PAGES OF LESYA UKRAYINKA'S CRIMEAN CHRONICLE

Lesya Ukrayinka, a great Ukrainian writer whose true name was Larisa Kosach (1871 - 1913), had to spend her whole life travelling in search of doctors and mild climate, for she suffered from tuberculosis. She underwent treatment in Germany, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Georgia, Egypt, but the most often she eame to the Crimea and spent three years as a whole. Two years of the three Lesya Ukrayinka lived in Yalta where she not only restored her health but worked a lot as well.

Three Crimean periods of the writer's life and works are known.

The first period includes two summers - of 1890 and 1891. This period gave birth to a poetic cycle "The Crimean Memories" which was included into her first book "On the Wings of Songs", as well as an ethnographic research of the ornaments of the Crimean Tartar embroidery.

In 1897 Lesya Ukrayinka came to Yalta and stayed for a whole year, which forms the second Lesya Ukrayinka's Crimean period. During that year the writer moved several times from one place to another and happened to live in the house that became her memorial museum afterwards. Since Christmas 1898 she lived in "Iphigeneia" villa, where began to write her first dramatic poem "Iphigeneia in Taurida" based on Ancient Greek legends the writer constantly appealed to. The theme of nostalgia was always very close to Lesya Ukrayinka; no wonder She is often called "Ukrainian Iphigeneia". That year in Yalta enriched Ukrainian literature with a new poetic cycle "The Crimean Echoes", a short story "Above the Sea", new translations of Byron. In Yalta she met Ukrainian actors who were always welcome in this town, made acquaintance with Sergey Merzhinsky to whom the most part of her tragic lyrics is dedicated.

The third period of the writer's Crimean life takes in 1907 and 1908 years. Together with her husband, Klimenty Kvitka, who worked in Yalta as an investigator's assistant, Lesya Ukrayinka intended to buy a house in this town. However, the exacerbation of the disease made her to leave Yalta ahead of time. During her last year in the Crimea Lesya Ukrayinka for her own account organised an expedition to record Ukrainian ballads, duma, which were performed to an accompaniment of kobza - an ancient national musical instrument. The writer herself phonographed the repertoire of Gnat Goncharenko - a kobzar from Sevastopol.

In 1910 in Geluan, a town in Egypt, Lesya Ukrayinka happened to meet the family of Ochrimenko a winegrower from Yalta (she gave private lessons to his sons). In 1971, the year of 100th anniversary of the writer's birth, her former student Mikola Ochrimenko together with other admirers of Lesya Ukrayinka made great efforts to immortalise her memory in the Crimea. In 1972 the monument to Lesya Ukrayinka was erected by sculptor Galina Kalchenko.

At the same time the poetess's museum was founded which nowadays is a department of Yalta State United Historic and Literary Museum.