![]() Hnat Khotkevych with amateur actors of the Hutsul Theater ![]() Khotkevych settled in Kyiv where he edited a literary magazine and organized countrywide tours of the Hutsul Theater. When the threat from the authorities passed, Khotkevych and his lover returned to “mainland” Ukraine but, soon afterwards, Kateryna left their newborn baby with him and his mother and returned to Lviv. The grass widower was soon comforted by a young married woman, another Kateryna herself a budding writer. His frustrated wife left Hnat and their three children in the Carpathian village and went to Moscow to rejoin her parents. The birth of a third child was the last straw that broke the marriage. The family was barely able to make ends meet and only survived thanks to a small kitchen garden and odd jobs. However, Khotkevych’s family life was anything but a bed of roses. Maria Zankovetska, the great Ukrainian actress, lavishly praised the theater and even donated all her savings to it. The illiterate actors learned their roles by ear but played just perfectly on the stage. The beautiful landscapes and those hard-working, open-hearted people inspired him to write the story The Soul of Stone and to create a unique Hutsul folk theater. He gave concerts in almost every village and town where he later reminisced that he “fell in love with the Hutsuls and their beautiful highlands” from the very moment he arrived. The family settled in the village of Kryvorivnia near the Romanian border where, very soon, the fame of his extraordinary musical talent spread throughout the region. He managed to escape arrest and, assisted by other workers and Lesya Ukrainka, the famous poet, he fled to Halychyna (the historical pre-Carpathian area covering the present-day Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1905, he was elected as head of a railworkers strike committee which resulted on him being put on a black list by the Russian authorities. In 1903 he opened a Ukrainian workers theatre in Kharkiv which, in the first three years, staged more than 50 plays. However, as his working hours were not long, he had time for his creative hobbies. They got married even though his salary was miserable. Music brought him together the young handsome engineer and Kateryna Rubanovych, the gifted music-loving daughter of a merchant. He continued to give every minute of his spare time to music, his first love and where he was to find the love of his life. The young graduate was appointed to a modest position in the technical maintenance department of the Kharkiv-Mykolayiv railroad administration. He did well but did not graduate with honors, because of the “political stain” on his academic record. Having heard Khotkevych’s repertory, which also included his own works, Lysenko made Khotkevych a soloist in his choir and ensured that he was readmitted to college. The young man took his bandura and went to Kyiv where he met the famous composer, Mykola Lysenko. ![]() ![]() This could have been his downfall as he was soon expelled from college and exiled from Kharkiv for two years for mixing with kobzars who were much despised by the authorities. They commented that “he plays very well but, if he were blind, he could be great kobzar.” He was a bright and diligent student and got high grades in all subjects, but spent almost all of his spare time with kobzars. From then on he took his bandura with him everywhere, even while studying at a public school and the Technological College in Kharkiv. On one such trip, the seven-year-old boy met a blind kobzar who taught him to play the bandura but it was only several years later that he was able to afford to buy his own. He was born on 12 January 1878 in Kharkiv, where his father was a cook and his mother a housemaid to a merchant who travelled extensively and took Khotkevych and his family with him. The life story of Hnat Khotkevych reads like a novel. His name is known to all Ukrainians but to very fewothers. He designed a diesel-powered locomotive before the Americans he composed more than 600 musical works he wrote several plays and founded folk theaters his poetry was used as lyrics to popular folk songs he founded the Bandura Choir in Poltava which was the first Soviet collective to tour North America he wrote several dozen movie scripts and starred in a well-known feature film as a wandering blind minstrel playing the kobza or the bandura. Hnat Khotkevych was the epitome of the polymath, a unique man of genius who was a multilingual writer, translator, engineer, teacher, ethnographer, musician, composer, actor and film director. ![]()
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