Pleiada

Pleiada (Pleiad). A literary group established in 1888 by Lesia Ukrainka and her brother, Mykhailo Kosach, in Kyiv. It was modeled on the French school of poetry the Pléiade. Its members included M. Bykovska, Hrytsko Hryhorenko, Mykhailo Komarov, Ahatanhel Krymsky, Volodymyr Samiilenko, Maksym Slavinsky, Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska, Ivan M. Steshenko, and Yevhen Tymchenko. Their meetings took place in various homes and were attended by Mykola Lysenko, P. Kosach, Kostiantyn Mykhalchuk, Mykhailo Starytsky, and others. The group also held literary evenings and contests and translated the works of non-Ukrainian authors, such as Heinrich Heine, Dante, Pierre-Jean de Béranger, Molière, and Vladimir Korolenko. The members prepared three collections for publication, ‘Vesna’ (Kyiv), ‘Desna’ (Chernihiv), and ‘Spilka’ (Odesa), but all three were banned by the Russian censor. Pleiada was active until 1893.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]