Budzar Maryna, Kovalov Yevhen

Man and his books: Catalogue of Hryhoriy Galagan’s Library as a source for his intellectual biography

Section: Book and personality

Abstract: The goal of the work. The article considers the reading practices of Hryhoriy Galagan (1819–1888), one of the outstanding representatives of the Ukrainian local nobility of the 19th century, as an important factor in the formation of his intellectual identity. The authors tried to find out to what extent Galagan’s world-view was determined by the readers’ repertoire, represented by the composition of his library. The research methodology includes methods of reconstruction of intellectual biography (historical-genetic, typological), as well as analysis of historical sources. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time the object of research was the catalog of the private library of H. Galagan, compiled in 1853 by the historian and ethnographer, bibliophile Mykola Markevich (1804– 1860). The document is stored in the Institute of Manuscript of the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. Reading is understood as a cultural action that forms a person’s intellectual identity. At the same time, the book collection, created by several generations of one family, is considered as the embodiment of not only individual but also collective consciousness. Conclusions. The authors show how the Galagan Library catalog reflects the reading priorities of one person, the preferences of the noble family, whose members joined the filling of the book collection, and the collective tastes that reflect the trends of public life. The article proves that due to the predominance of fiction and history and theology publications, the library’s collectors, in particular H. Galagan, had humanitarian preferences. Analysis of the contents of the sections of the catalog shows how important for the formation of the consciousness of the noble intellectual Enlightenment tradition, inherited from the previous era, and the vision of Romanticism, still relevant in the middle of the 19th century.

Keywords: Ukrainian nobility, Galagan’s family, Hryhoriy Galagan, intellectual biography, book, history of reading, home library, catalogue.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.21.309     Citation

• Budzar Maryna (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Kyiv, Ukraine), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3720-7799
• Kovalov Yevhen (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, (Kyiv, Ukraine), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7740-4332

Cite:
Budzar Maryna (2021). Man and his books: Catalogue of Hryhoriy Galagan’s Library as a source for his intellectual biography. Biographistica Ukrainica, (21) 309-340. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.21.309

References:

1. Budzar, M. (2017). The Death of M. Gogol in the Reception of his Contemporaries: The Essay by G. Galagan “Friends”. Kyiv Historical Studies, 2(5), 96-101. [In Ukrainian], [In Russian]. doi: https://doi.org/10.28925/2524-0757.2017.213
2. Budzar, M., and Kovalov, Ye. (Comps.), Kolesnyk, I. (Ed.). (2020). Hryhorii Galagan. Zhurnal (1836–1841). Kyiv, Ukraine: StreamARLine. [In Ukrainian], [In Russian].
3. Kavallo, G., and Sharte, R. (Comps. and Eds.). (2008). Istoriia chteniia v zapadnom mire ot Antichnosti do nashikh dnei (M. A. Runova, N. N. Zubkov, and T. A. Nedashkovskaia, Trans.). Moscow, Russia: FAIR. [In Russian].
4. Kistiakivskyi, O. F. (1994). Shchodennyk (1874–1885) (V. S. Shandra, Comp., I. L. Butych, Ed.). Kyiv, Ukraine: Naukova dumka. [In Ukrainian].
5. Liakisheva, S. I. (2009). Usadebnye biblioteki i domashnee chtenie dvorian kak obrazetc knizhnoi kultury Rossii 19 veka (Extended abstract of PhD dissertation). Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi institut iskusstv i kultury, Moscow, Russia. [In Russian].
6. Budzar, M., and Kovalov, Ye. (Comps.), Kolesnyk, I. (Ed.). (2019). “My vyikhaly z Sokyryntsiv…”: Trevelohy rodyny Galaganiv. Kyiv, Ukraine: StreamARLine. [In Ukrainian], [In Russian].
7. Repina, L. P. (2011). History at the border of the 20–21 cc.: Social theories and historiographical practices. Moscow, Russia: Krugh. [In Russian].
8. Repnina, V. (1890). Iz vospominanii kniazhny V. N. Repninoi o Gogole. Russkii Arkhiv, 10, 227-232. [In Russian].
9. Stepovych, A. (1929). Na Galaganivshchyni litom 1927 r. Ukraina, 1-2, 81-92. [In Ukrainian].
10. Chastnaia perepiska G. P. Galagana. Pisma N. A. Rigelmana. (1899). Kievskaia Starina, 5, 181- 198. [In Russian].
11. Chastnaia perepiska G. P. Galagana. Pisma O. M. Bodianskogo. (1899). Kievskaia Starina, 7, 24-32. [In Russian].
12. Shapovalov, V. A. (2013). The Russian Nobility in the first half of the 19th century and Books. Rossiiskaia Imperiia v Istoricheskoi Retrospektive, 8, 171-178. [In Russian].
13. Kridel, C. (n. d.). An Introduction to Biographical Research. In AERA. [In English].
14. Richards, R. J. (2017). The Role of Biography in Intellectual History. KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, 1(2), 295-318. [In English]. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/693727