Ukrainian historian, ethnographer, folklorist, poet and composer.
Biography
Born in the village Dunayets, now Glukhivskyi District, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine in the family of landowner Andriy Ivanovich Markevich (former imperial diplomat in Dresden and Constantinople), whose lineage dates back to the supreme hetman administration of the 17th-18th centuries. He received about 700 serfs, an estate in the village of Turivtsi of the Prylutsky regiment and a house in Moscow as an inheritance from his father Ivan Andreyovych. Mykola Andriyovych's mother was Countess Anastasia Vasylivna Hudovych of the coat of arms of Odrovonzh.
In 1804–1809, he lived with his grandfather in the village of Polozhakh (now Glukhiv district), then at P.I. Skoropadska's great-grandmother's and aunt's in the village. Dunayets, and from 1809 - in Sokyryntsy (now Sribniansky district of Chernihiv region), in the village of Vaskivtsi, later (until 1814) in the village of Rudivtsi (now Prylutsky District, Chernihiv Region). At the age of four, he could read and write in Russian, French and German.
From March 21, 1814, he studied at the private school of Pavel Bilecki-Nosenko in the village of Lapyntsi near Pryluky.
In 1817–1820 he studied at the Noble Boarding House at the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. There he joined the circle of O. S. Pushkin, I. I. Pushchyn, V. K. Küchelbecker, A. A. Delwig, F. M. Glinka, K. F. Ryleev, O. O. Bestuzhev.
His first poem was included by the Russian poet V. A. Zhukovsky in the pages of the magazine "Nevsky Spectator" (Russian doref.) in 1820. Mykola Markevich mastered music well, learned to play the piano from the famous virtuoso pianist John Field.
From 1820 he was a cadet of the Courland dragoon regiment in the military service of the imperial army. Then Mykola Markevich wrote to the Russian poet VA Zhukovsky:
"After entering the service, I lost a lot of time for science, but in the service I became a poet. "
At the beginning of 1821, he visited Kamianka, the center of meetings of members of the Southern Secret Society. He served in the headquarters of the 2nd Army, which included the regiment stationed in Tulchyn, where he met the future Decembrists and communicated with Pavel Pestel.
In 1824, he retired as a lieutenant, returned to his estate in Ukraine, except for a trip to Moscow in 1829, and did not leave it until the end of his life. He married Ulyana Oleksandrivna Rakovich, the daughter of a Prylut landowner.
In the Russian magazine "Moscow Telegraph" he publishes a number of his own poems: Dream-grass, Udavlenik, Hetmanship, Copper Bull, Witch, Mermaid and others, which were approved by the metropolitan readers of the Russian Empire.
In 1831, his first book appeared, printed in Moscow under the title "Ukrainian Melodies. The composition of Nikolai Markevich" (Russian), which included 36 poems.
He was engaged in research work, collected historical documents of the Cossack Era with the aim of creating the first Ukrainian encyclopedic dictionary, in which, as he believed, every Ukrainian man and woman could find historical, geographical, statistical data about Ukraine, biographies of outstanding people of the Ukrainian people. For 10 years, he created more than 100,000 articles for the encyclopedic dictionary, systematizing it in alphabetical order in 30 huge notebooks. The volume of his work prepared for publication was 11 volumes of 600 pages each. But because some "scholars of the Russian Empire" took part in the "Encyclopedic Lexicon" edition, who named some of his Ukrainian books, published in Moscow in 1836, "Big historical, mythological, statistical and literary dictionary of the Russian State" (Russian), then he stopped printing the dictionary, later regretting the missed opportunity to publish. He wrote to V. Zhukovsky:
"... I became gray writing my dictionary, I will turn gray completely rewriting it, but I cannot publish it without the help of the Russian government. "
He himself wrote musical notes for all his works. This is how the collection was published in Moscow in 1840 "Narodnye ukrainianie napevy, polozhennye dlya piano by Nikolay Markevich" (Russian). Lev Zhemchuzhnikov became the owner of a whole handwritten collection of Ukrainian folk songs and thoughts with notes written by M. A. Markevich himself, but which were not printed. Lev Zhemchuzhnikov recalled:
Mykola Andriyovych often visited Sokyryntsy, where he was always welcomed not only by his relatives, but also by his acquaintances. The buffalo enters with a pipe in his mouth, contented and happy, his gray curls flutter, he himself shines like the sun, and everything around him comes to life. "
In the magazine "Library for Reading" he was accused of writing the history of the "microscopic country" of Little Russia (Ukraine), in which "... no more than a million people and forty thousand robber Cossack troops." The Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky even spoke publicly against the important scientific activity of Mykola Markevich:
Little Russia was never a state, hence it follows that it did not have its own history in the strict sense of the word. "
Mykola Markevich was acquainted with Taras Shevchenko. And in 1847, Shevchenko's poem "Why do I have black eyebrows" was set to music. Shevchenko dedicated the poem "Banduriste, gray eagle" to Mykola Markevich. Taras Hryhorovych turned to Mykola Andreyovych for advice during the creation of"Haydamaki" and during creative work on etchings on historical subjects.
Mykola Markevich in the last years of his life
After the publication of the historical work "History of Little Russia" for almost 15 years, not a single printed work by Mykola Markevich appeared.
Since 1850, he began to get seriously ill. His works began to be printed again after the death of Emperor Nicholas I.
Mykola Markevich participated in compiling the Ukrainian dictionary, which included 45,000 words, proverbs, sayings, fairy tales, songs, ancient universals, letters, chronicles, and historical acts. He was a famous collector of ancient historical documents. He created a historical archive in Turivka with rare old prints, historical manuscripts, hetman universals, letters of prominent figures of Ukraine and Russia, ethnographic notes, dominated by a portion of the originals dating back to the end of the 16th century. His provincial archive included 12,000 manuscripts in Ukrainian, Turkish, Tatar, Polish, Russian, French, German, Latin, Greek, Georgian, and Armenian languages. He managed to classify almost half of them, systematically describe them and enter them into the catalog. Among those known in that archive were the documents of Andrii Markovych, the general sub-treasurer; documents of hetmans Ivan Skoropadskyi, Kyril Razumovskyi, Kochubey and Hudovichi; materials from the book collection of Peter Rumyantsev in the village of Tashani of Pereyaslav district.
Mykola Markevich moved from Poltava, with the help of Ivan Kotlyarevsky and the Poltava vice-governor, the library of Ippolit Bogdanovich's relatives (400 volumes of books, manuscripts, "Keleyny Letopysets" by Dmytro Rostovsky), etc. From the estate of his aunt P. I. Skoropadska in the village of Dunayets of Glukhiv County also added two chests with ancient manuscripts found in the storerooms to that archive.
In 1851, an article was published in the edition of the magazine "Patriotic Notes" with his request to provide assistance in publishing historical documents from his archive. Subsequently, this collection of documents from the history of Ukraine of the XVII-XVIII centuries. ended up in the Pashkov House of the Rumyantsev Museum of the city of Moscow in the fund of manuscript collections of the Russian State Public Library. The specified edition of the magazine at that time noted:
M.A. Markevich is the famous author of "History of Little Russia", for many years he collected rare handwritten monuments and now has 12,000 manuscripts in his archive, which can serve as valuable material for Russian history. "
He died after a long illness and was buried in the ancestral crypt near the Church of All Saints, in the garden planted and nurtured by him on the right bank of the Perevid River, opposite the village of Turivka (Turiv Volost, Prylutsky District).
Reviews
According to experts, he became the first Ukrainian encyclopedist. He was called a "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist" by Russian nationalists and was subject to the ban of Bolshevik censorship.
Historical works
История Малороссия in 5 volumes, published in 1842–1843 in Moscow, is a basic scientific work that describes the history of Ukraine from the earliest times to the end of the 18th century. The main source for writing this work was the "History of the Rus" and the works of Mykola and Dmytro Bantysh-Kamensky. The first two volumes have no scientific value; Volumes III-V, which contain documentary appendices, notes, description of sources, lists of general elders and senior clergy, chronological tables, retain a certain reference value.
Markevich N. A. History of Malorossii. T. 1 / N. A. Markevich. — M.: Type. Augustus Semena, under the Emperor. Medical surgeon. Acad., 1842. — 383 p. (Russian)
The first love, exploits and death of Timofey Khmelnytsky // Mayak. — 1840. — No. 5.
Mazepa // Mayak. — 1841. — No. 23, 24; Right there. — 1842. — No. 1. (Russian doref.)
Hetmanship of Barabasha // Russian Vestnik. — 1841. — T. 2.
About the first hetmans of Little Russia (1848)
About the Cossacks (1858)
Of scientific interest is the collection of documents from the history of Ukraine of the XVII-XVIII centuries collected by Mykola Andriyovych. (kept in the Pashkov House of the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow in the fund of manuscript collections of the Russian State Public Library).
Ethnographic works
A collection of Little Russian songs (1840)
Southern Russian songs (1857)
Обычай, повѣря, кухня и правяться малороссиянъ (1860) — the work was published after the death of the folklorist. He collected the materials included in this edition in the 1820s and 1830s without detailed certification.
About the climate of the Poltava province. — M., 1850;
About beekeeping in the Poltava province. — M., 1850;
About sheep breeding in the Poltava province. — M., 1851;
Historical and statistical description of Chernihiv. — Chernihiv, 1852;
About the population of Poltava province. — Kyiv, 1855;
Artistic works
In 1831, he published in Moscow the poetic collection "Ukrainian Melodies", dedicated to the past of Ukraine.
One of the first in Ukrainian romantic poetry to create the image of a folk singer ("Bandurist"), he was the first to connect the motif of Cossack heroism with the political modernity of Ukraine and its national liberation needs and aspirations.
Privacy
He had five sons from his marriage to Ulyana Oleksandrivna Rakovich (1809–1893):
Andriy (1830–1907)
Oleksandr
Volodymyr
Mykhailo
Wecircles
Commemoration
There is Mykola Markevich street in Pryluky.
In the village Dunayets (on the territory of the educational complex) in August 2018, a memorial sign was opened. The author of the sign is Gluhiv sculptor Gennadiy Matyuhin
