Narrative
Месть верховинця
Not translated into English
Mykola Ustyianovych · 1849
Opening lines
В темних горах наших Бескидів, в стороні, протягаючійся від Самбірского округа до Станіславівских верхів, лежить земля, давніше Тухольщиной названа, а на ній при самій угорській границі знаходится село Рожанка.
In the dark mountains of our Beskids, in the region stretching from the district of Sambir to the heights of Stanislaviv, lies a land once called Tukholshchyna, and on it, right by the Hungarian border, is the village of Rozhanka.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ukrlib.com.ua
Synopsis
A story drawn, says its subtitle, from a true event, in a village in the high valleys of the Carpathians. Prodan, an orphaned farmhand without a plot of land, loves Molana, daughter of Dmytro Kojan, the richest peasant in the place. His rival, Fedir, only son of a well-off house, is envious and sly. Around this rivalry unfold the life of the villages of the Verkhovyna, its festivals, its customs and its way of speaking.
Context
The story appeared in the Lviv press in 1849 and 1850, in five chapters. In 1879, for the author's priestly jubilee, the journal Zoria reissued it in a version he had reworked to make it “better still”: six chapters, a changed plot, a harsher attack on the lord of Skole. Critics judge this second version weaker, and only the first was reissued. In 1886, a Polish writer, Czesław Łukawski, published in Lviv an almost literal translation of it under his own name. The most complete edition is that of 1913.
Who it is for
A short narrative, in five chapters, in the speech of the mountain people. The word in the title refers to the inhabitant of the Verkhovyna, the high Carpathian mountains.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Ivan Franko as one of the best stories of the Galician prose of its time, and often reissued since.
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