Metlynsky, Amvrosii

Metlynsky, Amvrosii [Метлинський, Амвросій; Metlyns’kyj, Amvrosij] (pseud: A. Mohyla), b 1814 in Sary, Hadiach county, Poltava gubernia, d 29 July 1870 in Yalta. Poet, ethnographer, and publisher. He served as a professor at Kharkiv University (1843–9, 1854–8) and Kyiv University (1849–54). He published a collection of poetry, Dumky i pisni ta shche deshcho (Thoughts and Songs and Some Other Things, 1839), under his pseudonym. Some of his poetry was reprinted in the almanacs Snip and Molodyk. He also published an anthology of works by Kharkiv poets, Iuzhnyi russkii sbornik (Southern Russian Anthology, 1848), that included his works and those of Stepan Aleksandrov, Mykhailo Petrenko, and Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko. Metlynsky was a member of the so-called Kharkiv Romantic School; his poetry is suffused with nostalgia for the glories of the Ukrainian past, which he thought were destined never to return. His disbelief in a Ukrainian renaissance led him to embrace ideas of Slavic unity (see Pan-Slavism) and to place hope in Russia. His nostalgia prompted him to collect Ukrainian folk songs, which he published in Narodnye iuzhnorusskie pesni (Southern Russian Folk Songs, 1854), a collection that contained an abundance of previously unpublished material.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]