Orest Somov

Svitlana Krys (MacEwan University)

Ed. by Andrei Rogatchevski, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.1.00: Slavic and Russian Writing and Culture: Old, Medieval and Tsarist, 700-1917.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

Born 10 Dec 1793
Died 27 May 1833
Activity 1816-1833

Places

Born in Russia
Active in Russia; Russia

Activities

Primary

Prose writer

Other

Literary Critic/ Historian
Poet

Resources

Somov's Works

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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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2706 words

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 24 November 2024.]