_Ukrainian Literature_ _Studies of the Leading Authors_ _By_ CLARENCE A. MANNING ACTING EXECUTIVE OFFICER DEPARTMENT OF EAST EUROPEAN LANGUAGES COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY _With a Foreword_ _By_ PROFESSOR WATSON KIRKCONNELL UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION JERSEY CITY, N. J. 1944 COPYRIGHT, APRIL 1944 BY PROFESSOR CLARENCE A. MANNING COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK, N. Y. PRINTED IN U.S.A. BY HARMON PRINTING HOUSE POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Foreword 4 Introduction 5 The Background of Ukrainian Culture 7 Hrihori Skovoroda 17 Ivan Kotlyarevsky 23 Hrihori Kvitka-Osnovyanenko 34 Taras Shevchenko 41 Pantaleimon Kulish 56 Marko Vovchok 61 Ivan Levitsky-Nechuy 66 Changing Conditions 71 Ivan Franko 76 Lesya Ukrainka 89 Mikhaylo Kotsyubinsky 96 Vasil Stefanyk 103 Oles 112 After 1918 118 Bibliography 123 FOREWORD The Ukrainians have sometimes been termed “the Irish of the Slavonic world,” and the epithet is not infelicitous. In both cases there is a tradition of ancient, almost legendary, glory, followed by long centuries of stifled independence, in which the stream of national life disappeared underground almost completely--only to emerge in turbid and eager flood in modern times. The two nations’ literary traditions are likewise comparable. The _Cattle-raid of Cooley_ in the old Ulster-cycle has its counterpart in the _Raid of Igor_, a powerful epic-fragment whose provenance is clearly Kievan and not Muscovite. The abundant Irish legacy of folk-song (recorded by Douglas Hyde and others) is more than paralleled by the countless Ukrainian folk-songs, full of echoes of “old, unhappy, far-off things.” In both instances, there is a copious religious literature in medieval times. Most comparable of all are the literatures of the modern awakening, in which national authors, repudiating the dominant literary traditions of English (used by Goldsmith, Burke and Moore), Russian (used by Gogol) and Polish (used by Zaleski), have turned with intense political enthusiasm to the cultivation of their own ancestral speech.