Ukrainian Male Authors 1860-1900

From Days Gone By - Biographical Notes

From Days Gone By cover

Selected Short Fiction by

Yuriy Fedkovych (1834-1888)
Ivan Franko (1856-1916)
Borys Hrinchenko (1863-1910)
Hnat Khotkevych (1863-1910)
Oleksander Konysky (1836-1900)
Panteleymon Kulish (1819-1897)
Bohdan Lepky (1872-1941)
Panas Myrny (1849-1920)
Oleksa Storozhenko (1805-1874)
Sydir Vorobkevych (1836-1903)

Translated by Roma Franko
Edited by Sonia Morris

Yuriy Fedkovych (1834-1888)

Osyp Yuriy Fedkovych was born in the Bukovynian-Hutsul region of western Ukraine. After attending a German school in Chernivtsi, he worked for a few years in Moldavia, and then served in the Austrian army (1858-63) and participated in an Italian campaign. He retired with the rank of lieutenant and served first as a bailiff in his native village, and then as a county school inspector. In the 1880s he was the editor of the newspaper Bukovyna in Chernivtsi. He wrote lyrical poetry in both Ukrainian and German, historical poems, short stories, and plays. He translated German and Russian poetry into Ukrainian, as well as a few of Shakespeare’s plays. In his literary works he focussed on Hutsul themes and village life in Bukovyna. For his many contributions to Ukrainian literature, he is regarded today as “the herald of the Ukrainian revival in Bukovyna.”

Ivan Franko (1856-1916)

The greatest man of letters in Ukraine, Franko, the son of a village blacksmith, was born in the county of Drohobych in Halychyna (Galicia) in western Ukraine. He studied classical philology and Ukrainian language and literature at the University of Lviv, began work on his doctorate at the University of Chernivtsi in 1891, and completed it with distinction at the University of Vienna in 1893; however, because of his involvement in radical socialist movements for which he was imprisoned three times as a young man, he was denied a tenured appointment to the university in Lviv that now bears his name.

A man of prodigious talents and an indefatigable worker, his literary and scholarly output fills more than fifty volumes. He wrote lyrical and philosophical poetry, short stories, novellas, novels, and dramas; articles devoted to Ukrainian, Slavic, and Western European literary criticism, theory and history; studies pertaining to Ukrainian linguistics, folklore and ethnography; detailed analyses of old and medieval Ukrainian literature; and treatises in which he expounded his philosophical, sociological, political, and economic views. He served as editor and publisher of Ukrainian literary journals, as well as of Ukrainian, Polish, and German newspapers, and he was a prolific translator who worked with fourteen languages.

In recognition of Franko’s invaluable contributions to Ukrainian culture and of his vast knowledge of world cultures, he has been referred to as the “Ukrainian Moses” who toiled to lead his people to the promised land of freedom envisaged by the renowned Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), and as “the golden bridge” between Ukrainian and world literatures.

Borys Hrinchenko (1863-1910)

Hrinchenko, born in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine into the family of an impoverished noble who forbade his children to speak Ukrainian, became a prominent Ukrainian writer, translator, ethnographer, linguist, community leader, and political activist. His many accomplishments include: short stories, novellas, and plays that focussed on the sorry plight of the rural population in Ukraine; translations of the works of Western European writers; annotated collections of the varied ethnographic materials that he gathered; the establishment of a publishing house in Russian-ruled Ukraine that published fi fty popular-educational books despite severe censorship; a four-volume painstakingly documented dictionary of the Ukrainian language based on ethnographic records and literary works of the 19th century. In his articles and books he expounded his ideas, based on his many years of community work and political activity, about shaping “out of the Ukrainian nation one nationally conscious, enlightened community” that would eliminate the gap between the common people and the intelligentsia.

Hnat Khotkevych (1877-1938)

Born in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, Khotkevych worked as a railroad engineer. He was a scholar, a highly popular modernist writer of short stories, novels, and plays, and a translator of Shakespeare, Molière, Hugo and Schiller. He was also a composer, a gifted bandura performer and teacher, a theatre director, an editor of a literary journal, and a civic fi gure. Forced to emigrate to Western Ukraine in 1906 after organizing a railroad strike, he returned to Kharkiv in 1912, and later participated in Soviet cultural life. One of the most widely read authors in Ukraine, an eight-volume collection of his works was published in 1928-32. Arrested during the mass Yezhov terror in Ukraine (1937- 38) when the intelligentsia was decimated, he perished under unknown circumstances. He was rehabilitated after Stalin’s death, and a collection of his works was published in two volumes in 1966.

Oleksander Konysky (1826-1900)

Konysky, an ardent Ukrainian patriot, was born in the Russian ruled province of Chernihiv. He promoted Ukrainian-language publishing and worked tirelessly to establish Sunday schools for working youths and adults who could not attend regular schools. Because of these activities, he was arrested in 1863 and exiled without a trial to northern Russia. Two years later, when he was given permission to go abroad, he travelled to western Ukraine where he worked closely with prominent cultural leaders there. After returning home he maintained close ties with them and supported their work both morally and financially. Konysky was a poet, a prose writer, a translator, and a scholar who wrote numerous literary articles and studies. His works began appearing in journals in 1858, and during his writing career, he used more than a hundred pseudonyms. Branded as a “nationalist” during the Soviet period, his works were not published until an edition of his selected works appeared in 1986.

Panteleymon Kulish (1819-1897)

Kulish was born in Chernihiv in central Ukraine. Denied a degree from Kyiv University because he was not of the nobility, he became a teacher. In 1845 he was invited to teach at the St. Petersburg University and two years later, was given a grant to study abroad. En route he was arrested for belonging to a secret democratic group, known as the Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, jailed for two months, and then exiled to Tula for three years. After his return to St. Petersburg in 1850, he established a printing press and pursued a career of writing and publishing Ukrainian literature, ethnography, and history; however, his view that Ukraine should participate in a Pan-Slavic federation while developing its own distinctive high culture alienated him from his more nationally focussed peers. After the 1876 Ems Ukase forbade Ukrainian publications in the Russian Empire, he strengthened his ties with Halychyna (Galicia) where his poetry, prose works, and translations of Shakespeare were published. Often misunderstood and disliked by his contemporaries, a generation later, Ukrainian literati recognized his outstanding contributions to Ukrainian culture and gave him his due as being “a truly European intellectual.”

Bohdan Lepky (1872-1941)

Lepky was born in western Ukraine. After studying at universities in Lviv, Vienna, and Cracow, he became a teacher and then a professor at Cracow University in Poland (1899-1914). He began publishing short stories in 1895 and poetry a few years later. During the First World War, he taught Ukrainians interned in German prisoner-of-war camps and worked for the Union of the Liberation of Ukraine. After the war he began writing historical novels and, from 1921-1926, instructed courses organized by the Association of Ukrainian Students in Berlin. In 1926 he returned to Cracow University and taught there until 1939. A versatile man of many talents, Lepky devoted his life to the enrichment and promotion of Ukrainian culture. He published numerous articles on Ukrainian literature, wrote critical introductions to the works of classical Ukrainian authors, compiled songbooks, primers, and poetry anthologies, and translated Ukrainian literature into Polish, and European literature into Ukrainian. He was also an accomplished artist who included among his works many portraits and historical paintings.

Panas Myrny (1849-1920)

Panas Myrny is the pseudonym of Atanas Rudchenko. He was born in Myrhorod in eastern Ukraine, worked as a government official, and attained the status of a full government councillor. He started publishing poems, dramas, and short stories in 1872. Despite prohibitions by the Russian government, he never wavered from using the Ukrainian language in his literary works. In the 1880s, he began writing novels and dramas about the intelligentsia, the peasantry, and the new social processes brought about by the abolition of serfdom and the reforms of 1861. He was particularly interested in the shifting dynamics in village life after the introduction of these reforms, and in his works he laid the foundation for the development of the socio-psychological novel in Ukrainian literature. A translator of Shakespeare and Longfellow, he expanded the lexicon of the Ukrainian literary language.

Oleksa Storozhenko (1805-1874)

Storozhenko was born in the Poltava region of central Ukraine. He attended a military academy in St. Petersburg, and served in the Russian cavalry until 1831. He then joined the Russian bureaucracy where, in his work for various governors and ministers, he demonstrated an unusual ability for resolving legal matters. A man of diversified talents, he was an award-winning woodcarver, a gifted raconteur, an accomplished cellist, and an avid ethnographer who used the folk material that he collected in writing his folk tales and his humorous, anecdotal short stories. Storozhenko began writing in Russian in the 1850s, but later switched to Ukrainian. Although he remained a staunch supporter of the Russian bureaucracy, his stories are imbued with the pride that he took in his kozak lineage, his romanticized view of Ukrainian history, and his deep appreciation of the earthy humour and colourful language of his fellow Ukrainians.

Sydir Vorobkevych (1836-1903)

Vorobkevych was born in Chernivtsi in the Bukovyna region of western Ukraine. He completed his theological studies in Chernivtsi in 1861, served as an Orthodox priest for a few years, and then enrolled in the Vienna Conservatory. After completing his musical studies in 1868, he taught music and singing at the Chernivtsi Orthodox Seminary, and in 1875 he joined the Faculty of Theology at the University of Chernivtsi. As a musician he composed liturgical songs, music for psalms, choral works, lyrical songs, and popular operettas; he also wrote about Ukrainian composers, and authored texts on music theory and harmony. As a theologian, he compiled his sermons into two volumes and edited a church periodical. As a writer, he penned over a thousand lyrical poems in Ukrainian, wrote German poems, historical poems, short stories, and historical dramas. Through his substantive musical, theological, and literary endeavours, he consciously supported and promoted the Ukrainian national revival in Bukovyna in the late 19th century.

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