“The travesty Eneida” by Ivan Kotlyarevskyi in interpretation of Swedish scholar Alfred Jensen

We analyze the work “The travesty Eneida” by Kotlyarevskyi by Alfred Jensen, the reknown Swedish Historian, Slavist and translator. This work was first published in German, within the scientific collection “Greetings to Ivan Franko in occasion of 40th anniversary of his writing activity, 1874–1914” (Lviv, 1916). The translation of this work into Ukrainian by Pavlo Volyanskyi was published in Peremyshl in 1921. The Scholar highly acclaims the poem “Eneida” by I. Kotlyarevskyi and that fact promoted an interest to the Ukrainian literature in the German-speaking cultural circles. The analysis of this work is made in the context of Alfred Jensen’s interest in Ukraine during prolonged time. In the first place, we emphasize the role of his first trip to Ukraine in the mid-1890s, when he visited Kyiv, made a cruise along Dnipro river, visit ethnography exhibition in Lviv and travelled throughout Halychyna. The results of this trip formed the bulk of his edition “Slavia. Cultural sketches from Volga to Danube (1896–1897)”, in Swedish. We cover the letter exchange between Alfred Jensen and Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and Mykhailo Kotsyubynskyi, his personal contacts with them, as well as with Ivan Franko and Vasyl Shchurat during his scientific trip to Ukraine, aimed on collecting material for his book about Hetman Ivan Mazepa, in 1909. This book was published in Stockholm in Swedish (1912), and then translated into Ukrainian by Natalia Ivanychuk, the translation being published twice (1993 and 2020). We mark also his book “Taras Shevchenko. The life of Ukrainian poet” in German (1910), translations of two stories by M. Kotsjubynskyi into Swedish and publishing them. We also emphasize his collabo-ration with M. Hrushevskyi in the “Notes of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society”, in particular his publications of archive materials about Ukrainian immigration in Sweden (Pylyp Orlyk and Voynaroskyi family). The works of A. Jensen about Ukraine keep their scientific value until now. Keywords: Alfred Jensen, “Eneida”, Ivan Kotlyarevskyi, Ivan Franko, Mykhaylo Kotsyubynskyi, Mykhaylo Hrushevskyi, Hetman Ivan Mazepa, Hetman Pylyp Orlyk, Voynaroskyi family.