Cultural and Historical Heritage in the Interpretations and Understanding of Ukrainian Humanities Scholars

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the publication of Diariusz by Pylyp Orlyk. The Warsaw edition of 2021 has updated this historical figure not only as a statesman who has not stop his aspirations in exile and therefore becomes the founder of Ukrainian emigration in Europe. But also as a writer, the author of a literary work, known essentially as his Diariusz, one of the largest in the history of world literature. The edition includes the notes from 1725–1726, when the hetman has been in exile in Thessaloniki. He has found himself finally after the destruction of Zaporozhian Sich by Moscow troops in 1709. Valentyna Sobol, a well-known researcher of ancient Ukrainian literature, has deciphered and read these pages of the Diary by the persecuted hetman from Old Polish for the first time. So, the Warsaw Diariusz has been published in the original language, as well as with inset-letters in the other languages: Latin, Old Ukrainian, Turkish and French. A wide circle of the correspondents, including monarchs and politicians, who have shared the hetman’s desire to create an anti-Russian coalition, shows how actively and from whom he seeks support in his effort to restore Ukrainian statehood. His eldest son Hryhorii, like his father, has been changing cities and states, fleeing from Moscow agents hunting for Mazepa followers around the world. The son has supported his father’s cause. He has become a diplomat. At the same time, the Diary of Pylyp Orlyk is a very emotional document. The Zaporozhian Hetman in exile has entrusted the paper with not only his visions of a restored Cossack state, but also painful thoughts about the fate of his homeland. He has been waiting to meet his son impatiently and anxiously. Hryhorii has come to him incognito. The Hetman has left especially poetic lines about it. This fact makes his work a prominent phenomenon of the late baroque. Reading from the manuscript and publishing the entire text of Diaryusz, containing over 3,000 pages, as well as its translation into Ukrainian is an important task.