Scientific collaboration of Kalenyk Sheikovsky and Borys Grinchenko through the prism of epistolary narrative

Abstract

The relevance of the article lies in the fact that the scientific relations of the scientists, the commonality of their interests, support, and help are revealed through the letters of Kalenyk Sheykovsky to Borys Grinchenko. That is a separate episode in their biographies, which characterizes both of them as extremely thorough lexicographers, talented linguists, and connoisseurs of the Ukrainian language. The subject of the study is K. Sheykovsky’s epistolary and B. Grinchenko’s review of the “Opyt yuzhnorusskogo slovarya”, which are intended as sources for biographies of scientists. The goal is the reconstruction of interpersonal scientific relationships, the peculiarities of cooperation between researchers using the comparative-historical method, source-research techniques and tools that made it possible to recreate a particular period in the biographies of scientists. As a result of the research, it turned out that the scientists exchanged individual fixed lexemes. K. Sheykovsky sent the published issue of “Opyt yuzhnorusskogo slovarya” to B. Grinchenko in 1888, to which he responded with a favorable review on the pages of the Lviv magazine “Zorya”. On the basis of ego-documents, it can be stated that K. Sheykovsky published the dictionary at his own expense, while B. Grinchenko helped him with advice. The scientists exchanged their own works, and K. Sheykovsky also sent 18 riddles with variants to his addressee. The letters contain information about the exact number of lexemes for individual letters in the dictionary. The epistolary narrative is saturated with details of life, which create a unique picture of the world not only of both scholars, of the scholars’ life at that time, but also of the publishing business, the life of people of science, and the attitude towards Ukrainianness in the empire. K. Sheykovsky’s letters are evidence of the material difficulties of the person actually exiled to the town of Menzelinsk, Ufa province, dangerous to the empire connoisseur of the Ukrainian language, who worked in conditions of isolation and persecution. K. Sheykovsky worked on “Opyt…” for more than 30 years. Censorship and his status as a dangerous Ukrainophile prevented the scholar from publishing it in its entirety. However, even the two volumes (in three editions) that were published were a significant contribution to linguistics and folkloristics and changed the understanding of the lexical composition of the Ukrainian language.