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The name of Marusia Churai is firmly inscribed in the cultural code of Poltava and the whole of Ukraine. She is a symbol of folk song, talent and a woman's destiny, full of both greatness and tragedy. She is a figure that balances between historical facts and legends, but is no less significant.
According to legend, Marusia was born in the village of Kryvokhatky near Monastyrskyi Hill in the suburbs of Poltava in the mid-seventeenth century. She is considered to be the author of a number of famous Ukrainian songs, including ‘Oh, Don't Go, Hryts, ‘The Winds Are Blowing’, and ‘The Cossacks Have Risen to the World’. Whether she was a historical figure is still an open question. However, her image inspired many artists, including the most famous Poltava resident Ivan Kotliarevskyi, who used the song "The winds are blowing, the winds are blowing wildly..." as the opening aria of Natalka Poltavka in the 1819 drama of the same name. The image of Marusia Churai has been approached at different times: Levko Borovykovskyi, Mykhailo Starytskyi, Olha Kobylianska, and Lina Kostenko, whose historical novel in verse, Marusia Churai, became a classic of modern Ukrainian literature and won the Shevchenko Prize in 1987.
Poltava has always been closely associated with the name of Marusia Churai. A street in the city is named after the legendary Churai. In 1987, an open amphitheatre with 7,000 seats, the Marusyia Churai Singing Field, was built in the Poltava municipal park of culture and recreation "Peremoha". .
In 2006, a memorial to folk song in the form of poetess Marusia Churai was unveiled in front of the Poltava Academic Music and Drama Theater named after Mykola Gogol, which is the only monument to the legendary singer in Ukraine.
Poltava regularly hosts events dedicated to Marusia Churai: literary evenings, school readings, exhibitions, presentations of research papers and educational publications. And since 2019, the main Poltava theatre stage has been successfully hosting a full house for the drama Marusia Churai based on the novel of the same name by Lina Kostenko.
Marusia Churai is not just a poetic heroine. She is the personification of folk memory, an integral part of Poltava's cultural identity. Through her songs, legends and personality, we touch the soul of the people who have been creating, fighting and remembering for centuries.
сер. ХVІІ ст.
On the slope of Instytutskyi Hill in the Student Park named after Dmytro Yudenko, there is a small spring that Poltava residents call the Marusia Churai well.
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