Ivan Kotliarevsky | |
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| Born | (1769-08-29)29 August 1769O.S. (9 September 1769N.S.) Poltava,Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Died | 29 October 1838(1838-10-29) (aged 69)O.S. (10 November 1838N.S.) Poltava, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
Ivan Petrovych Kotliarevsky (Ukrainian:Іван Петрович Котляревський; 9 September [O.S. 29 August] 1769 – 10 November [O.S. 29 October] 1838) was aUkrainian writer, poet, playwright, andsocial activist, regarded as the pioneer of modernUkrainian literature. His main work is the poemEneida, atravesty ofVirgil'sAeneid.
Kotliarevsky was born on 9 September [O.S. 29 August] 1769 in the Ukrainian city ofPoltava in the family of clerk Petro Kotliarevsky.[1] The Kotliarevskys belonged to the Ukrainian nobility but were not wealthy. They owned a small estate in Poltava and a plot of land nearby.[2] After studying at the Poltava Theological Seminary (1780–1789), he worked as a tutor for thegentry at rural estates, where he became familiar with Ukrainian folk life and the peasantvernacular. He served in theImperial Russian Army between 1796 and 1808 in the Siversky Karabiner Regiment. Kotliarevsky participated in theRusso-Turkish War (1806–1812) as a staff-captain, during which the Russian troops laid the siege to the city ofIzmail. In 1808 he retired from the Army. In 1810 he became thetrustee of an institution for the education of children of impoverished nobles. In 1812, during theFrench invasion of Russia he organized the5th Ukrainian Cossack Regiment in the town of Horoshyn (Khorol uyezd,Poltava Governorate) under the condition that it will be left after the war as a permanent military formation. For that he received a rank ofmajor.[3]
He helped stage theatrical productions at the Poltava governor-general's residence and was the artistic director of the Poltava Free Theater between 1812 and 1821. In 1818 together withVasyl Lukashevych [uk] , V. Taranovsky, and others he became a member of thePoltava Freemasonry LodgeLiubov do istyny (Love of truth).[4][5] Kotliarevsky participated in the buyout of actorMikhail Shchepkin out of the serfdom. From 1827 to 1835 he directed severalphilanthropic agencies.[3] He died on 10 November [O.S. 29 October] 1838. Shortly before his death, he released his serfs and distributed his property to relatives and acquaintances. He was buried in Poltava.[6]
Kotliarevsky wrote his first poems while a student at the Poltava Theological Seminary and published them in the satirical almanacPoltavska mukha (Poltava fly).[6] He began work on his best-known literary work, thetravesty poemEneida (Ukrainian:Енеїда), in 1794.[7] The first three parts were published in Saint Petersburg (without the author's permission) in 1798.[6] Its publication is usually regarded as the starting point of modernUkrainian literature, as it marked the beginning of the use of vernacular Ukrainian as a literary language.[8] The fourth part was published in 1809, and the fifth and sixth parts were completed around 1820, although the first complete edition of the work was published only in 1842, after the author's death.[7]
Kotliarevsky'sEneida built upon a tradition of travesties ofVirgil'sAeneid in European literature. In particular, its main model was the earlier poem Aeneid Turned Inside Out [ru] (Russian:Виргилиева Энеида, вывороченная наизнанку,lit. 'Vergil's Aeneid, turned inside out') published in 1791 by the Russian poetNikolay Osipov (completed by Alexander Kotelnitsky), but Kotliarevsky's work is absolutely different.[7] InEneida, the Trojan heroes of theAeneid are transformed intoZaporozhian Cossacks while the Olympian gods become merciless landlords.[9] It reflects the memory of the recently destroyedZaporozhian Sich[10] andCossack Hetmanate and the current high point of Russian-imposedserfdom in Ukraine. It satirizes the social classes of the past and present eras.[7] The work became very popular in its time and inspired a number of imitations.[7] WithEneida, Kotliarevsky also introduced into Ukrainian poetryaccentual-syllabic verse, which replaced the earliersyllabic versification deemed less suitable for the randomly stressed Ukrainian language.[11] He usediambic tetrameter in ten-linestrophes with regular rhymes.[7]
Kotliarevsky's two plays, the comedyNatalka Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava, 1819) and thevaudevilleMoskal-Charivnyk (The soldier-sorcerer),[11] played a major role the development of Ukrainian national theater.[7]
Pavlo Petrenko writes that Kotliarevsky's worldview was "guided by moral rather than by sociopolitical criteria, and his sympathy for the socially and nationally oppressed Ukrainian peasantry was subordinated to his loyalty to tsarist autocracy."[7]
According to Pavlo Petrenko, "Kotliarevsky's influence is evident not only in the works of his immediate successors (Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko,Taras Shevchenko, Yakiv Kukharenko, K. Topolia, Stepan Pysarevsky, and others), but also in the ethnographic plays of the second half of the 19th century and in Russian (the works of the ethnic UkrainiansNikolai Gogol andVasilii Narezhny) and Belarusian (the anonymousEneida navyvarat [The Aeneid Inside Out]) literature."[7]
Kotliarevsky's complete works were published in Kyiv 1952–3 and 1969. In 1952, the Kotliarevsky Museum was opened in Poltava.[7] TheKharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts, inKharkiv, Ukraine, is named after him. Monuments to Kotlyarevsky were erected inKyiv (sculptor G. Kalchenko, architect A. Ignashchenko) and in Poltava (sculptor L. Pozen, architect A. Shirshov). Numerous boulevards and streets in Ukrainian cities are named after the poet, the largest ones being in Kyiv, Poltava,Chernihiv,Vinnytsia,Khmelnytskyi,Chernivtsi,Pryluky,Lubny andBerdychiv.[citation needed]
The first few stanzas of Kotliarevsky'sEneida were translated into English byWolodymyr Semenyna [uk] and published in the Ukrainian-American newspaperUkrainian Weekly on 20 October 1933.[12] However, the first complete English translation of the work was published only in 2004 by Ukrainian-CanadianBohdan Melnyk [uk].[13][14][15]
