Epic
Aeneid
Енеїда
Ivan Kotliarevsky · 1798
Synopsis
Troy burnt by the Greeks, Aeneas, a strapping Cossack, fills boats with scorched Trojans and puts to sea. Juno, who hates him, obtains a storm from Aeolus in return for the promise of a pretty girl; Aeneas buys off Neptune, and the sea calms. At Carthage, Queen Dido falls in love with him, and two years of feasting make him forget the city he is to found, until Zeus, glancing at the earth, sends Mercury to him. Further on await him the Sibyl and a hell where the lords who showed no pity to the poor are roasting.
Context
The poem circulated in manuscript copies when one of them reached Saint Petersburg: Maksym Parpura, who ran the printing house of the Medical College, had the first three parts printed in 1798, without the author's consent or even knowledge, with a glossary for Russian readers; the edition was reissued in 1808. The author himself published four parts in 1809 and placed in his hell a sinner who gave other people's goods to be printed, a touch that one of his close friends reported to Parpura. The last two parts were completed in the early 1820s, and the whole appeared only in 1842, in Kharkiv. The immediate model was Osipov's Russian travesty, derived from Blumauer and Scarron.
Who it is for
A burlesque epic in six parts, in ten-line stanzas. In French only extracts exist, in prose, the 1921 anthology having given up rendering the verse; a complete English translation appeared in 2004.
Prizes and reception
The first work published entirely in the spoken language of the country, regarded ever since as the beginning of modern Ukrainian literature.
Sources for this page 10
The pages consulted to check this page.