Orest Somov occupies a foundational place among early Ukrainian Romantics. Born in the late eighteenth century, Somov participated in the creation of a literary prose canon in the Russian Empire, contributing to the development of Ukrainian and Russian national literatures. An early practitioner and advocate of Romanticism, he called for the discovery of authentic local voices in the empire’s many nations, contending that these voices could be the basis of a new, original literature, devoid of blind Western imitations and archaic practices. Somov demonstrated this theory in a number of tales, short stories, and novelettes that he produced between 1827 and 1833, the year of his untimely death. Somov was one of the first professional literati in the Russian Empire, earning his income from…
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Citation: Krys, Svitlana. "Orest Somov". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 July 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14723, accessed 04 December 2024.]