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.