The Poet on Ukraine’s 200-Hryvnia Note: Lesya Ukrainka and Her Play Forest Song

The front of Ukraine’s 200-hryvnia banknote bears the portrait of a woman: the poet and playwright Lesya Ukrainka (Леся Українка, 1871–1913). The back depicts the gate tower of Lutsk Castle, in Lutsk, the capital of Volyn Oblast.

In its description of the banknote, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) presents her as a writer spoken of alongside Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko, and notes that Franko called her “the only man in our literature.”

The Name Larysa Kosach

Her real name was Larysa Kosach-Kvitka (Лариса Косач-Квітка); her maiden family name was Kosach. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU, published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies), she was born on February 25, 1871, in Zviahel (Звягель), in Volyn Governorate. The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine (Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) refers to the same town by its pre-renaming name, Novohrad-Volynskyi. The town’s name was restored to Zviahel by a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (No. 2779-IX) on November 16, 2022.

Her mother was the writer Olena Pchilka (real name Olha Kosach), and her mother’s brother was the thinker Mykhailo Drahomanov. According to the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, the pen name “Lesya Ukrainka” was chosen by her mother, and it is thought possibly to have followed the signature “Ukrainets” (“a Ukrainian”) that Drahomanov used on some of his works.

In childhood she lived in Zviahel, Lutsk, and the village of Kolodiazhne, all in Volyn, before later moving to Kyiv. According to the same encyclopedia, in 1881 she caught a chill while watching an Epiphany ritual held at a river, which triggered leg pain and the start of what is called her “thirty years’ war” against tuberculosis. She did not attend school, studying instead under her mother and private tutors. IEU states that, in addition to the main languages of Western Europe, she mastered Greek, Latin, and Slavic languages, and translated Gogol, Mickiewicz, Heine, Hugo, and Homer.

Her First Published Poem, at Thirteen

According to IEU, she wrote the poem “Hope” at age nine, and in 1884 her poems “Lily of the Valley” and “Sappho” appeared in the Lviv magazine Zoria — her first works to be printed. Her first poetry collection, On the Wings of Songs, was published in Lviv in 1893. The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine states that Ivan Franko helped bring out this collection.

Lviv was at the time part of Austria-Hungary. In the Russian Empire, where she lived, the printing of Ukrainian-language books had been banned since the 1876 Ems Ukase (see our article on the Ems Ukase). According to the same encyclopedia, when On the Wings of Songs was reissued in Kyiv in 1904, several works were cut by the censors.

What Her Dramatic Poems Portrayed

IEU places the peak of her literary output in her dramatic poems (plays written in verse). According to the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, she wrote twenty dramatic works in all.

Many of her subjects were drawn from outside Ukraine: the Babylonian captivity of the Old Testament, ancient Troy, Christians in the Roman Empire, the legend of Don Juan, and more. IEU explains that her cycle of dramatic poems on the Babylonian captivity was written as a symbol of Ukrainians confined within the Russian Empire.

• Cassandra (1907): portrays Ukraine’s fate through the prophetess of a doomed Troy (IEU)
• The Nobleman’s Wife (1910): set in the late-17th-century era of the “Ruin.” IEU calls it the work in which her hostility toward Russian imperialism is most clearly expressed
• Forest Song (1911): based on legends of Polissia, in the northern part of the Volyn region
• The Stone Host (1912): retells the story of Don Juan as a conflict between social conformity and individual freedom (IEU)

According to the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, of her twenty dramatic works, only two — The Nobleman’s Wife and Forest Song — take Ukraine itself as their subject.

Forest Song, Born from the Forests of Polissia

Forest Song (Лісова пісня) is a work from 1911. The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine grounds it in the folklore of Polissia, a region of forests and marshes stretching from northwestern Ukraine into southern Belarus. IEU describes it as a work depicting the clash between lofty ideals and the prosaic details of everyday life.

According to the Lesya Ukrainka Portal, a website compiling a bibliography of her works, the draft was written in ten to twelve days in the summer of 1911, while she was convalescing in Kutaisi, Georgia, and revisions continued into October of that year. It was published in 1912, in issue 3 of the magazine Literary-Scientific Herald. The same site quotes a passage from a letter to her mother dated December 20 of that year, recalling how, at Kolodiazhne, she once ran alone into the forest on a moonlit night and waited for the forest spirit Mavka to appear.

In Volyn Oblast, a literary festival called “Forest Song,” which began in Kovel in 2001, is held every year in early August. According to the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ESU), the festival’s timing matches the season the work was written in, and the surrounding villages that take part are places where Lesya Ukrainka heard legends and wrote down folk songs.

The same portal records that the play’s premiere was held, after the author’s death, at a theater in Kyiv on November 22, 1918.

Death in Surami, and a Funeral Under Watch

According to the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, from the autumn of 1903 she lived mostly in Georgia with her husband, folklorist Klyment Kvitka. The two were formally married in 1907. She died at the resort town of Surami on August 1, 1913, at the age of 42.

Her body was brought to Kyiv by rail a week later and buried at Baikove Cemetery the following day. According to the same encyclopedia, the funeral procession from the station to the cemetery was accompanied by gendarmes, who directed it along side streets. Singing, reading eulogies, and even carrying flowers by hand were forbidden, and red ribbons and lettering the authorities deemed suspicious were cut from the wreaths. The encyclopedia states that she had long been under surveillance by the secret police.

The Portrait on the 200-Hryvnia Note

According to the NBU’s list of banknotes, the 200-hryvnia note bearing the portrait of Lesya Ukrainka and the gate tower of Lutsk Castle has existed since the version put into circulation on August 22, 2001. The main current version, designed in 2019, has been in circulation since February 25, 2020; the portrait moved from the right side to the center. As of September 2026, the 2007-design note is described as being “gradually withdrawn.”

On February 25, 2026, a version adding the slogan “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!” on the reverse also entered circulation.

Works Available in Japanese

According to the National Diet Library’s bibliographic records, as of September 2026 the following works are available to read in Japanese.

• 石の主 (The Stone Host), translated by Ayako Noriki, Gunzosha, 2023. Original title Камінний Господар
• “カッサンドラー” (Cassandra), translated by Shinichi Murata. Included in ウクライナ戲曲集 (Collected Ukrainian Plays), edited and translated by Shinichi Murata (Kokusho Kankokai, 2025)
• ウクライナの心　ウクライーンカの詩劇　スコヴォロダの寓話 (The Heart of Ukraine: Ukrainka’s Verse Dramas, Skovoroda’s Fables), edited and translated by Hidehiko Nakazawa and Inna Hadzhenko, Dnepr Publishing, 2021

Other Japanese translations of Ukrainian literature are covered in our article on Japanese translations of Ukrainian literature.

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