Hryhorii Skovoroda, Ukrainian philosopher, poet, and composer (d. 1794)
Gregory Skovoroda, also Hryhoriy Skovoroda, or Grigory Skovoroda (Latin: Gregorius Scovoroda; Ukrainian: Григорій Савич Сковорода, Hryhoriy Savych Skovoroda; Russian: Григо́рий Са́ввич Сковорода́, Grigory Savvich Skovoroda; 3 December 1722 – 9 November 1794) was a philosopher of Ukrainian Cossack origin who lived and worked in the Russian Empire. He was also a poet, teacher and composer of liturgical music. His significant influence on his contemporaries and succeeding generations and his way of life were universally regarded as Socratic, and he was often called a "Socrates." Skovoroda's work contributed to the cultural heritage of both modern-day Ukraine and Russia, both countries claiming him as a native son.Skovoroda wrote his texts in a mixture of three languages: Church Slavic, Russian, and Ukrainian, with a large number of Western-Europeanisms, and quotations in Latin and Greek. Most of his preserved letters were written in Latin or Greek, but a small fraction used the variety of Russian of the educated class in Sloboda Ukraine, a result of long Russification but with many Ukrainianisms still evident.He received his education at the Kiev Mogila Academy in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine). Haunted by worldly and spiritual powers, the philosopher led a life of an itinerant thinker-beggar. In his tracts and dialogs, biblical problems overlap with those examined earlier by Plato and the Stoics. Skovoroda's first book was issued after his death in 1798 in Saint Petersburg. Skovoroda's complete works were published for the first time in Saint Petersburg in 1861. Before this edition many of his works existed only in manuscript form.