Tymko (Tymish) Padura

Tymko (Tymish) Padura

Tymko (Tymish) Padura was born on December 1, 1801. He was a poet, composer, and wandering bard of the Romantic era who became one of the brightest voices of the Ukrainian school in Polish literature.

Born in Podillia, he worked and created at the intersection of Ukrainian and Polish cultures, transforming the Cossack image into living poetry. Padura wrote songs and poems in Ukrainian and Polish and performed them himself on the kobza or bandura. He traveled through villages in the guise of a kobzar.

His poems feature Cossacks, haidamaks, and steppe travelers, and explore themes of freedom, nobility, and the longing for a lost state and an idealized Cossack past. Some of his poems attracted the attention of professional composers, both Polish and Ukrainian. For example, Mykola Lysenko set “Lyrnik” to music. The bagpipe player Hryhoriy Vidort performed Padura’s songs. Padura said: “Mickiewicz is a great poet, but who knows him? The whole of Poland and Ukraine sings about me.” Padura was even credited with writing the song “Hey, Falcons,” but this was a false assumption.

Padura also translated A. Mickiewicz’s poem “Konrad Wallenrod” into Ukrainian.

In 1825, Padura spoke at the Decembrists’ and the Polish “Patriotic Society” congress in Zhytomyr, where he raised the issue of Ukrainian independence. From 1825 on, he served Wacław Rzewuski, a Volyn magnate who loved the Cossacks so much that he formed a Cossack unit at his court. According to Rzewuski, the reestablishment of the Cossacks and the struggle for Polish and Ukrainian independence should have begun with him. The detachment, in which Padura was a poet-kobzar, joined the Polish uprising of 1830.

For Rzewuski, the uprising ended in death; for Padura, it ended in imprisonment.

In 1848, Padura served as a Polish delegate to the Pan-Slavic Congress in Prague.

He died on September 20, 1871, in Kozyatyn and was buried in Makhnivka, a village in the Vinnytsia region.

Padura’s figure, as well as the Ukrainian school in Polish literature, is a romanticism trend in which Polish authors wrote about Ukraine — Cossacks, steppes, Haidamaks, Cossack wars, folk songs, and myths. This phenomenon is eloquent of that era. These works reflected an admiration for the heroic pages of history, among the brightest of which were the Cossacks, who became an important link in spreading Cossack themes in a European context and in supporting their presence in the Ukrainian environment. This inspired contemporaries — both Ukrainians and Poles — to self-awareness and the fight for independence.

The material was prepared by Iryna Zhakova, a researcher in the scientific and excursion department.

Illustrations:

1. Tymish Padura

2. “Kozak” from the collection “Ukrainky Tymka Padury”. Warsaw, 1844.