Pavlo Tychyna - Life

Life

Born in Pisky in 1891, he was baptized on January 27 that mistakenly was considered his birth date until recently. His father, Hryhoriy Timofiyovych Tychyna, was a village deacon and a teacher in the local grammar school. His mother, Maria Vasylivna Tychyna (Savytska), was eleven years younger of Pavlo's father. Pavlo had nine more siblings: five sisters and four brothers. At first young Tychyna stadied at the district's elementary school that was recently opened in Pisky in 1897. His first teacher was Serafima Morachevska who later recommended him to try his talent in chorus. In 1900 he became a member of an archiary chorus in the Trinity (Troitsky) monastery near Chernihiv. Simultaneously young Tychyna studied in the Chernihiv theological school. In 1906 Pavlo's father has died. In 1907 Pavlo finished his school.

In 1907-1913 Tychyna continued his education in the Chernihiv Theological Seminary. There he became friends with the future poet, Vasyl Ellan-Blakytnyi. He also met Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky who influenced greatly his early works. In 1912-1913 Tychyna's works get published in the various local publications. In 1913-1917 he was studying at the Economics department of the Kiev Commercial Institute which he did not finish. At the same time, he worked on the editorial boards of the Kiev newspaper Rada and the magazine Svitlo (1913–14). In summers he worked for the Chernihiv statistical bureau. Later he worked as the assistant to chorus-meister in the Mykola Sadovsky theater.

When the World War I has broken out the institute transferred to Saratov. Tychyna while on the road to the institute's new location became ill and was forced to stay and recover from his sickness. He found his sanctuary at the house of another poet, Volodymyr Samiylenko, in Dobrianka. During the war he worked in different Ukrainian publications. In 1920 Pavlo became the member of Pluh. After an immediate success with his poetry, in 1923 he moved to Kharkiv (Kharkov), entering the vibrant world of early post-Revolution Ukrainian literary organizations. In 1923 he joined the organization Hart after moving to Kharkiv and in 1927 the famed VAPLITE. In 1920s Tychyna was a member of Kharkiv city council as an independent. Controversies about the ideological tendencies of VAPLITE and the content of several of Tychnya's poems led to him being criticized for ideological reasons. As a response, Tychyna stopped to write and everybody assumed that it was the end to his writings. Later he became the member of Chervonyi Shliakh, started to study Armenian, Georgian, and Turkic languages, became the activist of the Association of Eastern Studies in Kiev.