Ivan Kotliarevsky

Ivan Petrovych Kotlyarevsky (Template:Lang-uk) (b. 9 September [O.S. 29 August] 1769, 1769, Poltava - d. 10 November [O.S. 29 October] 1838, Poltava), was a Ukrainian writer, poet and a playwright widely regarded to be the father of the modern Ukrainian literature. His epic-style poem Eneïda (Енеїда) (1798), a parody of Virgil's Aeneid, is considered to be the first literary work published wholly in Ukrainian, an everyday language of millions, but officially unrecognized and discouraged from the literary usage in the Imperial Russia. His two plays, also living classics, Natalka-Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava) and Moskal'-Charivnyk (The Muscovite-Sorcerer) have started the development of Ukrainian national theater and opera.