Semen Klymovskyi was a Ukrainian philosopher, poet, and Cossack of the Kharkiv Regiment. He is the author of the song "A Cossack Went Across the Danube". He was born at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He died in the village of Pryputni, Yelisavethrad district, Kherson province (near the modern village of Moshoryne in Kirovohrad region, Pryputni village disappeared due to the Holodomor) at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The exact date of his birth and death are unknown.
Author of the song
The author of the famous song "A Cossack Went Across the Danube" has long been considered a legendary figure. The song's authorship was first confirmed by the Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin. He was also familiar with Semen Klimovsky's other works, On the Truth and Generosity of Benefactors and On the Justice of Chiefs.
Karamzin wrote about him:
"In the imperial library is kept his handwritten work 'On Generosity and Truth', which contains many good sentiments and even good poems... It is said that Klymovskyi was famous and honoured among his fellow Cossacks by no less than seven Greek sages; that he, like an inspired pythian, spoke in high-flown verse in conversations, gave his friends prudent advice, and often repeated the proverb: "To do good to us and evil to no one is a legitimate life"; and the curious came from far and wide to listen to him.
The poet's popularity grew after he became the hero of the Russian writer Alexander Shakhovsky's opera-vaudeville The Cossack Poet (1812).
In 1905, the historian Vsevolod Sreznevsky was lucky enough to find two manuscripts in the personal library of Peter the Great and publish them, signed by "the most unworthy slave, the Kharkiv Cossack Semen Klymov", making them available to all curious. The language of Semen Klymovskyi's works is similar to the language of Skovoroda's works - Russian with numerous Church Slavonic and Ukrainianisms. Some of his works are written entirely in the Ukrainian spoken language. And in our time, a researcher of literary antiquity, Valerii Shevchuk, translated the eighteenth-century poet's writings into modern Ukrainian and published them in one of the volumes of the Anthology of Ukrainian Poetry.
Poetic treatises
The works "On the Truth and Generosity of Benefactors" and "On the Justice of Rulers" are extremely interesting from many perspectives[3]. "A king without truth is dead," S. Klymovskyi wrote. He went on to paint a picture of the moral decline to which society is doomed by a ruler who "falls into the abyss of evil". Darkness, lies, rage, and "moral illness" are the price for despising the truth. A "lover of the truth" is not worthy of being a king, Klimovsky argues, because he becomes "dead-armed" during his lifetime... The author moralises, promising that grace will be poured out from heaven only to those who "undertake to do the right thing in the truth". And this is not cold, scholarly moralising, but a passionate incantation, a demonstration of a moral dilemma designed to have a "pedagogical" effect: "It is better to be a beggar and suffer the truth and cold than to be a king and not have the truth."
It was August 1724 - this is the date at the end of the manuscript. Researchers of S. Klymovskyi's work Hryhorii Nudha and Valerii Shevchuk have drawn attention to the political context in which the treatises of the "Kharkiv Cossack" addressed to Peter I appeared. The policy of revenge against Ukraine "for Mazepa" had terrible consequences. The economy was plundered, many people were killed, and restrictions were imposed on Ukrainian book printing. In 1722, the Hetmanate was abolished. From now on, Ukraine was to be ruled by the "Little Russian Collegium" headed by Brigadier Velyaminov. Pavlo Polubotok, who went to St. Petersburg to "negotiate" at least some rights for Ukrainians, did not return home and died in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
The manuscript (a handwritten book into which S. Klymovskyi personally copied his works) was found by V. Sreznevskyi, who published it in 1905 in Kharkiv. The manuscript is kept in St. Petersburg in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Life story
A monument to Semen Klymovskyi in the village of Moshoryne (the village of Pryputni disappeared due to the Holodomor and its territory was annexed to the village of Moshoryne)
Klymovskyi's life is usually associated with the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where he allegedly studied (although the encyclopedia "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Names" does not mention Klymovskyi). Karamzin considered him a nugget, a "student of nature" who, unfortunately, "was not taught by art". This view is unlikely to be justified, as the poet's surviving works testify to his good knowledge of languages, literature, and philosophy. Among those who were spiritually closest to Klymovskyi, Horace should be the first to be named.
The question of what years the poet lived in remains a mystery. What is clear is that his life was very long, perhaps even more than a century. In 1724, he was apparently a very young man. Klymovskyi ended his life at the end of the eighteenth century in the steppes of the former Dyke Pole, where he and his friend founded the hamlet of Pryputni. It was here that the old poet was found by a certain Mykola Levytskyi, who in 1818 published his essay "The Village of Pryputni (Kherson Gubernia, Elisavetgrad Uyezd)" in the Kharkiv journal "Ukrainian Herald". This essay was found by Hryhorii Nudha and published in his book "Cossack. Philosopher. Poet". However, his findings would have been incomplete if not for Fedir Plotnir, who found in the archives the place of the now extinct Pryputni village - near Nova Praha (Oleksandriia district of Kirovohrad region). On 14 October 2003, a memorial sign was erected on the site of the Pryputni village on the feast of the Intercession.
The village has long since disappeared: the last inhabitants fled during the Holodomor of 1932-1933. If you drive from the regional centre towards Oleksandriia, you will turn the trail near the village of Vasine, then several kilometres of steppe road - and here is the deep gully where Semen Klymovskyi and his friend once first appeared. At the bottom of the gully, a large pond glistens, and opposite it, on a hill near Khomchyna Grove, surrounded by tall poplars, stood Klymovskyi's house, where Mykola Levytskyi stayed. He found the old Cossack with Horace and Virgil in his hands. The peasants in straw huts were just returning from the field. The sun was setting. The host took his guest up the hill - every evening he used to see off the heavenly body in this way. Levytskyi remembered the words that only a life that can be said to be charitable has meaning: the relationship between Klymovskyi and the peasants was also imbued with charity: the picture that Levytskyi paints is almost idyllic. Part of this idyll is the worldly advice of the wise "master" Klymowski, as well as the songs he gives to the village youth. The essay also mentions the song "A Cossack Went Across the Danube".
Works.
"About the truth and generosity of benefactors"
"About the justice of those in authority"
"On the strange deeds of the All-Russian Emperor (Peter the Great)"
"On the humility of the highest"
"On the arrival of King Charles XII of Sweden and the betrayal of Mazepa"
The song "A Cossack went across the Danube"
