Iakov Golovatskii

Born Oct. 17, 1814, in the village of Chepeli, present-day Brody Raion, L’vov Oblast; died May 13, 1888, in Vilnius. Ukrainian poet and folklorist.

Golovatskii was the son of a Uniate priest. He graduated from the University of L’vov in 1841. In 1848 he became a professor of Ukrainian language and literature at the university and, later, rector of the university. He was, together with the writers M. Shashkevich and I. Vagilevich, one of the founders of the new Ukrainian literature in Galicia, which was under the Austro-Hungarian yoke. His poems were published in the anthology Mermaid of the Dnesir (1837). In 1846 he published 20 Serbian poems in Ukrainian translation in the collection A Harvest Wreath for the Ruthenians. He propagated the idea of the unity of the Ukrainian people and strove for the development of a literature in his native language. In the 1850’s, Golovatskii was close to the Slavophiles, and later he went, Over to the reactionary camp. The collection Folk Songs of Galician and Ugrian Russia (books 1–4; 1878), assembled by Golovatskii, is of great value.