Sources of the Formation of Ahatanhel Krymskyi’s Linguistic Persona

Abstract

The article is devoted to the sources of the formation of a linguistic persona of the future famous scholar, writer, translator, and polyglot – Ahatanhel Krymskyi. In the article there has been conducted an analysis of the communicative geographical and epistolary discursive area of A. Krymskyi at the times of his childhood and adolescence. These periods of his life we consider the decisive ones for his linguistic individualization and the definition of the parameters of a linguistic persona. The linguistic persona’s features were caused by the origin of A. Krymskyi (the Crimean Tartar roots, an intelligent family of a teacher of history and geography and a Polish Lithuanian noble woman), and his unique abilities (the boy learned to read at the age of 3 and a half, had a phenomenal memory, and an analytical brain). A great role was played by the multilingual and multicultural places of dwelling and studying, namely the following towns and cities: Volodymyr Volynskyi, Zvenyhorodka, Ostroh, Kyiv (such languages as Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish were spoken there and different ethnic cultures cooperated), Moscow (A. Krymskyi was surrounded by the Russian, Ukrainian, and other languages; a Ukrainian community was actively working), Beirut (in the city, the Arabic, French, Russian, and other languages were spoken; there was a unique environment of Eastern/Oriental cultures). The formation of a polyglot was favoured by the study of classical languages, Western European, Slavonic and Eastern / Oriental languages at the secondary and higher educational institutions. The evolution of scientific abilities of the specialist in the Ukrainian, Slavonic and Oriental studies was supported by the highly professional teachers (first of all Pavlo Zhytetskyi in Kyiv and Vsevolod Miller, Oleksii Veselovskyi, Ihnatii Krachkovskyi in Moscow). The communication with famous people (Ivan Franko, Borys Hrinchenko, Omelian Ohonovskyi, Mykhailo Pavlyk, Lesia Ukrainka and others) intensified the Ukrainian vector of the linguistic persona of A. Krymskyi. Creative possibilities of the linguopersona-writer and translator are reflected in his literary and translation heritage (the collection of poems “Palm branches” (1901, 1908), “The Stories of Beirut” (1906), the novel “Andrii Lahovskyi” (1905, a full version was published in 1972), translations of the poetry by Hafez, Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Ferdowsi, Turkish folk songs and others into Ukrainian and Russian.