In the Dark of the Night: Selected Prose Fiction

by Roma Z. Franko, Roma Z Franko, Dniprova Chayka, et al.

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0968389910
• ISBN13: 9780968389911
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Language Lanterns Publications
• Length: 465 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable, enthralling, riveting read not only in the dark of the night, but in all seasons and shad

In the Dark of the Night is both the title of Volume II of the series called Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, which was launched in 1998, and the title of a story by Lyubov Yanovska. The purpose of this series (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature) is to provide English readers with selected works of Ukrainian women writers (most of whom have not been previously translated into English) and thereby enhance their understanding of women's slow, difficult, and ongoing trek to political, economic and social equality. In the Dark of the Night features the selected works of Ukrainian prose fiction in English by Dniprova Chayka (1861-1927) and Lyubov Yanovska (1861-1933); their works range from sketches and vignettes to novels and novelettes. "Together they constitute an unsystematic but compelling social history of an era during which the mortar of social mores, religious beliefs, and gender distinctions began to crumble as successive political and ideological cataclysms wreaked havoc with time-honoured personal and societal relations. In additional to national, political and educational issues, they address matters of gender which cut across ethnic and social divisions, and explore the power and often devastating consequences of social conditioning." Born in Southern Ukraine as Lyudmyla Berezyna-Vasylevska, Dniprova Chayka (her pseudonym meaning "The Seagull of the Dnipro"), while growing up, not only had a severe father who was an autocratic Russian village priest who made life for his family very difficult, but also had a loving and kind Ukrainian mother who nurtured her innate love of beauty as she protected her. Her non de plume was apropos since not only was she born near the Dnipro River, but, in Ukrainian folk songs and poetry, "the image of a lamenting seagull symbolizes a mother weeping for her children, or Ukraine bemoaning the sad fate of her people." Lyudmyla appreciated the varied and rich customs, folk songs, folk tales, and beliefs of her people and completed her schooling in a private gymnasium in Odesa, working as a private tutor, a teacher in a village school, and as a high school instructor in Odesa. It was during this time that Lyudmyla embarked on her lifelong labor of love--collecting Ukrainian folklore materials and folk songs; she participated in an archaeological-ethnographical conference held in Odesa in 1884, and there presented three notebooks containing a collection of folk songs. In 1885, Lyudmyla married Feofan Vasylevsky, a Ukrainian historian and publicist, who worked as a statistician, and was an ardent Ukrainian patriot actively opposing tsarist decrees which severely restricted the use of the Ukrainian language. Because of his involvement in Ukrainian organizations, he lost his position. Both Lyudmyla and her husband found themselves under police surveillance because of their involvement in subversive political movements. In 1905, she was briefly arrested for her writings and her manuscripts w