Ukrainian-Polish poet, composer and bagpipe player. Author of a number of songs about Cossacks.
Descendant of a small noble family (father's coat of arms Sas and mother's coat of arms Zador), which was reflected in his outlook. As a Polish patriot, he insisted on the need for a joint struggle of Poles and Ukrainians for independence. He was a Cossack singer, popularized Ukrainian folklore and music.
Biography
He was born in Illintsy, Kyiv province (now Vinnytsia), his father was a Bratslav storekeeper. After graduating from the Illinets parish school and the Vinnytsia gymnasium (1820), he entered the Kremenets Lyceum, which he graduated in 1825.
At the beginning of 1825, Padura took part in the joint congress of the Polish "Patriotic Society" ("Narodowe Towarystwo Patriotyczne") and the Decembrists in Zhytomyr. At the meeting, among other things, the issue of the appropriateness of the independence of "Little Russia" was raised - Padura was a speaker on this topic.
He lived in the courts of tycoons (Potocki, Sangushki, Zhevusky) as a poet-in-residence.
He participated in the November Uprising of 1830-1831, fought in the detachment of Vaclav Zhevusky, his personal friend, to whom Padura dedicated his poem "Golden Beard". During the years 1830-1832, he was imprisoned by the tsarist authorities.
A grave in the village Makhnivka at the Catholic cemetery
After the defeat of the uprising, he lived in his Makhnivtsi estate near Berdychev. He was the tutor of the sons of Pius Boreyk from Pykov. He participated in the Pan-Slavic Congress in Prague (1848) as a delegate from Poland. Died in Kozyatyn, buried in Makhnivka (now a village of Kozyatyn district, Vinnytsia region).
As a poet, he was influenced by Ukrainian folklore, the works of Julian Nemtsevich, George Gordon Byron, and Ossian (see James McPherson). The period of his greatest creative activity falls on the end of the 20s — the beginning of the 30s of the XIX century. For a long time, his works were distributed only in manuscripts, which did not prevent their significant influence on Ukrainian literature both in Dnipro and Galicia. Presumably, the first printed publication (the poem "Cossack") was in the text of "Rusian Grammar" by Yosyp Levytskyi (Lviv, 1830, in German). Padura later published this poem in a much revised form.
Padura wrote works in Ukrainian in Latin. The first separate publication - "Pienia Tomasza Padury" - was carried out without the author's permission in Lviv in 1842. It cannot be considered authentic, because it included not only unauthorized, distorted texts, but also a number of works that generally belonged to other authors.
The collection "Ukrainky Tymka Padury" (Warsaw, 1844, contained 13 poems and musical scores) was published under his own author's editorship. Already after the author's death, "Pyśma Tymka Padurry. Wydanie posmertne z awtohrafiw" (1874) is a complete collection of his poetic and prose works, in which, next to all Ukrainian texts (also in Latin transcription), their Polish translations were presented.
In his songs and thoughts, Padura expressed his admiration for the Cossack antiquity, at the same time, along with the Cossackophile tendencies, the Slavic and Polonophile concept of the history of Ukraine is felt ("From the Baltic to Gorbat / Some iron tribe / From the ploughshare, the bulat is forged / And the Slavs wear name" — from the poem "Leistrovy").
Padura himself composed melodies for some of his texts, thanks to which they became folk songs (the author himself contributed to their popularization, traveling around the villages dressed as a "grandfather"). Professional composers, both Polish (Karol Lipinski) and Ukrainian, also paid attention to Padura's works: for example, "Lyrnik" was set to music by Mykola Lysenko. Padura's songs were performed by the torbanist Hryhoriy Vidort (also a friend of Vaclav Zhevuskyi).
He also wrote in Polish, which gives grounds for including him in the so-called "Ukrainian school" of Polish literature. For some time it was believed that he was the author of the song "Hej, sokoły" (its melody, in particular, was used in Jerzy Hoffman's film "Fire and Sword"), but as Polish researchers have established, this song was written by the Polish composer Maciej Kamenski. He spoke about himself: "Mickiewicz is a great poet, but who knows him, but the whole of Poland and Ukraine sings about me."
Timko Padura translated Adam Mickiewicz's poem "Konrad Wallenrod" into Ukrainian.
After the poet's death, on September 20, 1871, in the town of Kozyatyn, Berdychiv County, Kyiv Province, Valery Przyborovsky turned to his friend Marian Vasyutynsky (in whose house the poet lived and died in recent times) with a request to provide information about Padura, necessary for a critical evaluation of the poet's literary activity. Vasyutynsky fulfilled the request.
Commemoration
There is Tymka Padura Street in Lviv.
In Kozyatyn, an alley is named after Tymko Padura.
On June 30, 2016, a commemorative plaque in honor of Timko Padura was installed on the building of the music school in Illintsy.
