In the communication environment of Ukrainian intellectuals in the mid-19th century: Opanas Markovych’s letters to Hryhoriy Galagan

Abstract

The article for the first time publishes in full four letters of the Ukrainian philologist, folklorist, writer Opanas Vasyliovych Markovych (1822–1867) to Hryhoriy Pavlovych Galagan (1819–1888), one of the most influential landowners of the Left-bank Ukraine and a prominent public figure. Opanas Markovych is one of those representatives of the Ukrainian intellectual community of the middle of the 19th century, whose contribution to the development of National culture has not been yet appreciated. The publication of Opanas Markovych`s correspondence with Hryhoriy Galagan is intended to deepen the understanding of the outlook and ideological priorities and life practices of this person and contribute to an understanding of how the system of networking of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the middle of the 19th century. The letters, dating from 1856–1858, are evident behind a number of issues relevant both personally for the author and the addressee, as well as for the circle of liberally minded Ukrainian nobility, to which these people belonged. Ethnographic search, the recording and publication of Ukrainian song folklore, the appearance of the works of Marko Vovchok, and the discussion of Panteleimon Kulish’s novel “The Black Rada” are the leading themes of the epistolary. References to the family life of the correspondence participants create a domestic-historical context of their communication attention should be paid to the fact that the letters are written in Ukrainian, so in this regard, their publication is important for a wide range of scholars of humanities. Therefore, their publication is important for a wide range of scholars of humanities – not only historians, but also philologists, specialists in sociolinguistics and others. The language of the letters, with a large number of folk idioms, using archaic grammatical forms, represents the way of the Ukrainian literary language in the 19th century.