Paulinka (play)
1913 play by Yanka Kupala
Paulinka (Belarusian: Паўлінка) is a comedy play in two parts by the Belarusian poet and writer Yanka Kupala. Written in 1912, it was first printed in 1913 in St. Petersburg by the publisher The Sun Will Peek into Our Window As Well (be:Загляне сонца і ў наша аконца).
Plot
Paulinka is the daughter of a petty nobleman (a village szlachcic), Sciapan Krynicki. She falls in love with the local teacher Yakim Saroka. Her father disapproves of this, planning to marry her to a wealthier szlachcic, Bykovsky. Paulinka and Saroka are planning to run away, but Yakim is arrested for his revolutionary views, ratted out by Bykovsky.
Play directors often replace the finale with a more optimistic one: the pair does run away.
History
The play grew out of Kupala's unfinished short story А вербы шумелі (And the Willows Rustled). It is suggested that the prototype of Paulinka was Kupala's lyrical friend Paulina Myadzyolka, but in later years she denied this.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6510965. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912 and 1913.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paulinka (play)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.