Panas Myrny Street, 56. Panas Myrny's Memorial estate

Official page of the Poltava Panas Myrny's Memorial estate




Panas Myrnyi's house-museum

Amidst cosy picturesque outskirts of Poltava there stands the house-museum of a classic of the Ukrainian literaturePanas Myrnyi (Panas Rudchenko).

A one-storey wooden white-washed house is hidden among poplars and bushes of lilac. Whenever you come here everything cherishes your eyes. You think about Panas Myrnyi's time and better understand his life and creative activity.

This museum is one of the richest in Ukraine. Here about a thousand items, books, photographs and documents are exhibited in seven rooms of the writer's house. More than 150 manuscripts of Panas Myrnyi and his brother Ivan Bilyk (Ivan Rudchenko) together with whom the great novel "Do oxens roar if their crib is full?" was written, over 280 pages of epistolary heritage of the writer and the memberes of his Family, the first editions of Panas Myrnyi's works, memoirs of contemporaries about him, part of the archives of the magazine "Ridnyi krai" ("Native land") are all kept in the museum.

The works of the writer were published into Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Lithuanian, Russian, Slovak and other languages.

The museum was opened in 1940. The writer's average son Mikhailo Rudchenko headed it over 20 years. In 1951 a bronze bust of Panas Myrnyi on a labradorite base was placed in the yard of his homestead. In 1985 in the new building the literary exposition was opened.

In the Book of Visitors to the museum there are warm and sincere lines devoted to Panas Myrnyi and his creative work written by the admirers of his talent from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Latvia, Poland, the USA.

Panas Myrnyi bought the house in 1903 in 3d Kobyshchanska street which lately was renamed after him. Here he was working hard during the last 17 years of his life. He worked on his novel "A Loose Woman", wrote in prose the poem "Dream", short stories "Work", "Nonsense", "The adventures with the "Kobsar", plays, verses, essais and articles. He translated into Ukrainian and published the poem by Henry Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha", prepared for publishing the tragedy by William Shakespeare "King Lear", went on working on translation of the play "The Virgin of Orlean" by Frederic Shiller.

Panas Myrnyi took part in unveiling of the monument to Ivan Kotlyarevskyi, in the annual celebrations of Taras Shevchenko's anniversaries, in edition of the magazine "Ridnyi krai". He also founded the children publishing house "Zirka" ("The star").

The writer's wife Alexandra Rudchenko (her girl's name was Sheydeman) came from a German family. She perfectly knew German and French and worked as a music teacher at a College for girls of noble origin.

Panas Myrnyi's homeplace remembers the voices of Lesia Ukrainka and Olena Pchilka, Mikhailo Kotsyubynskyi and Vasyl Stephanyk, Gnat Khotkevych and Volodymyr Samiylenko. Maria Zankovetska's and Mykola Lysenko's hands touched the keys of this very piano...

From here Panas Myrnyi walked to the centre of the town to the place of his job - the Social Maintenance Chamber.

Here on the 28th of January 1920 at the age of 71 the writer quietly passed away.

Behind the neat house a small garden stretches down the hill to the pond. Thick willow - trees bend their long branches over the dark waters... A hundred year old oak-trees stand like in a deep dream...

• Shemchuk V.A.
• Piven I.P.