Pavlo Arsenovych Hrabovsky (Ukrainian: Павло Арсенович Грабовський; 11 September O.S. 30 August">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 30 August1864 – 12 December [O.S. 29 November] 1902) was a Ukrainian poet, journalist, translator and revolutionary.

Biography

Hrabovsky was in to the family of a village Sexton (office), sexton. His father died while he was at a young age and was raised by his mother. He was educated at the church school in Okhtyrka and at the theological seminary in Kharkov, in the third year he was expelled for participating in the Narodnik movement (in the organization of

Black Repartition Black Repartition (BR; ; also known as Black Partition) was a revolutionary organization in Russia in the early 1880s. Black Repartition was established in August-September 1879 after the split of Zemlya i volya (Land and Liberty) at the Voronez ...

) and distributing banned literature, then arrested and exiled to his native village under police supervision. In 1885 he went to Kharkov, where he worked as a proofreader in the newspaper "Yuzhny Krai", in the autumn of the same year he was mobilized into the army and sent to serve in the

Turkestan Military District The Turkestan Military District (, ''Turkestansky voyenyi okrug (TurkVO)'') was a military district of both the Imperial Russian Army and the Soviet Armed Forces, with its headquarters at Tashkent. The District was first created during the 1874 R ...

. In 1886 in Orenburg he was arrested again for distribution of illegal literature, later he was imprisoned in Izium and Kharkov. In 1888 he was sentenced to 5 years of exile in the Irkutsk Governorate. In 1889, he took part in the drafting and distribution of the "Statement to the Russian Government" against the brutal massacre of prisoners on March 22, 1889. After the text of the statement appeared in the foreign press, he was arrested and accused of drafting a political appeal. in 1889 he was arrested again and imprisoned in Irkutsk for 3.5 years. Later he was in exile in Vilyuysk and Yakutsk, and then in Tobolsk, where he died of tuberculosis and was buried at the Zavalnoye Cemetery.

Literary works

Hrabovsky was one of the representatives of Ukrainian revolutionary democratic poetry of the late 19th-century and a follower of the tradition of

Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (; ; 9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist, and ethnographer. He was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts and a member of the Brotherhood o ...

. He considered literature as a means of combating injustice and social evil and was an opponent of the

art for art's sake Art for art's sake—the usual English rendering of (), a French slogan from the latter half of the 19th century—is a phrase that expresses the philosophy that 'true' art is utterly independent of all social values and utilitarian functions, b ...

slogan. Poetry, according Hrabovsky, should be a "bold voice for all the offended and oppressed." Many of his poems are sad and were written under the impression of imprisonment. The optimistic feature of Grabovsky's poetry is hope for a better future, despite all the grief of his personal life, good nature, and a call to goodness. Hrabovsky is also the author of numerous translations into Ukrainian of works of world classics such as

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

Sándor Petőfi Sándor Petőfi ( []; né Petrovics; ; ; 1 January 1823 – most likely 31 July 1849) was a Hungarian poet and Classical Liberalism, liberal revolutionary. He is considered Hungary's national poet, and was one of the key figures of the Hungari ...

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the List of national poets, national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the be ...

, etc, and Russian poets (

Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is conside ...

Lermontov Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of ...

, Derzhavin etc.) as well as Scandinavian and Georgian writers. He also translated Ukrainian literature into Russian.

Personal life

In 1888, Hrabovsky, in the Moscow transit prison (Butyrka), met a former teacher and a member of the Narodnaya Volya, Nadezhda Malaksiano (Sigida), who was also convicted of revolutionary activity. Many of his lyrical poems are imbued with love for her; the poet dedicated his first poetry collection, Snowdrop, to her. Nadezhda Sigida died in 1889 in the Kara tragedy. Two years before his death in Tobolsk, Hrabovsky married a student of the paramedic-midwife school, Anastasia Nikolaevna Butkovskaya. In 1901, they had a son, Boris, who would later become one of the inventors of television in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hrabovsky, Pavlo 1864 births 1902 deaths 19th-century Ukrainian poets Ukrainian translators Ukrainian revolutionaries Ukrainian essayists Ukrainian children's writers Translators of Edgar Allan Poe Translators of William Shakespeare Narodniks