Among her best-known works are the collections of poemsOn the Wings of Songs (1893),Thoughts and Dreams (1899),Echos (1902), the epic poemAncient Fairy Tale (1893),One Word (1903), and the playsPrincess (1913),Cassandra (1903–1907),In the Catacombs (1905), andForest Song (1911).
Lesya Ukrainka was born in 1871 in the town ofNovohrad-Volynskyi (now Zviahel) inUkraine. She was the second child of Ukrainian writer and publisher Olha Drahomanova-Kosach, better known under her pen-nameOlena Pchilka. Ukrainka's father was Petro Kosach (from theKosača noble family), head of the district assembly ofconciliators, who came from the northern part ofChernihiv province.
After completing high school in Chernihiv Gymnasium, Ukrainka's father Kosach studied mathematics at the University of Petersburg. Two years later he moved to Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev (nowKyiv University) and graduated with a law degree. In 1868 Kosach married Olha Drahomanova, the sister of his friendMykhailo Drahomanov, a well-known Ukrainian scientist, historian, philosopher, folklorist, and public figure.[3][4] Her father was devoted to the advancement ofUkrainian culture and financially supported Ukrainian publishing ventures. Lesya Ukrainka had three younger sisters,Olha, Oksana, and Isydora, and a younger brother, Mykola.[5] Ukrainka was very close with her uncle Drahomanov, her spiritual mentor and teacher, as well as her elder brother Mykhailo, known under the pen name Mykhailo Obachny, whom she called "Mysholosie" after their parents' joint nickname for both of them.
Lesya inherited her father's physical features, eyes, height, and build. Like her father, she was highly principled, and they both held thedignity of the individual in high regard. Despite their many similarities, Lesya and her father were different in that her father had a gift for mathematics, but nogift for languages; conversely, Lesya had no gift for mathematics, but she knewEnglish,German,French,Italian,Greek,Latin,Polish,Russian,Bulgarian, and hernative Ukrainian.[4]
Lesya's mother wrote poetry and short stories for children in Ukrainian. She was also active in thewomen's movement and published a feminist almanac.[6] Ukrainka's mother played a significant role in her upbringing. TheUkrainian language was the only language used in the household, and to enforce this practice, the children were educated by Ukrainian tutors at home to avoid schools that taught Russian as theprimary language. Ukrainka learned how to read at the age of four, and she and her brother Mykhailo could read foreign languages well enough to read literature in the original.[7]
By the time she was eight, Ukrainka wrote her first poem, "Hope," which was composed in reaction to the arrest and exile of her aunt,Olena Kosach, for taking part in a political movement against thetsarist autocracy. In 1879, her entire family moved toLutsk. That same year her father started building houses for the family in the nearby village ofKolodiazhne.[8] It was at this time that her uncle, Mykhailo Drahomanov, encouraged her to study Ukrainianfolk songs,folk stories, and history, as well to peruse the Bible for its inspired poetry and eternal themes. She also was influenced by the well-known composerMykola Lysenko, as well as the famous Ukrainian dramatist and poetMykhailo Starytsky.[9]: 12
At age thirteen her first published poem, "Lily of the Valley," appeared in the magazineZorya inLviv. It was here that she first used her pseudonym, which was suggested by her mother because in the Russian Empire publications in the Ukrainian language were forbidden. Ukrainka's first collection of poetry had to be published secretly in western Ukraine and secretly brought into Kyiv under her pseudonym.[10] At this time Ukrainka was well on her way of becoming a pianist, but due totuberculosis of the bone, she did not attend any outside educational establishment. Writing was to be the main focus of her life.[9]: 10
Since the beginning of the 1890s, Ukrainka had been communicating with thePoltava region. From the summer of 1893 to the middle of 1906, Ukrainka spent almost every summer inHadiach and near the city in the Green Grove. The writing of many works is marked by this place; in particular, the legend "Robert Bruce, King of Scotland" was written here. It was here that Ukrainka befriended the teacher A. S. Makarova, with whom she later corresponded, and the latter left memories of the poet.[11]
The poems and plays of Ukrainka are associated with her belief in her country's freedom and independence. Between 1895 and 1897 she became a member of the Literary and Artistic Society in Kyiv, which was banned in 1905 because of its relations with revolutionary activists.[12] In 1888, when Ukrainka was seventeen, she and her brother organized a literary circle called Pleyada (The Pleiades), which they founded to promote the development of Ukrainian literature andtranslation of foreign classics into Ukrainian. The organization was based on the French school of poesy, the Pleiade. Their gatherings took place in different homes and were joined by Mykola Lysenko, Petro Kosach, Kostiantyn Mykhalchuk, Mykhailo Starytsky, and others.[13] One of the works they translated wasNikolai Gogol'sEvenings on a Farm Near Dykanka.
Taras Shevchenko andIvan Franko were the main inspiration of her early poetry, which was associated with Ukrainka's loneliness,social isolation, and longing for the Ukrainian nation's freedom.[14] Her first collection of poetry,Na krylakh pisen' (On the Wings of Songs), was published in 1893. Since Ukrainian publications were banned by the Russian Empire, this book was published inWestern Ukraine, which was part ofAustria-Hungary at the time, and smuggled intoKyiv.
Ukrainka's illness made it necessary for her to travel to places where the climate was dry, and, as a result, she spent extended periods of time in Germany,Austria, Italy,Bulgaria,Crimea, theCaucasus, andEgypt. She loved experiencing other cultures which was evident in many of her literary works, such asThe Ancient History of Oriental Peoples, originally written for her younger siblings. The book was published in Lviv, andIvan Franko was involved in its publication. It included her early poems, such as "Seven Strings," "The Starry Sky," "Tears-Pearls," "The Journey to the Sea," "Crimean Memories," and "In the Children's Circle."
Ukrainka also wrote epic poems, prose dramas, prose, several articles ofliterary criticism, and severalsociopolitical essays. She was best known for her playsBoyarynya (1914;The Noblewoman), a psychological tragedy centred on the Ukrainian family in the 17th century[15] and which refers directly to Ukrainian history, andLisova pisnya (1912;The Forest Song), the characters of which include mythological beings from Ukrainian folklore.
In 1897, while being treated inYalta, Ukrainka metSiarhej Miaržynski [be;uk], an official fromMinsk who was also receiving treatment for tuberculosis. The two fell in love, and her feelings for Merzhynsky were responsible for showing a different side of herself. Examples include "Your Letters Always Smell of Withered Roses," "To Leave Everything and Fly to You," and "I'd Like to Wind around You Like Ivy," which went unpublished in her lifetime. Miaržynski died with Ukrainka at his bedside on 3 March 1901. She wrote the entire dramatic poem "Oderzhyma" ("The Possessed") in one night on his deathbed.[citation needed]
Lesya Ukrainka actively opposed Russian tsarism and was a member of UkrainianMarxist organizations. In 1901, she gave theAustro-Marxist Mykola Hankevich a Ukrainian translation ofThe Communist Manifesto made by "her comrades from Kyiv".[16] She was briefly arrested in 1907 by tsarist police and remained under surveillance thereafter.
In 1907, Lesya Ukrainka marriedKlyment Kvitka, a court official, who was an amateur ethnographer and musicologist. They settled first inCrimea, then moved toGeorgia.
Ukrainka died on 1 August 1913 at a health resort inSurami, Georgia.
Lesya Ukrainka's sexuality has been described as "spark[ing] debate among literary scholars for decades" by author Maryna Kulakova, particularly her relationship withOlha Kobylianska.[17] The two began corresponding through writing in 1891,[18] and after a 1901 meeting inChernivtsi, began writing intimate passages to one another.[19] Lesya Ukrainka grew closer to Kobylianska after Miaržynski's death, while Kobylianska was dealing with a rejection byOsyp Makovei, who was uninterested in marriage.[18]
The correspondence between Lesya Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska led the two to develop a gender-neutral language, referring to one another as "someone" (Ukrainian:хтось,romanized: khtos) in order to express feelings of love. This language has been compared toAnne Lister's diaries by professor Anna Dżabagina.[20] Dżabagina additionally notes that the usage of this coded language was for political reasons; Lesya Ukrainka, who lived in the Russian Empire, was less likely to overtly express her sexuality than Kobylianska, who lived in Austro-Hungarian Empire.[21] The former's letters were nonetheless explicit in noting her desire for physical contact, and she wrote on one occasion that she
thought of someone and wanted to talk to someone [...] and most of all to sit, half-undressed, on someone's bed while someone is lying there already wrapped in a scarf under the duvet and feels a little but sleepy, but also doesn't quite want to sleep, and has black eyes with golden sparks. So that someone would know that someone needs someone to keep their spirits up, because someone's spirit is very often burdened, though not with the same thing it was burdened with before, but something wider and also heavier...[17]
The relationship between Kobylianska and Lesya Ukrainka has been referred to as a "lesbian phantasy" by literary scholarSolomiya Pavlychko.[22] Increased attention to the relationship between the two women has sparked homophobic backlash from certain sectors of Ukrainian academia, as well as what Dżabagina refers to as "straightwashing".Oksana Zabuzhko, for example, has claimed that the correspondence was simply the literary conventions of the time, and that any intimate character is a result of reinterpretation by modern, "unprepared" readers.[23]
Ukrainka began to write poetry at the age of nine: the poem "Hope" ["Надія"] was written under the influence of the news about the fate of her aunt Olena Antonivna Kosach (married to Teslenko-Prykhodko), who had been exiled for participating in the revolutionary movement. In 1884 the poems "Lily of the Valley" ["Конвалія"] and "Sappho" ["Сапфо"] were first published in Lviv magazine "Zorya". That was the first time Larysa Kosach was published under her pen name, Lesya Ukrainka. In the following reprints, Lesya added a dedication to her brother to the poem "Sappho": "Dearest Shura Sudovshchikova, remember." In 1885 a collection of her translations fromMykola Gogol (made together withMykhailo) was published in Lviv.[9]: 120
Lesya Ukrainka's literary activity revived in the mid-1890s when the Kosachs moved to Kyiv, and she became a co-founder of the Pleiades literary circle, surrounded by the Lysenko and Starytsky families. At the request of the Pleiades, in 1889 she compiled her famous List of World Literature for translation. In 1892,Heinrich Heine's Book of Songs was published in Lviv, translated by Lesya Ukrainka together with M. Slavinsky. The first collection of her original poems "On the Wings of Songs" appeared in Lviv (1893), the second edition in Kyiv (1904), the second collection "Thoughts and Dreams" (1899), the third "Reviews" (1902) – in Chernivtsi.[9]: 123 [8]
After that, Lesya Ukrainka worked for a decade and created more than a hundred poems, half of which were never published during her lifetime.
Lesya Ukrainka entered the canon ofUkrainian literature primarily as a poet of courage and struggle. Her thematically rich lyrics are somewhat conditionally (due to the relationship of motives) divided into personal, landscape, and civic. The main themes of her early lyrical poetry are the beauty of nature, love for her native land, personal experiences, the purpose of the poet and the role of the poetic word, social and social motives. In her first works the influences ofTaras Shevchenko,Panteleimon Kulish,Mykhailo Starytsky, and Heine are noticeable, the clear influences of Olena Pchilka and Mykhailo Drahomanov (pseudonym – Ukrainian) on the choice of motives are visible.[7]
The poem "Contra spem spero!" (1890) characterizes the ancient understanding of valor (arete), brilliant mastery of mythological illusions, self-creation of a woman warrior. It is this aspect of creativity for many years which determined the tone of her scientific "forestry". This is the main motive of the poems "To Comrades", "Comrades in Memory", "Sinner", "Slavus – Sclavus", "Fiat nox", "Epilogue" and many others.
The motif of freedom takes on a variety of colors: from disobedience to the traditional understanding of the empire to the individual choice of modus vivendi, which means discovering the truth and serving it. Betrayal on any level is identified with tragedy, and with the act of Medea. The lyrics of thirst and hidden triumph were associated with the inability to realize their love, exposing the scheme of chivalrous love. The lyrical heroine is a knight who sings to her lady of the heart. The eroticism of such poems as "I would like to embrace you like an ivy", "Your letters always smell of withered roses" are mystical praises in honor of the divine mistress.[24]
Although Ukrainka began her career as a lyric poet, she is now widely regarded above all as a dramatist. From the mid-1890s she turned to drama and over the next two decades wrote more than twenty plays in verse and prose that combine elements of realism, neoromanticism and symbolism.[25] Scholars have argued that her dramatic writing marked a transition from ethnographic, populist theatre to a consciously modern Ukrainian drama, with complex psychological characters and intellectual debate rather than stock types and melodramatic plots.[26]
Her early symbolist playThe Blue Rose (1896) explores questions of mental illness, social norms and personal freedom within the milieu of the urban intelligentsia, anticipating themes of European fin-de-siècle drama.[27] In a series of later historical and mythological dramas – includingCassandra (1903–1907),In the Catacombs (1905),The Stone Host (1912) andThe Forest Song (1911) – Ukrainka used figures from antiquity, Christianity and Ukrainian folklore to reflect on empire, tyranny and the ethical responsibility of the individual intellectual.[28] Critics have read these plays as part of a broader European "prophetic" drama that interrogates history and politics through tragic paradox rather than direct allegory.[29]
Ukrainka’s dramas are also central to the history of feminist theatre. Her female protagonists – from the clairvoyant but powerless Trojan prophetess ofCassandra to the forest spirit Mavka inThe Forest Song – challenge patriarchal norms and conventional models of tragic heroines. Comparative studies have highlighted the dialogue between Ukrainka’s plays and the work of Henrik Ibsen and other European modernist dramatists, noting both her engagement with contemporary feminist ideas and her distinct reworking of them in a Ukrainian cultural context.[30]
Fiction has a special place in Lesya Ukrainka's literary heritage. The first stories from rural life ("Such is her fate","Holy evening!", "Spring songs") are connected in content and language with folk songs. In the genre of fairy tales written "Three Pearls", "Four tales of green noise", "Lily", "Trouble will teach", "Butterfly". The stories "Pity" and "Friendship" are marked by sharp drama. The Ukrainian woman's death story "Ekbal Hanem", intended to depict the psychology of an Arab woman, remained unfinished.[8]
Statue of Lesya Ukrainka by Mykhailo Chereshniovsky erected in 1975 in High Park, in Toronto, Canada. Engraved is the quote "Whoever liberates themselves shall be free. Whoever is liberated by others captive shall remain".
Statue of Lesya Ukrainka in Ukrainski bulvar,Moscow
Under initiatives of localUkrainian diasporas, there are several memorial societies and monuments to her throughout Canada and the United States, most notably a monument on the campus of theUniversity of Saskatchewan inSaskatoon, Saskatchewan.[31] There is also a bust of Ukrainka inSoyuzivka in New York State.
Each summer since 1975, Ukrainians inToronto gather at the Lesya Ukrainka monument inHigh Park to celebrate her life and work.[32]
A monument to Lesya Ukrainka stands in the Ukrainian Section of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, erected under the auspices of the United Ukrainian Organizations and the Ukrainian community. The statue was designed by Mykhailo Chereshniovsky (1911- 94) and was commissioned by the Ukrainian National Women’s League of North America on the initiative of Mykhailyna Stawnycha, president of the UNWLA Branch 33 in Cleveland (and by the leadership of Kateryna Mural of Branch 30, who continuously headed the monument committee).The statue was unveiled on 2 September 1961 in the presence of the sister of Lesya Ukrainka, Isydora Kosach-Borysova.[33]
Short stories; “Christmas Eve”, “The Moth”, “Spring Songs”, “It is Late”, “The Only Son”, “The School”, “Happiness”, “A City of Sorrow”, “The Farewell”, “Sonorous Strings”, “A Letter to a Distant Shore”, “By the Sea”, “The Blind Man”, “The Apparition”, “The Mistake”, “A Moment”, “The Conversation” and “The Enemies” translated by Roma Franko;[40]
The Forest Song, (play), in "In a Different Light: A Bilingual Anthology of Ukrainian Literature Translated into English byVirlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps as Performed by Yara Arts Group", compiled and edited by Olha Luchuk, Sribne Slovo Press, Lviv 2008.
Cundy, Percival, trans. Spirit of Flame: A Collection of the Works of Lesya Ukrainka. Foreword by Clarence A. Manning. New York: Bookman Associates, 1950. Copyright 1950 by Ukrainian National Women’s League of America with dedication “ To the organized women of the United States who helped publish this book.”
Lesya Ukrainka. Life and work by Constantine Bida. Selected works, translated by Vera Rich. Toronto: Published for the Women's Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee by University of Toronto Press, 1968. English translations:The Stone Host (pp. 87-142),The Orgy (pp. 143-180),Cassandra (pp. 181-239),Robert Bruce, King of Scotland (pp. 240-251),Seven Strings (pp. 252-255),Shorter Poems (pp. 256-259).
Cassandra: A Dramatic Poem, Lesia Ukrainka, Nina Murray (Translator), Marko Pavlyshyn (Introduction by). Publisher: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2024, ISBN 9780674291775 (hardcover), 9780674291782 (paperback), 9780674291799 (epub), 9780674291805 (PDF).
^abWedel, Erwin. Toward a modern Ukrainian drama: innovative concepts and devices in Lesia Ukrainka’s dramatic art, inSlavic Drama, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 1991, p 116.
^abcdBohachevsky-Chomiak, Martha. Feminists Despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884–1939. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1988.
^"Lessya Ukrainka".Bibliography. Archived from the original on 13 January 2012. Retrieved12 December 2011.
^"Lessya Ukrainka".Biography. Archived from the original on 13 January 2012. Retrieved12 December 2011.
^"Pleiada". Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol.4. Retrieved12 December 2011.
^Ukrainka. Britannica Centre 310 South Michigan Avenue Chicago Illinois 60604 United States of America: Encyclopædia Britannica. 1995.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^Ukrainka Lesya. Britannica Centre 310 South Michigan Avenue Chicago IL 60604 United States of America: Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^Taniuk, Les’. Toward the problem of Ukrainian “prophetic” drama: Lesia Ukrainka, Volodymyr Vynnycenko, and Mykola Kulis, inSlavic Drama, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 1991, p 125.
^Konstantyn Bida,Lesya Ukrainka: Life and Work (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), pp. 44–45, 87–89.
^Erwin Wedel, "Toward a Modern Ukrainian Drama: Innovative Concepts and Devices in Lesia Ukrainka’s Dramatic Art," in Jaroslav Rozumnyj and Jars Balan (eds.),Slavic Drama: The Question of Innovation (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1991), pp. 115–132.
^Les Taniuk, "Toward the Problem of Ukrainian 'Prophetic' Drama: Lesia Ukrainka, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, and Mykola Kulish," inSlavic Drama (Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 1991), pp. 125–137.
^Svitlana Krys, "A Comparative Feminist Reading of Lesia Ukrainka’s and Henrik Ibsen’s Dramas,"Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 34, no. 4 (2007): 389–409.
^Swyripa, Francis. Wedded to the Cause, Ukrainian-Canadian Women and Ethnic Identity 1891–1991. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1993, p. 234.
^Cohen, Aaron I. (1987).International encyclopedia of women composers (Second edition, revised and enlarged ed.). New York.ISBN0-9617485-2-4.OCLC16714846.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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