Taras Bulba
The Original 1835 Edition
Mykola Hohol  [Nikolai Gogol]
Translated by Michael M. Naydan and Olha Tytarenko
Edited by Ludmilla Trigos

ISBN ​​978-1-969900-27-3      212 pages         $20.00

Finally! Taras Bulba pure: free from Orthodox-imperial pathos and independent of the russkii mir. Get acquainted here with Mykola Hohol, Ucrainien, as he defined himself while travelling in Europe. 
     Yuri Andrukhovych

This novella, originally brought to my attention in my youth as the work of Nicholas Gogol (Hohol’s “Russian” name) is, in this new translation by Michael M. Naydan and Olha Tytarenko, a timely telling of a 16th century Ukrainian struggle for independence as the nation yet again struggles for the same.
     The original edition of “Taras Bulba” (1835) was written in Russian with Ukrainian elements to acquaint readers in the Russian Empire with Hohol’s native land. After being criticized for the absence of Russia in the narrative, Hohol was coerced into publishing an expanded version in 1842 extolling the Tsar, Russia, and Russian Orthodoxy, which would have been impossible since Russia was one of the main enemies of the Ukrainian Cossacks at the time. That coerced 1842 edition has virtually been the only one translated to date. The original was published in St. Petersburg by Nicholai Gogol, after Hohol, of Cossack gentry, moved to St. Petersburg to further his literary ambitions. Much like Hemingway--a great admirer of Hohol’s--moved from Illinois to Paris to write his fiction, so Hohol moved from Velyki Sorochyntsi in central Ukraine to St. Peterburg, the difference being that unlike Hohol, Hemingway didn’t have to abandon his native tongue.
     Though considered the father of “Russian” realism--Dostoyevsky said “We
all come out from under Gogol’s ‘overcoat’”--I read this novella as an example of
Romanticism, not because the time of the novella’s writing coincides with the literary
movement. Of all the inventiveness of Romanticism--Coleridge’s suspension of
disbelief, imagination before reason, the individual before society--the movement
eulogized the non-industrial past of “natural” man.
     Just as Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Rob Roy helped forge a new Scottish
identity of wild, non-industrial, barren Scottish highlands, so Hohol’s Bulba does the
same for Ukrainians. By elevating the fierceness, brutality, loyalty to tribe and
religious devotion of the Zaporzhian Cossacks in their war with the Poles, Hohol
enriches the folkloric soil of the Ukrainian steppes with warriors’ blood and pride.
In a time of war, Naydan and Tytarenko’s translation of Taras Bulba serves as
a metaphoric raised fist to the would-be oppressors of 21st century Ukraine.
     Janet Hamill


Michael Naydan and Olha Tytarenko have performed an immense service for students of Ukrainian and Russian history, culture and politics with their definitive translation of Taras Bulba. Rejecting colonial perspectives, Naydan and Tytarenko demonstrate that Nikolai Gogol was in fact Mykola Hohol, a Ukrainian writer living in a Russian empire.                  
    Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark

This long-awaited publication fills an essential lacuna. English language readers will now be able to access and appreciate, thanks to Naydan and Tytarenko's nuanced and sensitive translation, the robust richness of Hohol's original vision from the time he was most committed to showcasing the richness of Ukrainian history and culture.
     Vitaly Chernetsky 

Ukrainian writer Mykola Hohol (aka Nikolai Gogol in the Russian version of his name) is one of the greatest nineteenth-century writers in the Slavic literary world. Known as a Ukrainian author who wrote in Russian, the language of the Russian Empire, Hohol occupies a major place in the Ukrainian literary canon with his early Ukrainiann-themed works: the Gothic horror stories Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, his Romantic novel Taras Bulba, and his Mirhorod tales including “Viy.” He occupies the pinnacle in the pantheon of Russian culture with his brilliant short stories such as “The Overcoat” and “The Queen of Spades,” his brilliant comedy The Inspector General, and his extraordinary satirical novel Dead Souls.

Michael Naydan is Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University and a well-known translator of Ukrainian literature. In 2024 he received the Outstanding Contribution to the Profession Award by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and E. European Languages. He has published over 50 articles on literary topics, more than 80 translations in journals and anthologies, and translated or co-translated over 45 books. His latest volume of Oleh Havrish’s The Eerie Tales of Grandma Havryshykha (co-translated with Svitlana Budzhak Jones and Oksana Husieva) is forthcoming with Cervena Barva Press.

Olha Tytarenko is Senior Lector in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. She has co-translated five books with Michael Naydan including Aleksandr Strashny’s The Ukrainian Mentality: An Ethno-Psychological, Historical, and Comparative Exploration (ibidem Press, 2024), and Maria Matios’ Sweet Darusya: A Tale of Two Villages (2019) and Yuri Vynnychuk’s Tango of Death (2019), both with (Spuyten Duyvil Publishers).