Skip to content
Call Us Today! 212-533-4646 | MON-FRI 12PM - 4PM (EST)
DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
Search for:
About Us
UNWLA 100
Publications
FAQ
Annual Report 2023
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2021
Initiatives
Advocate
Educate
Cultivate
Care
News
Newsletters
Sign Up For Our Newsletter
Join UNWLA
Become a Member
Volunteer With Us
Donate to UNWLA
Members Portal
Calendar
Shop to Support Ukraine
Search for:
Print
Print Page
Download
Download Page
Download Right Page
Open
1
2-3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10-11
12-13
14-15
16-17
18-19
20-21
22-23
24-25
26-27
28-29
30-31
32-33
34-35
36-37
38-39
40
OUR LIFE M onthly, p u b lish e d by U krainian N a tional W om en’s League o f Am erica FEBRUARY 1998 Editor: TAMARA STADNYCHENKO ETHEL LILIAN VOYNICH Haunting Music and Revolution by ROKSOLIANA ZORIVCHAK In late 1911, Elkin Matthews of London published Six Lyrics from the Ruthenian of Taras Shevchenko and The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov from the Russian of Mikhail Lermontov, both rendered into English by E.L. Voynich. The book appeared in the 86th edition of the popular Vigo Cabinet fiction series (which included previously published collections of poetry by W.B. Yeats, J. E. Masefield, H. Ibsen, Omar Khayyam and Ch. Baudelaire) and introduced English readers to the verse of Taras Shevchenko. Voynich is not well known to English language readers. The 1996 revised edition of The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford, NY: University Press) contains a very short and rather strange entry about her: "VOYNICH, Ethel Lilian, nee Boole (1864-1960), novelist, known (largely in the Soviet Union) for her revolutionary novel The Gadfly (1897) set in pre-1848 Italy" (p. 614). According to the reference book, the Soviet Union still existed in 1996. Voynich was also not the first writer and translator to take an interest in Shevchenko. English- language Shevchenkiana was initiated by Ahapius Humnytskyi-Honcharenko in 1868 and the first English language publication about the poet is dated 1876, when John Stevens, an American journalist, published the article "Shevchenko, a National Poet of Little Russia" in the October issue of the New York monthly Pleiad. British translator Francis Patrick Marchant and William Richard Morfill, first British Ukrainist, also contributed to English language Shevchenkiana many years before Voynich's work was published. Although a relative latecomer to the field, Voynich is remarkable not only for her work as a translator of Shevchenko, but for her versatility as a writer and her colorful experiences as an artist and as a person. Ethel Lilian Boole was bom on May 11, 1864 in Cork, Ireland into a family of scientists. Her father, George Boole, was the founder of mathematical logic; her mother, Mary Everest Boole, was also a mathematician. Ethel studied piano at the Berlin Conservatory and after graduating, lived for a while in Switzerland and France. She became interested in the European revolutionary movement and took to reading extensively on the subject. She was greatly impressed by the book Underground Russia by Serhiy Stepniak- Kravchynskyi, a revolutionary and writer on current affairs. In 1886, she met Stepniak-Kravchynskyi in London, and their encounters left a lasting impression o n her life and creativity. (M. Oliynyk, in his historical novel The Prologue, which was dedicated to Stepniak-Kravchynskyi, recreated the vivid character of E.L. Voynich and described her friendship with the revolutionary). Through Stepniak-Kravchynskyi, she became interested in the revolutionary movements in the Russian Empire and in the mores, language and literature of Ukrainians, Russians and Poles suffering under czarism. In order to gain a more intimate knowledge of the Russian revolutionaries, she moved to Russia and lived there from 1887 till 1889, teaching music and English for a living. She made contacts with revolutionaries, took part in demonstrations and delivered food parcels to political prisoners. Later in the Warsaw citadel, she met Polish revolutionary Michael Voynich whom she married in London in 1892. Her Slavonic interests grew and were greatly 16 НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 1998 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
Page load link
Go to Top
1 
2-3 
4-5 
6-7 
8-9 
10-11 
12-13 
14-15 
16-17 
18-19 
20-21 
22-23 
24-25 
26-27 
28-29 
30-31 
32-33 
34-35 
36-37 
38-39 
40 
