Pavlychko, Dmytro

Pavlychko, Dmytro [Павличко, Дмитро; Pavlyčko], b 28 September 1929 in Stopchativ, now in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Poet and activist of the Ukrainian renaissance in the 1960s and 1980s; father of Solomea Pavlychko. He graduated from the philological faculty at Lviv University (1953) and worked for the journal Zhovten’. From 1971 to 1978 he was editor in chief of the journal Vsesvit. In 1986 he became secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR and in 1988 of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. In 1989–90 he was head of the Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society. He was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and in 1990 served as chairman of its Foreign Affairs Commission. He was people’s deputy of the Supreme Council of Ukraine until 1999 and then in 2005–6. In 2006–11 he served as chairman of the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council.

Pavlychko has published many poetry collections, including Liubov i nenavyst’ (Love and Hate, 1953), Pal’mova vit’ (Palm Branch, 1962), Hranoslov (The Edge of Words, 1968), Sonety podil’s’koï oseni (Sonnets of a Podilia Autumn, 1973), Poemy i prytchi (Poems and Parables, 1986), Pokaianni psalmy (Repentent Psalms, 1994), Rubaï (Lumberjacks, 2003), Sonety (Sonnets, 2004), and Potop (The Flood, 2010). He has also published a collection of articles on literary criticism, Magistraliamy slova (On the Highways of the Word, 1977); scenarios for film; and literature for children, such as Zolotorohyi Olen’ (The Golden-Horned Deer, 1970), Smerichka (The Fir Tree, 1982), and Pleso (The Water Surface, 1984). He has translated from J. Martí, Kh. Botev, P. Hviezdoslav, William Shakespeare, and other writers. Pavlychko's poems are notable for their adherence to form, richness of vocabulary, and finely honed language, especially the sonnets (eg, ‘Svitovyi sonet’ [The World Sonnet, 1983]). Since the late 1980s, as an activist and publicist, Pavlychko has aided the rebirth of Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian language and has opposed Russification.

Ivan Koshelivets

[This article was updated in 2014.]