Hryhori Skovoroda

The 18th-century Ukrainian philosopher, mystic, poet Hryhori Skovoroda, author of the collection of poems Garden of Divine Songs as well as several prose works, represents the end of the Ukrainian baroque, a period marked by a keen fascination with emblematics.

The very course of Skovoroda's life is emblematic, forming a circle. He fondly remembered the place of his birth as a land of woods, hills, springs, and gardens. Upon his death in 1794 he was buried, it is said, in a garden. Skovoroda reportedly asked that his epitaph read:

The world chased me but could not catch me.

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