Olha Kotyk, a graduate of Lviv Polytechnic, now a resident of Germany, translated and has recently published a collection of poems by the forgotten German impressionist poet Max Dauthendey. On the eve of the opening of the XXV Lviv Publishers’ Forum, with the support of the International Institute of Education, Culture and Diaspora Relations of Lviv Polytechnic, she delivered a lecture-presentation of this, translated into Ukrainian, collection.
Olha Kotyk, an engineer-mathematician, while studying at University, spent a lot of time at the Department of Foreign Languages, where she brilliantly studied the French language; in fact, she defended her engineering diploma paper in this language. Today, she lives in Germany and is a representative of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Nuremberg. So, she studied German enough to dare to translate and publish German poetry. She did her best – the proof is a high appreciation of her poetic translation from poet Ihor Kalynets, the Shevchenko Prize laureate.
Myroslava Diakovych, Doctor of Juridical Sciences, the Honorary Consul of Germany in Lviv, attended the lecture-presentation and highly appreciated Olha Kotyk’s translation. She noted that the appearance of such a book in Ukrainian is a notable contribution to the strengthening and development of Ukrainian-German cultural relations.
Why did Ukrainian Olha Kotyk get interested in the work of the German impressionist Dauthendey? During his lifetime Max Dauthendey, a native of the Bavarian city Würzburg, was called «a quiet and gentle dreamer», but after his death he was recognized as the most prominent representative of German literary impressionism, together with George, Rilke and Dehmel. In addition, Max Dauthendey was a great artist, one of the prominent representatives of the Berlin Bohemia. He was a close friend to the legendary Edvard Munch and Stanisław Przybyszewski.
It should also be noted that the proceeds from the sale of books, both in Germany and in Ukraine, Olha Kotyk delegates through the trusted volunteers to the East of Ukraine.
Photos by Yosyp Marukhniak
