Levko Borowykowskyj

Levko Ivanovich Borovikovsky

Cyrillic ( Ukrainian )
	Левко Іванович Боровиковський
Transl. :	Levko Ivanovič Borovikovs'kij
Transcr. :	Levko Ivanovych Borowykowskyj

Levko Iwanowytsch Borowykowskyj ( Ukrainian Левко Іванович Боровиковський ;. Scientific transliteration Levko Ivanovič Borovikovs'kij * 22 February 1808 in Meljuschky in Khorol , Poltava Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 26. December 1889 ) was a Ukrainian poet, writer and translator.

Life

Childhood and youth

Levko Iwanowytsch Borowykowskyj was the son of a poor aristocratic family, some of whose ancestors were Cossacks : his grandfather, Luka Borovik, came from a Cossack family. After the young Lewko had learned to read and write at home, he attended the Choroler Kreisschule from 1819 to 1822. From 1822 to 1826 he was a student at the high school in Poltava . Here he began, influenced by his literature teacher IG Butkowa, to develop an initial interest in literature.

Study time

In 1826 he began his studies at the philological institute in Kharkiv , where he studied philosophy, Russian and general history, Latin, French and Polish. During his studies Borowykowskyj began to collect works and writings of Ukrainian folk literature and to write his first fairy tales, poems and ballads. In 1830 he completed his studies with a doctorate.

Lectureship

After graduating, he was hired as a lecturer in history at the University of Kursk , and later also in Latin. In the spring of 1837 he switched to the Novocherkassk high school. Little is known about this period of his life. In 1838 he switched again to the Poltavsk Gymnasium, where he taught Latin as well as Russian literature. Even during this time, Borowykowskyj continued to write songs, poems, fairy tales and collected folklore. In the spring of 1839 the poet had already collected, written and published over 600 fables and a large number of lyrical works. At the same time, the Russian writer Gulak-Artemovskij was also working in Poltava . During this time, the two poets often met to discuss the important questions of literary life. In 1852 he published the anthology fairy tales and (rhyming) joke words (ukr. Байки й прибаютки ), which can be seen as the high point of his literary work.

Retirement

In the mid-1950s Borowykowskyj fell ill with a mental illness, which also meant the end of his literary career. At this time, the poet moved back to live with his mother and spent his last period in his hometown. The poet died in 1889 at the age of 81.

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Levko Borowykowskyj was one of the authors of Ukrainian romantic literature. During his studies he was a member of a group of Charkov poets who were influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling . The "Kharkiv Romantics" group was active in Sloboda-Ukraine at that time. In addition to him, Ambrosij Metlinskij and Aleksander Korsun were also members of this literary circle, the v. a. Produced literature in Russian.

Borowykowskyj began collecting various texts from Ukrainian folk literature while still a student and in five years he collected more than 1000 proverbs, which he sorted in alphabetical order. During this time he also wrote around 250 fairy tales, collected around 150 Ukrainian folk songs and created a Ukrainian dictionary with the letters A – G.

In 1828 his first work was published: Пиръ Владиміра Великаго ( Eng . The Feast of Vladimir the Great). It became a patriotic epic, which has strong similarities to the popular Bylina . At the same time, the writer was also working on his ballad Смерть Пушкаря (The Death of the Gunner), which describes the exploits of a brave knight who fights against the Poles and Tatars. In particular, he used a lot of archaic vocabulary and stylistically adhered to the conventions of Romanticism. The ballad was also considered the romantic's favorite genre. In the same year he published the ballad Молодиця (dt. The Young ). He wrote a total of 12 ballads based on the content of Ukrainian folk legends. In them, above all, the true love between young people was celebrated. B. in the ballad Marusja (1829), the content of which is a free imitation of the ballad Svetlana by Wassili Andrejewitsch Schukowski .

In the course of his literary life, Borowykowskyj also wrote some songs and poems. For example, in 1832 he wrote a poem about the Wallachians (ukr. Волох ).

The often used imagery of Ukrainian folklore is characteristic of his romantic poems. In his poetry one can see in particular the influence of the poetics of Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin and Kondrati Fyodorowitsch Rylejew . As one of the first Ukrainian writers, he consolidated the serious tone (Russian "серьёзный тон"). Eleven of his fairy tales were published in the Lastotschka Almanac (Ukrainian Lastivka) in 1841. In 1852 he published an anthology under the name of fairy tales and (rhymed) joke words (ukr. "Байки й прибаютки"). This work is also considered to be his most important work. The unadulterated Ukrainian folk humor shines through here. His “Baiki” are primarily Ukrainian fairy tales by the Polish enlightening poet and publicist I. Krasizkij and the Russian fairy tale writer Ivan Andrejewitsch Krylow . This work met with great success and was reprinted many times in various anthologies and collections. Many expressions of his folk tales have passed into folklore. z. B. "Голодний Клим озвавсь баса: 'Найлучча птиця - ковбаса!" " dt .: Whoever promises not to drink anything is a lost man.)

Borowykowskyj was also a translator. He was the first Ukrainian translator to translate Pushkin's two works ( Два ворона , 1830, and Зимний вечер ) into Ukrainian. He also translated many of Adam Mickiewicz's writings (partly his Krymskije sonety and others) and some odes by Horace . His translations always had a Ukrainian flavor: for example, he made the hero in Pushkin's poem "Zwei Ravens". B. a Cossack, instead of the young lady of the house a Cossack.

literature

• Golovko, SV (Ed.): Borovikovs'kij Levko. In: Ukrajins`ka literatura u portretach i dovidkach. Kiev 2000, pp. 30–31.
• Pospisila, Iva (Ed.): Borovikovs'kij Levko. In: Slovnik ruskych ukrajinskych a beloruskych spisovatelu. Prague 2001, pp. 149-150.

Web links

• http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/bio_b/borovikovski_li.php
• http://www.poetryclub.com.ua/metrs.php?id=94&type=biogr
• http://lessons.com.ua/levko-borovikovskij-1806-1889/
• http://www.livelib.ru/author/363089