Shalak Oksana

Epistolary of Mykola Bilozersky (1833-1896) as a source for his biography

Section: Sources of biographical research

Abstract: The purpose of the article is to analyze Mykola Bilozersky’s spiritual and moral priorities, to outline certain stages in the folklorist’s biography, to identify scientific authorities at the beginning of his activity, to consider the main events that influenced his scientific life, to highlight the problems that aroused interest and in which he worked The research uses source studies methods that are based on historicism and objectivity and make it possible to analyze the epistolary narrative, as well as general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, which contribute to the generalization of the main thing in the significant mass of correspondence of M. Bilozersky, which, like a kind of mosaic, creates a picture the world of the scientist. The scientific novelty consists in an attempt to understand the biography of M. Bilozersky through his epistolary, revealing the significance of correspondence as a source for the reconstruction of the biographies of scientists, in an effort to understand the context of his work that was silenced by him, which makes it possible to understand the real drivers and cautions in his folkloristic work, to reveal the sequence of life events, to analyze the method of recording folklore, its ordering and editing principles. Conclusions. The letters and their drafts in the archive of M. Bilozersky are a kind of documents of certain periods of his life. The years 1853-1856 are especially vivid, since notebooks of drafts of correspondence from that time have been preserved. Through the epistolary narrative, the most important scientific problems raised and solved by the folklorist, which appeared before him during the arrangement of “Narodnye yuzhnorusskie pesni” (1854) and “Yuzhnorusskie letopisi” (1856): the urgency of creating rules for recording folklore, a list of kobzars, bandurists and lyre players; principles of arrangement, understanding of the edition of chronicles and collection of thoughts and songs with comments; method of analysis of collected folklore material. The correspondence of M. Bilozersky contains numerous names of historians, folklorists, writers who formed the scientist’s circle of communication, his spiritual biography, which was important in the change of scientific and cultural paradigms of the middle and end of the 19th century.

Keywords: Mykola Bilozersky, biography, reconstruction, epistolary, folklore.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.25.377     Citation

• Shalak Oksana (V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Ukraine, Kyiv, [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8275-6703

Cite:
Shalak Oksana (2024). Epistolary of Mykola Bilozersky (1833-1896) as a source for his biography. Biographistica Ukrainica, (25) 377-395. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.25.377

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