Pavlo Hryhorovych Tychyna is a Ukrainian poet, translator, publicist, politician, public and statesman.
Place of Birth, Education
He was born on January 15, 1891 in the village of Pisky, in the Kozelets district of the Chernihiv province, in the family of a clergyman.
He received his primary education at a local school. His abilities were noticed by the teacher Serafima Nikolaevna, who advised his parents to give the boy the opportunity to continue his studies.
In the period from 1907 to 1913, Tychyna studied at the Chernihiv Theological Seminary. During his studies, he participated in the seminary choir, and later in the city choir.
In 1913, the poet became a student of the Commercial Institute and moved to Kyiv.
Creative activity
Already in 1906, when Tychyna was 15 years old, he began to write his first literary works. His first known poem was “The blue sky has closed…”. For the first time, his poetry appeared in print in 1912 on the pages of the magazine “Literary-Scientific Bulletin”, where the poem “You know how the linden rustles…”.
Starting from 1911, Tychyna regularly attended literary meetings held by Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi in his home.
During his studies at the Commercial Institute, he worked as an accountant in the Chernihiv provincial zemstvo, worked as an assistant choirmaster in the theater of Mykola Sadovsky, and also held the position of head of the chronicle department in the newspaper “Nova Rada” and was the editor of the magazine “Svitlo”.
In 1917, Tychyna joined the movement for national liberation. The events of this time were reflected in his poetry.
In 1923, the poet moved to Kharkiv. At different times he was a member of the literary associations “Hart” and the Free Academy of Proletarian Literature (VAPLITE).
During 1923 – 1934 he worked as a co-editor of the magazine “Red Way”.
When mass repressions against representatives of the intelligentsia began in Ukraine, in 1934 he published the collection “The Party Leads”, which met the ideological requirements of that time and contained the glorification of Soviet power.
In the same 1934, Tychyna returned to Kyiv, where he settled in the writers’ house known as Rolit.
In the period from 1936 to 1943, he served as director of the Institute of Literature.
In July 1941, Tychyna, together with almost 400 academicians and researchers of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, was evacuated to Ufa. There he headed the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature. In the same year, he became a laureate of the Stalin Prize for his poetry collection “The Sense of a Single Family”.
The most significant work of his poetry during the Second World War was the poem “The Funeral of a Friend”.
In the period from 1943 to 1948, he served as Minister of Education of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR).
From 1953 to 1959, he was Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and at the same time Deputy Chairman of the Council of Nationalities.
Pavlo Tychyna died on September 16, 1967 in Kyiv.
The most famous collections of poetry
Among the most famous poetry collections of Tychyna, a special place is occupied by “Solar Clarinets”, written in 1918 and published in 1919.
In 1920, the collection “The Plough” appeared. In the same year, the collection “Instead of Sonnets and Octaves” was written.
The following year, the collection “In the Space Orchestra” was published, and in 1924 “The Wind from Ukraine” was published.
During the Second World War, Tychyna wrote the collections “To Win and Live”, published in 1942, and “The Day Will Come”, published in 1943.
The last collection of the artist was “Silver Night”, which was published in 1964.
Interesting Facts
Here are some interesting facts from the life of Tychyna:
- Tychyna had an absolute ear for music and had a pleasant and sonorous voice. At the age of 9, he was placed in the choir at the monastery in Chernihiv;
- Despite his wide popularity, the poet did not have much income. In 1921, Tychyna was forced to work in the Kyiv Children’s Library named after Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko;
- for 5 years, Tychyna served as Minister of Education of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. During this time, he was engaged in the restoration of schools after the war;
- His apartment had a large personal library, which numbered approximately 20,000 books.
