Shevchenko

A peculiar situation evolved among the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the early 19th century. As we have seen, the intellectual currents that permeated much of Eastern Europe and Russia did not bypass Ukraine.

The generation of the 1840s, which included individuals such as the historian Kostomarov, the author Kulish, and the poet Shevchenko, was based not in Kharkiv, but in Kiev where a new university had been founded in 1834. Its members hailed from both the Right Bank and the Left Bank and their social origins were more varied than those of their gentry predecessors.

Among the young men of the 1840s, one individual – Taras Shevchenko – towered above the rest. Indeed, it may be argued that Shevchenko’s impact on his countrymen was greater than that of any other Ukrainian in modern history. That a poet should have attained such preeminence in a developing nation of 19th-century Eastern Europe is not unusual. Cultural activity was the one arena in which the stateless Slavs could express their individuality, so poets, writers, and scholars often played leading roles as “national awakeners.” Nevertheless, it is difficult to find another example of an individual whose poetry and personality so completely embodied a national ethos as did Shevchenko for the Ukrainians.

For his countrymen, Shevchenko’s biography symbolized his nation’s sad fate. Born in 1814 in Moryntsi, a village on the Right Bank, Shevchenko grew up as an orphaned serf. When his master took him along as a servant to St Petersburg, the youth’s talents as a painter attracted the attention of several leading artists who, in 1838, helped him to buy his freedom. Shevchenko then entered the Imperial Academy of the Arts where he obtained a first-rate education. Meanwhile, his growing contacts with the numerous Ukrainian and Russian artists and writers in the capital greatly broadened his intellectual horizons. Soon he was consumed by the need to express himself in poetry. In 1840, his first collection of Ukrainian poems, entitled Kobzar (“The Bard”), appeared in print. Based largely on Ukrainian historical themes, these powerful, direct, and melodious poems were quickly hailed as the work of a genius by Ukrainian and Russian critics alike.

The appearance of the Kobzar, as George Luckyj notes, was the single most important event in the history of Ukrainian literature because “in his work the Ukrainian language achieved for the first time literary excellence.”¹³ It transcended the one-dimensional, limited role that Ukrainian literature had fulfilled up until now and disproved the views of those, such as the famous Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky, who believed that the language of the Ukrainian peasant was incapable of expressing cultivated thoughts and feelings. In reply to Belinsky’s belittling view of Ukrainian, Shevchenko wrote:

You’ve given me a sheepskin coat Alas, it does not fit. The garment of your own wise speech Is lined with falsehood’s wit.¹⁴

Shevchenko’s success also countered the example set by his contemporary fellow Ukrainian Nikolai Gogol, who believed that if talented Ukrainians wished to attain literary fame and fortune they could do so only within the context of Russian literature.

Shevchenko expanded the flexibility, range, and resources of Ukrainian by synthesizing several Ukrainian dialects, the colloquialisms of peasants and townsmen, and the forms and vocabulary of Church Slavonic.

Shevchenko’s concerns and impact radiated far beyond the literary sphere. The former serf never forgot his “unfortunate brothers” and in the thundering tones of a biblical prophet he castigated the exploiters of the enserfed peasantry. Unlike most of his colleagues among the intelligentsia, Shevchenko did not believe in liberal, gradualistic projects of reform. His poems openly advocated radical, revolutionary solutions to injustice in society. In his famous Zapovit (“Testament”), Shevchenko called upon his countrymen to bury him on a steep cliff above the Dnieper and then to rise in revolt:

Make my grave there – and arise, Sundering your chains, Bless your freedom with blood of foemen’s evil vein! Then in that great family, A family new and free, Do not forget, with good intent Speak quietly of me.¹⁵

Inextricably interwoven with Shevchenko’s anger about social injustice was his bitterness about national oppression in Ukraine, “this land of ours that is not ours,” as he described it. An implacable enemy of tsarist autocracy, he called for Ukrainian self-determination long before his more cautious colleagues espoused the idea. This stand is clearly evident in his treatment of Ukrainian history, his favorite theme. For Shevchenko, Khmelnytsky was a “genial rebel,” but also the man responsible for Ukraine’s fateful union with Russia that resulted in the loss of Ukrainian self-rule. Cossack leaders who stood up to the tsars, such as Polubotok, earned his sympathy; those who cooperated with Moscow were severely criticized. Shevchenko did not mask his hatred of Peter I whom he called a “tyrant” and “torturer” and Catherine II did not fare better with him.

Now I understand It was the First who crucified our Ukraine And the Second finished off the widowed orphan. Murderers! Murderers! Cannibals!¹⁶

But Shevchenko’s nationalism was not of the narrow, chauvinistic variety. He viewed Ukraine’s striving for freedom as part of a universal struggle for justice. As the poems “The Heretic,” dedicated to Jan Hus, the famous Czech martyr, and “Caucasus” suggest, he sympathized with downtrodden peoples all over the world.

Shevchenko’s poetry, some of it so rebellious that it was not published until 1905, exposed his contemporaries to new and unsettling ideas and emotions. After reading it, the historian Kostomarov wrote that “Shevchenko’s muse tore away the shrouds that shielded us from the life of the people and it was terrible, sweet, painful and intoxicating to behold.”¹⁷ Shevchenko forced his colleagues to see in the narod (the people) not merely colorful customs, but their suffering. In Cossack history he sought not romantic heroes, but lessons that would lead to a better future. For him Ukraine was not just a picturesque region of the Russian Empire, but a land that could and should stand on its own.