Русалка Дністровая (“The Dniester nymph”), subtitled Ruthenische Volks-Lieder (Buda, 1837), was the first Western-Ukrainian literary almanac published in the Ukrainian vernacular. It used a phonetically-oriented spelling later also popularized by Taras Ševčenko's Kobzar of 1840. The almanac’s function as beacon of a Ukrainian national identity and cultural revival reached beyond the borders of Galicia.
The phonetic spelling system (devised mainly by one of the almanac’s editors, Markijan Šaškevyč) facilitated the adoption of Cyrillic rather than Latin for the Ukrainian language as used in Habsburg Galicia. While the principle “write as you hear and read as you see” (пиши як чуєш, а читай як видиш) ultimately goes back to Johann Christoph Adelung, Šaškevyč was primarily influenced by Vuk Karadžić’s folk song editions. The spelling of “Rusalka Dnistrovaia” in turn became influential for later Ukrainian orthography.
The compilers (Šaškevyč, Yakiv Holovatskyj and Ivan Vahylevyč) were known, and enjoyed great prestige, as Galicia’s “Ruthenian Triad” (Руська Трійця). Former students of the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lemberg/Lviv and of Lviv University, they were inspired by Romantic Pan-Slavism. The writings of the priest-poet Šašekvyč (1811–1843) were motivated and characterized by Ukrainian national ideals and patriotic appeals. Vahylevych (1811–1866) was oriented more towards ethnology, folklore and philology. Holovatskyj (1814–1888) went on to study at the University of Pest, and from 1849 until 1867 was the first Professor of Ruthenian at Lviv University, where he became Dean 1858-59) and Rector (1863-64). The group’s pronounced Pan-Slavism showed also in their choice of pen names: Ruslan, Dalibor, and Yaroslav, respectively. The group disbanded after Šaškevyč’s death in 1843.
In the 1830s, the Ruthenian Triad had put together a collection of poems entitled The son of Ruthenia (Син Русі, 1833), and attempted in 1834 to publish a collection of Ukrainian-language folklore and literature entitled The star (Зоря); the attempt was suppressed by the censor. These collections became the basis for the publication of The Dniester nymph, which was itself beset by censorship problems.
Complaints to the censors delayed publication until 1837; and immediately after its publication, the almanac was banned, first by the Lviv and then by the Viennese censors, who deprecated its Ukrainian slant and its use of Cyrillic. The ban lasted until 1848; of the 1000 printed copies, almost 800 were seized and sent to Vienna. The remainder, nonetheless, gained renown and influence in Ukrainian circles. It comprised folk songs from Galicia collected by Dalibor (Vahylevyč); some reprints of Ukrainian songs from the collections of Myhajlo Maksymovyč and Izmail Sreznevskij; original poems by Petro Hulak-Artemovs’ky and Tymko (Tomasz) Padura. Some translations from Serbian folk songs were included, as was a translated excerpt from the Czech Rukopis královédvorský. The editors also included some of their own original poetry and prose fiction.
One of the inspirations behind The Dniester nymph was Ján Kollár (1793–1852), Slovak poet and prominent figure of Slavic Romanticism. Holovats’kyj translated Kollár’s poetic chef d’œuvre, the sonnet cycle Slavý dcera. Kollar’s words “Ne z mutneho oka, z ruky pilne nadeje kwitne” (“Hope blossoms not from a cloudy eye, but from a diligent hand”) served as the almanac’s motto; and indeed the title figure of the water nymph of the Dniester river alludes to Kollar’s use, in Slavý dcera, of the Elbe, Danube and Vltava to signify the Slavic world.
