Eneida
This mock-heroic poem is considered to be the first literary work published wholly in the Ukrainian vernacular.
The talented depiction of various elements of the life of the Ukrainian people in the context of language, history, traditions and everyday life brought the poem great success among contemporaries, caused many imitations, and led to the final displacement of the old literary language from the literary use by the vernacular.
[1] Eneida is a parody of Virgil's Aeneid, where Kotliarevsky transformed the Trojan heroes into Zaporozhian Cossacks.
[2] It is a loose retelling[3][4] of N. P. Osipov's 1791 Aeneid Travestied Inside Out [ru] (Russian: Виргилиева Энеида, вывороченная наизнанку), written in Russian; the latter being a free translation of Aloys Blumauer's Virgils Aeneis, travestiert (1784), which in turn hails back to Paul Scarron's 1648 poem Le Virgile travesty en vers burlesques.
The poem is in top-100 list by "From Skovoroda to modern time: 100 most important creative art in Ukrainian".
Juno, who did not love Aeneas, the son of Venus, ran to the wind god Aeolus to raise a storm and drown the Trojans.
He said that the fate of Aeneas had already been decided — he would go to Rome to "build a strong kingdom", "drive the whole world into serfdom" and "they will all be leaders".
The queen fell in love with Aeneas and walked with him so that he forgot about his main goal — the construction of Rome.
They both went down the street to hell, where Drowsiness, Yawning, and Death lived, and behind them stood the plague, war, cold, famine, and other calamities.
Finally he met his father Anchises, who said that Aeneas will found "a great and zealous family", that "will rule the whole world".
The guide sailor sees an island ruled by the cruel queen Circe, who turns people into animals.
Meanwhile, Juno, seeing that Aeneas is already allowing himself too much, decides to give him a good lesson for his impudent behavior.
Nyz and Evrial showed great courage, cut out many enemies, and when they returned, they came across Latins going to their camp.
The young men try to hide in the woods, but the Latins tracked them down, surrounded the forest, from which "you can not slip away", and began to look for a "brave couple".
Colonel Wolsent executed Evrial, and Nyz thrust his sword into the enemy and fell in battle.
Then the artillery chief begins to embarrass them, to remind them that Aeneas "considers us soldiers, the grandchildren of the most glorious grandfathers".
Juno turned into the image of Aeneas and lured Turnus to the ship so that he would sail home and not die.
For this, Zeus quarrels with Juno and says: "We have already told all the gods: Aeneas will be with us in Olympus to eat the same pies that I tell you to bake."
Another partial translation was published by University of Toronto Press in 1963 in the anthology Ukrainian Poets 1189–1962, by C. H. Andrusyshen and Watson Kirkconnell.
[6] However, the first full English translation of Kotliarevsky's magnum opus Eneida was published only in 2006 in Canada by a Ukrainian-Canadian Bohdan Melnyk, most well known for his English translation of Ivan Franko's Ukrainian fairy tale "Mykyta the Fox" (Ukrainian: Лис Микита).
Еней був парубок моторний І хлопець хоть куди козак, На лихо здався він проворний, Завзятіший од всіх бурлак.
Но греки, як спаливши Трою, Зробили з неї скирту гною, Він, взявши торбу, тягу дав; Забравши деяких троянців, Осмалених, як гиря, ланців, П'ятами з Трої накивав.
Він, швидко поробивши човни, На синє море поспускав, Троянців насадивши повні, І куди очі почухрав.
Но зла Юнона, суча дочка, Розкудкудакалась, як квочка, — Енея не любила — страх; Давно уже вона хотіла, Його щоб душка полетіла У пекло, щоб і дух не пах.
He quickly built some boats of timber, Then launched them in the quiet sea And filling them with muscle limber He hit the foam where eyes could see.
