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Hryhorii Skovoroda Template:Lang-uk; Template:Lang-ru) (1722 -- 1794) Ukrainian poet, philosopher and composer.

Skovoroda was born in the family of a poor Cossack in the village of Chornukhy in the Lubny regiment (Poltavs'ka oblast') of the Hetman State ("Malorossiia") in 1722. He studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (1734-1741, 1744-1745, 1751-1753) but did not complete the full program. From 1741 to 1744 he was a member of the imperial choir in the capitals of the Russian Empire. He spent the period from 1745 to 1750 in Hungary and may have traveled elsewhere in Europe as well. In 1750-1751 he taught poetics in Pereyaslav. For most of the period from 1753 to 1759 Skovoroda was a tutor in the family of a landowner in Kovrai. From 1759 to 1769, with interruptions, he taught such subjects as poetry, syntax, Greek, and ethics at the Kharkiv College. After an attack on his course on ethics, he in 1769 decided to leave teaching for the last time. In the final quarter of his life he traveled by foot through Ukraine staying shortly with various friends, both rich and poor.

Three days before he died, he went to the house of one of his closest friends and told him he had come to stay. Everyday he left the house early with a shovel, and it turned out that he spent three days digging his own grave. On the third day, he ate dinner, stood up and said, "my time has come." He went into the next room, laid down, and died. On his grave, he asked that the following words be written: "The world grasped at me, but I was never caught."

This last period was the time of his great philosophic works. In this period as well, but particularly earlier, he wrote poetry and letters in Ruthenian (Ukrainian), Greek and Latin and did a few translations from Latin. A lover of music, he played several instruments and composed songs.

References

1. Skovoroda, Gregory S. Fables and Aphorisms. Translation, biography, and analysis by Dan B. Chopyk. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Review: Wolodymyr T. Zyla, Ukrainian Quarterly, 50 (1994): 303-304.
2. Skovoroda, Hryhorii. Piznay v sobi ludynu. Translated by M. Kashuba with an introduction by Vasyl' Voitovych. L'viv: Svit, 1995. Selected works (Ukrainian language).
3. Skovoroda, Hryhorii. Tvory: V dvokh tomakh, foreword by O. Myshanych, chief editor Omelian Pritsak. Kiev: Oberehy, 1994. (Ukrainian language).
4. Skovoroda, Hryhorii (Gregory), "A Conversation Among Five Travelers Concerning Life's True Happiness"
5. Zakydalsky, Taras, "The Theory of Man in the Philosophy of Skovoroda" (1965)
6. "The world tried to catch him but failed — Hryhoriy Skovoroda, the 18th-century Ukrainian philosopher", Welcome to Ukraine, 2003, 1

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