Poetry
Співомовки
Not translated into English
Stepan Rudansky · 1880
Opening lines
Чи в Киіві, чи в Полтаві,
Чи в самій столиці,
Ходив чумак з мазницею
Помежи крамниці.
Whether in Kyiv or in Poltava,
Or in the capital itself,
A chumak went about with his tar pot
Among the shops.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from uk.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Humoresques in verse, of a few stanzas each, drawn from the anecdotes, sayings and stories that circulated in the villages of Podolia. Each piece sketches in two strokes a small scene from life in the village, the market or the church, and leads it towards a retort that hits home. The 1880 collection brings together twenty-eight of them, chosen from the hundreds its author had left in manuscript.
Context
The pieces were written between 1851 and 1860 and gathered into three manuscript notebooks entitled Співомовки козака Вінка Руданського. None of it appeared in book form during the author's lifetime. The first edition, twenty-eight pieces, was prepared in Kyiv in 1880 by Olena Pchilka, the mother of Lesya Ukrainka, who had it printed at her own expense under the collective pseudonym of “little Volhynian circle”. The edition of the works in seven volumes appeared in Lviv from 1895 to 1903, thanks to Mykhailo Komarov, Volodymyr Levytsky, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Ivan Franko.
Who it is for
Pieces of a few lines, made to be spoken aloud. The word in the title is a compound coined by the author, with no French equivalent.
Prizes and reception
The collection that made known the genre invented and named by its author, the humoresque in verse, and secured his posthumous reputation.
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The pages consulted to check this page.