Реферат на тему:
Т.Г.Шевченко
(пошукова робота на англійській мові)
Shevchenko, Taras [?ev?enko] b 9 March 1814 in Moryntsi, Zvenyhorod
county, Kyiv gubernia, d 10 March 1861 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
(Photo: Taras Shevchenko.) Ukraine’s national bard and famous artist.
Born a serf, Shevchenko was orphaned when he was twelve and grew up in
poverty and misery. He was taught to read by a village precentor and was
often beaten for ‘wasting time’ on drawing. At the age of 14 he became a
houseboy of his owner, P. Engelhardt, and served him in Vilnius
(1828–31) and then Saint Petersburg. Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko’s
artistic talent, and in Saint Petersburg he apprenticed him to the
painter V. Shiriaev for four years. Shevchenko spent his free time
sketching the statues in the capital’s imperial summer gardens. There he
met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other
compatriots, such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the
Russian painter A. Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met
the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait
of the Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovsky as the prize in a lottery whose
proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko’s freedom on 5 May 1838.
Soon after, Shevchenko enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint
Petersburg and studied there under Briullov’s supervision. In 1840 his
first poetry collection, Kobzar, consisting of eight Romantic poems, was
published in Saint Petersburg. It was followed by his epic poem
Haidamaky (The Haidamakas, 1841) and the ballad Hamaliia (1844). While
living in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko made three trips to Ukraine, in
1843, 1845, and 1846, which had a profound impact on him. There he
visited his still enserfed siblings and other relatives, met with
prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals (eg, Hrebinka, Panteleimon
Kulish, and Mykhailo Maksymovych), and was befriended by the princely
Repnin family (especially Varvara Repnina). Distressed by the tsarist
oppression and destruction of Ukraine, Shevchenko decided to capture
some of his homeland’s historical ruins and cultural monuments in an
album of etchings, which he called Zhivopisnaia Ukraina (Picturesque
Ukraine, 1844).
After graduating from the academy of arts in 1845, Shevchenko became a
member of the Kyiv Archeographic Commission and traveled widely through
Russian-ruled Ukraine in 1845 to sketch historical and architectural
monuments and collect folkloric and other ethnographic materials. In
1844 and 1845, mostly while he was in Ukraine, he wrote some of his most
satirical and politically subversive narrative poems, including ‘Son’ (A
Dream), ‘Sova’ (the Owl), ‘Kholodnyi Iar,’ ‘Ieretyk’/ ‘Ivan Hus’ (The
Heretic/Jan Hus),‘Slipyi’ (The Blind Man), ‘Velykyi l’okh’ (The Great
Vault), and ‘Kavkaz’ (The Caucasus). He transcribed them and his other
poems of 1843–45 into an album he titled ‘Try lita’ (Three Years).
While in Kyiv in 1846, Shevchenko joined the secret Cyril and Methodius
Brotherhood. Like the other members of the brotherhood, he was arrested,
on 5 April 1847. The authorities’ confiscation and discovery of his
anti-tsarist satirical poems in the ‘Try lita’ album brought Shevchenko
a particularly severe punishment—military service as a private in the
Orenburg Special Corps in a remote region by the Caspian Sea. Tsar
Nicholas I himself ordered that Shevchenko be forbidden to write, draw,
and paint while in military exile. While serving at the Orenburg and
Orsk fortresses, however, Shevchenko managed to continue doing so. He
hid his secretly written poems in several handmade ‘bootleg booklets’
(1847, 1848, 1849, 1850). Many of the drawings and paintings he made
while in exile depict the life of the indigenous Kazakhs. Owing to
Shevchenko’s skill as a painter, he was included in a military
expedition to survey and describe the Aral Sea (1848–9).
In 1850 Shevchenko was transferred to the Novopetrovskoe fortress (now
Fort Shevchenko in Kazakhstan), where the terms of his captivity were
more harshly enforced. Nevertheless, he managed to create over a hundred
watercolor and pencil drawings and write several novellas in Russian.
Finally released from military exile in 1857, two years after Nicholas
I’s death, Shevchenko was not allowed to live in Ukraine. After spending
half a year in Nizhnii Novgorod, he moved to Saint Petersburg. He was
allowed to visit relatives and friends Ukraine in 1859, but there he was
detained and interrogated and sent back to Saint Petersburg. Shevchenko
remained under police surveillance until his death. He was buried in
Saint Petersburg, but two months later, in accordance with his wishes,
his remains were transported to Ukraine and reburied on Chernecha Hora
(Monk’s Mountain) near Kaniv. Since that time, his grave has been a
‘holy’ place of visitation by millions of Ukrainians. Today it is part
of the Kaniv Museum-Preserve (est 1925).
Shevchenko has had a unique place in Ukrainian cultural history and in
world literature. Through his writings he laid the foundations for the
creation of a fully functional modern Ukrainian literature. His poetry
contributed greatly to the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness,
and his influence on various facets of Ukrainian intellectual, literary,
and national life is still felt to this day.
Shevchenko’s literary oeuvre consists of one mid-sized collection of
poetry (Kobzar); the drama Nazar Stodolia and two play fragments; nine
novellas, a diary, and an autobiography written in Russian; four
articles; and over 250 letters. Already during his first period of
literary activity (1837–43), he wrote highly sophisticated poetic works.
He adapted the style and versification of Ukrainian folk songs to
produce remarkably original poems with a complex and shifting metric
structure, assonance and internal rhyme, masterfully applied caesuras
and enjambments, and sophisticated alliterations grafted onto a 4 + 4 +
6 syllable unit derived from the kolomyika song structure. He also
abandoned use of the regular strophe. Innovations can also be found in
Shevchenko’s use of epithets, similes, metaphors, symbols, and
personifications. A man of his time, his worldview was influenced by
Romanticism. But Shevchenko managed to find his own manner of poetic
expression, which encompassed themes and ideas germane to Ukraine and
his personal vision of its past and future.
Shevchenko’s early works include the ballads ‘Prychynna’ (The Bewitched
Woman, 1837), ‘Topolia’ (The Poplar, 1839), and ‘Utoplena’ (The Drowned
Maiden, 1841). Their affinity with Ukrainian folk ballads is evident in
their plots and supernatural motifs. Of special note is Shevchenko’s
early ballad ‘Kateryna’ (1838), dedicated to Vasilii Zhukovsky in memory
of the purchase of Shevchenko’s freedom (see also his painting Kateryna,
which is based on the same poem). In it he tells the tale of a Ukrainian
girl seduced by a Russian soldier and abandoned with child—a symbol of
the tsarist imposition of serfdom in Ukraine. Some of his other poems
also treat the theme of the seduced woman and abandoned mother—‘Vid’ma’
(The Witch, 1847], ‘Maryna’ (1848), and the ballads ‘Lileia’ (The Lily,
1846) and ‘Rusalka’ (The Mermaid, 1846). The oblique reference to
Ukraine’s history and fate in ‘Kateryna’ is also echoed in other early
poems, such as ‘Tarasova nich’ (Taras’s Night, 1838), ‘Ivan Pidkova’
(1839), Haidamaky (1841), and Hamaliia (1844). Cossack raids against the
Turks are recalled in ‘Ivan Pidkova’ and Hamaliia; ‘Tarasova nich’ and,
especially, Haidamaky draw on the struggle against Polish oppression.
Shevchenko wrote the Romantic drama Nazar Stodolia (1843–44) toward the
end of his early period of creativity. Its action takes place near
Chyhyryn, the 17th-century capital of the Cossack Hetmanate.
Although Shevchenko’s early poetic achievements were evident to his
contemporaries, it was not until his second period (1843–5) that through
his poetry he gained the stature of a national bard. Having spent eight
months in Ukraine at that time, Shevchenko realized the full extent of
his country’s misfortune under tsarist rule and his own role as that of
a spokesperson for his nation’s aspirations through his poetry. He wrote
the poems ‘Rozryta mohyla’ (The Ransacked Grave, 1843), ‘Chyhyryne,
Chyhyryne’ (O Chyhyryn, Chyhyryn, 1844), and ‘Son’ (A Dream, 1844) in
reaction to what he saw in Ukraine. In ‘Son’ he portrayed with bitter
sarcasm the arbitrary lawlessness of tsarist rule. Shevchenko’s talent
for satire is also apparent in his 1845 poems ‘Velykyi l’okh,’ ‘Kavkaz,’
‘Kholodnyi Iar,’ and ‘I mertvym, i zhyvym …’ (To the Dead and the
Living.). ‘Velykyi l’okh, ’a ‘mystery’ in three parts, is an allegory
that summarizes Ukraine’s passage from freedom to captivity. In ‘Kavkaz’
Shevchenko universalizes Ukraine’s fate by turning to the myth of
Prometheus, the free spirit terribly punished for rebelling against the
gods, yet eternally reborn. He localizes the action in the Caucasus,
whose inhabitants suffered a fate similar to that of the Ukrainians
under tsarism. In his poetic epistle ‘I mertvym, i zhyvym …’ Shevchenko
turns his bitterness and satire against the Ukrainians themselves,
reminding them that only in ‘one’s own house’ is there ‘one’s own truth’
and entreating them to realize their national potential, stop serving
foreign masters, and become honorable people worthy of their history and
heritage, in their own free land.
Similarly, in his poem ‘Try lita’ (1845), which has also been used as
the name of the second period of Shevchenko’s poetic creativity and the
body of work he wrote at that time, he presents his own ‘awakening’ to
the shame around him. Shevchenko laments his lost innocence and scorns
the coming new year ‘swaddled’ in one more ukase. His scorn for the
inactivity of his compatriots is also echoed in the poem ‘Mynaiut’ dni,
mynaiut’ nochi’ (Days Pass, Nights Pass, 1845), in which somnolent
inactivity is seen as far worse than death in chains. In December 1845
Shevchenko composed a cycle of poems titled ‘Davydovi psalmy’ (David’s
Psalms). He chose the psalms that had a meaning for him (1, 12, 43, 52,
53, 81, 93, 132, 136, 149) and imbued those biblical texts with
contemporary political relevance. He ends his ‘Try lita’ album with his
famous ‘Zapovit’ (Testament, 1845), a poem that has been translated into
more than 60 languages. After being set to music by H. Hladky in the
1870s, the poem achieved a
s??????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Shevchenko’s historical poem ‘Ivan Hus,’ aka ‘Ieretyk’ ( 1845),
introduced another of Shevchenko’s major themes. Dedicated to Pavel
?afa?ik, it depicts the trial and burning of Jan Hus in Konstanz in 1415
to promote the Pan-Slavism of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood.
Shevchenko wrote his poetic cycle ‘V kazemati’ (In the Casemate) in the
spring of 1847 during his arrest and interrogation in Saint Petersburg.
It marks the beginning of the most difficult, late period of his life
(1847–57). The 13 poems of the cycle contain reminiscences (the famous
lyrical poem ‘Sadok vyshnevyi kolo khaty’ [The Cherry Orchard by the
House]); reflections on the fate of the poet and his fellow members of
the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood; and poignant reassertions of his
beliefs and his commitment to Ukraine. Shevchenko’s stand was
unequivocal, and he exhorted his fellow Cyrillo-Methodians and all of
his compatriots to ‘Love your Ukraine / Love her … in the harshest time
/ In the very last harsh minute / Pray to God for her.’ Throughout his
exile, Shevchenko’s views did not change. But his poems grew more
contemplative and reflective. In his ‘bootleg booklets’ he continued
writing autobiographical, lyrical, narrative, historical, political,
religious, and philosophical poems. Of special interest is his long poem
‘Moskaleva krynytsia’ (The Soldier’s Well, 1847, 2d variant 1857), which
reveals Shevchenko’s preoccupation with the themes of inhumanity and the
capacity to accept and forgive. A comparison of its two variants
provides an insight into Shevchenko’s maturation as a poet and thinker.
Shevchenko’s autobiographical poems include such lyrical works as ‘Meni
trynadtsiatyi mynalo’ (I Was Turning Thirteen, 1847), ‘A. O.
Kozachkovs’komu’ (For A. O. Kozachkovsky, 1847), ‘I vyris ia na
chuzhyni’ (And I Grew Up in Foreign Parts, 1848), ‘Khiba samomu
napysat’’ (Unless I Write Myself, 1849), ‘I zolotoi i dorohoi’ (Both
Golden and Dear, 1849), and ‘Lichu v nevoli dni i nochi’ (I Count Both
Days and Nights in Captivity, 1850, 2d variant 1858). But personal
reflection also occurs in some of his ‘landscape’ poems, especially
where Shevchenko describes the paysage of his captivity—eg, ‘Sontse
zakhodyt’, hory chorniiut’’ (The Sun Is Setting, the Hills Turn Dark,
1847) and ‘I nebo nevmyte, i zaspani khvyli’(The Sky Is Unwashed, and
the Waves Are Drowsy, 1848). Varied and rich are the poems devoted to
narratives and description motivated by his memories of peasant life.
Shevchenko uses folk-song elements to depict sadness, parting,
loneliness, folkways, motherhood, women’s harsh fate, and the longing
for happiness. His poetic style is marked by the use of simple language,
concrete descriptions, metaphors, and personification. Shevchenko
consistently refined his use of folkloric material. He expanded the use
of ancient symbolism and made full use of the expressivity of folk
songs. His adaption and transformation of folkloric elements was so
successful that many of his poems became folk songs (such as Reve ta
stohne Dnipr shyrokyi [The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows]) in their
own right.
Shevchenko sporadically reiterated his political convictions and
continued pointing to the tsarist enslavement of individuals (serfdom)
and nations. In his poem ‘Poliakam’ (To the Poles, 1847), he once again
called for a Polish-Ukrainian pan-Slavic brotherhood. Shevchenko used a
Kazakh legend in his short poem ‘U Boha za dveryma lezhala sokyra’
(Behind God’s Door Lay an Ax, 1848) to describe in allegorical terms the
Kazakhs’ misfortunes under Russian rule. Satire remained part of his
poetic arsenal. In the poem ‘Tsari’ (Tsars, 1848, revised 1858) he
presented killing, debauchery, incest, and adultery as typical of royal
courts, including those of King David of Israel and Grand Prince
Volodymyr the Great. The successful combination of an offhand burlesque
style with bitter invective gave Shevchenko a powerful but somewhat
veiled weapon in his attack on monarchism in general and tsarism in
particular. Much more direct are his accusations against the tsars in
‘Irzhavets’’ (1847, revised 1858).
Parallel to the motifs of the seduced girl and the unwed mother, which
occur frequently in Shevchenko’s poems, is the motif of incest. It
appears in ‘Tsari’ and ‘Vid’ ma’ and forms the basis for ‘Kniazhna’ (The
Princess, 1847). Although in many of his poems Shevchenko harshly
attacked the hypocrisy of the church and clergy, he remained steadfast
in his belief that divine justice would triumph one day not only in
Ukraine, but throughout the world. His millenarian vision appears in
many of his poems, but it is perhaps best encapsulated in the following
lines from ‘I Arkhimed i Halilei’ (Both Archimedes and Galileo, 1860):
‘An d on the reborn earth / There will be no enemy, no tyrant / There
will be a son, and there will be a mother, / And there will be people on
the earth.’
The last period of Shevchenko’s creativity began after his return from
exile in 1857 and ended with his death in 1861. It is marked in his
works by more frequent allusions to the Bible and classical literature
and by the increasingly dominant role of contemplative lyricism. The
period contains such longer poems as ‘Neofity’ (The Neophytes, 1857),
‘Iurodyvyi’ (The Holy Fool, 1857), the second redaction of ‘Vid’ma’
(1858), ‘Nevol’nyk’ (The Captive, begun in 1845 and finished in 1859),
and ‘Mariia’ (1859). There are also renditions of biblical
texts—‘Podrazhaniie Iiezekiiliu, Hlava 19’ (Imitation of Ezekiel,
Chapter 19, 1859), ‘Osii, Hlava 14’ (Esau, Chapter 14, 1859), ‘Isaia,
Hlava 35’ (Isaiah, Chapter 35, 1859), and ‘Podrazhaniie 11 Psalmu’
(Imitation of the Eleventh Psalm, 1859)— in which Shevchenko turns to
the Scriptures for analogies to the contemporary situation. In the
latter poem he proclaims what could be considered the motto of his
creativity: ‘I will glorify / Those small, mute slaves! / On guard next
to them / I will place the word.’ This last period also contains some of
Shevchenko’s most profound contemplative poems. The period ends with a
reflective poem addressed to his muse, ‘Chy ne pokynut’ nam, neboho’
(Should We Not Call It Quits, [My] Friend), written in two parts on 26
and 27 February 1861, eleven days before his death. Like many of
Shevchenko’s last poems, it is full of allusions to classical mythology,
including a reference to the river Styx, which he was preparing to
cross.
The novellas Shevchenko wrote while in exile were not published during
his lifetime. They reflect the influence of the satirical-expose prose
of Nikolai Gogol, but also contain many asides (excursions into the
past, inserted episodes, authorial comments, reminiscences, and
commentaries). Although written in Russian, they contain many
Ukrainianisms. The first two of them—‘Naimichka’ (The Servant Girl,
1852–3) and ‘Varnak’ (The Convict, 1853–4)— share the anti-serfdom
themes of Shevchenko’s Ukrainian poems with the same titles. ‘Kniaginia’
(The Princess, 1853) is similar in theme to his poem ‘Kniazhna.’ The
remaining six novellas—‘Muzykant’ (The Musician, 1854–5), ‘Neschastnyi’
(The Unfortunate Man, 1855), ‘Kapitansha’ (The Captain’s Woman, 1855),
‘Bliznetsy’ (The Twins, 1855), ‘Khudozhnik’ (The Artist, 1856), and
‘Progulka s udovol’stviiem i ne bez morali’ (A Stroll with Pleasure and
Not without a Moral, 1856–8)— are not thematically similar to any
particular poems. Shevchenko also kept a daily diary in Russian; it is
of great value in interpreting his poetic works and an important source
for studying his intellectual interests and development.
Shevchenko has held a unique position in Ukrainian intellectual history,
and the importance of his poetry for Ukrainian culture and society
cannot be underestimated. His Kobzar marks the beginning of a new era in
Ukrainian literature and in the development of the modern Ukrainian
language. Through his poetry, Shevchenko legitimized the use of
Ukrainian as a language of modern literature. His poems’ revolutionary
and political content found resonance among other captive peoples. The
earliest translations of his poems—mainly into Polish, Russian, Czech,
and German—appeared while he was still alive. By the 1990s parts of the
Kobzar had been translated into more than 100 languages. Shevchenko’s
poetry has also become a source of inspiration for many other works of
literature, music, and art.
Although Shevchenko is known primarily because of his poetry, he was
also an accomplished artist; 835 of his art works are extant, and
another 270 of his known works have been lost. Although trained as an
academic artist (see Academism) in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko moved
beyond stereotypical historical and mythological subjects to realistic
depictions on ethnographic themes (see Genre painting), such as his
painting A Peasant Family (1844), often expressing veiled criticism of
the absence of personal, social, and national freedom under tsarist
domination. His portraits have a broad social range of subjects, from
simple peasants (eg, Praying for the Dead, 1857) and petty officials to
prominent Ukrainian and Russian cultural figures (eg, Portrait of
Vasilii Zhukovsky [1844], Portrait of Mykhailo Maksymovych [1859]),
Ukrainian historical figures (eg, Portrait of Vasyl Kochubei [1859]),
members of former Cossack starshyna families (eg, Portrait of Hanna
Zakrevska [1843], Portrait of Platon Zakrevsky [1843], Portrait of Illia
Lyzohub [1846]), and members of the imperial nobility (Princess
Keikuatova [1847], Portrait of Nikolai Lunin [1838]). They are
remarkable for the way Shevchenko uses light to achieve sensitive
three-dimensional modeling. He painted or sketched over 150 portraits,
43 of them of himself. He also painted and drew numerous landscapes and
recorded such Ukrainian architectural monuments as The Vydubychi
Monastery (1844), Bohdan’s Church in Subotiv (1845), The Ascension
Cathedral in Pereiaslav (1845), The Ruins of Subotiv (1845), The Pochaiv
Monastery from the South (1846), and Askoldova Mohyla (1846). While in
exile he depicted the folkways of the Kirghiz and Kazak people (eg, By
the Fire [1849], Kazak on a Horse [1849], The Baigush [1853], The
Baigush under the Window [1856]) and the landscapes of Central Asia (eg,
The Raim fort on the Syr-Darya [1848], Fire in the Steppe [1848],
Dalismen-Mula-Aulye [1848], Turkmenian Sepulchres at Kara Tau [1856])
and the misery of life in exile and in the imperial army (eg, In Prison
[1856–57], In the Stocks [1856–57], Running the Gauntlet [1857]).
Shevchenko frequently turned in his paintings and drawings to literary,
historical, and mythological motifs (eg, Diogenes [1856], Narcissus and
Echo [1856], Saint Sebastian [1856], Robinson Crusoe [1856], Mermaids
[1859]). He was also very proficient in watercolor, aquatint, and
etching. On 2 September 1860 the Imperial Academy of Arts recognized his
mastery by designating him an academician-engraver.
The significance of Shevchenko and his oeuvre has given rise to
thousands of multifaceted biographical, bibliographic, literary,
textological, linguistic, lexicographic, psychological, pedagogical,
religious, philosophical, political, sociological, and art-historical
studies. Of prime importance to all of them have been Shevchenko’s
poetic and artistic works. Most of his manuscripts are preserved in the
Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
in Kyiv. A unique collection of Shevchenkiana can also be found in the
National Library of Ukraine—over 15,000 items collected by Yurii
Mezhenko. The largest collection of published editions of Shevchenko’s
works and of documents about his life and oeuvre is found at the Taras
Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv. Some of his manuscripts and papers
are also preserved in other archives, libraries, and museums in Ukraine,
Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Cracow, and Geneva. There is no complete
register of all archival Shevchenkiana, nor does a complete bibliography
of works by and about Shevchenko exist, especially of translations of
Shevchenko and of works about him in foreign languages.
The first known published works about Shevchenko date from 1839. During
his lifetime, various reviews of his poetry appeared in the Ukrainian,
Russian, Polish, Czech, German, French, and Italian press. The first
edition of Shevchenko’s poems to appear outside the Russian Empire was
Novyia stikhotvoreniia Pushkina i Shavchenki [sic] (The New Poems of
Pushkin and Shevchenko, Leipzig, 1859), published on the initiative of
Panteleimon Kulish. The first full edition of Shevchenko’s Kobzar
appeared in Saint Petersburg in 1860, as did a Russian translation with
a bibliography of Shevchenko’s published works and other Russian
translations. Also published there was his last book before his
death—Bukvar’ iuzhnorusskii (A South Russian [ie, Ukrainian] Primer,
1861), which Shevchenko prepared in 1860 for Ukrainian Sunday schools
and personally subsidized.
In the early 1860s most studies about Shevchenko appeared in the journal
Osnova (Saint Petersburg). The first article about him in German, by
H.-L. Zunk, appeared in Die Gartenlaube (Leipzig) in 1862 (no. 28). The
first separately published study of Shevchenko’s life and work was
written in Polish: Leonard Sowi?ski’s Taras Szewczenko (1861), with a
Polish translation of ‘Haidamaky’ as an addendum. Another work in
Polish, A. Gorza?czy?ski’s Przek?ady pisarzow ma?orossyjskich: Taras
Szewczenko (Translations of Little Russian Writers: Taras Shevchenko),
was published in 1862 (repub 1863) by. A biographical and critical study
in Polish, G. Battaglia’s Taras Szewczenko, ?ycie i pisma jego (Taras
Shevchenko, His Life and Letters, 1865), did much to popularize
Shevchenko among Polish readers. Johann Georg Obrist, the first
translator of Shevchenko into German, used Battaglia’s work to write
T.G. Szewczenko, ein kleinrussischer Dichter (1870). Vasyl P. Maslov’s
Taras Grigor’evich Shevchenko: Biograficheskii ocherk (Taras Hryhorovych
Shevchenko: A Biographical Sketch, 1874, 1887), the first relatively
complete Russian biography of Shevchenko, was also based on Battaglia’s
work.
The tsarist circular issued by Minister Petr Valuev in 1863 and the Ems
Ukase of 1876 put an effective stop to the publication of works in
Ukrainian in the Russian Empire. Publications of Shevchenko’s works and
works about him were thenceforth issued primarily in Austrian-ruled
Galicia and abroad. Poezii Tarasa Shevchenka (The Poems of Taras
Shevchenko), which appeared in Lviv in 1867 in two volumes, contained
mainly Shevchenko’s political poems. In Russian-ruled Ukraine they were
either prohibited or published in censored editions. After the
appearance of the two-volume Prague edition of Shevchenko’s Kobzar
(1876), the French scholar E.-A. Durand published a large promotional
article in Revue des deux mondes (15 June 1876), ‘Le poete national de
la Petite-Russie, T. G. Chevtchenko.’ This article stimulated the
writing of two similar articles— by J. A. Stevens in The Galaxy (New
York, June 1876) and by C. Dickens, Jr, in All the Year Round (London, 5
May 1877). At about the same time, Volodymyr Lesevych published his
article ‘Taras Shevchenko, el gran poeta de Ucraina’ and some
translations of Shevchenko’s poems in the Madrid journal La Ilustracion
espanola y americana (1877, no. 4). A more thorough article, Karl-Emil
Franzos’s ‘Die Kleinrussen und ihr Saenger,’ appeared in Augsburger
Allgemeine Zeitung (1877, nos 164–65). It was expanded into a booklet,
Vom Don zur Donau (1878), in which Franzos emphasized the universality
of Shevchenko’s works. Of importance in making Shevchenko accessible to
the world at large was the work done by the emigre scholar and
revolutionary Mykhailo Drahomanov. Of special note is his brochure La
litterature oukrainienne proscrite par le gouvernement russe, which was
distributed at the 1878 Literary Congress in Paris. In Geneva,
Drahomanov published a two-vol edition of Kobzar (1881), Marija, maty
Isusowa: Wirszy Tarasa Szewczenka z uwahamy M. Drahomanowa (Mary, Mother
of Jesus: Poems by Taras Shevchenko with Comments by M. Drahomanov,
1882), and Poezii Tarasa Shevchenka, zaboroneni v Rosii (Poems by Taras
Shevchenko Banned in Russia, 1890).
In the 1880s the main promoter of Shevchenko was the prominent Galician
radical, journalist, writer, and scholar Ivan Franko. From his early
‘Prychynky do otsinennia poezii Tarasa Shevchenka’ (Contributions to the
Evaluation of Taras Shevchenko’s Poetry, S’vit, 1881, nos 8–12, and
1882, no. 1) onward, Franko wrote on various aspects of Shevchenko’s
creativity. His perceptive study of the poem ‘Perebendia’ (1889)
considers Shevchenko’s uniqueness in the context of European Romanticism
and the Ukrainian folk tradition. Insights into Shevchenko’s use of the
ballad genre are found in Franko’s ‘“Topolia” T. Shevchenka’ (T.
Shevchenko’s ‘Topolia,’ 1890).
Interest in Shevchenko grew in the late 19th century. Oleksander Konysky
expanded his articles on Shevchenko in Zoria (Lviv) into a monograph,
Taras Shevchenko-Hrushivs’kyi: Khronika ioho zhyttia (Taras
Shevchenko-Hrushivsky: A Chronicle of His Life, 2 vols, 1898–1901); an
abridged version of vol 1 was published in Russian in Odesa in 1898.
Basing his work on the sources available, Konysky corrected many errors
in previous biographies of Shevchenko and presented the first scholarly
biography of Ukraine’s national bard. Stanyslav Liudkevych’s article on
the origin and meaning of musicality in Shevchenko’s poetry (Moloda
Ukraina, 1901, nos 5–6, 8–9, and 1902, no. 4) was the first of many
works dealing with Shevchenko’s poetics. Mykhailo Komarov laid the
bibliographic foundation of of Shevchenkiana with his guide to
publications on Shevchenko in literature and art (1903).
Vasyl Domanytsky’s 367-page textological study of Kobzar was published
in Kievskaia starina (1906, nos 9–12) and as a separate monograph in
1907. The first ‘full’ edition of Kobzar was edited by him and published
in Saint Petersburg in 1907 (repub in 1908). Dmytro Yavornytsky’s
booklet of valuable archival materials on Shevchenko’s life was
published in 1909. Also of interest was his study on the Zaporozhian
Cossacks in Shevchenko’s poetry, published in Letopis’ Ekaterinoslavskoi
uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii (no. 8 [1912).
A number of important works appeared in 1914, the centenary year of
Shevchenko’s birth: Vasyl Shchurat’s collection of articles Z zhyttia i
tvorchosty Tarasa Shevchenka (From the Life and Works of Taras
Shevchenko; Oleksii Novytsky’s Taras Shevchenko iak maliar (Taras
Shevchenko as an Artist, 1914), the first major study on that subject;
and Yakym Yarema’s ‘Uiava Shevchenka’ (Shevchenko’s Imagination), a
study of the metaphor in Shevchenko’s poetry, published in a Ternopil
gymnasium’s annual report in 1914.
A major contribution to Shevchenko studies was written by the Swedish
Slavist Alfred Jensen; his monograph Taras Schewtschenko: Ein
ukrainisches Dichter-leben (1916) pointed to the universal themes and
concerns in Shevchenko’s poetry. Stepan Balei produced the first
psychological analysis of Shevchenko’s works, Z psykholohii tvorchosty
Shevchenka (On the Psychology of Shevchenko’s Creativity, 1916).
Shevchenko studies continued developing during the 1917–20 struggle for
Ukraine’s independence and in the 1920s under the early Soviet regime.
Scholars at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) wrote on
Shevchenko using various approaches: research and documentation (Serhii
Yefremov, Mykhailo Novytsky, Volodymyr V. Miiakovsky, Yevhen Markovsky);
the sociology of literature (Dmytro Bahalii, Yosyf Hermaize, Oleksander
Doroshkevych, Mykola Plevako, Volodymyr Koriak); esthetic criticism
(Pavlo Fylypovych, Viktor Petrov, Petro Rulin, B. Varneke); and
formalism (Borys Yakubsky, Ahapii Shamrai, Yarema Aizenshtok, Borys
Navrotsky). The first Soviet book in Shevchenko studies was the essay
collection Taras Shevchenko (1921), edited by Yevhen Hryhoruk and
Fylypovych, published on the 60th anniversary of the poet’s death. Many
important studies of Shevchenko were published in the jubilee
collections Shevchenkivs’kyi zbirnyk (The Shevchenko Miscellany, 1924)
and Shevchenko ta ioho doba (Shevchenko and His Era, 2 vols, 1925–6]).
Notable studies also appeared separately: Aizenshtok’s booklet
Shevchenkoznavstvo—suchasna problema (Shevchenko Studies: A Current
Problem, 1922); Bahalii’s T. H. Shevchenko i Kyrylo-Metodiivtsi (T. H.
Shevchenko and the Cyrillo-Methodians, 1925); Oleksander Bahrii’s Taras
Shevchenko v literaturnoi obstanovke (Taras Shevchenko’s Literary
Environment, 1925); and Plevako’s Shevchenko i krytyka (Shevchenko and
Criticism, 1926) . In Polish-ruled interwar Galicia, two important
studies appeared: Ilarion Svientsitsky’s Shevchenko v svitli krytyky i
diisnosty (Shevchenko in the Light of Criticism and Reality, 1922) and
Mykhailo Vozniak’s Shevchenko i kniazhna Repnina (Shevchenko and
Princess Repnina, 1925).
In 1926 the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Research Institute was
established in Kharkiv, with a branch in Kyiv, to collect Shevchenko’s
manuscripts and artworks and study his life and oeuvre. Research was
published in the institute’s annual collection Shevchenko ( 1928, 1930)
and its bimonthly Literaturnyi arkhiv (1930–1). The Kyiv branch prepared
a dictionary of Shevchenko’s lexicon and a dictionary of his
acquaintances, but the Stalinist terror prevented their publication.
Serhii Yefremov was a leading Shevchenko scholar of the first quarter of
the 20th century was. His many articles were reprinted in the collection
Taras Shevchenko (1914). In 1921 Yefremov became head of the VUAN
Commission for the Publication of Monuments of Modern Literature. One of
the commission’s objectives was the preparation of an academic edition
of Shevchenko’s works. Only two vols appeared—vol 4, Shchodenni zapysky
(Daily Notes, 1927), and vol 3, Lystuvannia (Correspondence, 1929),
edited by Yefremov and annotated by various scholars. The remaining
volumes, as well as O. Novytsky’s volume on Shevchenko’s artistic works,
were never published, because most of the above scholars were arrested
and perished in Stalinist prisons and concentration camps during the
1930s.
The terror of the 1930s cut short the meaningful study of Shevchenko in
the USSR for decades. The relatively few scholars who survived were
placed under the control of Party officials who had nothing to do with
scholarship and whose main role was to liquidate all manifestations of
independent thought and opinion. A long period of systematic
falsification of Shevchenko’s works began, and it lasted, to a greater
or lesser degree, until the demise of the USSR. Most Soviet studies of
Shevchenko written in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s by Party officials
(eg, Volodymyr Zatonsky, Andrii Khvylia, and Yevhen Shabliovsky) merit
little discussion.
Meanwhile, meaningful Shevchenko studies were produced by emigre
scholars in the West. In the 1930s, the main center of Shevchenko
studies was the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw, whose
associates prepared and published 13 volumes of a 16-volume edition of
Shevchenko’s complete works (1934–38) before the German and Soviet
occupation of Poland in 1939 put an end to the project. Vols 2–4 and
6–12 were edited by Pavlo Zaitsev, vol 14 by Bohdan Lepky, and vol 15 by
Roman Smal-Stotsky; vol 16 consisted of a bibliography compiled by
Volodymyr Doroshenko. Vol 1 was not published; Zaitsev’s biography of
Shevchenko, which had been planned for that volume, was published
separately two decades later, in 1955, in the United States. The volumes
contained commentaries and annotations by the editors and other
Shevchenko scholars such as Leonid Biletsky, Ivan Bryk, Dmytro
Doroshenko, Oleksander Lototsky, Yevhen Malaniuk, Stepan Siropolko, and
Dmytro Chyzhevsky. In 1934 two other books on Shevchenko were published
in Warsaw: Zaitsev’s Polish study on Shevchenko and the Poles in the
context of Ukrainian-Polish relations in the mid-19th century; and
Stepan-Stotsky’s Taras Shevchenko: Interpretatsii (Taras Shevchenko:
Interpretations, reprinted in New York in 1965), which focused on the
bard’s criticism of and opposition to Russian domination.
In Prague, meanwhile, Vasyl Simovych wrote a popular study of
Shevchenko’s life and works (1934; reprinted in 1941 and 1944). Much
earlier, in 1921 while in Berlin, he had prepared an annotated edition
of Kobzar. Also in Berlin, Dmytro Doroshenko prepared a popular booklet
in German, Schewtschenko, der grosse ukrainische Nationaldichter (1929);
it was also translated and published in French (1931), English (as Taras
Shevchenko: The National Poet of the Ukraine and Taras Shevchenko: Bard
of Ukraine, 1936, repr 1946), and Italian (1939). Doroshenko also wrote
a survey of post-First World War Shevchenko studies, ‘Die Forschung
ueber Taras ?ev?enko in der Nachkriegszeit,’ published in Zeitschrift
fuer slavische Philologie, 9 (1932). In 1937 the Ukrainian Scientific
Institute in Berlin published Taras Schewtschenko, der ukrainische
Nationaldichter, l814–l86l, a collection of articles by K. H. Meyer, G.
Specht, and Zenon Kuzelia and of translations of Shevchenko’s poems.
In France, Elie Borschak (I. Borshchak) pointed to Shevchenko’s role in
the struggle for Ukrainian self-determination in his article ‘Le
mouvement national ukrainien au XIXe siecle,’ Le Monde Slave, November
1930. A few years later the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) in Lviv
published Borschak’s Shevchenko u Frantsii: Narys iz istorii
franko-ukrains’kykh vzaiemyn (Shevchenko in France: A Historical Sketch
of Franco-Ukrainian Relations, 1933). Another notable contribution to
Shevchenko studies before the Second World War was Filaret Kolessa’s
book on Shevchenko’s poetry (Lviv 1939); it contains two
monograph-length works, on the folkloric element in Shevchenko’s poetry
and on Shevchenko’s verse form.
Several valuable studies appeared during the Second World War: Yarema
Aizenshtok’s Iak pratsiuvav Shevchenko (How Shevchenko Worked, 1940); O.
Borshchahivsky and M. Yosypenko’s book on Shevchenko and the theater
(1941); Mykola Hrinchenko’s book on Shevchenko and music (1941);
Sviatoslav Hordynsky’s booklet on Shevchenko the painter (1942); Yevhen
Yulii Pelensky’s Shevchenko—kliasyk (Shevchenko: A Classic, 1942); and
some articles by Leonid Bulakhovsky and Oleksander Doroshkevych.
After the Second World War, the Institute of Literature of the Academy
of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR concentrated on completing a 10-volume
‘full academic’ edition of Shevchenko’s works begun in the 1930s. Vols
3–4 (dramatic works) appeared in 1949, and vol 5 (the diary and
autobiography), in 1951. Vols 1–2 (the poetry) were reprinted from the
1939 edition in 1951 and 1953, and vol 6 (letters, notes, etc), in 1957.
Vols 7–10 (the artworks) did not appear until 1961–4. Unfortunately this
edition was not free of the censorship and falsifications that had
marred Shevchenko studies in Soviet Ukraine. Some, though by no means
all, of its deficiencies were removed from the subsequent ‘full’ edition
of Shevchenko, which appeared in 6 vols in 1963–4. Reproductions of
Shevchenko’s artistic oeuvre were also published in a separate
four-volume edition in 1961–4. Beginning in 1952 the Institute of
Literature held annual conferences on Shevchenko and published the
proceedings in collections; unfortunately, much of their content
mirrored the Party line and limitations on scholarly freedom and rigor.
Nonetheless, some worthwhile books did appear: Sava Chavdarov’s on
Shevchenko’s pedagogical ideas (1953); V. Shubravsky’s on Shevchenko’s
dramaturgy (1957, 1959, 1961); D. Iofanov’s on Shevchenko’s life and
works (1957); Yurii Ivakin’s on Shevchenko’s satire (1959, 1964); and
Yevhen Nenadkevych’s Z tvorchoi laboratorii T. H. Shevchenka (From T. H.
Shevchenko’s Creative Laboratory, 1959).
Many works appeared in Ukraine to mark the 150th anniversary of
Shevchenko’s birth in 1961 and the centenary of his death in 1964. Among
the more notable books published then in Ukraine were Yurii Ivakin’s on
the style of Shevchenko’s political poetry (1961) and his two-volume
commentary on Kobzar (1964–8); Vasyl S. Vashchenko’s on Shevchenko’s
language (1963); Petro Prykhodko’s on Shevchenko and Ukrainian
Romanticism (1963); Hryhorii Verves’s on Shevchenko and Poland (1964); a
two-volume dictionary of Shevchenko’s vocabulary (1914); and a
two-volume bibliography of Shevchenkiana (1963) written on the territory
of the former USSR during the years 1839–1959. The latter work was
augmented in 1968 by F. Sarana’s bibliography of Shevchenko studies
published during the years 1960–64, but it also excluded works written
outside the USSR.
In the 1970s the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of
the Ukrainian SSR prepared three important ‘collective’ works:
Shevchenkoznavstvo: Pidsumky i problemy (Shevchenko Studies: Summations
and Problems, 1975) and Shevchenkivs’kyi slovnyk (A Shevchenko
Dictionary, 2 vols, 1978), both of them under the chief editorship of
Yevhen Kyryliuk; and Tvorchyi metod i poetyka T. H. Shevchenka (The
Creative Method and the Poetics of T. H. Shevchenko, 1980).
In the postwar West, contributions to Shevchenko studies were published
in the serials and books of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences
in Canada and the United States. These included a reprint of the
four-volume Kobzar edited and annotated by Leonid Biletsky; and Taras
?ev?enko, 1814–1861: A Symposium (1962), edited by George Yurii Shevelov
and Volodymyr V. Miiakovsky. The Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh),
which was reconstituted by emigre scholars in Western Europe, North
America, and Australia after the war, created a Shevchenko Studies
Commission; the commission, headed by Pavlo Zaitsev, published his
afore-mentioned biography of Shevchenko (1955) as well as ?ev?enko: Sein
Leben und sein Werk (1965), edited by J. Bojko (Yurii Blokhyn) and E.
Koschmieder. Various articles about Shevchenko and about his works were
also published in Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka, vols 161
(1953), 167 (1958), 176 (1962), 179–80 (1965), 187 (1976), and 214
(1991). The NTSh also prepared guides to Shevchenkiana in the libraries
of Paris (1961) and Munich (1914).
In Munich, the Ukrainian Free University (UVU) published Bojko’s
Shevchenko i Moskva (Shevchenko and Moscow [ie, Russia], 1952); the
Ukrainian version of his booklet Taras Shevchenko and West European
Literature (1956); and, with the Slavic and Baltic Philology Seminar at
the University of Munich, the collection Taras ?ev?enko, 1814–1861
(1964). In 1944 Demian Horniatkevych’s earlier booklet on Shevchenko as
an artist was published in German translation as Taras Schewtschenko als
Maler, and Ivan Keivan’s new work on Shevchenko the artist also appeared
that year.
In postwar North America, Mykola Denysiuk’s publishing house in Chicago
republished the Warsaw edition of Shevchenko’s works in 14 vols
(1959–63). Vol 13, edited by Bohdan Kravtsiv, was devoted to Shevchenko
studies and contained selected articles by Panteleimon Kulish, Ivan
Franko, Vasyl Shchurat, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Serhii Yefremov, Oleksii
Novytsky, Stepan Smal-Stotsky, Borys Navrotsky, and Filaret Kolessa. In
1961 Vasyl Barka’s book about Shevchenko, Pravda Kobzaria (The Kobzar’s
Truth), appeared. The Shevchenko jubilee year of 1964 saw the appearance
of Luka Lutsiv’s Taras Shevchenko, spivets’ ukrains’koi slavy i voli
(Taras Shevchenko, the Singer of Ukrainian Glory and Freedom) and the
collection of articles and translations Taras Chevtchenko, 1814–1861: Sa
vie et son oeuvre, edited by K. Uhryn and A. Joukovsky (Arkadii
Zhukovsky). Sixteen years later, George Stephen Nestor Luckyj compiled
and edited an important collection of English-language and translated
criticism, Shevchenko and the Critics, 1861–1980 (1980).
In the postwar West, booklets on Shevchenko’s religious beliefs and
philosophy were written by L. Biletsky (1949), Wasyl Jaszczun (1959),
and Ivan Vlasovsky (1961); larger works on the subject include D.
Buchynsky’s Khrystyians’ko-filosofs’ka dumka Tarasa H. Shevchenka (Taras
H. Shevchenko’s Christian Philosophical Thought, 1962); Relihiinist’
Tarasa Shevchenka (Taras Shevchenko’s Religiosity, 1964) by Metropolitan
Ilarion (ne Ivan Ohiienko); and I. Stus’s Relihiini motyvy v tvorchosti
Tarasa Shevchenka (Religious Motifs in Taras Shevchenko’s Works, 1989).
Entirely new interpretations of Shevchenko were published in North
America in the 1980s. George Grabowicz proposed a new mythopoeic and
psychoanalytical approach in The Poet as Mythmaker: A Study of Symbolic
Meaning in Taras ?ev?enko (1982; Ukrainian trans 1991). Examining the
structures and paradigms of the bard’s mythical thought, Grabowicz
examines the relationship between Shevchenko’s Ukrainian-language poetry
and his Russian-language prose, the tension between Shevchenko’s
nativism and his universality as a poet, and the connection between his
revolutionary fervor and his apparent fatalism. A few years later Leonid
Pliushch contributed another pioneering work in the study of
Shevchenko’s mythopoeic vision, Ekzod Tarasa Shevchenka (Taras
Shevchenko’s Exodus, 1986). In his detailed analysis of two variants of
Shevchenko’s poem ‘Moskaleva krynytsia’ (A Soldier’s Well), Pliushch
formulates the fundamental syncretic ‘mythology’ unifying Shevchenko’s
literary oeuvre.
With the considerable lessening of political pressure and censorship
that occurred in Ukraine in the late 1980s, several new works departing
from the official Soviet Communist party line in Shevchenko studies were
published in Kyiv. Ivan Dziuba’s comparative study of Shevchenko’s and
A. Khomiakov’s attitudes toward pan-Slavism, U vsiakoho svoia dolia
(Each Has One’s Fate, 1989), challenged a number of proscribed
principles of Soviet-era Shevchenko studies by presenting Shevchenko’s
views as contrary to those of the Russian pan-Slavists and as advocating
Ukrainian political independence. In the early 1990s several new,
illustrated books about Shevchenko’s life and works focused on his role
as the awakener of Ukrainian national consciousness; and formerly
forbidden works by Ukrainian emigre scholars, including Zaitsev,
Grabowicz, and Pliushch, were reprinted in Ukraine. Also, in 1993, Kyiv
University began publishing a new scholarly periodical Shevchenkoznavchi
studii (Shevchenko Studies). Dziuba’s new study of Shevchenko’s
‘Kavkaz,’ Zastukaly serdeshnu doliu (They Cornered Our Wretched Fortune,
1995), focused on the anti-imperialist motifs in Shevchenko’s poetry and
presented a critique of Russian imperialism, especially as it pertains
to the tsarist conquest of Caucasia. Dziuba’s essays on Shevchenko’s
legacy, many of which deal with comparative studies of Shevchenko and
several Western European poets, were republished in his collection Z
krynytsi lit (From the Wellspring of Years) in 2001.
The most important contributions to Shevchenko studies to appear in
post-Soviet Ukraine have continued the analysis of the poet’s mythopoeic
and philosophical vision. Oksana Zabuzhko’s Shevchenkiv mif Ukrainy
(Shevchenko’s Myth of Ukraine, 1997) provides a detailed analysis of
earlier literary scholarship on the subject and presents a synthetic
interpretation of Shevchenko as a creator of a “nation-consolidating
artistic mythology” in the tradition of Dante, Cervantes, and Goethe.
George Grabowicz’s collection of essays Shevchenko, iakoho ne znaiemo
(The Shevchenko We Don’t Know, 1998) continues his earlier attempts at
uncovering the psychological and mythopoeic ‘code’ of Shevchenko’s works
(focusing, among others, on tracing the poet’s ‘symbolic autobiography’
and analyzing the motifs of self-definition in his poetry), and presents
a critique of ‘mainstream’ Shevchenko studies in post-Soviet Ukraine.
Ie. Nakhlik’s Dolia. Los. Sut’ba (Fate, 2003) provides a new comparative
study of the works of Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz, and Aleksandr
Pushkin.
An important new biographical and textological study of Shevchenko and
his works is P. Zhur’s Trudy i dni Kobzaria (The Kobzar’s Work and Days,
2003) while the most significant study of Shevchenko’s paintings and
engravings is V. Iatsiuk’s Maliarstvo i hrafika Tarasa Shevchenka
(Painting and Graphic Art of Taras Shevchenko, 2003).
In 2001 A Concordance to the Poetic Works of Taras Shevchenko in 4 vols,
compiled by Oleh Ilnytzkyj and G. Hawrysch, was copublished by the
Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States and the Canadian
Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press as the first publication of this
type in the area of Ukrainian studies. Also in 2001, the first volume of
the fullest annotated edition of Shevchenko’s works (12 vols) was
published in Kyiv under the editorship of Mykola Zhulynsky.
Нашли опечатку? Выделите и нажмите CTRL+Enter
