Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky (; ; in Kyiv – 24 July 1964 id.) was a Ukrainian poet, translator, academician, Doctor of Philological Sciences. Biography Rylsky was born in Kyiv in 1895 in a family of public activist, ethnographer, publicist, member of the "Kyiv Stara Hromada" (Old Community), Tadei Rozeslavovych Rylsky. His early education, young Rylsky received at home. In 1908 he entered the 3rd grade of the Kyiv Private Gymnasium of Volodymyr Naumenko. During his gymnasium period Rylsky befriended with families of Mykola Lysenko and Oleksandr Rusov. In 1915-17 he studied at medical faculty of Kyiv University, with creation of Ukrainian People's University in October 1917, Rylsky transferred to its history and philology faculty. Due to the Ukrainian–Soviet War, Rylsky left Kyiv in late 1917 and with his brother Ivan worked at food administration in the city of Skvyra, later worked as a rural teacher in villages nearby. In 1918 Bolshevik sympathizers in Romanivka drove Rylsky from his family house, robbed it, destroyed invaluable archive and library of his father.<ref name=tsion>Tsion, V. A son of szlachcic and peasant (Син шляхтича і селянки). Zbruch. 19 March 2015</ref> Rylsky returned to Kyiv only in 1923 where at first he earned a living as a teacher. Works He began writing poems early. His first poem was published in 1907 in a newspaper "Rada", his first collection "At white isles" () saw the world in 1910. Already in 1918 his poems "Tsarevna", "On the edge of the forest", collection "Beneath autumn stars" showed that period of internship and "voice sampling" has passed, and his 1922 collection "Blue distance" confirmed it for sure. The 1920s were marked by the poet's creative flourishing: his collections "Through storm and snow" (1925), "The 13th spring" (1926), "Where roads meet", "Hum and rumbling" (both 1929). In the last of those collections Rylsky arose also as a gifted translator of world poetry i.e. works of Paul Verlaine, Valery Bryusov, Stéphane Mallarmé, Maurice Maeterlinck, and others. The event of cultural and artistic life became a translation of "Pan Tadeusz" of Adam Mickiewicz. As a representative of the "pure art" doctrine, during the years when the Stalinists adopted the official doctrine of "socialist realism". In 1937 he was involved in rewriting the libretto of Mykola Lysenko's opera Taras Bulba, returning later to neo-classical forms. Maksym Rylsky is one of the most outstanding Ukrainian poets of the 20th century and master of the genres