Maksym Rylsky

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Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky (Ukrainian: Максим Тадейович Рильський; 19 March 1895 – 24 July 1964) was a Soviet Ukrainian poet, translator, academician, and scholar of language. He was born in Kyiv and lived much of his life there. His father was an active public figure and ethnographer, and his mother came from a peasant family; the family had roots linked to Polish and Ukrainian history.

Rylsky began writing poetry as a child, with his first poem published in 1907 and his first collection appearing in 1910. He studied medicine at Kyiv University from 1915 to 1917 and then moved to a broader program in history and philology before war and upheaval interrupted his studies. He returned to Kyiv in fits and starts, worked as a teacher, and continued writing. By the early 1920s he had found his own voice, moving beyond early imitation. His 1922 collection Blue Distance helped establish his mature style.

During the 1920s he published several more poetry books and became a noted translator, turning to poets like Verlaine, Mallarmé, Bryusov, Maeterlinck, and Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz. In 1931 he was arrested and briefly imprisoned. He was a representative of the “pure art” idea and worked within the official socialist realism framework that grew under Stalin. In 1937 he helped rewrite the libretto of the opera Taras Bulba and later returned to neoclassical forms.

During World War II, Rylsky and his family were evacuated from Kyiv to Ufa (1941–1944). There he wrote long poems that stepped away from socialist realism, which brought public criticism. In 1944 he became director of the Institute of Fine Arts, Folklore, and Ethnography in Kyiv, a position he held until his death; the institute now bears his name. He published about 30 collections of original poetry, as well as translations and scholarly works. By the 1970s millions of copies of his works had been published in the USSR.

Rylsky joined the Communist Party in 1943 and was elected to the Supreme Soviet in 1946. His house became a museum, and a street was named in his honor. He was a translator who knew many languages and could translate from about 30 languages, with a focus on French, German, and Russian. He remains one of the most notable Ukrainian poets of the 20th century, known for his mastery of the sonnet and long narrative forms within a neoclassical tradition.