Short stories
Ukrainian Folk Stories
Народні оповідання
Marko Vovchok · 1858
Synopsis
Eleven stories, most of them told in the first person by a peasant woman, as one tells one's life to a neighbour. Several, among them Kozatchka, Odarka and Panska volia, speak of the existence of serfs, and first of all of women, under the arbitrary rule of their masters. Others, such as Maksym Hrymatch or Danylo Hourtch, go back in the manner of ballads to the Cossack past, where pride and loyalty decide a destiny. The volume opens with Sestra, the sister, and also brings together Tchoumak, Son, Vykoup, Sviekroukha and the story that will become Otets Andriï.
Context
The stories were written at Nemyriv in 1856 and 1857. Opanas Markovych sent them to Panteleimon Kulish, who printed them in his printing house in Saint Petersburg in the last months of 1857, the volume bearing the date 1858, and who coined the masculine pseudonym. Shevchenko and Kulish welcomed them with enthusiasm; Turgenev translated them into Russian, and his version appeared in 1859. Two further volumes followed, in 1862 and in 1865. It is through the Russian version that the collection was translated into French in 1999; an English translation appeared in 1983.
Who it is for
Eleven short stories that can be read separately, in a language close to the speech of the villages; only a part exists in French.
Prizes and reception
The collection that opens realism in Ukrainian prose and at once made its author's reputation.
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