What makes Kobylianska’s literary achievements even more remarkable is that she did all of this writing in Ukrainian, rather than the German language in which she was educated. Although she was deeply inspired by the great German thinkers of her time, German and Austrian editors made it clear that the themes of her work — women’s inner lives, social constraints, and peripheral provincial settings — were of “little interest” to a wider European readership.

“Choosing Ukrainian, therefore, meant turning away from the prestige, institutional support, and broader readership associated with imperial culture in favor of a language widely regarded as provincial and culturally secondary. In this sense, writing in Ukrainian functioned as an act of cultural commitment and intervention within an emerging national project,” Ladygina explained.