Marko Prokliatyi: poema na malorossiskom iazyke iz predanii i poverii zaporozhskoi stariny

Gothic Cossack novel

An important work of Ukrainian literature based on folklore and legends of the Zaporizhian Cossacks. This edition is accompanied by a preface from Vasyl Ivanovych Bilyi (1817-1890), an Odesa publisher and bookseller of the 1870s, which details how the book came to fruition. Storozhenko wrote in a letter to the publisher that he had spent more than thirty years collecting fragments of folk tales connected to the legendary character of Marko - inspired by the Ukrainian proverb tovchet'sya yak Marko v pekli [wandering like Marko in Hell].

Storozhenko states that every nation has its tradition of a such a figure, which neither Earth nor hell accepts for his sins. For France this is Melmoth, the Ancient Greeks had Odysseus, the English and Germans have too many to count, the Russians have Immortal Koshchei and Ukrainians have Marko. Over the decades spent collecting oral accounts, he found that most people associated the story to the uprising of 1648.

The first two chapters of Marko the Damned were published in the Pravda journal in Lviv in 1870, Storozhenko then completed a further ten chapters but died in 1874, unable to see through the publication in his own lifetime. Seventeen days before he died, he sent the twelve chapters to the publisher with the note, 'I'm sending you all of Marko, do what you know how to, may God help you'. The subsequent four chapters were finished by the editor based on the author's letters and taking in consideration his views on the purpose of the work.

OCLC locates four copies (the BL, Oxford University, Princeton and Harvard).

First edition, 8vo (21.7 x 15 cm); frontispiece portrait, some foxing and thumbing to title otherwise internally fresh, errata slip at rear; contemporary quarter calf with title blindstamped to spine, extremities worn and spine partially split but holding fine,a good copy, vii, 170pp.