Tverdokhlib, Sydir

Tverdokhlib, Sydir [Твердохліб, Сидір; Tverdoxlib], b 9 May 1886 in Berezhany, Galicia, d 16 October 1922 in Lviv. (Photo: Sydir Tverdokhlib.) Writer and translator. After studying at Lviv University and Vienna University he worked as a gymnasium teacher in Lviv. There he belonged to the modernist group Moloda Muza; his first poems and translations appeared in 1906 in itsmagazine S’vit. A bilingual (Ukrainian-Polish) writer, Tverdokhlib published one small book of poetry, V svichadi plesa (In the Mirror of the River's Surface, 1908), and verse, novellas, and translations in both Ukrainian (Nedilia (1911–12), Iliustrovana Ukraïna, Dilo) and Polish (Krytyka, Przegląd Krajowy, Widnokręgi) periodicals. Tverdokhlib's translations introduced the Polish reading public to contemporary Ukrainian literature and were favorably received by critics. Published separately were his Polish translations of three books of Mykhailo Yatskiv's novellas (1908, 1910, 1911), an anthology of modern Ukrainian poetry (1911; 2nd edn 1913), and a book of Taras Shevchenko's selected verse (1913). Tverdokhlib also translated Shevchenko's ‘Haidamaky’ into German and Juliusz Słowacki's poems into Ukrainian. From 1920 he and Yatskiv headed the small, unpopular Ukrainian Agrarian party, which co-operated with the Polish occupational regime in Western Ukraine and published the government-funded weekly Ridnyi krai (Lviv). During the Ukrainian general boycott of the 1922 elections to the Sejm Tverdokhlib announced his candidacy and began campaigning. Consequently the underground Ukrainian Military Organization condemned him as a national traitor and had him assassinated in Kaminka-Strumylova.

Roman Senkus

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