Literature about Skovoroda. In Knyhar: litopys ukrayinskoho pysmenstva, vol. 1-3, 1920, pp. 14-24.

The author examines the problem of Hryhorii Skovoroda's work, which was relevant for nineteenth-century scholars. Petrov analyses the biographical evidence about Skovoroda in the works of Mykhailo Kovalinskyi, Gustav Hess de Calvet, and Ivan Vernet. He finds analogies between Skovoroda and his biographers and Socrates and Plato. Petrov notes that the Romantic era was a period of ‘spring’ for Skovoroda, characterised by interest in his biography among intellectuals. For example, the Romantics were primarily looking for the roots of pre-Romanticism in Skovoroda.

Interest in Skovoroda waned until the 90s of the nineteenth century, but revived after the publication of Dmytro Bahalii's The Works of H. Skovoroda. Petrov argues with Bahalii's conclusion about Skovoroda's philosophy, stressing that Skovoroda could not have been a reformer of Christianity because he was too independent a thinker. In conclusion, the author notes that we should abandon the Platonised interpretation of Skovoroda's philosophy in favour of an accurate analysis of his works.

Kateryna Skrypnyk