A EUROPEAN WITH A UKRAINIAN SOUL
Authors: Zabyaka Ivan 
Published: January 2019

The article deals with Vasyl Gorlenko, one of the most prominent Ukrainian culturologists of the late nineteenth century – beginning of the XX century. Whose name on the one hand did not belong to the forgotten names: it is fixed in all professional encyclopedias, many articles have been written about it, it is mentioned in the memoirs of contemporaries, there are even three monographs, on the other hand all this is very small, going out from what was done by Vasily Petrovich. There are a lot of problems raised in the writings of V. Gorlenko. There are some that are extremely important. It was established that studying at the famous Sorbonne, he passed the beautiful school of the French theoretician of literature and art critic Ivan T., French classical literature and art, thus receiving a high level of education, education of the best spiritual traits of behavior, possessed at least 5 foreign languages. It was discovered that when V.Gorlenko returned to his homeland, he first met in St. Petersburg with many prominent figures who came from his native land. One of these places of acquaintances is "Tuesdays" by M. Kostomarov. It was on them that V. Gorlenko was a true school of Ukrainian studies. And when Ukraine appeared periodicals that were in line with its patriotic interests, V. Gorlenko began to work with them. In the newspaper Trud, after twenty years of actual silence about T. Shevchenko, the first in Ukraine is a fragment of Russian tales of Taras Shevchenko "A walk with pleasure and not without morality" and the story "The Musician" with some reproach to everyone else who hadn’t done it already. It was found out that the Ukrainian elite rallied around the magazine "Kievan old woman" (1882-1906): V. Antonovich, D. Bagaliy, M. Belyashivsky, P. Golubovsky, V. Domanytsky, P. Efimenko, P. Zhitetsky, O. Lazarevsky, O. Levitsky, M. Sumtsov, V. Tarnovsky and many others. Here were M. Drahomanov, M. Kostomarov, V. Vynnychenko, Panas Mirnyi, I. Franko, M. Staritsky and dozens of other Ukrainian scholars and writers. Among them Vasyl Horlenko. Currently, 114-th of his publications, contained in this publication, are known. Articles, reviews, reviews of publications, information, folk records - each of these publications is an example of scientific conscientiousness and responsibility of the author. It was here that his multifaceted talent of journalist, literary critic and historian, ethnographer and folklorist, art historian, expert in Ukrainian antiquity was revealed. Quite often, V.n Gorlenko was the first, who write about the works of P. Mirny, I. Franko, I. Karpenko-Karyi, M. Kropivnitsky, I. Manzhuro and many others. Invaluable source in the study of both the personality of V. Gorlenko and his environment is his correspondence. Currently, there are about 40 recipients and more than 700 letters to him and partly to him. He corresponded with many Ukrainian and foreign writers, scholars, and cultural figures. He loved Ukraine most of all and was afraid of those revolutions that were devastated, death, spiritual impoverishment, barbarism; advocated the steadfast development of society, feeling as an integral part of its people, small and great Nature. Therefore, it remained for us a bright star of the unimpeded space of culture.