Your Glorious Name…: Yevheniya Yaroshynska in the Relations with Frantiљek Rehor (On the Occasion of the 160th Anniversary of Birthday of the Czech Ethnographer)

Author

Kovalets Lidiya – a Doctor of Philology, an associate professor at Ukrainian Literature Subdepartment of the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University

Your Glorious Name…: Yevheniya Yaroshynska in the Relations with Frantiљek Rehor (On the Occasion of the 160th Anniversary of Birthday of the Czech Ethnographer)

Abstract

The article outlines the history of contacts between the female writer, folklorist and ethnographer Yevheniya Yaroshynska (1868–1904) and the Czech Ukrainist F. Řehoř (1857–1899). For this purpose, correspondence, memoirs, and information from the periodicals were used.  It emphasizes that the Czech pages in the biography of Y. Yaroshynska have appeared at the time when her national interests were more clearly crystallized. M. Pavlyk (most likely) became the mediator in her acquaintance with F. Řehoř. The Czech ethnographer, in 1877–1890, on the territory of Eastern Halychyna and Hutsulshchyna recorded, described and collected the materials for the Halychyna­Ruthenian Section of the Prague Industrial Museum. He enlisted to this process many Ukrainian literary figures, including Y. Yaroshynska. Thus, she sent him examples of folk art collected in Bukovyna, as well as folkloric and ethnographic articles being conducive to F. Řehoř’s creation of unique collection of Ukrainian materials for the Náprstek Museum in Prague.

In July 1891, most probably, owing to the financial assistance of F. Řehoř, Y. Yaroshynska, along with the large delegation from the Halychyna­Bukovynian intellectuals, took part in the Regional Industrial Exhibition in Prague. The article provides information on this important event in the scientific and cultural cooperation of both nations, the outstanding participation by Y. Yaroshynska in the exhibition, as well as the writer’s impressions from the trip and from what she has seen, which were described as her article Memories from a Travel to Prague. A high level of culture and general development of Czech society captured the Bukovynian literator. These observations strengthened Yaroshynska’s desire to work in favour of her own nation. The high appreciation of the work of Y. Yaroshyns’ka by the Czech researcher was reflected in his biographical article about her, contained in the Czech Otto’s Scientific Dictionary. This estimation is also noticeable in the epistolary dialogue with the Bukovynian writer. Our article also raises the question of necessity to return, to the scientific usage, of the entire body of documents on the relations between Y. Yaroshynska and her Czech colleague, particularly the ethnographic texts sent to F. Řehoř.

Keywords

Yevheniya Yaroshynska, František Řehoř, Bukovyna, Czech Republic, correspondence, travel to Prague, industrial exhibition, scientific and cultural relations.

References

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