Pavlo Filipovich Petrovich

Early years

He was born in the village of Kaitanivka, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province (now Katerynopil district, Cherkasy region) in the family of a priest.

Education

Received secondary education at Zlatopil Gymnasium and Pavel Galagan College in Kyiv. From 1910 to 1915, he studied Slavic-Russian philology at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Volodymyr's Kyiv University under the guidance of Academician Volodymyr Peretz. He also studied at the Faculty of Law.

Active activity

After graduation, he remained working at the university, first as a scholar, then as a private associate professor, and later as a professor until 1935. His work on the life and work of the Russian poet Yevhen Baratynsky received a gold medal and was published in a separate edition in 1917.

In 1920, the university was renamed the Institute of National Education (INO), where together with Professor Mykola Zerov Filipovych led a seminar on the history of Ukrainian literature. He began writing poems in Russian under the pseudonym Pavel Zorev, but in 1917 he switched to Ukrainian.

As a literary critic, he first appeared in the magazine "Knygar" edited by Vasyl Stary and Mykola Zerov. He worked at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, publishing numerous works on the history of Ukrainian literature and editing literary anthologies. He was a supporter of the comparative-historical method, which was popular at that time.

Filipovich was a neoclassical poet who followed the best examples of classical and Western European literature. His alienation from communist ideology made him hostile to the regime.

Death

In September 1935, he was arrested by the NKVD, and in 1936 he was convicted of participating in a spy-terrorist organization. Initially, he was sentenced to death, but later it was commuted to 10 years in prison. He served his sentence in the camps of Karelia and Solovki, and was executed on November 3, 1937. Rehabilitated posthumously in 1958.

His wife, sculptor Maria Mykhailiuk-Filipovich, was also convicted and exiled to Karaganda for 5 years in 1938.

Creativity

Filipovych began his poetic activity in 1910, publishing poems in Russian under the pseudonym P. Zorev in the magazines Vestnyk Evropy, Zavety, and Kuranty. His early works were influenced by symbolism. In 1919, his poems were published in the collection "Muzaget".

His literary work includes two collections of poetry: "Earth and Wind" (1922) and "Space" (1925). His poetry is characterized by depth of thought and perfection of form, as well as a gravitation to boundless spaces. He knew how to confront the present with the past and the future.

Filipovich belonged to the group of "neoclassicists", and his poetry is saturated with cultural content and universal values. The most complete edition of his poems was published in Munich in 1957.

Translation

Filipovich translated works from French (Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Pierre Jean de Béranger), Russian (Alexander Pushkin, Valery Bryusov, Yevhen Baratynskyi).

Literary Studies

His first significant scientific work "Life and work of E. Baratynskyi" was published in 1917. From 1917 he worked as a private associate professor at Kyiv University, and from 1920 to 1933 as a professor at the Institute of National Education. He participated in the compilation of the biographical dictionary of Ukrainian figures, was the secretary of the historical and literary society at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the editor of scientific collections.

His literary studies related to Western European literature, modern Ukrainian literature and the methodology of the science of literature. He wrote articles about Ivan Franko, Oleksandr Oles, Lesya Ukrainka, Olga Kobylyanska, Mykhailo Kotsiubinsky and others. He was also one of the founders of modern Shevchenko studies.

Filipovich edited many collections, including "T. Shevchenko" (1921), "Shevchenko collection" (1924), "Shevchenko and his time" (1925, 1926), "Ivan Franko" (1926), "Literature" (1928) and others.

His most important works include:

• "Shevchenko and Romanticism" (1924)
• "To the history of Ukrainian romanticism" (1924)
• "Genesis of the Frank legend "The Death of Cain"" (1924)
• "Oh. Oles" (1925)
• "Shevchenko and Grebinka" (1925)
• "To the study of Shevchenko and his era" (1925)
• Ryleev and Derzhavin (1926)
• "Paths of Frank's Poetry" (1926)
• "Shevchenko and the Decembrists" (1926)
• "Desolated Idyll" (1926)
• "European writers in the Shevchenko lecture" (1926)
• "Kotlyarevsky's translation of Sappho" (1927)
• "The story of one plot" (1927)
• "Olga Kobylyanska in a literary environment" (1928)
• "Pushkin in Ukrainian literature" (1927)
• "New works about I. Kotlyarevskyi" (1928)
• "The first retelling of Shevchenko in Russian" (1928)
• "Analysis of the image of Prometheus in the works of Lesya Ukrainka" (1928)
• "Ukrainian literary studies during 10 years of the revolution" (1928)