Tadeusz Rylski: Khlopoman, Publicist, Ethnographer, and Educator

Abstract

This article outlines the profile of Tadeusz Rylski (1840–1902), father of the distinguished Ukrainian poet and translator Maksym Rylski (1895–1964). The Rylski family, belonging to the nobility—most likely of Polonized Ukrainian descent—produced many remarkable personalities. Raised in a Polish noble environment, Tadeusz Rylski sided with the Khlopomans during his studies at the University of Kyiv. This movement advocated for a shift in national consciousness toward full integration with
the Ukrainian peasantry, whom they viewed as the true bearers of authentic local folk, economic, and religious culture. As a Khlopoman, Rylski undertook painstaking educational and cultural work among the Ukrainian people, traveling extensively throughout the Ukrainian lands to study local
traditions and customs. His research focused on the worldview, folklore, and economic relations of the Ukrainian peasantry. Rylski authored more than a dozen articles and treatises in the fields of ethnography, ethnology, folklore, and economics. His theoretical reflections, drawing on the ideas of utopian socialists Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, were firmly grounded in practical experience. For forty years, he farmed, arbitrated disputes, and taught in the village of Romanivka (Pol. Romanówka)
in the Zhytomyr region, earning immense respect among the local peasants. He also embodied his youthful ideal of complete integration with the Ukrainian populace through his marriage to a Ukrainian woman, Melania Chupryna. The youngest of his three sons, Maksym—who was seven years old at the time of his father’s death—experienced no identity dilemmas. Raised in a wholly Ukrainian cultural milieu, he grew up to be an outstanding Ukrainian poet and a prolific translator of European literature, notably becoming the only translator to render the complete text of Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz into Ukrainian.