The Families of Rylskis and Bulakhovskis: From the Memories on Creative Contacts during the Second World War and the Postwar Period

Author

Karatsuba Myroslava

a Ph. D. in Philology, an associate professor, a senior research fellow at Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4836-9264

The Families of Rylskis and Bulakhovskis:
From the Memories on Creative Contacts during the Second World War and the Postwar Period

Abstract

The reminiscences of the representatives of the family of academician linguist Leonid Bulakhovskyi: his wife – Tetiana Bulakhovska (candidate of philological sciences, specialist in French language and literature and opera singer) and his daughter Yuliia Bulakhovska – a doctor of philological sciences, polonist, professor, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Higher School, about communication with M. Rylskyi and his family in evacuation in Ufa (Bashkyriia, 1941–1942), and Kyiv (end of 1943–1961) are submitted in the article. The focus of attention is on the creative meetings of two outstanding scientists, united by joint work on a wide humanitarian field – linguistics, folkloristics, literary studies, translation problems as well as by personal friendship.

The first episodes of the memories touch on the events of the beginning of the Second World War. A large part of academic organizations has been forced to evacuate to safer regions of the Soviet Union with the advance of fascist troops on Ukraine. In the summer of 1941 M. Rylskyi as the director of the Institute of Folk Creativity and Art and L. Bulakhovskyi, currently the deputy director of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, have been evacuated to Bashkyriia, where they continue to perform the duties as the employees of academician institutions. Creative contacts of the scientists start from the Ufa period.

The submitted memories concern also the creative projects on which the scientists have worked, first of all, on compiling the RussianUkrainian dictionary, as well as translations of the works of French, Polish and other European authors by M. Rylskyi. The post-war events, in particular, the scientists’ participation in the Congresses of Slavists and important international scientific conferences are also described.

The scientific achievements of outstanding scientists on the field of Folkloristics are considered separately, it concerns the foreword by L. Bulakhovskyi to the published works «Serbian Folk Songs» and «Serbian Folk Poetry», as well as about translations by M. Rylsky from the folk poetry of the Serbs.

Particular attention is focused on the literary exploration of L. Bulakhovskyi, devoted to M. Rylskyi, named «Rylskyi is a Patriotic Poet».

Keywords

Maksym Rylskyi, Leonid Bulakhovskyi, Yuliia Bulakhovska, scientists in evacuation, Ufa period, creative contacts.

References

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