Olena Pchilka

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Petrivna and the family name is Kosach.

Olha Kosach Ольга Косач
Born	Olha Petrivna Drahomanova (1849-06-29)29 June 1849 Hadiach, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died	4 October 1930(1930-10-04) (aged 81) Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine)
Pen name	Olena Pchilka
Occupation	writer, civil activist
Language	Ukrainian
Alma mater	Exemplary Boarding School of Noble Maidens (Kyiv)
Spouse	Petro Kosach
Children	7, including Larysa, Olha, and Izydora
Relatives	Mykhailo Drahomanov (brother)

Olha Petrivna Kosach (née Drahomanova 29 June 1849 – 4 October 1930), better known by her pen name Olena Pchilka (Ukrainian: Олена Пчілка), was a Ukrainian publisher, writer, ethnographer, interpreter, and civil activist. She was the sister of Mykhailo Drahomanov and the mother of Lesya Ukrainka, Olha Kosach-Kryvyniuk, Mykhailo Kosach, Oksana Kosach-Shymanovska, Mykola Kosach, Izydora Kosach-Borysova and Yuriy Kosach.

Early years

Olena Pchilka with Lesya Ukrainka, 1898

Pchilka was born in Hadiach, into the family of a local landowner, Petro Drahomanov. She received a basic education at home and completed her education at the Exemplary Boarding School of Noble Maidens (Kyiv) in 1866. She married Petro Kosach sometime in 1868 and soon moved to Novohrad-Volynskyi, where he worked. Her daughter Lesya Ukrainka was born there. Pchilka is, perhaps, the most well-known Ukrainian female poet. She died in Kyiv, aged 81.

Pchilka recorded folk songs, folk customs, and rites, and collected folk embroidery in Volhynia, later publishing her research.

She published numerous works, and was active in the feminist movement, particularly in cooperation with Nataliya Kobrynska with whom she published the "Pershyi Vinok" almanac in Lemberg.

Activity

A group of Ukrainian writers gathered in Poltava to inaugurate a monument to Ivan Kotliarevsky, 1903. From left: Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Vasyl Stefanyk, Olena Pchilka, Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Starytsky, Hnat Khotkevych, Volodymyr Samijlenko.

She began her career by translating poetry by Pushkin and Lermontov. With the publication of her book Ukrainian Folk Ornament in Kyiv in 1876, Olena Pchilka became known as the first expert in this type of folk art in Ukraine. In 1880, Pchilka published Stepan Rudansky's Songs at her own expense, and a year later a collection of her translations from the works of Gogol, Pushkin, and Lermontov, To Ukrainian Children (1881), was published. In 1883, she began publishing poems and stories in the Lviv magazine Zorya, her first being the collection of poems Thoughts of a Net (1886). At the same time, she took an active part in the Ukrainian women's movement; in 1887, together with Natalia Kobrynska, she published the almanac "The First Wreath" in Lviv.

Translator

Pchilka also was a translator and translated into the Ukrainian language many famous works, such as those of Nikolai Gogol, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Pushkin, and others.

Works

Among the most prominent of her works are the following:

• "Tovaryshky" (Comradesses, 1887),
• "Svitlo dobra i lyubovi" (The light of goodness and love, 1888),
• "Soloviovyi spiv" (Nightingale singing, 1889),
• "Za pravdoyu" (For a truth, 1889),
• "Artyshok" (Artichoke, 1907),
• "Pivtora oseledsya" (One and a half herring, 1908),
• a play "Suzhena ne ohuzhena" (1881),
• a play "Svitova rich" (World thing, 1908) and others.

External links

• Olena Pchilka at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine