Topic of Ecology of Natural and Cultural Environments in Maksym Rylskyi’s Creation

Author

ZborovskyiAnatolii

a director of Irpin Historical and Local History Museum (Irpin of Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine)

Topic of Ecology of Natural and Cultural Environments
in Maksym Rylskyi’s Creation

Abstract

An outstanding Ukrainian poet M. Rylskyi has compared the preservation of the native language and culture with the preservation of nature as a human habitat in his works.

The influence of the environment, where M. Rylskyi has spent his childhood, on the formation of his personality is considered in the article. Communication with outstanding figures of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian peasants, familiarization with Ukrainian folklore, appropriate education and the beauty of Ukrainian nature are the factors those have contributed to the development of M. Rylskyi ecological outlook and poetic talent. M. Rylskyi has developed the moral and aesthetic principles laid in childhood also in the mature years.

nature, of the city of Irpin in particular, where the poet has a dacha for a long time, inspires him. M. Rylskyi’s passion for fishing and hunting has been not so much a pursuit of hunting and fishing trophies as a communication with nature and a source of inspiration for creating poetic pearls.

However, M. Rylskyi has experienced terrible times of the destruction of the Ukrainian ethnos and Ukrainian culture, total Russification. He has also almost become a victim of Stalin’s mass repressions.

During some liberalization of the communist regime, the public figure and academician, to the best of his ability, has tried to influence the party leaders, Khrushchev in particular, but unsuccessfully.

However, he has an influence on fans of Ukrainian poetry. M. Rylskyi has urged to protect language, culture and nature, emphasizing the importance of folk art, where both literature and music are originated in such poems as Dog-Rose, Language and others. M. Rylskyi, a polyglot and erudite person, has found works in world literature resonating with his moral and aesthetic principles and translated them for the Ukrainian readership.

The relevance of the humanistic poetry of M. Rylskyi is intensified constantly even nowadays, counteracting the destructive tendencies of the growth of environmental problems and the dehumanization of mankind, which have already acquired a planetary scale.

The poetry and journalistic heritage of M. Rylskyi and his translation of Goethe’s poem, as well as the memoirs of the son of the poet B. Rylskyi are used in the article.

Keywords

Maksym Rylskyi, Ukrainian poetry, ecology, nature, language, culture.

References

1. GOETHE, Wolfgang Johann, v. Nature and Art (translated from the German by Maksym RYLSKYI). In: Maksym RYLSKYI, CollectedWorks: in Twenty Volumes. Kyiv: Scientific Thought, 1985, vol.11: Poetic Translations, p. 293 [in Ukrainian].
2. ANDRUSIAK, Ivan (compiler). A Wanderer and Fisherman. Nature in the Works of Volodymyr Svidzinskyi and Maksym Rylskyi. Kyiv: Fact, 2003 [in Ukrainian].
3. RYLSKYI, Bohdan. A Journey into My Father’s Youth. Kyiv, 2004 [in Ukrainian].
4. RYLSKYI, Maksym. Lyrics. Kyiv: Kyiv Truth, 2005 [in Ukrainian].
5. RYLSKYI, Maksym. Why I Do Not Go Hunting. In: Maksym RYLSKYI, Collected Works: in Twenty Volumes. Kyiv: Scientific Thought, 1988, vol. 18: Journalism: 1953–1964, pp. 577–584. [in Ukrainian].