Background
He was born in the vicinity of Kharkiv. Hryhory Kvitka was born in 1778 in the village of Osnova, near the city of Kharkiv, to a family of Ukrainian nobility.
He was born in the vicinity of Kharkiv. Hryhory Kvitka was born in 1778 in the village of Osnova, near the city of Kharkiv, to a family of Ukrainian nobility.
He adopted the pen name "Osnovyanenko," a reference to the village of his birth, when he embarked on his literary career. Kvitka was one of the earliest proponents of Ukrainian as a literary language and began publishing in the first Ukrainian literary journals printed in Kharkiv in the early 19th century. Like most of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian literary scene, he also wrote in Russian.
His Ukrainian-language works were mostly burlesque and satirical in nature, but he also wrote more serious prose, such as his sentimental novella Marusia.
According to his own statement about the work, he wrote it "to prove to one unbeliever that something gentle and moving can be written in the Ukrainian language."
On the one hand, as one of the first popular writers to use the Ukrainian language, he is viewed a founding figure of Ukrainian literature.
On the other hand, many prominent Ukrainian scholars, including Ivan Franko, Mykola Zerov, and Dmytro Chyzhevsky, viewed his work as reactionary and conservative and were skeptical of the sentimental, pastoral image that he painted of Ukraine and Ukrainians.