Ukrainian Male Authors 1880-1920

Down Country Lanes

Biographical Notes

Down Country Lanes cover

Selected Short Fiction by

Tymofey Bordulyak (1863-1936)
Mykola Chernyavsky (1868-1946)
Ivan Franko (1856-1916)
Bohdan Lepky (1872-1941)
Dmytro Markovych (1848-1920)
Les Martovych (1871-1916)
Stepan Vasylchenko (1879-1932)
Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880-1951)

Translated by Roma Franko
Edited by Sonia Morris

Tymofey Bordulyak (1863-1936)

Bordulyak was born into a peasant family in western Ukraine. After completing elementary school in a village, he attended a secondary school in Lviv where, despite the many privations that he suffered, he applied himself diligently to studying Latin, Greek, German, and French, and familiarizing himself with the works of Western European writers. While enrolled in the theological faculty of Lviv University, he embarked on an intensive course of self-study learning Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Italian, and reading works devoted to literary theory, criticism, and aesthetics. After graduating in 1889, he served both as a Ukrainian Catholic priest and an elementary school teacher in numerous villages and towns in Halychyna (Galicia). In the short stories that he published in newspapers and journals, he wrote sympathetically about the lives of the peasants among whom he lived. Highly praised by Ivan Franko and other contemporary authors and critics, he nevertheless ceased all literary activity as of 1916.

Mykola Chernyavsky (1868-1946)

Chernyavsky was born into a priest’s family in a village in eastern Ukraine. He graduated from the Katerynoslav theological seminary in 1889, taught in a church school in Bakhmut for a couple of years, worked as a statistician in Chernihiv and Kherson until 1919, and then returned to teaching. He started publishing lyrical poetry in 1895, and went on to write historical poems, sonnets, short stories, novellas, and memoirs. Under Soviet rule, he became less active as a writer and translator, and ceased to publish in 1933. Even though he distanced himself from politics, he was persecuted by Soviet authorities who accused him of nationalism. His works were banned until after Stalin’s death, but even after his rehabilitation, not all of them were published.

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 fi lls more than fi fty 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 prolifi c 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.

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.

Dmytro Markovych (1848-1920)

Markovych was born in Poltava in central Ukraine into a family that traced its lineage to kozak leaders. He showed an early interest in writing, and was expelled from school for starting his own journal. In 1865 he entered Kyiv University but a lack of funds forced him to leave and to take a job as an inspector in a distillery. He then became interested in ethnography and began actively collecting folklore materials. In 1868 he enrolled in a legal college, but was forced to leave because of his involvement in an illegal Ukrainian students’ movement. For the next few years he avoided the gendarmes by wandering throughout Ukraine. After entering the legal profession, he encountered and observed people from all walks of life, and he incorporated these observations in his short stories. Later in life he settled in Volyn and became actively involved as an organizer in the co-operative movement. During the revolutionary period, he held several important positions in pro-Ukrainian political administrations.

Les Martovych (1871-1916)

A writer, lawyer and community activist, Martovych was born in western Ukraine. In 1898 he moved to Lviv where he edited a radical newspaper while taking correspondence courses in legal studies from the University of Lviv. After graduating in 1909, he worked as a clerk and legal assistant in a number of smaller towns where he became a community activist. His fi rst short story was published in 1889, and he continued writing throughout his lifetime. In his works he focussed on the daily life of the peasantry and the provincial intelligentsia, especially the priests and teachers at the turn of the 20th century. His works are written mainly in a realistic style that occasionally borders on impressionism, and they are often laced with satire directed at bureaucrats and the rural gentry. In addition to his literary works, he contributed numerous articles to Ukrainian journals and newspapers. His collected works were published in three volumes in 1943.

Stepan Vasylchenko (1879-1932)

Stepan Vasylchenko is the pseudonym of Stepan Panasenko who was born in the province of Chernihiv in central Ukraine. He graduated from a pedagogical seminary and taught in village schools in the provinces of Kyiv and Poltava. During the 1905 Revolution he was arrested for taking part in workers’ demonstrations in the Donbas region, and spent three years in prison. In 1910, he began working as a journalist in Kyiv, and during World War I he was conscripted into the army. His short stories, based on his life experiences, focus on the hard lives of teachers in that era, the turbulent events of the 1905 Revolution, and the horrors of war. The realism of his stories, plays, and fi lm scripts is often tempered by fl ights of fantasy, a subtle sense of humour and the rich language of folk poetry. Unable to reconcile himself to Soviet rule and policies, but also unable and unwilling to completely abandon his literary career, he turned to translating and to writing stories for children. From 1921 to 1928 he was a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature in a school named in honour of Ivan Franko in Kyiv. His collected works were published in four volumes in 1928-30 and again in 1960. He died in Kyiv.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880-1951)

Vynnychenko, a writer, statesman, and politician was born in the province of Kherson in southern Ukraine. He studied law at the University of Kyiv, but was expelled in 1902 for revolutionary activities, and spent a year in prison. Between 1903-1917, he fl ed abroad a number of times to avoid political persecution. An active participant in Ukraine’s fi ght for independence, he assumed key positions in 1918- 19 in Ukraine’s autonomous government. When efforts to set up an independent Ukrainian state failed, he went into permanent exile in 1920 and devoted himself to pursuing a literary career in France. His short stories, novels, and dramas, some of which were translated and staged in various theatres in Europe, faithfully depict the lives and the language of the working class, petty criminals, and revolutionaries, and are based on the premise: to thine own self be true. His works were very popular among Ukrainian readers, but the authorities accused him of individualism and total amorality, and his works were banned in Soviet Ukraine. He died in Mougins, France.

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