Matsynsky, Ivan
Matsynsky, Ivan [Мацинський, Іван; Macyns'kyj], b 9 April 1922 in Medzilaborce, Prešov region, d 14 March 1987 in Prešov, Slovakia. Writer and cultural figure in the Prešov region. He worked in Prešov as an editor and literary consultant, a lecturer in political economy (1951–6), director of the Prešov Ukrainian National Theater (1956–60), head of the Department of Ukrainian Literature at the Slovak Pedagogical Publishing House (1960–9), the first secretary of the Cultural Association of Ukrainian Workers (KSUT, 1969–70), and an editor of Ukrainian literature at the Slovak Pedagogical Press (1970–85). While serving as the external director of the KSUT cultural and educational department he initiated the creation of the Ukrainian Branch of the Slovak Writers’ Union and served as its first chairman (1952–5), its secretary, and a member of the editorial board of its journal, Duklia (est 1953).
Matsynsky wrote several poetry collections: Belye oblaka (White Clouds [in Russian], 1949), Nasha mova (Our Language, 1956), Ivanko ta Olenka (1958), Karpats'ki akordy (Carpathian Chords, 1962), Prystritnyky (Sorcerers, 1968), the lyrical Vinky sonetiv (Garlands of Sonnets, 1985; his largest and finest collection), and the posthumous Merydiany i paraleli (Meridians and Parallels, 1989). He also wrote literary criticism and reviews; short stories (published mostly in Duklia); two plays in Russian (in the early 1950s); an anthology of Slovak poetry in Ukrainian translation (1953); a short novel, Zymova nich (A Winter’s Night, 1961), about collectivization in the Prešov region; a book, Rozmova storich (A Discourse of Centuries, 1965), on the sociocultural development of 18th- and 19th-century Transcarpathia; a book on Slovak and Ukrainian literary development and on J. Botto, with Ukrainian translations of Botto’s poetry (1981); scholarly studies of the Prešov Ukrainian National Theater, early Ukrainian primers, the 19th-century Transcarpathian poet V. Dovhovych, and the artist Orest Dubai; and materials for a cultural dictionary of Czechoslovakia’s Ukrainians (serialized in Duklia).
Roman Senkus
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]