Михайль Семенко

Activity: Culture

Date of birth: December 31, 1892

Date of death: October 24, 1937, Kyiv

A writer and poet, the founder and theorist of Ukrainian futurism. A representative of the Executed Renaissance.

“When Walt Whitman died, in 1892, I was born,” — this is how Mykhailo Semenko wrote about himself, born in the village of Kybintsi in what was then the Myrhorod district. His father was a clerk, and his mother, Mariia Proskurivna (Semenko), was a writer, although she had only two years of education at a rural school: she mostly wrote pastoral works about the life and customs of Ukrainian peasants.
His mother made sure that all seven of her children received an education, but Mykhailo did not immediately decide on his life path. At first, he intended to become a musician and studied violin; later he entered a psychoneurological institute, which he did not complete. While serving in the army (during World War I he was mobilized to the Far East as a telegraph operator), Mykhailo wrote to his father that he wanted to pursue literature and earn his living from it. Later, Semenko concealed the fact of his service in the tsarist army, instead adding to his biography a fictional plan to emigrate to the United States via the Bering Strait.
Bold and impulsive, the young Semenko “spent most of his time in cafés and lived in hotels.” He became the creator of a new trend in futurism: quero-futurism — the “art of searching.” There is a widespread story that he outrageously “celebrated” the 100th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth by burning a copy of the Kobzar, claiming that it “smelled of tar and lard.” However, writer and researcher of Semenko, Liubov Yakymchuk, asserts that this is a myth: he only wrote in his booklet Kvero “I burn my ‘Kobzar’” — as a sign of rejecting the “canonization” of the classic in favor of new art; later, Semenko even published his own collection titled Kobzar.
In 1918 in Kyiv, Semenko published two previously written poetry collections, Pierrot Appears and Nine Poems, and in 1919 proclaimed “revolutionary futurism,” whose anthem became the poem Comrade Sun. In 1920 he organized the “Strike Group of Futurist Poets,” which he later renamed “Aspanfut” — the “Association of Panfuturists,” active from 1921 to 1924. Later, this group transformed into “Komunkult”: after facing criticism, Semenko moved away from futurism, became interested in leftist ideas, and turned into a poet of the revolution.
At one time, the poet belonged to the party of Ukrainian communist Borotbists, but he renounced membership after its merger with the Bolshevik Communist Party, and in the 1930s he acknowledged the fallacy of his former views.
Mykhailo Semenko was married twice: he met his first wife, Lidiia Horenko, the daughter of Ukrainian settlers, during his service in Vladivostok. From this marriage he had a daughter, Iryna, a literary scholar and teacher. His second wife was the actress Nataliia Uzhvii, who gave birth to his son Mykhailo. This marriage ended a year before the poet’s tragic death.
On April 23, 1937, Semenko was arrested by the NKVD. The charges were typical: attempting to overthrow Soviet power with the support of “German fascists,” participation in a “nationalist terrorist organization” that did not actually exist, and preparing an assassination attempt on the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Kosior. Under torture, Semenko confessed to all the “crimes” and testified against the poet Andrii Mykhailiuk — later both were executed on the same day and buried in a mass grave in the Bykivnia forest near Kyiv.
After his death, Semenko’s name was erased from Ukrainian literature for an entire generation. However, later the poet, who boldly experimented with language, creating new forms and vocabulary, returned — albeit posthumously — to influence subsequent generations of Ukrainian poets.

Author: Olha Herasymenko