Turning the pages back... October 18, 1868 (10/17/99)

Turning the pages back...

October 18, 1868

Bukovyna, the southwestern Ukrainian ethnographic region that spills over into Romania, was the birthplace of two prominent members of the Ukrainian literary canon, Yurii Fedkovych and Olha Kobylianska. Less known but also noteworthy was Yevhenia Yaroshynska, the first Ukrainian woman writer and folklorist in Bukovyna, unfortunately cut down by illness at an early age.

She was born on October 18, 1868, in the village of Chunkiv in the Kitsman district of Bukovyna into the family of a teacher. Her great grandfather had fled to the region in 1812 from eastern Ukraine after becoming involved in a murky political intrigue.

Somewhat surprisingly for the child of a teacher, her formal education, at a German Übungschulle, did not extend past the sixth grade, but Yaroshynska assiduously pursued her interest in German classics and modern works, and German translations of modern English and French works at home. She began writing poetry and short stories in German when she was 14 and managed to have them published in some regional journals. By 1887 two had appeared in a Viennese periodical, the Das Interessante Blatt.

She attracted the attention of Ukrainian activists such as Omelian Popovych (editor of the Ukrainian-language newspaper Bukovyna) and Fedkovych himself, who encouraged her talents and convinced her to write in her native language. By 1886 their influence had become decisive, and she decided to devote herself to Ukrainian exclusively.

She established her reputation as a folklorist by publishing articles about embroidery and Easter egg designs in German and Czech periodicals. She sent a collection of 450 Bukovynian songs (inexplicably unpublished until 1972) to the Russian Geographic Society, which awarded her a silver medal and a stipend in 1888. In 1891 she went with a group of Ukrainian writers and activists, including the feminist writer Natalia Kobrynska, on a trip to Prague, but her populist instincts overcame her urge to see the world.

From 1893 she apprenticed as a teacher in the village of Bridok, securing her own position in the town of Raranchi in 1896 (her father was the principal), where she was also active in the Rus'ka Shkola society. She wrote children's stories, articles, essays and prose meditations on the Ukrainian peasantry's lives and living conditions, including "Prokliatyi Mlyn" (The Cursed Mill, 1891), "Zheniachka ta Vyplat" (Arranged Marriage and Dowry, 1892) and "Zolote Sertse" (The Golden Heart, 1895).

In 1896 she began publishing in serialized form a work that would both endear her to many young western Ukrainian populist readers and yet antagonize the local clerically run educational establishment. The first four installments of "V Domi Protopopy" (In the House of the Archpriest's Wife) appeared in the newspaper Bukovyna (then under the editorship of Lev Trubatsky), but by the time the fifth was to come out in 1898, Trubatsky bowed to the pressure of "an outraged Orthodox readership" and interrupted the run.

Yaroshynska had sketched out a portrait of the Bukovynian intelligentsia and touched on the controversial theme of youthful rebellion against the corrupt, Romanianized Orthodox clergy in the region. Unfortunately, as it turned out, her writings cost her any opportunity to secure a teaching position in the regional capital, Chernivtsi.

Unbowed, Yaroshynska continued her activism and ethnographic work, became involved in the emancipation movement and continued to publish widely - including a "Letter to Ruthenian Women in America" that appeared in Svoboda.

In 1902 her story "Adresatka Pomerla" (The Addressee is Deceased) appeared in the Lviv-based Literaturno Naukovyi Vistnyk, and she showed signs of improving her somewhat simplistic, sentimental and pedagogical style. In 1903 the work that had aroused such controversy earlier appeared as a novel titled "Perekynchyky" (Turncoats).

That year Yaroshynska's health took a turn for the worse, and she had to take leave from her duties in Raranchi. She enjoyed a brief rally in mid-1904, attending a teachers' conference in Chernivtsi with her father, but in the fall she fell ill and underwent an operation that went badly. She died soon after, on October 21, 1904, in the Bukovynian capital.

Sources: "Yaroshynska, Yevheniia," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Marta Tarnavska "Yevhenia Yaroshynska: Zhyttia i Tvorchist" in Suchasnist, Nos. 6 and 7 (June, July-August 1976).

| Home Page |