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THE FIRST UKRAINIAN STUDIES SCHOLAR IN THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD by ROKSOLIANA ZORIVCHAK Oxford University, the oldest institution of higher learning in England, was founded in 1117. For Ukrainians, the world famous university is of particu lar interest, because it produced the first scholar of Ukrainian studies in the English speaking world — William Richard Morfill. Morfill's works bear the stamp of the true pioneer and the scholarly heritage of the celebrated British Slavist has lately attracted keen interest in Ukraine whose culture he knew and re spected. In the 1870’s, when Morfill embarked on his academic career, Ukrainian language, history and cul ture were not exactly terra incognita for Britons. Quite a few works about Ukraine had already been published by British historians Richard Knolles and Paul Rycaut and by travellers John Bell, Joseph Marshall, and Ed ward Daniel Clarke. In 1816, in London, Benjamin Beresford published "The Russian Troubadour, or a Collection of Ukrainian and other National Melodies", the oldest published collection of music and lyrics of Russian and Ukrainian songs outside the Slavic world. Ukraine's music is represented by two songs, one of them by the Cossack poet Semen Klymovskyi. In 1835, writer and translator George Barrow published his versions of two Ukrainian folk ballads. In 1841, The Foreign Quarterly Review featured an elaborate review of an anonymous author on a collection of Ukrainian songs and dumas published by Mykhailo Maksymovych in 1834. In 1848, a collection entitled "The Cossacks of the Ukraine, comprising biographi cal notices of the most celebrated Cossack Chiefs" and "Gonta", a historical drama in five acts, were pub lished in London by Henrik Krasinsky, a Polish immi grant. But these works represent a sporadic tentative prelude to the far more prolific and intense study of Ukraine produced by Morfill. William Richard Morfill was bom on Novem ber 17, 1834 in Maidstone, Kent. He was schooled first in his home town and then at Tonbridge. From childhood, Morfill was distinguished for his amazing memory and exceptional gift for languages. He loved literature, especially poetry. A gift from one of his teachers at Tonbridge, a Russian reader, was to change his life — a boyhood fascination with the literature, history and languages of the Slavs grew into a lifelong passion for Slavic studies. In 1853, Morfill entered Oxford University. After graduating in 1857, he remained at Oxford in the capacity of tutor, while studying Slavic languages as well as Magyar, Romanian, and Georgian. His vaca tions were spent traveling throughout Europe: Tbilisi, Georgia in 1888, Kyiv, Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1891, Lviv and Warsaw in 1985. During these travels, Morfill established close contacts with Mykhailo Dra- homanov, Ivan Steshenko, Serhiy Yefremov, Mykola Voronyi, and Oleksa Kovalenko. Morfill, whose Ukrainian language studies were hampered by the lack of suitable textbooks and dictionaries, found these contacts invaluable. He was especially indebted in this to Mykhailo Drahomanov with whom he corresponded frequently from 1871 to 1895, the year Drahomanov died. Their letters, unfortunately have not survived. At home in England, his personal visits to Eastern Europe, his continued correspondence with Slavic scholars in the region, and the knowledge he had acquired about the Slavs from books, eventually earned him a reputation as an expert in Slavic studies. As such, he was able to arouse interest in Slavic stud ies in others in the academic community and to defuse many of the prejudices the English had towards the Slavs. In 1889, he was appointed staff Lecturer in Russian at Oxford University, in 1900 he became Pro fessor of Russian and Slavic languages, and in 1903, in appreciation for his contribution to Slavic studies, Morfill was elected Fellow of the British Academy. Morfill produced only a few works devoted exclusively to Ukrainian studies. But in his numerous books about Russia and Poland, and in his lectures, articles and essays for the ninth edition of The Ency clopedia Britannica (Edinburgh, 1875-1888), the scholar commented lavishly on Ukraine's fiction, lan guage, history, geography and cultural institutions. In 1876, in an article entitled "The Russian Language and its Dialects", Morfill first wrote about the Ukrainian language. In the article, he presents Ukrainian as an independent linguistic system, empha sizing that through their distinctive and talented works, Ukrainian writers had won their people the complete right to statehood. A more complete analy sis of the Ukrainian language, its phonetics, morphol ogy and syntax, were presented in his article "The Slavic Tongues" which was published in the 22nd vol “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 2000 13
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