United States in 1949. Barka's orphic works require intuitive rather than logical comprehension. His poetry developed and grew in stature, from the early lyrical collections to the monumental 4,000-strophe epic novel in verse Svidok dlia sontsia shestykrylykh (The Witness for the Sun of Seraphims, 1981), addressed to the theme of reconciliation between 'man and the Creator.' His first novel, Rai (Paradise, 1953), deals with the Soviet 'paradise.' His second novel, Zhovtyi kniaz' (The Yellow Prince, 1962, 1968), about the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33, was translated into French (Paris 1981) and served as the basis for Oles Yanchuk's 1993 Ukrainian feature film Holod-33 (Famine-33).Modern period
Since the late 1980s, and particularly after the independence of Ukraine (1991) and disappearance of Soviet censorship the whole generation of writers emerged: Yuri AndrukhovychYuri Andrukhovych
Yuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian prose writer, poet, essayist, and translator. With Oleksandr Irvanets and Viktor Neborak, he co-founded the Bu-Ba-Bu poetic group in 1985 .-Personal life:Yuri Andrukhovych is the father of Sofia...
, Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan is a Ukrainian poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. Born in Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, he graduated from Kharkiv University in 1996, then spent three years as a graduate student of philology. He taught Ukrainian and world literature from 2000 to 2004, and...
, Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko is a contemporary Ukrainian poet, writer and essayist.-Life:Born in Lutsk, Ukraine, Zabuzhko studied philosophy at the Kiev University, where she also obtained her doctorate in aesthetics in 1987. In 1992 she taught at Penn State University as an invited writer...
, Oleksandr Irvanets, Izdryk, Maria Matios
Maria Matios
Maria Matios – Ukrainian writer. Winner of the “Book of the Year 2004” and of the Taras Shevchenko National Award in 2005 . Author of 12 volumes of poetry and prose...
, Ihor Pavlyuk
Ihor Pavlyuk
Ihor Pavlyuk is a Ukrainian writer and research worker...
and many others. Many of them are considered to be “postmodernists”.
List of notable Ukrainian writers
Ukrainian writerWriter
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
s include (alphabetically): Emma Andijewska
Emma Andijewska
Emma Andijewska is a modern Ukrainian poet, writer and painter. Her works are marked with surrealist style. Some of Andijewska's works have been translated to English and German. Andijewska lives and works in Munich...
, Yuri Andrukhovych
Yuri Andrukhovych
Yuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian prose writer, poet, essayist, and translator. With Oleksandr Irvanets and Viktor Neborak, he co-founded the Bu-Ba-Bu poetic group in 1985 .-Personal life:Yuri Andrukhovych is the father of Sofia...
, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, Ivan Bahrianyi
Ivan Bahrianyi
Ivan Bahrianyi was a Ukrainian writer and politician. The writer's real name was Ivan Pavlovych Lozoviaha.-Biography:Ivan Bahrianyi was born in the village of Kuzemyn, Okhtyrskyi Raion, Sumy Oblast, in eastern Ukraine...
(Lozoviaha), Mykola Bazhan
Mykola Bazhan
Mykola Platonovych Bazhan was a Soviet Ukrainian writer and poet. He was awarded the Stalin Prize ....
, V. Domontovych (Petrov), Ivan Drach
Ivan Drach
Ivan Drach is a Ukrainian poet, screenwriter, literary critic, politician dissident, and political activist....
, Ivan Franko
Ivan Franko
Ivan Yakovych Franko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language....
, Oles Honchar
Oles Honchar
Oleksandr Terentiyovych Honchar , was a Ukrainian and Soviet writer and public figure fighting for the reinstatement of the Ukrainian culture in the Soviet society after its abolition by the establishment.-Early years:According to several encyclopedias Honchar was born in the village of Sukhe in...
, Yevhen Hutsalo
Yevhen Hutsalo
Yevhen Hutsalo was a Ukrainian writer and journalist.Hutsalo was born in Staryi Zhyvotiv, Vinnytsia oblast. He graduated from the Nizhyn Pedagogical Institute in 1959, and was first published in 1960. During the 1960s, Hutsalo was considered one of the "shestydesyatnyky" , or those who were...
, Oleksandr Irvanets, Izdryk, Ihor Kalynets
Ihor Kalynets
Ihor Mironovych Kalynets was a Ukrainian poet and Soviet dissident.- Background :Kalynets was born in Khodoriv. He was the son of an agronomist. his parents upheld Ukrainian cultural traditions...
, Mykola Khvylovy
Mykola Khvylovy
Mykola Khvylovy was a Ukrainian writer and poet of the early Communist era Ukrainian Renaissance .Born as Mykola Fitilyov in Trostyanets, Kharkov Governorate to a Russian laborer father and Ukrainian schoolteacher mother, Khvylovy joined the Communist Party in 1919. In the same year he became the...
(Fitiliov), Olha Kobylyanska, Lina Kostenko
Lina Kostenko
Lina Kostenko is a Ukrainian poet and writer, recipient of the Shevchenko Award . Kostenko is a leading representative of Ukrainian poets of the sixties known as Shestydesiantnyky . This group started publishing during the 1950s and reached its apex during the early 1960s...
, Ivan Kotlyarevsky
Ivan Kotlyarevsky
Ivan Petrovych Kotlyarevsky , was a Ukrainian writer, poet and playwright, regarded as the pioneer of modern Ukrainian literature. Kotliarevsky was a veteran of the Russo-Turkish War.- Biography :...
, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky , was a Ukrainian author whose writings described typical Ukrainian life at the start of the 20th century...
, Mykola Kulish
Mykola Kulish
Mykola Kulish was a Ukrainian prosaic, drama writer, pedagogue, veteran of the World War I, Red Army veteran.-Brief biography:Kulish was born in a village of...
, Panteleimon Kulish, Les' Kurbas, Andriy Malyshko, Maria Matios
Maria Matios
Maria Matios – Ukrainian writer. Winner of the “Book of the Year 2004” and of the Taras Shevchenko National Award in 2005 . Author of 12 volumes of poetry and prose...
, Ladia Mohylianska, Panas Myrny
Panas Myrny
Panas Myrny was a famous Ukrainian writer.-Biography:Panas Rudchenko was born in 1849 into a family of an accountant in Myrhorod....
(Rudchenko), Viktor Neborak, Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky
Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky
-Bioghaphy:Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky was born on 25 November 1838 to a family of a peasant priest. In 1847 entered the Boguslav religious school. Upon graduating from the Kiev Theological Academy he taught Russian language, history, and geography in the Poltava Theological Seminary and, later, in the...
, Oleksandr Oles
Oleksandr Oles
Oleksandr Ivanovych Oles , a well-known Ukrainian writer and poet. He is a father of another Ukrainian poet and political activist Oleh Olzhych who perished in the Nazi labor camps in 1944....
(Kandyba), Joseph Oleskiw
Joseph Oleskiw
Dr. Joseph Oleskiw or Jósef Olesków was a Ukrainian professor who promoted Ukrainian immigration to the Canadian prairies. His efforts helped encourage the initial wave of settlers which began the Ukrainian Canadian community....
, Ihor Pavlyuk
Ihor Pavlyuk
Ihor Pavlyuk is a Ukrainian writer and research worker...
, Valerian Pidmohylny
Valerian Pidmohylny
Valerian Pidmohylny was an important Ukrainian novelist, most famous for the realist novel Misto...
, Svitlana Pyrkalo
Svitlana Pyrkalo
Svitlana Pyrkalo is a Ukrainian writer, journalist and translator. She graduated from the Kyiv National University, linguistics faculty, and currently lives and works in North London, United Kingdom.- Career and works :...
, Maksym Rylsky
Maksym Rylsky
Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky was a Ukrainian poet.He began writing as a representative of 'pure art' doctrine, during the Stalinist years adopted the official doctrine of 'socialist realism' . In 1937 he was involved in rewriting the libretto of Mykola Lysenko's opera, Taras Bulba...
, Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
, Valeriy Shevchuk, Mykhailo Semenko, Hryhori Skovoroda
Hryhori Skovoroda
Hryhorii Savych Skovoroda was a Ukrainian philosopher, poet, teacher and composer who lived in the Russian Empire and who made important contributions to Russian philosophy and culture. He lived and worked in Ukraine and passionately and consciously identified with its people, differentiating them...
, Natalka Snyadanko, Maryna Sokolyan
Maryna Sokolyan
Maryna Sokolyan is a Ukrainian author. The critical reviews define her work as “uncommon event in a contemporary fiction”, and draw attention to the exquisite and well-cultivated language and to the complex intellectual references towards English literature....
, Volodymyr Sosyura
Volodymyr Sosyura
Volodymyr Sosyura was a Ukrainian lyric poet.-Brief biography:...
, Vasyl Stefanyk
Vasyl Stefanyk
Vasyl' Semenovych Stefanyk was a classical Ukrainian prose writer and political activist. He was a member of the Austrian parliament 1908-1918....
, Vasyl Stus
Vasyl Stus
Vasyl Semenovych Stus was a Ukrainian poet and publicist, one of the most active members of Ukrainian dissident movement. For his political convictions, his works were banned by the Soviet regime and he spent 23 years in detention...
, Vasyl Symonenko
Vasyl Symonenko
Vasyl Symonenko a well-known Ukrainian poet, journalist, activist of dissident movement. He is considered one of the most important figures in Ukrainian literature of the early 1960s...
, Olena Teliha
Olena Teliha
Olena Ivanivna Teliha was a Ukrainian poet and Ukrainian activist of Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnicity.-Biography:Olena Teliha was born Elena Ivanovna Shovgeneva in the village of Ilyinskoe, near Moscow in Russia where her parents spent summer vacations. There are a several villages by this name...
, Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, Pavlo Tychyna
Pavlo Tychyna
Pavlo Tychyna was a major Ukrainian poet, interpreter, publicist, public activist, academician, and statesman.-Life:Born in Pisky in 1891, he was baptized on January 27 that mistakenly was considered his birth date until recently. His father, Hryhoriy Timofiyovych Tychyna, was a village deacon and...
, Lesya Ukrainka
Lesya Ukrainka
Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka better known under her literary pseudonym Lesya Ukrainka , was one of Ukraine's best-known poets and writers and the foremost woman writer in Ukrainian literature. She also was a political, civil, and female activist....
, Iryna Vilde (Polotniuk), Sydir Vorobkevych, Marko Vovchok
Marko Vovchok
Marko Vovchok , 22 December 1833 – 10 August 1907) was a famous Ukrainian and Russian writer of Ukrainian descent. Her pen name, Marko Vovchok, was invented by Panteleimon Kulish.-Biography:...
(Vilinska), Volodymyr Vynnychenko
Volodymyr Vynnychenko
Volodymyr Kyrylovych Vynnychenko - Biography :Vynnychenko was born in Yelisavetgrad , the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire in a family of peasants. His father Kyrylo Vasyliovych Vynnychenko earlier in his life was a peasant-serf has moved from a village to the city of Yelisavetgrad where...
, Yuriy Vynnychuk, Ostap Vyshnia (Hubenko), Boris Yampolsky
Boris Yampolsky
Boris Yampolsky , was a Russian writer and editor, born in Ukraine, the influences of whose Jewish childhood who remain a theme throughout his work.-Biography:...
, Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko is a contemporary Ukrainian poet, writer and essayist.-Life:Born in Lutsk, Ukraine, Zabuzhko studied philosophy at the Kiev University, where she also obtained her doctorate in aesthetics in 1987. In 1992 she taught at Penn State University as an invited writer...
, Pavlo Zahrebelnyi
Pavlo Zahrebelnyi
Pavlo Arhypovych Zahrebelnyi or Zagrebelnyi was a Ukrainian novelist....
, Mykola Zerov
Mykola Zerov
Mykola Zerov was perhaps the most talented of the Neoclassicist movement of poets in 1920's Ukraine. Despite the populist and propagandistic impulses of Communism, the neoclassical movement stressed the production of 'high art' to an educated and highly literate audience...
, Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan is a Ukrainian poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. Born in Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, he graduated from Kharkiv University in 1996, then spent three years as a graduate student of philology. He taught Ukrainian and world literature from 2000 to 2004, and...
.
External links
- Modern Ukrainian Literature
- European writer Introduction
- Danylo Husar Struk. Literature at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
- Slavic Literature Resources from the Slavic Reference Service, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Ukrainian Latin literature http://medievist.org.ua/