Ivan Kotliarevskyi

Ivan Petrovych Kotliarevsky (, ; – ) was a Ukrainian writer, poet, playwright, and social activist, regarded as the pioneer of modern Ukrainian literature. His main work is the poem Eneida, a travesty of Virgil's Aeneid.

Biography Kotliarevsky was born on in the Ukrainian city of Poltava in the family of clerk Petro Kotliarevsky. The Kotliarevskys belonged to the Ukrainian nobility but were not wealthy. They owned a small estate in Poltava and a plot of land nearby. After studying at the Poltava Theological Seminary (1780–1789), he worked as a tutor for the gentry at rural estates, where he became familiar with Ukrainian folk life and the peasant vernacular. He served in the Imperial Russian Army between 1796 and 1808 in the Siversky Karabiner Regiment. Kotliarevsky participated in the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812) as a staff-captain, during which the Russian troops laid the siege to the city of Izmail. In 1808 he retired from the Army. In 1810 he became the trustee of an institution for the education of children of impoverished nobles. In 1812, during the French invasion of Russia he organized the 5th Ukrainian Cossack Regiment in the town of Horoshyn (Khorol uyezd, Poltava Governorate) under the condition that it will be left after the war as a permanent military formation. For that he received a rank of major.

He helped stage theatrical productions at the Poltava governor-general's residence and was the artistic director of the Poltava Free Theater between 1812 and 1821. In 1818 together with , V. Taranovsky, and others he became a member of the Poltava Freemasonry Lodge (Love of truth). Kotliarevsky participated in the buyout of actor Mikhail Shchepkin out of the serfdom. From 1827 to 1835 he directed several philanthropic agencies.

The first modern Ukrainian writer

Kotliarevsky wrote his first poems while a student at the Poltava Theological Seminary and published them in the satirical almanac (Poltava fly). The first three parts were published in Saint Petersburg (without the author's permission) in 1798. The fourth part was published in 1809, and the fifth and sixth parts were completed around 1820, although the first complete edition of the work was published only in 1842, after the author's death. It reflects the memory of the recently destroyed Zaporozhian Sich and Cossack Hetmanate and the current high point of Russian-imposed serfdom in Ukraine. It satirizes the social classes of the past and present eras. He used iambic tetrameter in ten-line strophes with regular rhymes. However, the first complete English translation of the work was published only in 2004 by Ukrainian-Canadian .