Ukraine people culture

Ukraine people culture articles:

Ukraine people (Ukrainians) have a rich folk culture. The hopak is a popular and energetic folk dance involving a competition among the dancers.

Ukraine people culture - hopak folk dance

Ukraine culture - Ukraine national folk dance hopak 1st picture

Ukraine culture - Ukraine national folk dance hopak 2nd picture

The bandum, a lutelike instrument with 50 or more strings, is Ukraine's people national instrument.

Pysanky are intricately designed ornamental Easter eggs, bearing Christian or pre-Christian symbols. Colorful wood-carvings are produced by the artisans of the Carpathian Mountain area.

Ukraine people culture - Pysanky pictures

Ukraine culture - Ukraine national Easter eggs - Pysanky 1st picture

Ukraine culture - Ukraine national Easter eggs - Pysanky 2nd picture

Some of the national dishes of Ukraine cuisine are borscht (borsch) - a soup made of beets. cabbage, and meat; rarcnyhy - boiled dumplings tilled with potatoes, cheese, sauerkraut, or berries and served with cream; holubtsi - stuffed cabbage rolls; and various sweet breads such as pasha, served at Easter time.

Other foods common to the Ukraine people diet are pork, chicken, fish, potatoes, buckwheat, sour rye bread, and drinks such as tea, coffee, and honey liqueur.

Ukraine literature

Ukraine literature, the body of writings in the Ukrainian language. The earliest writings of the Ukrainians, works produced in Kievan Rus from the 11th to the 13th century, were composed in Church Slavonic and are thus the common literary heritage of the Russians and Belorussians as well.

After the Mongol invasion (13th century), Ukraine literature was in decline until its revival in the 16th century. By the early 19th century the Ukrainian vernacular had become the primary vehicle of literary expression, and an era of prolific writing began.

Nineteenth-century Ukraine literature reflected the rapid development of Ukrainian national consciousness under Russian rule.

Ivan Kotlyarevsky, classicist poet and playwright, inaugurated modern Ukraine literature with his Eneida (1798), a burlesque travesty of Virgil's Aeneid that transformed its heroes into Ukrainian Cossacks.

Ukraine poet Taras Shevchenko

Ukraine culture - Ukraine national poet Taras Shevchenko photo

Ukraine's most prominent literary figure and national patriot is Taras Shevchenko (1814 - 1861). The early poetry of Taras Shevchenko, the outstanding Ukraine poet of the 19th century, expressed the interests of the Romantics.

But soon his poetry moved to a more sombre portrayal of Ukraine history, especially in the long poem Haidamaky (1841; "The Haidamaks"), and to works satirizing Russia's oppression of Ukraine - e.g. Son ("The Dream"), Kavkaz ("The Caucasus"), and Poslaniie ("The Epistle"). His later poetry, written after his release (1857) from exile, treats broader themes.

Ukraine writer Lesya Ukrainka

Ukraine culture - Ukraine national poet Lesya Ukrainka photo

Lesya Ukrainka is the pseudonym of Larisa Petrovna Kosach-Kvitka (1871-1913). Lesya Ukrainka was a poet, dramatist, short-story writer, essayist, and critic who was the foremost woman writer in Ukraine literature and a leading figure in its modernist movement.

Her early lyrical verse, influenced by Taras Shevchenko, dealt with the poet's loneliness and social alienation and was informed by a love of freedom, especially national freedom. She was active in the Ukrainian struggle against tsarism and joined Ukrainian Marxist organizations, translating the Communist Manifesto into Ukrainian in 1902. In 1907 she was arrested and, following her release, was kept under observation by the tsarist police. She married the court official Klyment Kvitka in 1907.

Ukrainka concentrated on poetic dramas from about 1906 on. Her plays were inspired by various historical milieus - e.g., the Old Testament in Oderzhyma (1901; "A Woman Possessed") and Vavylonsky polon (1908; The Babylonian Captivity), the world of ancient Greece and Rome. Her historical drama "Boyarynya" (1914; The Noblewoman) is a psychological tragedy centering on a Ukrainian family in the 17th century.

Lesya Ukrainka also wrote short stories and critical essays and did masterful translations of works by Homer, William Shakespeare and Lord Byron.