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I. The Literature of Kyivan Rus': Chronicles, Lives of Saints, Epics
II. The "Ruthenian Triad" and Western Ukrainian National Revival
III. Taras Shevchenko, Pantaleimon Kulish, and the Ukrainian Romanticism
IV. Ivan Franko and the Western Ukrainian Populists and Radicals
V. Ukrainian Modernist Writers of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century
VI. Mykola Khvylovy, Vaplite, and the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s
VII. Mykola Zerov and the Ukrainian Neoclassicists
I. THE LITERATURE OF KYIVAN RUS': CHRONICLES, LIVES OF SAINTS, EPICS
The development of original literature in Kyivan Rus' was based on both a rich folk oral tradition and a dissemination of translated religious texts. The oldest and most noted Kyivan didactic work is ‘A Sermon on Law and Grace' (1050) by Metropolitan Ilarion, the first native metropolitan of Kyiv. 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 Volodymyr the Great, Saint Princess Olha, and others were written and collected in the Kyivan Cave Patericon, the most remarkable collection of lives in the Kyivan period. 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)... Learn more about Ukrainian medieval literature by visiting the following entries:
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CHRONICLES. The Ukrainian chronicles are the most remarkable monuments of historical literature produced in ancient Rus’. They can be divided into three parts, the Primary Chronicle (up to the 12th century), the Kyiv Chronicle (from 1118 to 1190), and the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (from the beginning of the 13th century to 1292). They were written as annual records or annals. Besides accounts of events they contain a variety of literary materials—stories, legends, biographies, and borrowings from Byzantine chronicles. The so-called Primary Chronicle of 1097 was based on three earlier compilations (of 1037, 1073, and 1079) and became in its turn the source for Povist’ vremennykh lit (ca 1111), whose authorship is traditionally attributed to the monk Nestor the Chronicler.... |
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NESTOR THE CHRONICLER, b ca 1056, d ca 27 October 1114 in Kyiv. Famous medieval hagiographer and chronicler; saint in the Ukrainian church. He entered the Kyivan Cave Monastery at 17 and was a hierodeacon under Hegumen Stefan of Kyiv (1074–8). He participated in the ceremonial disinterment of the relics of Saint Theodosius of the Caves in 1091. He was one of the most educated men in late 11th- and early 12th-century Kyivan Rus’, renowned for his knowledge of theology, history, literature, and Greek. Nestor wrote the lives of Saints Borys and Hlib and Saint Theodosius of the Caves in the 1080s, and he supplemented and continued the text of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle (written in 1093), and completed its redaction, known as Povist’ vremennykh lit (The Tale of Bygone Years), ca 1111–13... |
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HAGIOGRAPHY. Biographies, tales, and legends about saints, including accounts of miracles performed by them, particular episodes from their lives, and their martyrdom. These writings are among the most important monuments of old Ukrainian literature. Original works written in Ukraine include the Lives of Saints Borys and Hlib and the Life of Saint Theodosius of the Caves, both by Nestor the Chronicler, the beautifully composed Tale and Passion and Glorification of the Holy Martyrs Borys and Hlib, and the Life of Prince Mstyslav I Volodymyrovych. The lives of Saint Volodymyr the Great, Saint Princess Olha, Mykhail Vsevolodovych of Chernihiv, and Boyar Fedir have come down to us only in later redactions. The Kyivan Cave Patericon is an important monument of hagiographic literature... |
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KYIVAN CAVE PATERICON. A collection of tales about the monks of the Kyivan 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 Kyivan 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’)... |
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SLOVO O POLKU IHOREVI. An epic poem of the late 12th century written by an anonymous author. Its subject is the unsuccessful campaign mounted in the spring of 1185 by Ihor Sviatoslavych, prince of Novhorod-Siverskyi, against the Cumans. Its central theme is the fate of the territories of Kyivan Rus’. In addressing that theme the author condemns the various princes for their feuding and their selfishness at the expense of the general good. Particularly rich in poetic tropes (epithets, similes, metaphors, metonymy, hyperbole, and personification), the work suggests a sophistication indicative of a rich tradition of folk and martial literature with highly developed poetics. The original manuscript perished in the Moscow fire of 1812. The want of an original allowed a number of critics to consider the work a falsification of a later date. The majority of scholars, however, believe it to be authentic... |
II. THE "RUTHENIAN TRIAD" 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 Holovatsky, 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. 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... Learn more about the legacy of the "Ruthenian Triad" and the origins of Western Ukrainian national revival by visiting the following entries:
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RUTHENIAN TRIAD (Ruska triitsia). A Galician literary group named after the number of the predominant members, Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych, which existed in the late 1830s, while the three were students at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv. 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)... |
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SHASHKEVYCH, MARKIIAN, b 6 November 1811 in Pidlyssia, Zolochiv circle, Galicia, d 7 June 1843 in Novosilky Lisni, now in Buzk raion, Lviv oblast. Poet and leader of the literary revival in Western Ukraine based on the vernacular. He graduated from the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv in 1838 and worked as a priest in the rural Lviv region. During his studies he met Yakiv Holovatsky and Ivan Vahylevych, with whom he formed the Ruthenian Triad. He also organized nationally conscious Ukrainian young people to work for national and cultural revival in Western Ukrainian lands, particularly to reintroduce the use of spoken Ukrainian language in writing and sermons. Their efforts resulted in the preparation of collections of folklore and the publication of the almanac Rusalka Dnistrovaia (1836). The almanac had a decisive effect on the revival and development of Ukrainian literature in Galicia... |
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HOLOVATSKY, YAKIV, b 17 October 1814 in Chepeli, Zolochiv circle, Galicia, d 13 May 1888 in Vilnius. Noted historian, literary scholar, ethnographer, linguist, bibliographer, lexicographer, and poet. As a student he traversed Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia collecting folk songs. In 1832, at Lviv University he, Markiian Shashkevych, and Ivan Vahylevych formed the Ruthenian Triad, which published the first Galician almanac in the vernacular, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), and played an important role in the Galician cultural revival. In 1843 he became a Greek-Catholic village priest. From 1848 to 1867 he was the first professor of Ruthenian (Ukrainian) philology at Lviv University. Influenced by Mikhail Pogodin's Pan-Slavist ideas, he became a Russophile in the 1850s. Dismissed from the university for his views, in 1867 he moved to Russian-ruled Vilnius to head the archeographic commission there... |
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VAHYLEVYCH, IVAN, b 2 September 1811 in Yasen, Stanyslaviv circle, Galicia, d 10 May 1866 in Lviv. Romantic poet, philologist, and ethnographer of the Galician revival. While studying at Lviv University and at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv, he associated with Markiian Shashkevych and Yakiv Holovatsky, and the three of them formed the Ruthenian Triad. Because of his populist activities, cultural nationalist views, and correspondence with scholars in the Russian Empire, he suffered harassment by the church and Austrian civil authorities. During the Revolution of 1848–9 in the Habsburg monarchy he supported a democratic Polish-Ukrainian political federation. Later that year he left the Uniate church in protest against the church hierarchy's sanctions against him and converted to Lutheranism. Ostracized by most Ukrainians and by the church, he was unable to find steady work until 1862, when he was appointed city archivist in Lviv... |
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RUSALKA DNISTROVAIA (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 Lviv; 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... |
III. TARAS SHEVCHENKO, 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:
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SHEVCHENKO, TARAS, b 9 March 1814
in Moryntsi, Zvenyhorod county, Kyiv gubernia, 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… |
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KULISH, PANTELEIMON, b 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 Kyiv 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 Kyiv 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... |
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CYRIL AND METHODIUS BROTHERHOOD. Secret
society established in December 1845–January 1846 in Kyiv 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. Kyiv 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… |
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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 Kyiv gymnasiums. In 1846 he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Russian History at Kyiv 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... |
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ROMANTICISM. An artistic and ideological movement in literature, art, and music and a world view which arose toward the end of the 18th century in Germany, England, and France. In the beginning of the 19th century it spread to Russia, Poland, and Austria, and in the mid-19th century it encompassed other countries of Europe as well as North and South America. Romanticism, which appeared after the French Revolution in an environment of growing absolutism at the turn of the 19th century, was a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the stilted forms, schemata, and canons of classicism and, at times, sentimentalism. Paramount features of romanticism were idealism, a belief in the natural goodness of the individual person, and, hence, the cult of feeling as opposed to reason; a predilection for the more ‘primitive’ expressions of human creativity as being closer to the fundamental goodness of the person and, hence, an enthusiasm for folk art, poetry, and songs; a belief in the perfectibility of the individual person and, hence, a predilection for change and the espousal of ‘striving’ as a mode of behavior; and a search for historical consciousness and an intensified learning of history (historicism), coupled at times with an escape from surrounding reality into an idealized past or future or into a world of fantasy… |
IV. 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:
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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, 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... |
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POPULISM, WESTERN UKRAINIAN. 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 Kyiv, the Ruthenian Triad, and the Supreme Ruthenian Council in Lviv... |
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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... |
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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... |
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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)... |
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LITERATURNO-NAUKOVYI VISTNYK (Literary Scientific Herald, or LNV). A monthly journal published in 1898-1906 in Lviv, in 1907-14 and 1917-19 in Kyiv, 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... |
V. 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 and early 20th century by visiting the following entries:
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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...
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MYKHAILO KOTSIUBYNSKY, b 17 September 1864 in Vinnytsia, d 25 April 1913 in Kyiv. One of the finest Ukrainian writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 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, Emile 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... |
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VOLODYMYR VYNNYCHENKO, 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 Kyiv 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... |
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VASYL STEFANYK, 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 aquainted 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... |
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OLHA KOBYLIANSKA, 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... |
VI. 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... Learn more about Mykola Khvylovy and other Vaplite members by visiting the following entries:
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KHVYLOVY, MYKOLA, 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... |
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VAPLITE (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... |
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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 twentieth century. After his mother's early death, Kulish spent most of his childhood in orphanages and charity homes. He studied history and philology at Odesa University, 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... |
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YOHANSEN, MAIK, b 28 October 1895 in Kharkiv, d 27 October 1937 in Kyiv. 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 publically 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... |
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TYCHYNA, PAVLO, b 27 January 1891 in Pisky, Kozelets county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 16 September 1967 in Kyiv. 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 Kyiv 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)... |
VII. 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... Learn more about the literary legacy of the Neoclassicists by visiting the following entries:
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NEOCLASSICISTS. 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... |
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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 Kyiv University. He was a professor of Ukrainian literature at the Kyiv Architectural Institute (1918-20), the Kyiv Co-operative Tekhnikum (1923-5), and the Kyiv 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... |
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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), Kyiv 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 Kyiv 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 Kyivan 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... |
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FYLYPOVYCH, PAVLO, b 1 September 1891 in the village of Kaitanivka, Kyiv gubernia, d 3 November 1937. Poet and literary scholar. Fylypovych studied at Galagan College and at Kyiv 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... |
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RYLSKY, MAKSYM, b 19 March 1895 in Kyiv, d 24 July 1964 in Kyiv. Poet, translator, and community activist. He studied at Kyiv 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.... |
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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 Kyiv 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.... |
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