Amvrosy Metlinsky

Amvrosy Metlinsky (Амвросій Метлинський, romanized: Amvrosii Metlynskyi; 1814 in Sary, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire – 29 July 1870 in Yalta, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire) was a Ukrainian poet, ethnographer, folklorist and panslavist. Professor at the University of Kharkiv.

Metlinsky was a professor of Russian Literature at Kharkiv University from 1843–49, and again from 1854–58. From 1849–54 he was a professor at Kyiv University. During the 1830s, the city of Kharkiv became the center of Ukrainian Romanticism. Metlinsky and other authors such as Izmail Sreznevsky and Nikolay Kostomarov published ethnographic materials, native interpretations of Ukrainian history, and collections of folk legends and Cossack chronicles. In 1839, he published a collection of poetry called Dumky i pisni ta shche deshcho (Thoughts and Songs and Some Other Things) under his pseudonym Amvrosii Mohyla. In 1848, he published an anthology of works by other Kharkiv poets called Iuzhnyi russkii sbornik (Southern Russian Anthology).

Metlinsky's poetry contains his nostalgia for the glories of the Ukrainian Cossack past, which he believed were destined never to return. He described his poetry as "the work of the last bandurist who passes on the song of the past in a dying language". He did not believe in the possibility of a renaissance of the Ukrainian people, which led him to embrace Pan-Slavic unity. His nostalgia prompted him to collect Ukrainian folk songs which he published in 1854. The most part of this collection was previously unpublished.

In his autobiography, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi mentions collections of Ukrainian folk songs published by Metlinsky as works that influenced him.