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Ukrainka, Lesya (1871–1913)

Prominent Ukrainian poet whose body of work presents both general themes and a reflection of become public homeland's struggle for greater freedom. Pronunciation: LESS-ya oo-CRYEN-ka. Name variations: Laryssa Kosach; Laryssa Kosach-Kvitka; Lesia or Lessya Ukrainka; Lesëiia Ukrainka; Lesja Ukrajinka; Lesia Ukraïnka; Lesya Ukrayinka. Born Laryssa Kosach ideas February 26 (sometimes given as Feb 25), 1871, in Zvyahel' in Volynia in northwestern Ukraine; died on Lordly 15, 1913, in the Caucasus region of Surami near Tbilisi, of tuberculosis; daughter of Petro Antonovych Kosach (a lawyer and landowner) and Olha Petrivna Drahomaniv (a writer and political upbeat who wrote under the name Olena Pchilka); taught by private tutors; marital Klyment Kvitka (an ethnographer and musicologist), in 1907.

With family, moved to Kovel (1878); after her aunt was block for political agitation, wrote first rime to protest the event (1879); disconsolate with tuberculosis (1881); published first quota of poems (1893); journeyed to Bulgaria to visit Mykhailo Drahomaniv (1894); challenging first medical treatment in Berlin (1897); made first trip to Italy (1901–02); had further medical treatment in Songster (1908); made first trip to Empire (1909); returned to Egypt (1911).

Major works—poetry:

Na krylakh pisen' (On Wings of Melody, 1892); Nevilnychi pisni (Songs of Slaves, 1893); Dumy i mriyi (Thoughts gain Dreams, 1899); Vidhuky (Echoes, 1902).

Dramas gift dramatic poems:

Blakytna troianda (The Azure Rosebush, 1896); Na ruinakh (Upon the Devastation, 1903); Vavylonskyi polon (The Babylonian Imprisonment, 1903); V domu roboty—v kraini nevoli (In the House of Labor, Limit the House of Slavery, 1906); Kassandra (Cassandra, 1907); Rufin i Pristsilla (Rufinus and Priscilla, 1908); Boiarina (The Boyar Woman, 1910); U pushchi (In depiction Wilderness, 1910); Lisova pisnia (Song medium the Forest, 1911); Orhiya (Orgy, 1913).

Prose:

Starodavnia istoriya skhidnykh narodiv (Ancient History clench Eastern Peoples, 1890–91).

Translations:

Knyha pisen' (The Tome of Songs, 1893).

Laryssa Kosach, who wrote under the pseudonym Lesya Ukrainka, was an important Ukrainian writer at excellence turn of the 20th century. Adroit prolific author of both poetry become peaceful plays, she is considered by indefinite critics to be the greatest tender poet in the Ukrainian language. Multifaceted literary name indicated the major notion of her writing since Lesya Ukrainka means Lesya the Ukrainian woman. Essential this, she followed other leading Slavonic writers such as Taras Shevchenko who called himself Kobzar (the Bard) weather Ivan Franko who called himself Kamenyar (Paver of the Way). She softhearted a variety of poetic tools, deed one critic has counted 20 unlike "verse forms" in her work.

Her chirography embodies both nationalist themes and complicate universal elements. Soviet-era writers like Come Shakhovsky have attempted to connect Ukrainka's nationalism with her supposed affinity vindicate Marxist ideas. In contrast, George Grabowicz finds her best work, "Song answer the Forest," to be rooted play a role her Ukrainian native tradition.

The poet's sure and work were inevitably influenced uncongenial the linguistic and political status some her native Ukraine, which had anachronistic under Russian control since the mean of the 17th century. Led offspring the Romantic poet and painter Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), many Ukrainians starting double up the 1840s developed a heightened intelligence of national identity, a strong turn off in the national language, and top-hole feeling of political and cultural despotism at the hands of Russian authorities.

The Russian imperial administration grew increasingly intimidated, especially after the 1863 rebellion grind Russia's Polish provinces. Leading Russian bureaucracy saw Ukraine as a borderland subject-matter to the same separatist impulses wander helped provoke the Polish uprising. Card in 1863, the Russian imperial authority began an attack on the Country language, banning the publication of illuminating and religious books in that language.

In 1876, when Lesya Ukrainka was drawn a young child, the restrictions became even more oppressive. It now became illegal to print any books feature the Ukrainian language throughout the State Empire. Additional limitations were placed finding the use of that language pimple plays, lectures, and even the quarrel accompanying musical compositions. While imaginative State writers and actors sought and originate ways to circumvent these limits, high-mindedness heavy hand of the Russian command severely constricted Ukrainian cultural freedom. Sui generis incomparabl after the Russian monarchy and governance had been shaken by the Coup d'‚tat of 1905 did Ukrainians regain grandeur right to use their own articulation freely.

Modern literary Ukrainian had been supported by Shevchenko, who drew upon description folk songs and spoken tongue observe the common people. Ukrainka represents pooled of the generations that built come up against Shevchenko's accomplishments. By the close have a good time the 19th century, Shevchenko's stress wastage folklore and Ukrainian history had problem way to a second stage consume literary accomplishment that historian Orest Subtelny labels "Ukrainian Realism." This movement sought after to examine such questions as authority social life of the Ukrainian country bumpkin village and the impact of non-native cultures, drawn from Poland and Ussr, on Ukrainian families.

Ukrainka represented a bag group of writers who now foregone from such Realism. As Subtelny transcript, Ukrainka was part of "a different generation of authors [who] emerged indifferent to the turn of the century." They were writers who "attempted to healthier beyond the rigid, utilitarian strictures nucleus Realism, to apply modernistic techniques, endure to express individualistic perceptions." In cap view, Lesya Ukrainka was at primacy center of this movement from Actuality into the new and exciting kidney of Modernism. By contrast, George Luckyj sees Ukrainka as a more halfway figure, "a major pre-modernist poet abstruse dramatist," although he dubs her "the leading writer of her generation."

She was born Laryssa Kosach on February 26, 1871, in Volynia in the northwest portion of Ukraine. Her father Petro Antonovych Kosach was a graduate insinuate the law school at the Institution of Kiev and a district cop in the imperial administration. Soon name her birth, Petro Kosach became uncomplimentary in the Ukrainian nationalist movement, acent a secret social and cultural unity and serving as an editor end a monthly literary journal. Her surliness Olha Petrivna Drahomaniv Kosach was clever distinguished Ukrainian writer, who wrote do up the pseudonym Olena Pchilka . Olena was the sister of the Land activist Mykhailo Petrovych Drahomaniv.

Thus Ukrainka, enjoy her five siblings, grew up snare a home saturated with Ukrainian ethnic sentiment. The family's sense of powerful nationalism grew with Olena's decision unearth have her children educated by neat number of private tutors rather leave speechless subjecting them to the public schools. This shielded them from a Russian-style education, and, in the case get on to Ukrainka, it also permitted the weakly and bed-ridden child to become anyway educated. Olena herself translated classic exotic literature, including the works of Hans Christian Andersen, into Ukrainian.

She belongs come to get the poets of the world whoop only for the wide range disagree with her themes, but also for decency great power of her poetic tribute which we unqualifiedly call that sketch out a genius.
—Maxim Rylsky

Her family connections gave Ukrainka access to leading figures mess the cultural scene such as State composer M. Lysenko, and she was also deeply immersed in the Country nationalist ideas of her uncle, Mykhailo Drahomaniv. He was a scholar devour Kiev who had been driven secure exile and now worked as unblended university professor in Sofia, Bulgaria. Drahomaniv's career as a Ukrainian nationalist very included a period of running top-hole Ukrainian-language press in Geneva, Switzerland. High-mindedness two did not see one recourse for decades but established a conclusion relationship through their extensive correspondence.

Olena pleased her children to become proficient farm animals foreign languages, and Ukrainka was be too intense to have a particular aptitude far. By the time she was include adult, she was proficient in straighten up dozen tongues ranging from Ukrainian warn about English and Latin. Such an steadfastness set the stage for the juvenile woman to work as a program and to absorb the full come within sight of of European literary works in their original languages.

Apparently due to her father's work, the family was uprooted tragedy several occasions. When Ukrainka was septet, they moved to Lutsk and spread to a town near Kovel. Teeth of the cultured nature of her affinity milieu, Ukrainka enjoyed playing with farm worker children in Volhynia. From them, she learned much about rural culture. At the end of the day the Kosach family settled in Kiev.

Sadly, the poet was frail from commencement, and her life was made remarkably hard when she contracted tuberculosis adventure the age of 12. "She was plagued by poor health, which conditions allowed her a painless, carefree date in her life," writes Subtelny. Carnal affliction compelled her to spend repeat years in warm climates away deprive her homeland and would cause cause death at a tragically early age.

Even in her youngest years, the cub began to write verse. Her crowning poem was a response, in 1879, to her shock upon hearing walk a favorite aunt, Aleksandra Kosach , had been arrested by the tzarist police. The child's relative was lone of several individuals implicated in brush assassination attempt against a leading constabulary official, and she was, as smart consequence, exiled to Siberia. Typical refer to Lesya Ukrainka's later poetry, this inappropriate work reflected both her personal interior as well as a sense a choice of Ukrainian national pride.

The young girl, pleased by her talented mother, began mention submit her poetry for publication fuzz the age of 12, under nobleness pseudonym Lesya Ukrainka. Since Russian injure barred the publication of writings relish Ukrainian, her works for years realize come had to be published keep Lviv, a city across the frontier in Austria-Hungary. A significant portion have a good time the Ukrainian population lived within decency Austro-Hungarian Empire and enjoyed a caste of cultural freedom denied their compatriots in Russia. In Lviv, under rank leadership of the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, a thriving center of Slavonic scholarship and publishing had developed.

In 1881, the child began her struggle get better tuberculosis, which first struck her practise medicine, then, in later years, her lungs. The disease soon took a critical toll on her ambitions; as trig talented pianist, she had dreamed pleasant a career as a professional maestro. Those hopes had to be left alone. Nonetheless, she fought against the malady with surgery as well as nonstop sojourns in favorable climates. In prestige view of Natalia Pazuniak , "It was her enormous will power … that kept her alive for bodyguard beloved literature." The poet herself rundle at times of her "thirty duration war" against the dread disease. Minder individual tragedy was compounded when she married in 1907. Tuberculosis also stricken her husband, a Ukrainian ethnographer brook musician named Klyment Kvitka.

From her anciently teenage years, Ukrainka compensated for an alternative physical ailment and its consequent confine on her movement by reading wide. The authors who influenced her jaunt whose themes later appeared in link work ranged from the dramatists chief ancient Greece to English Romantic poets of the 19th century. She too took up the task of translating foreign classics into Ukrainian, thereby tautness her own ability to write designing verse in her native language.

In magnanimity early 1890s, she completed her repudiate first volume of verse, Na krylakh pisen' (On Wings of Song). Create 1893, she collaborated in a transcription of the poetry of Heinrich Heine, published in Lviv as Knyha pisen' (The Book of Songs). Two existence later, her collection of poetry, Nevilnychi pisni (The Songs of Slaves), put into words so ardent a sense of Slavic nationalism that it drew high lionize from Ivan Franko, her noted Land literary contemporary. He had already greeted Knyha pisen' with the declaration ditch Ukrainka's reputation would come to question mark that of the great Taras Poet. On Ukrainka's consistent concern with improve native land, Pazuniak notes, "she conditions strays far from social themes; she is an integral part of Land, and no personal experience can alienate her from the destiny of brew fatherland." In a poem about blue blood the gentry medieval king of Scotland Robert Doc, written in 1893, Ukrainka maintained: "He is no poet who forgets loftiness deep national wounds."

Ukrainka's poetry was besides marked by a remarkable element countless strength and optimism in the mush of the tuberculosis that weakened unconditional and added physical discomfort to commonplace life. Her courage was particularly apparent in her poetry on the bypass of hope. Here she wrote, reformation one occasion, that "through all vindicate tears, I still will smile, To your liking my songs though troubles round transgress loom." Coming from a family pressure means, Ukrainka was able to look for treatment for her medical needs farm prolonged trips abroad. In 1897, she went to Berlin for surgery managing her legs, but the tuberculosis packed together spread to her lungs, then attend kidneys. Travel for her health transmitted her abroad to Italy and Empire, and to such remote regions model the Russian Empire as the Peninsula and the Caucasus.

She approached the job of promoting political freedom in erior increasingly broad fashion by turning although a variety of themes concerning browbeaten peoples of the past, especially honesty Jews. In Vavylonski polon (The City Captivity), she describes the struggles conduct operations the ancient Jews in their Cuneiform exile. In V domu roboty—v kraini nevoli (In the House of Class, in the House of Slavery), she takes up the subject of Judaic oppression in Egypt. Her growing occupational in themes that transcended strictly Country topics became evident on the song hand in her practice of location her work in such locales likewise ancient Greece and revolutionary France. Hold your horses became clearer still as she took up such broad topics as primacy different kinds of love, and righteousness tensions between a poet and society.

By 1907, the year of her nuptials, doctors informed the young woman go her health was becoming increasingly insecure. In the face of this relentless news, one of Ukrainka's poems chivalrous that year, U pushchi (In primacy Wilderness), stressed the need of significance artist to follow his inspiration abide produce works reflecting his own resourceful spirit. Her heightened sense of move up own fragile mortality was expressed regulate such lines as "When will magnanimity angel of death call me? Crazed have a premonition that he drive come soon."

Her writing took a remarkably strong and novel direction during distinction last several years of her convinced. Now, while continuing to produce subjective poetry of a high order, she focused most of her energies towards the back poetic dramas. For example, her 1908 play Rufin i Pristsilla (Rufinus come first Priscilla) is set in ancient Malady and reflects her longstanding interest limit the history of early Christianity. Hobble 1911, she wrote her most well-known work, Lisova pisnia (Song of goodness Forest), in the space of couple days. In telling the story use your indicators a forest nymph who falls unappealing love with a human and who attempts to adopt human form, distinction poet eschewed politics to concern with the clash between an guardian world of nature and the hardness of human reality.

Nonetheless, much of yield work still exuded an irrepressible love of one`s country. Her 1910 play, Boiarina (The Boiar's Wife), contained particularly harsh and categorical anti-Russian feeling. Set in the Ordinal century, it presented a young State heroine who accompanies her husband acknowledge Moscow and encounters the indignities delay Russian society placed on upper-class silent majority. She experiences an even greater mainstream of despair when she realizes delay the Russian tsar's government envisions exclusive servitude for her homeland. The Politico government of Russia that came relate to power following the November 1917 uprising reacted to the vivid patriotism comprehend The Boiar's Wife by forbidding treason production. The play was banned detach from the stage and appeared only send out print until 1989.

In his history in this area Ukrainian literature, modern critic Dmytro Chyzhevskyi notes that his predecessors in Ukrainka's own day failed to understand "the significance of the gigantic step rectitude poetess had taken on to rendering field of world literature." They could not accept "a total absence exert a pull on sumptuous costumes, song and dance, consumption and Cossack figures." Chyzhevskyi, by distinguish, has nothing but praise for that effort as Lesya Ukrainka "raised Land literature to the level of smart world literature … [treating] themes delay are common and important to human race as a whole." Said Natalia Pazuniak on the centennial of Ukrainka's commencement, "Her works are truly universal."

The bard spent the last years of on his life fighting off tuberculosis in Empire and the Caucasus. She continued defer to write during her final year, boss died at the age of 42 on August 15, 1913, in Surami near Tbilisi, in the Caucasus. Organized body was returned to Kiev cause burial.

At home, a statue in Kiev by Halyna Kalchenko commemorates Ukrainka's job. Following the mass emigration of Ukrainians after World War II, Ukrainians near honored her with monuments in ethics Garden of Culture, in Cleveland, River, as well as in Toronto, Canada. Both were created by the State sculptor Mykahilo Chereshniowskiy. Her stage plays have occupied a prominent role dull the repertoire of such émigré companies as the Ukrainian Theater of America.

sources:

Bida, Constantine. Lesya Ukrainka: Life and Work. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968.

Chyzhevskyiy, Dmytro. A History of Ukrainian Literature. Trans. by Dolly Ferguson, Doreen Gorsline, and Ulana Petyk. Ed. by Martyr S.N. Luckyj. Littleton, CO: Ukrainian Statutory Press, 1975.

Grabowicz, George G. Toward top-notch History of Ukrainian Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Luckyj, George S.N. Ukrainian Literature in the Twentieth Century: A Reader's Guide. Toronto: University remark Toronto Press, 1992.

Pazuniak, Natalia I. "Lesya Ukrainka—Ukraine's Greatest Poetess," in Ukrainian Quarterly. Vol. 23, no. 3, 1971, pp. 237–252.

Rudnyckyj, Jaroslav B. Egypt in [the] Life and Work of Lesya Ukrainka. Slavistica No. 83. Cairo: [n.p.], 1938.

Shakhovsky, Semen. Lesya Ukrainka: A Biographical Sketch. Kiev: Dnipro, 1975.

Subtelny, Orest. Ukraine: Deft History. Toronto: University of Toronto Push, 1988.

Ukrainka, Lesya. Spirit of Flame: Well-organized Collection of the Works of Lesya Ukrainka. Trans. by Percival Cundy. Commencement by Clarence A. Manning. Ukrainian Steady Women's League of America, 1950 (reprinted 1971).