WASHINGTON – February 25 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Larysa Kosach-Kvitka – better known as Lesia Ukrainka – who is widely recognized as one of Ukraine’s foremost literary figures. A talented translator, folklorist, prominent public intellectual, and civil and women’s rights activist, Ukrainka is best known for her poems and plays affirming ideals of humanism and the struggle for personal and national freedom.
Raised in an aristocratic Ukrainian family in the small town in the Podillia region of western Ukraine, Lesia was well-educated and fluent in 10 languages. Her talents allowed her to study the best works of ancient and Western European literature and philosophy and to translate the works of, among others, Homer, Shakespeare, Byron, Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Adam Mickiewicz, Ivan Turgenyev. Ukrainka’s own works are suffused with a belief in her country’s freedom and independence and incorporate the richness of Ukrainian culture and folklore. She elaborated a Ukrainian narrative and wove it into the pan-European cultural canvas. The Ukrainian Institute of London has produced an informative video that positions Ukrainka as a pioneer of a new feminist literature at the leading edge of European trends.
One interesting aspect of Lesia Ukrainka’s personal life was that her passion for folk songs, myths, legends, rites and customs helped her meet her future husband, Klyment Kvitka, who as a freshman attended her presentation at the Kyiv University Artistic and Literature Society in November 1898. He had been collecting Ukrainian folk songs since he was 16 and Lesia helped him transcribe those she was familiar with, as they originated from her native Podillia region. A prominent ethnography scholar who published more than 6,000 folk songs, Klyment Kvitka remained somewhat unfortunately in the shadow of his genius wife whom he out-lived by 40 years. After Ukrainka’s death in 1913, he helped publish the first seven-volume edition of her works, essays and letters.