25 Facts About Lesya Ukrainka

Lesya Ukrainka was an active political, civil, and feminist activist.

Lesya Ukrainka was born in 1871 in the town of Novohrad-Volynskyi of Ukraine.

Lesya Ukrainka was the second child of Ukrainian writer and publisher Olha Drahomanova-Kosach, better known under her pen-name Olena Pchilka.

Lesya Ukrainka's father was devoted to the advancement of Ukrainian culture and financially supported Ukrainian publishing ventures.

Lesya Ukrainka had three younger sisters, Olha, Oksana, and Isydora, and a younger brother, Mykola.

Lesya Ukrainka was very close with her uncle Drahomanov, her spiritual mentor and teacher, as well as her elder brother Mykhailo, known under the pen name Mykhailo Obachny, whom she called "Mysholosie" after their parents' joint nickname for both of them.

Lesya Ukrainka inherited her father's physical features, eyes, height, and build.

Lesya Ukrainka was active in the women's movement and published a feminist almanac.

Lesya Ukrainka learned how to read at the age of four, and she and her brother Mykhailo could read foreign languages well enough to read literature in the original.

Lesya Ukrainka was influenced by the well-known composer Mykola Lysenko, as well as the famous Ukrainian dramatist and poet Mykhailo Starytsky.

The poems and plays of Lesya Ukrainka are associated with her belief in her country's freedom and independence.

In 1888, when Lesya Ukrainka was seventeen, she and her brother organized a literary circle called Pleyada, which they founded to promote the development of Ukrainian literature and translation of foreign classics into Ukrainian.

Lesya Ukrainka's illness made it necessary for her to travel to places where the climate was dry, and, as a result, she spent extended periods of time in Germany, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Crimea, the Caucasus, and Egypt.

Lesya Ukrainka loved experiencing other cultures, which was evident in many of her literary works, such as The Ancient History of Oriental Peoples, originally written for her younger siblings.

Lesya Ukrainka wrote epic poems, prose dramas, prose, several articles of literary criticism, and several sociopolitical essays.

Lesya Ukrainka was best known for her plays Boyarynya, a psychological tragedy centered on the Ukrainian family in the 17th century, which refers directly to Ukrainian history, and Lisova pisnya, the characters of which include mythological beings from Ukrainian folklore.

In 1897, while being treated in Yalta, Lesya Ukrainka met Siarhiej Miarzynski, an official from Minsk who was receiving treatment for tuberculosis.

Lesya Ukrainka wrote the entire dramatic poem "Oderzhyma" in one night on his deathbed.

Lesya Ukrainka actively opposed Russian tsarism and was a member of Ukrainian Marxist organizations.

Lesya Ukrainka was briefly arrested in 1907 by tsarist police and remained under surveillance thereafter.

In 1907, Lesya Ukrainka married Klyment Kvitka, a court official, who was an amateur ethnographer and musicologist.

Lesya Ukrainka died on 1 August 1913 at a health resort in Surami, Georgia.

Lesya Ukrainka grew closer to Kobylianska after Miarzynski's death, while Kobylianska was dealing with a rejection by Osyp Makovei, who was uninterested in marriage.

The relationship between Kobylianska and Lesya Ukrainka has been referred to as a "lesbian phantasy" by literary scholar Solomiya Pavlychko.

Lesya Ukrainka entered the canon of Ukrainian literature primarily as a poet of courage and struggle.