#blog of ukrainian

[hypno0tic]

last 2 months i didn’t know what i want to do with my life in future, do i want to stay here or to go back to Ukraine for education. I thought i want to stay in Vienna to finish school, but i finally decided that i’ll go back and maybe come back to Vienna for art university in 2 years. I just don’t feel like staying in Austria because tbh mentality is too different from mine here no offense to Austrians + i need my home and my old lifestyle.

And i want to thank Austrian government and people for helping Ukrainians. I am very grateful and i hope every Ukrainian here too.

this is just a picture from summer 2021 before the war

me and my friends at 5 am waiting for sunrise, i’m genuinely happy on this picture ( i’m the girl with guitar ).

[swamp-cats-den]

This is so funny.

When the westerners see a post complaining of russophobia they imagine a young queer intellectual stuck in russia, hating the regime to the core and being all bleeding heart for the suffering Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, the same very person complaining of russophobia in one post boasts about literal war trophies brought from the occupied Ukrainian territories by their war criminal father in another, fills their artworks with modern russian military symbols, and tags the posts about their relatives participating in invasion with 'lol memes'.

It is honestly funny how much goodwill russians are still given for absolutely nothing while Ukrainians have to constantly prove that we deserve, well, to at least not be massacred.

[learnukrainian]

Free online courses about Ukraine

Basics of the Ukrainian Language and Culture - https://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/introduction-ukrainian-language-and-culture/

Ukraine: History, Culture, and Identities; this course is available in English, French, Italian, and Norwegian on Coursera: https://ui.org.ua/en/sectors-en/the-first-online-course-about-ukraine-in-english/

The Making of Modern Ukraine with Timothy Snyder: https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-making-of-modern-ukraine

Crimea: History and People on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/crimea-history-and-people/

[owelloxsblog]

Autumn in Kharkiv

Inst: owelox

[myrddin-wylt]

pspspsps, most of Ukraine is still without power, heating, and water. various NGOs and governments are doing all they can, but volunteer groups are always the ones who can help first and most directly - especially the volunteer paramedics and military corps, who are the guys helping people in active combat zones that the NGOs can’t go into. like I realize donating to military groups sounds weird, but given the complete lack of respect the Russian military has shown for peace corridors and basic rules of war, these guys are saving a lot more lives than they are ending them.

anyway here are a few groups I like in particular:

Come Back Alive, the big dick charity of them all

Ukrainian Association of Washington state: less familiar with them but they’re hosting Ruslan Gorovyi and motherfucker that’s all you have to say to me.

Hospitallers Medical Battalion are so fucking solid. they’re volunteer paramedics, so they’re the first ones going into combat zones to help civilians. I’m a little in love, honestly.

UAnimals has a patreon if you want to help animals and pets in Ukraine

All4Ukraine has a collection of individual fundraisers, so you can literally choose what you want to put your money to. a lot of them are actually cars, which may sound weird, but do not underestimate how utterly vital cars are for evacuations, ambulances, recon, etc etc, especially as winter begins. Ukraine is fucking cold, and it’s a huge country - getting people transportation is literally lifesaving rn.

[pagansphinx]

Bernard Meninsky (British/Ukrainian,1891–1950) • Victoria Station, District Railway IWM • 1918 • Imperial War Museums, UK

[illustratorsblog]

🌱🌻~WIP illustration~🌻🌱

Aziraphale and Crowley in the Ukrainian style. Walking through the Ukrainian forests, passing through abandoned old houses, the angel and the demon argued about the fate of the people who once lived there

[thepaintedroom]

Aleksandr Shevchenko (Ukrainian, 1882-1948) • The Pink Room •

[collectionstilllife]

Aleksandr Shevchenko (Ukrainian, 1882-1948) • Still Life with a Decanter and a Pipe •

[photo-art-lady]

Creative Female Portraits By Ukrainian Photographer Hanna Panchenko

Hanna Panchenko

Photographer

Location : Ukraine

Hanna Panchenko is a photographer from Kiev, Ukraine. She is fascinated by the art of photography. Inspired by authentic natural beauty. It is both playful and provocative. Also, she intimately focuses on the details of the human form.

Website : https://www.hannapanchenko.com/

[ohsalome]

What are some amazing, most read Ukraine authors? The only one I know is Gogol and I would like more on my radar.

First important disclaimer is that without knowing ukrainian, your pool of choice is very limited. Unfortunately, our translators haven't done nearly enough to make ukrainian literature acessable for english speakers, so a lot of genuinely amazing stuff would require you to know the language.

The second important disclaimer is that I am going to recommend you a lot of poetry, and, with no disrespect to the translators, it doesn't hit nearly as hard in english as it is in ukrainian. I've recently heard the phrase "to read poetry in translation is like to take a shower wearing a raincoat", and it is so true. So, apologies for this barrier, but there is nothing one can do.

With that in mind, let's start from classics:

The first most important author is Taras Shevchenko. He mainly wrote poetry, but has some prose works as well, and during his life he was more known as a popular artist. The Bible of his works is Kobzar (a ukrainian word for travelling blind musicians), and the same word is also often used as a nickname for Shevchenko - akin to how Shakespeare can be called the Bard. Among the most important poems pay attention to A Dream (the poem for which he was imprisoned by the russians with an explicit ban on writing and painting), The Caucasus, My Testament, Kateryna, A cherry orchad by the house, О thoughts of mine

The second big name to know is Lesya Ukrainka. Lesya is also more known for her drama and poetry than her prose, but she also was a prolific translator and a feminist. Her most well-know play is The Forest Song (a cartoon adaptation is soon to be released after 7 years of production, but from the trailer it looks like it's not going to be close to the text). I find her Бояриня play to be much more interesting and relevant, however, it looks like it has not been translated yet. Among her poems, some of the most important are Contra Spem Spero and Cassandra (the latter has had some successful stage prouctions in Great Britain last year, mayhaps it will gain popularity)

Some links to her works: [x] [x]

Fun fact: there are speculations about Lesya Ukrainka's relationship with her close friend Olga Kobylyanska. The letters they exchanged are quite intimate and sometimes even erotic in nature, which lead some academics to believe that they were more than friends (most still fall in the "gal pals" camp tho). However, if that were true, that would mean that Lesya Ukrainka is the only bisexual woman to ever be printed on banknotes.

The third pillar of ukrainian classical literature is Ivan Franko. Once again, we are talking about partiotic poetry, but there are also many socialistic ideas in his works (although he became dissilusioned with it in his later years ), which I think many western readers will find appealing - (side comment - it looks like "collective west" is going through the same processses that we overcame a century ago, so ehm... good luck, y'all will need it). I haven't been able to find much of his works translated in English, so here is a good master page. Zakhar Berkut is considered to be one of his greatest works (a ukrainian-american co-production movie The Rising Hawk was released a couple of years ago, it was shit). If you manage to put your hands on it, I would greatly recommend The Painted Fox and Moses. Also, reading Eternal Revolutionary imprinted on me so much in childhood and determined who I grew up to be, I pretty much consider Franko to be my spiritual father.

A great event that happened this year is that Valeryan Pidmohylny's The City is finally getting an english translation. I have been gushing about this book on this blog before (you can also find the link to the publisher there), because for the archetypical ukrainian literature this book is a breath of fresh air. It's beautiful, it's modern, it's urbanistic, the protagonist is irredeemable asshole, it's amazing and I should re-read it as well.

Among the authors that are much more difficult to find, I greatly recommend Ivan Nechu-Levytsky. In my humble opinion, he like no other has managed to capture the "ukrainian spirit" and his plots are extremely captivating and dramatic as hell.

I will always, always add Ivan Bahryiany to my lists of ukrainian "must reads". He is an author of the first ever ukrainian adventure novel Tiger Trappers/The Hunters and the Hunted, which is the book that is loved even by those who don't like ukrainian literature. However, I personally find his Garden of Gethsemane to be a much more important (but take care, it is much more depressing as well). This author is extremely important, but I struggle finding PDFs of his work - perhaps, you'd have to search the libraries or ukr diaspora publishers for paperbacks. I have also been unsuccessfully hunting for an english translation of Why I am not going back to the Soviet Union? pamphlet for years - and I know for sure it exists because the USA first lady at that time has read it and it influenced her opinion on the USSR - but I've had no luck so far.

Another very important author of the same time period is Mykola Khyvylovy. One of his plays has actually been recently put to stage in English (shamefully, I haven't watched it yet, but I can vouch for the text it was based on - it's brutal).

I can't speak about ukrainian literature without mentioning crimean tatars, and although their works are much, much less known (in Ukraine as well, unfortunately), please do not overlook it. It is a gorgeous culture, and reading it, I grew to love and value Crimea so much even without ever visiting it. There are some english translations avaliable, including those of Noman Çelebicihan - an extermely important figure in Crimean Tatar history, the founder of the unfortunately short-lived Crimean Democratic Republic, the author of their national anthem, and overall very influential revolutionary.

Now let's jump to the popular modern authors. Many don't have english translation, but the problem is much less prominent in comparison to the ukrainian classics. With these authors, you shouldn't have trouble with finding paperbacks. Among the most influential authors I can recommend Serhiy Zhadan (Timothy Snyder has once said that he expects Zhadan to receive a Nobel Prize in literature and I agree), Oksana Zabuzhko (she either aught to release soon or has already released an english-exclusive book about the russian-ukrainian war), Yuri Izdryk (extremely modern and unconventional, but he's a good represention of the current state of art), Yuriy Andrukhovych (love his mastery of language, hate his characters). These authors are more light-hearted, but a grim necessity for today is Stanislav Aseyev's The Torture Camp on Paradise Street. It is a autobilgraphical book describing his experience being imprisoned by russians between 2017 and 2019. Western journalism often describes the war crimes russians commit on our land, but just listing the number of people lost doesn't show the face of the russian horror. Read this book to understand why we were screaming about the russian threat before the full-scale invasion, and why every time we regain the territory we brace with terror of what we'll discover there - because everywhere russian army goes, they build hunderds of such Isolyatsya camps that the book describes.

Also check out Serhiy Zhadan's band!

[dawningfairytale]

mischa and talia made love on "all the social media networks", right?

does this mean they were on tumblr?

[learnukrainian]

Castles of Ukraine

Бердичівський замок

Дубенський замок

Золочівський замок

Замок Любарта

Vocabulary:

Замок - zamok - castle

Королівський замок - koroleevskyi zamok - royal castle

Королівська сім'я - koroleevska seemia - royal family

Принц - prynts - prince

Принцеса - pryntsessa - princess

Король - korol - king

Королева - koroleva - queen

[owelloxsblog]

Exhibition of works by Maria Prymachenko in Lviv

[tantsyu]

you could put it like that, i suppose. “i am the machine that reveals the world to you as only i alone am able to see it.”

(2024)

[pagansphinx]

Aleksandr Shevchenko (Ukrainian, 1882-1948) • Musicians • 1913 • State Russian Museum