People of Chernivtsi honored Olha Kobylianska’s memory

The Kobylianska Literary Memorial Museum, marking the 70th anniversary of its foundation these days, celebrated the writer’s 151st anniversary by presenting a new publication to the public. The book is called The 20 Essays about Olha Kobylianska and Connoisseurs of Her Legacy and has been released by Bukrek Publishers. Its author, associate professor of Ukrainian literature at Yurii Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (ChNU) Yaroslava Melnychuk stressed: “Kobylianska had a lot of people taking an interest in her works. My publication contains 20 portraits of researchers who belonged to different generations and spoke with the writer, studied her life. These different generations of Kobylianska’s connoisseurs show how time influenced her legacy’s standing among critics.”

For the eighth year in row, the Kobylianska Prize was awarded on the writer’s birthday. This year’s first prize went to Chernivtsi artist Larysa Kuvaieva for a series of portraits of Kobylianska, while the second prize was awarded to Olena Matkovska, who is a teacher, a public figure, and an embroideress trained by Yaroslava Hafiichuk, as well as a graduate of the ChNU’s Department of Philology; she presented a series of embroidered towels, shirts, and napkins. The third prize went to Romanian writer and translator Ivan Kydyshchuk, who translated into Romanian some works by Kobylianska, including The Princess, which has been staged with great success at the Mihai Eminescu Theater in Botosani, Romania. The first museum to be opened in Bukovyna after the liberation of this land from the Nazi invaders was the Kobylianska Literary Memorial Museum in Chernivtsi in 1944. Its holdings of the author’s personal belongings now include over 1,000 exhibits... It published the writer’s unique article To Ukrainians All Over the World. After all, Kobylianska was a symbol for the Ukrainians all over the world in the 1920s and 1930s, and was even awarded an honorary doctorate from the Ukrainian Free University of Prague.