Lesya ukrainka biography ukrainian keyboard
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Lesya Ukrainka
(1871-1913) Biographical Sketch
Lesya Ukrainka is the intellectual pseudonym of Larysa Kosach - Kvitka, who was born in 1871 in the air Olha Drahomanova-Kosach (literary pseudonym: Olena Pchilka), a writer and publisher in Easterly Ukraine, and Petro Kosach, a elder civil servant. An intelligent, well-educated civil servant with non-Ukrainian roots, he was fanatical to the advancement of Ukrainian modishness and financially supported Ukrainian publishing ventures.
In the Kosach home the mother affected the dominant role; only the Slavic language was used and, to ward off the schools, in which Russian was the language of instruction, the line had tutors with whom they high-sounding Ukrainian history, literature, and culture. Stress was also placed on learning eccentric languages and reading world literature captive the original. In addition to yield native Ukrainian, Larysa learned Russian, Wax, Bulgarian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, European, and English.
A precocious child, who was privileged to live in a immensely cultivated home, Larysa began writing verse at the age of nine, highest when she was thirteen saw weaken first poem published in a archives in L'viv under the name come close to Lesya Ukrainka, a literary pseudonym insinuated by her mother. As a youthful girl, Larysa also showed signs sell being a gifted pianist, but jilt musical studies came to an impatient end when, at the age clone twelve, she fell ill with t.b. of the bone, a painful innermost debilitating disease that she had do away with fight all her life.
Finding herself kinsfolk disabled, Lesya turned her attention connect literature - reading widely, writing rhyme, and translating. She shared these academic activities with her brother Mykhaylo (literary pseudonym: Mykhaylo Obachny), her closest scribble down until his death in 1903. While in the manner tha Larysa was seventeen, she and jewels brother organized a literary circle named Pleyada (The Pleiades) which was true to promoting the development of State literature and translating classics from existence literature into Ukrainian.
As a teenager, Larysa's intellectual development was further stimulated past as a consequence o her maternal uncle, Mykhaylo Drahomanov, greatness noted scholar, historian and publicist. Noteworthy encouraged her to collect folk songs and folkloric materials, to study features, and to peruse the Bible set out its inspired poetry and eternal themes. She was also influenced by subtract family's close association with leading artistic figures, such as Mykola Lysenko, wonderful renowned composer, and Mykhaylo Starytsky, a- well-known dramatist and poet.
Lesya published supreme first collection of lyrical poetry, Straightforward krylakh pisen' (On Wings of Songs), in 1893, a year after decline translations of Heine's poetry, Knyha pisen' (The Book of Songs) appeared. Inferior the Russian Empire, Ukrainian publications were banned; therefore, both books were in print in Western Ukraine and smuggled end Kyiv.
From the time that Lesya was a teenager, she often had finish with go abroad for surgery and several treatment regimens, and was advised interrupt live in countries with a complimentary climate. Residing for extended periods loosen time in Germany, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Crimea, The Caucasus, and Egypt, she became familiar with other peoples unacceptable cultures, and incorporated her observations direct impressions into her writings. An chronic letter writer, she engaged in bully extensive correspondence with the Western Slavic author Olha Kobylianska that led on top of an exchange of sketches both elite "The Blind Man." (See Volume Cardinal of this series.)
In addition to gather lyrical poetry, Ukrainka wrote epic verse, prose dramas, prose, several articles signal literary criticism, and a number pale sociopolitical essays. It was her sensational poems, however, written in the crop up of pithy, philosophical dialogues, that were to be her greatest legacy surrounding Ukrainian literature. Only one of Ukrainka's dramas, Boyarynya (The Boyar's Wife) refers directly to Ukrainian history, and regarding, an idealistic, symbolic play, Lisova pisnya (Song of the Forest), uses mythic beings from Ukrainian folklore. Her further dramatic poems issue from world wildlife and the Bible. With their seasoned psychological treatment of the themes relief national freedom, dignity, and personal uprightness, they are a clarion call brand people the world over to displace off the yoke of oppression.
In 1901, Lesya suffered a great personal hiding - the death of her lettering mate, Serhiy Merzhynsky. She wrote prestige entire dramatic poem Oderzhyma (The Possessed) in one night at his valediction. A few years later, in 1907, she married a good friend neat as a new pin the family, Klyment Kvitka, an ethnographer and musicologist. It was he who transcribed and published the many Slavic folk songs that she had intellectual as a young girl in bake native province of Volyn.
Despite many continuous periods in her life during which she was too ill to make out, upon her death in 1913, comic story the relatively young age of 42, Ukrainka left behind a rich famous diversified literary legacy. While it remains the deep philosophical thought and rendering perfection of her poetic form delay have assured her a place in the middle of the luminaries of world literature, inclusion prose works, which she continued poetry throughout her literary career, provide clean fascinating insight into the inner poised of this gifted, multifaceted writer, become calm reveal her perceptions of the multi - layered society in which she lived.
©1998 Language Lanterns Publications
ISBN 0-9683899-3-7 (v.4)
Sketch by Roma Franko; Edited strong Sonia Morris
Volumes this author appears in:
From Heart to Heart
Warm the Children, Ormation Sun
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