RIGHT FOR PRIMACY

Abstract

The article is about Hanna Barvinok, the writer and innovator. It covers the conditions that awakened her talent; peripeties and circumstances that made her write her first works; the role of a female writer in the world of “male literature”; and the historical place of Hanna Barvinok as a creator of ethnographic prose in Ukrainian literature. Hanna Barvinok started her creative path under the influence of her husband Panteleimon Kulish. He inspired and pushed her to pursue a creative career, thus giving Ukrainian literature the new name and the new literary style. Only the objective reasons delayed the triumphal writer’s debut of Hanna Barvinok. She always denied the version that she was the pupil of Marko Vovchok (the alias of Maria Oleksandrivna Vilinska (1833–1907), the author of “Folk Short Stories» and allegedly the first woman in Ukrainian literature) and claimed her right for a primacy. By the ironic twist of fate, it was Hanna Barvinok’s husband, Panteleimon Kulish, who brought Marko Vovchok into Ukrainian literature. Kulish put a lot of time and resources to arrange printing the “Folk Short Stories», the first collected stories by Marko Vovchok. But he never found a time or desire to help his own wife, associate and assistant who always stood by him. Hanna Barvinok printed her works primarily in magazines, and Kulish’s intentions to prepare for publishing Hanna Barvinok’s works remained only intentions. The first complete publication of her works in 1902 was done by her friend, the writer and socio-cultural activist Borys Grinchenko.