Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj (Іван Котляревський, 1769–1838) was born into a noble family in Poltava (then part of the Russian Empire). His working life was spent in military service and in the education and cultural spheres; his fame is based on his pioneering use of Ukrainian for his poems and plays. After his education in Katerynoslav/Dnipro/Dnepropetrovsk and at the Poltava Theological Seminary (1780-1789), Kotljarevs’kyj worked as a private tutor and as a clerk. From 1796 on he served in the Russian army, seeing action in the Russo-Turkish war (1806-1812) and organizing a Ukrainian Cossack Regiment during Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812. As of 1810 he was a trustee of the Educational Institute for the Children of Impoverished Nobles; he also sat on the committee of the Poltava Free Theatre and in 1819-1821 was its artistic director. In 1818 he joined a Masonic lodge. From 1819 until 1830 he served as treasurer of the Poltava Russian Library; between 1827 and 1835 he also chaired several philanthropic agencies. In 1838 he died, unmarried and childless at age 69, in Poltava.
Kotljarevs’kyj was devoted to literature and play-writing. He revolutionized Ukrainian culture when he used the Ukrainian vernacular to create a burlesque adaptation of Virgil’s Aeneid: Eneïda (Енеїда). Begun in 1794, its first three parts were printed, unbeknownst to the author but with the censor’s approval, in Saint Petersburg in 1798. A second edition appeared in 1808 and an extended, four-part version came out in 1809. The completed 6-part version was published posthumously in Kharkiv in 1842. Its innovative aspect consisted not only in its use of the Ukrainian vernacular but also in its metre: ballad-style, regularly rhymed stanzas of four-foot iambs instead of the then current syllabic metre. The writer also added a 24-page Ukrainian-Russian glossary, highlighting the substantial differences between the two languages – at the time, Ukrainian, known as “Little-Russian”, was seen as a dialect variant of Russian. Eneïda depicts contemporary life in a society still mindful of the independence it enjoyed under the Hetmanate; it satirically evokes the serfs’ oppressed condition and showcases Ukrainian traditions.
These elements rendered the poem popular among contemporaries; it was imitated by various authors and by raising Ukrainian to the status of a literary language it influenced the successor generation (Hryhorij Kvitka-Osnov’janenko, Taras Ševčenko, Jakiv Kuharenko). The composer Jaroslav Lopatyns’kyj used the poem for his opera Aeneas on a journey (Еней на мандрівці, 1911); Mykola Lysenko in the same year composed the opera Eneïda (Енеїдa).
As a playwright Kotljarevs’kij gained fame with his operetta Natalka from Poltava (Наталка-Полтавка), written for the Poltava Free Theatre in 1819 and published in 1838 in Ismail Sreznevskij’s almanac Ukrainskij sbornik. It was a response to the caricatures of Ukrainian life in the comedy The Cossack poetaster (Казак-стихотворець) by Aleksandr Šahovskoj, which had also been performed at the Poltava Free Theatre. The operetta depicts the life of Ukrainian village with its cultural customs and traditions; its happy-end note (the heroine eventually marries her beloved) is offset by the character of the long-suffering mother doomed to a joyless life. The play has never been off the repertoire of Ukrainian theatres from its 1819 premiere to the present.
The vaudeville The Muscovite sorcerer (Москаль-чарівник), written in 1819 and published in 1841, also evoking rustic local colour, was performed in Moscow and St- Petersburg as well as in the Poltava Free Theatre.
The first full edition of Kotjarevs’kyj’s works appeared in Kyiv in 1952-53, and again in 1969. A Kotljarevs’kij Museum opened in Poltava in 1952. Eneïda was turned into a graphic novel in 1969, and several films versions were made of Natalka from Poltava and The Muscovite sorcerer (1911, 1936, 1978). The Kotliarevs’kyj Prize for drama and theatre was established in 1990.
