up and in 1901 Kobylians'ka met with the female writer Lesia Ukrainka (1871-1913). The meeting produced an intensely passionate union that was realised through correspondence as illness and circumstances prevented them from living together. The literary critic Ihor Kostetsky later suggested that their relationship was lesbian, while George S. N. Luckyj believes that: "There was probably little or no physical contact between the two women, though the language of their letters appears homo-erotic".Solomiia Pavlychko has noted the strong homoerotic motifs found in Kobylians'ka's published work, most notably Valse mélancolique. Her other well known novels were Zemlya (Land, 1902) and V nedilyu rano zillia kopala (On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs, 1909). Of the latter, Vitaly Chernetsky wrote:The book's plot is based on a well-known Ukrainian folk song, "Oi ne khody, Hrytsiu..." ("O Don't Go Out, Hryts'..."). In it, a young man, Hryts', courts two young women simultaneously. One of the two women, in despair, poisons her beloved with an herb potion. Since the plot of the work is known to the reader in advance, attention is turned instead to its presentation: the narrative techniques employed, the description of nature, rural customs and rituals, and the additional subplots and details introduced by the author. The novel's plot is developed through the introduction of a new set of characters, nomadic Gypsies who move between [a rural area in the Ukrainian Carpathians] and the Hungarian plain and play a pivotal role in the text. This element of what contemporary cultural studies would term hybridity makes Kobylians'ka's novel stand out among the works of Ukrainian Modernists tackling folkloric themes. Simultaneously, some of her poetic and prose works in the abstract-symbolic style were published in various local magazines such as Svit and Ukrainian Hut. Mykhailo Starytsky later wrote a play under the same name V nedilyu rano zillia kopala. That work was also translated into several languages. Later Kobylianska met and traveled with fellow Ukrainians such as Lesia Ukrainka, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, who influenced her cultural and political outlook. Together with other writers such as Marko Cheremshyna, Osyp Makovey, Katria Hrynevycheva, she described World War I. Some of her stories of that period were Juda, The letter of a convicted soldier to his wife, and others. In 1918, she strongly opposed the union of Bukovina with Romania, which resulted in her persecution by the new Romanian authorities. In 1940, when the