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influenced by Velix Volkhovskyi, a revolutionary populist from Poltava Province. He had fled from his place of exile in Russia and settled in London where, apart from progressive political ideas, he also popularized Ukrainian folklore and literature. In 1902, he delivered a series of lectures in English on the pathos and humor of Ukrainian folklore. Ethel Lilian Voynich embarked on her literary career as a translator of Russian literature. She translated the stories of V. Garshin, the fairy tales of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the comedy The Wedding by N. Gogol and assorted articles on nihilism in Russia by Stepniak-Kravchynskyi. In 1931, she published her English translations of Frederic Chopin's letters from Polish and French. Voynich also wrote musical works, including the oratorio Babylon (1948) which is dedicated to the collapse of czarism. Her first novel, The Gadfly, was published in the United States in 1897. Against the background of the Italian liberation struggle of the 1830s and 1840s, she created the expressive character of Arthur Burton, a revolutionary -- the Gadfly. Her subsequent novels Jack Raymond (1901), Olive Letham (1904), An Interrupted Friendship (1910) and Put Off Your Shoes (1945) were not destined to reap the same success as The Gadfly, although they are filled with the same revolutionary romanticism. The novel Olive Letham is particularly interesting for Ukrainians as Karol and Olive, the two main characters of the novel, spent some time in Brody. A Ukrainian translation of Jack Raymond by M. Lyssychenko was published in 1930. The Gadfly has been translated into Ukrainian by M. Lyssychenko (1929), M. Ryabov (1935) and Y. Halan (1948). In 1981, the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Feature Film Studio in Kyiv dramatized The Gadfly in a three- part TV film directed by Mykola Maschenko. The film won the coveted Taras Shevchenko State Prize in 1982. Ethel Lilian Voynich's interest in Shevchenkiana evolved in a curious manner that began with her interest in the history, folklore and fiction of Ukraine. She began to study Ukrainian in the 1890s and mastered it quickly. She expanded her knowledge of Ukraine and Ukrainians in Lviv in 1895 where she went to explore the possibility of smuggling illegal literature to Russia. Here she met Ivan Franko and his friend Mykhailo Pavlyk, a full member of the Shevchenko Scholarly Society, with whom she maintained a lengthy correspondence. She was also well informed about the activities of Ukrainian scholar, civic leader, publicist and political thinker M. Drahomaniv. She translated some Ukrainian folk songs (unfortunately, none of the translations appeared in print) and became smitten with the beauty of Shevchenko's poetry. Voynich began translating Shevchenko's poetry in the 1890s. After twenty years, she published 156 poetic lines in the book published in 1911 by Elkin Matthews. The best of her translations are those of Testament (the most faithful rendition of all the twenty-two versions to date), the prologue to The Princess, and "/ care not". The pervading candor of these masterpieces bursts forth even in translation. In her biographical sketch of Shevchenko, she examines him as a world poet and a revolutionary rebel, drawing the reader's attention to the conditions under which he lived, writing of the "haunting music" of his idiom, and referring to his letters and the novel The Artist which is based on quite a few episodes from the poet's life. The sketch, however, betrays her lack of information on the poet — she erroneously asserts that his talent declined after the years of exile, and she mixes up the years of his poetical output. The book was reviewed quite a few times in the Russian and Ukrainian press and helped popularize Shevchenko's poetry. To this day her translations are printed in various publications, testifying to their enduring artistic and aesthetic value. Ethel Lilian Voynich died in New York on July 28, 1960. Her work as a biographer and translator of Shevchenko has been researched by H. Mayfet, H. Ustenko, O. Zhomnir, and M. Tamawska. V. Polek compiled a valuable bibliographical guide Ethel Lilian Voynich and Ukraine in 1970. Of the verses dedicated to her by Ukrainian poets, Lina Kostenko's "The Touch of Sorrow" from the collection On the Banks of the Eternal River (1977) is perhaps the most moving. It describes how Voynich is fated to live out her years in the dull heights of a skyscraper, in the crowded metropolis of so many people where it seems to her that everyone has forgotten her: And suddenly the Gadfly enters and getting on his knees, he asks "Do you remember me, Ethel Lilian? I am your youth. I dwell in time, in space as well. I am your heart's so faithful son scarred by your wounds." (Translated by A. Bilenko) Editor’s Note: Roksoliana Zorivchak is professor of English at Ivan Franko University in Lviv, Ukraine. ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ", ЛЮТИЙ 1998 17
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