Yarychevsky, Sylvester

Yarychevsky, Sylvester [Яричевський, Сильвестер; Jaryčevs'kyj, Syl'vester; pseudonyms: Landsman, Leonyd, Shalvyr], b 14 January 1871 in Rohatyn, Galicia, d 30 March 1918 in Seret, Bukovyna. Writer. He studied at Lviv University (1891–4) and Vienna University (1896–1901). In 1891 he joined the Ruthenian Radical party. In 1909 he moved to Seret to teach and to run a Ukrainian student residence. During the First World War he was Seret’s burgomaster. From 1891 on he published short stories (including some of the first Western Ukrainian stories dealing with urban themes and Vienna), poems, articles, and feuilletons in many Western Ukrainian periodicals, mostly in Bukovyna. In 1906 he contributed translations of contemporary German poetry to the magazine S’vit. Published separately were his dramatic allegory Nebesni spivtsi (Heavenly Bards, 1902), his prose-poem collection Sertse movchyt' (The Heart Stays Silent, 1903), his novella collections Na khvyliakh zhyttia (On Life’s Waves, 1903) and Mizh terniam i tsvitom (Between Thorns and the Bloom, 1905), his poetry collection Pestri zvuky (Varied Sounds, 1904), his fairy tale in verse Horemyr (1906), and his five-act play Pochatok kintsia (Beginning of the End, 1913). A two-volume edition of most of his extant poetry, prose, and drama (some previously unpublished), edited with an introduction by Mahdalyna Laslo-Kutsiuk, was published in Bucharest (1977, 1978).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]