Novel
The Black Council
Чорна рада
Panteleimon Kulish · 1857
Synopsis
A chronicle of the year 1663. Colonel Chram, who has become a priest, leaves the right bank of the Dnieper with his son Petro to reach the left bank and support Yakym Somko, whom he wants to see made hetman. On the way, they knock at the door of a wealthy Cossack and meet people of the Sich, town burghers, lords and peasants, each with his own idea of the country and of its leader. Everything converges on Nizhyn, where an assembly open to the whole Cossack mass is to choose the hetman.
Context
The novel first existed in two versions, Russian and Ukrainian, markedly different, and the sources disagree about which came first; chapters of the Russian version appeared in a journal as early as 1845. The arrest of 1847 halted its publication; a second draft dates from 1856, and the novel finally appeared in full in 1857, in both languages, the Russian version bearing an epilogue of its own. The model is Walter Scott's historical novel. Shevchenko wrote to the author on 5 December 1857 that he had already read it twice and thanked him for having printed it in the language of the country. An abridged English translation appeared in 1973.
Who it is for
A chronicle novel of about three hundred pages in the usual editions. One must know who Khmelnytsky was, and that the Dnieper then separated two Ukraines.
Prizes and reception
The first historical novel written in Ukrainian, and the best work of historical prose in that literature according to Ivan Franko.
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