Taras Shevchenko


Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko., also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar, was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, as well as folklorist and ethnographer. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko is also known for many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.
He was a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1847 Shevchenko was politically convicted for writing in the Ukrainian language, promoting the independence of Ukraine and ridiculing members of the Russian Imperial House.

Life

Childhood and youth

Taras Shevchenko was born on in the village of Moryntsi, Zvenyhorodka county, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire. He was the third child after his sister Kateryna and brother Mykyta, in family of serf peasants Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko , both of whom were owned by landlord Vasily Engelhardt. According to the family legends, Taras's forefathers were Cossacks who served in the Zaporizhian Host and had taken part in the Ukrainian uprisings of the 17th and 18th centuries. Those uprisings were brutally suppressed in Cherkasy, Poltava, Kiev, Bratslav, and Chernihiv disrupting normal social life for many years afterwards. Most of the local population were then enslaved and reduced to poverty.
In 1816 Shevchenko family moved back to the village of Kyrylivka in Zvenyhorodka county, where Taras' father, Hryhoriy Ivanovych, had been born. Taras spent his childhood years in the village. On, Taras' sister Yaryna was born, and on —Maria. Once, young Taras went looking for "the iron pillars that hold up the sky" and got lost. Chumaks who met the boy took him with him to Kyrylivka. On Taras' brother Yosyp was born.
In the fall of 1822 Taras started to take some grammar classes at a local precentor Sovhyr. At that time Shevchenko became familiar with Hryhoriy Skovoroda's works. During 1822-1828 Shevchenko painted horses and soldiers.
On his older sister and nanny Kateryna married Anton Krasytskyi, a serf "from Zelena Dibrova". On Taras' hard working mother died. A month later on his father married a widow Oksana Tereshchenko, a native of Moryntsi village, who already had three children of her own. She treated her step children and, particularly, little Taras, with great cruelty.
On Taras's half-sister Maria from the second marriage of Hryhoriy Ivanovych was born. In 1824 Taras, along with his father, became a traveling merchant and traveled to Zvenyhorodka, Uman, Yelizavetgrad. At the age of eleven Taras became an orphan when, on, his father died as a serf in corvée. Soon his stepmother along with her children returned to Moryntsi.
Taras went to work for precentor Bohorsky who had just arrived from Kiev in 1824. As an apprentice, Taras carried water, heated up a school, served the precentor, read psalms over the dead and continued to study. At that time Shevchenko became familiar with some works of Ukrainian literature. Soon, tired of Bohorsky's long term mistreatment, Shevchenko escaped in search of a painting master in the surrounding villages. For several days he worked for deacon Yefrem in Lysianka, later in other places around in southern part of Kiev Governorate. In 1827 Shevchenko was herding community sheep near his village. He then met Oksana Kovalenko, a childhood friend, whom Shevchenko mentions in his works on multiple occasions. He dedicated the introduction of his poem "Mariana, the Nun" to her.
As a hireling for the Kyrylivka priest Hryhoriy Koshytsia, Taras was visiting Bohuslav where he drove the priest's son to school, while also taking apples and plums to market. At the same time he was driving to markets in the towns of Burta and Shpola. In 1828 Shevchenko was hired as a serving boy to a lord's court in Vilshana for permission to study with a local artist. When Taras turned 14, Vasily Engelhardt died and the village of Kyrylivka and all its people became a property of his son, Pavlo Engelhardt. Shevchenko was turned into a court servant of his new master at the Vilshana estates. On Pavlo Engelgardt caught Shevchenko at night painting a portrait of Cossack Matvii Platov, a hero of the Patriotic War of 1812. He boxed the ears of the boy and ordered him being whipped in the stables with rods. During 1829–1833 Taras copied paintings of Suzdal masters.
For almost two and a half years, from fall of 1828 to start of 1831, Shevchenko stayed with his master in Vilno. Details of the travel are not well known. Perhaps, there he attended lectures by painting professor Jan Rustem at the University of Vilnius. In the same city Shevchenko could also have witnessed the November Uprising of 1830. From those times Shevchenko's painting "Bust of a Woman" survived. It indicates almost professional handling of the pencil.
After moving from Vilno to Saint Petersburg in 1831, Engelgardt took Shevchenko along with him. To benefit from the art works, Engelgardt sent Shevchenko to painter Vasiliy Shiriayev for four-year study. From that point and until 1838 Shevchenko lived in the Khrestovskyi building where Shiriayev rented an apartment. In his free time at night, Shevchenko visited the Summer Garden where he portrayed statues. In Saint Petersburg he also started writing his poems.
In 1833 Shevchenko painted a portrait of his master :uk:Енгельгардт Павло Васильович|Pavlo Engelgardt.
In his novel "Artist" Shevchenko described that during the pre-academical period he painted such works as "Apollo Belvedere", "Fraklete", "Heraclitus", "Architectural barelief", "Mask of Fortune". He participated in painting of the Big Theatre as artist apprentice. He created a composition "Alexander of Macedon shows trust towards his doctor Philip". The drawing was created for a contest of the Imperial Academy of Arts, announced in 1830.

Out of serfdom

In Saint Petersburg Shevchenko met Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to Russian painter Alexey Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky as a lottery prize. Its proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on 5 May 1838.

First successes

Shevchenko was accepted as a student into the Academy of Arts in the workshop of Karl Briullov in the same year. The following year he became a resident student at the Association for the Encouragement of Artists. During annual examinations at the Imperial Academy of Arts, Shevchenko won the Silver Medal for landscape painting. In 1840 he again received the Silver Medal, this time for his first oil painting, The Beggar Boy Giving Bread to a Dog.
Shevchenko began writing poetry while still being a serf, and in 1840 his first collection of poetry, Kobzar, was published. According to Ivan Franko, a renowned Ukrainian poet in the generation after Shevchenko, " was "a new world of poetry. It burst forth like a spring of clear, cold water, and sparkled with a clarity, breadth and elegance of artistic expression not previously known in Ukrainian writing".
In 1841, the epic poem Haidamaky was released. In September 1841, Shevchenko was awarded his third Silver Medal for The Gypsy Fortune Teller. Shevchenko also wrote plays. In 1842, he released a part of the tragedy Mykyta Haidai and in 1843 he completed the drama Nazar Stodolia.
While residing in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko made three trips to Ukraine, in 1843, 1845, and 1846. The difficult conditions Ukrainians had made a profound impact on the poet-painter. Shevchenko visited his siblings, still enserfed, and other relatives. He met with prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals Yevhen Hrebinka, Panteleimon Kulish, and Mykhaylo Maksymovych, and was befriended by the princely Repnin family, especially Varvara.
In 1844, distressed by the condition of Ukrainian regions in the Russian Empire, Shevchenko decided to capture some of his homeland's historical ruins and cultural monuments in an album of etchings, which he called Picturesque Ukraine. Only 6 first etchings were printed because of the lack of means to continue.
An album of watercolors from historical places and pencil drawings was done in 1845.

Exile

On 22 March 1845, the Council of the Academy of Arts granted Shevchenko the title of a non-classed artist. He again travelled to Ukraine where he met with historian Nikolay Kostomarov and other members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a clandestine society also known as Ukrainian-Slavic society and dedicated to the political liberalization of the Empire and its transformation into a federation-like polity of Slavic nations. Upon the society's suppression by the authorities, Shevchenko's wrote a poem "Dream", that was confiscated from the society's members and became one of the major issues of the scandal.
Shevchenko was arrested along with other members of the society on 5 April 1847. Tsar Nicholas read Shevchenko's poem, "Dream". Vissarion Belinsky wrote in his memoirs that, Nicholas I, knowing Ukrainian very well, laughed and chuckled whilst reading the section about himself, but his mood quickly turned to bitter hatred when he read about his wife. Shevchenko had mocked her frumpy appearance and facial tics, which she had developed fearing the Decembrist Uprising and its plans to kill her family. After reading this section the Tsar indignantly stated "I suppose he had reasons not to be on terms with me, but what has she done to deserve this?" In the official report of Orlov Shevchenko was accused in using "Little-Russian language" of outrageous content instead of being grateful to be redeemed out of serfdom. In the report Orlov claimed that Shevchenko was expressing a cry over alleged enslavement and disaster of Ukraine, glorified the Hetman Administration and Cossack liberties and "with incredible audacity poured slander and bile on persons of Imperial House".
While under investigation, Shevchenko was imprisoned in Saint Petersburg in casemates of the 3rd Department of Imperial Chancellery on Panteleimonovskaya Street. After being convicted, he was exiled as a private to the Russian military garrison in Orenburg at Orsk, near the Ural Mountains. Tsar Nicholas I, personally confirming his sentence, added to it, "Under the strictest surveillance, without the right to write or paint." He was subsequently sent on a forced march from Saint Petersburg to Orenburg and Orsk.
Next year in 1848, he was assigned to undertake the first Russian naval expedition of the Aral Sea on the ship "Konstantin", under the command of Lieutenant Butakov. Although officially a common private, Shevchenko was effectively treated as an equal by the other members of the expedition. He was tasked to sketch various landscapes around the coast of the Aral Sea. After an 18-month voyage Shevchenko returned with his album of drawings and paintings to Orenburg. Most of those drawings were created for a detailed account about the expedition. Nevertheless, Shevchenko created many unique works of art about the Aral Sea nature and Kazakhstan people at a time when Russian conquest of Central Asia had begun in the middle of the nineteenth century.
He was then sent to one of the worst penal settlements, the remote fortress of Novopetrovsk at Mangyshlak Peninsula, where he spent seven terrible years. In 1851, at the suggestion of fellow serviceman Bronisław Zaleski, lieutenant colonel Mayevsky assigned him to the Mangyshlak geological expedition. In 1857 Shevchenko finally returned from exile after receiving amnesty, though he was not permitted to return to St. Petersburg and was forced to stay in Nizhniy Novgorod.
In May 1859, Shevchenko got permission to return to Ukraine. He intended to buy a plot of land close to the village Pekari. In July, he was again arrested on a charge of blasphemy, but then released and ordered to return to St. Petersburg.
near Kaniv, historical postcard. The cross was dismantled by the Soviets in the 1920s

Death

Taras Shevchenko spent the last years of his life working on new poetry, paintings, and engravings, as well as editing his older works. After difficult years in exile, however, his illnesses took their toll upon him. Shevchenko died in Saint Petersburg on 10 March 1861, the day after his 47th birthday.
He was first buried at the Smolensk Cemetery in Saint Petersburg. However, fulfilling Shevchenko's wish, expressed in his poem "Testament", to be buried in Ukraine, his friends arranged the transfer of his remains by train to Moscow and then by horse-drawn wagon to his homeland. Shevchenko was re-buried on 8 May on the Chernecha hora near the Dnipro River and Kaniv. A tall mound was erected over his grave, now a memorial part of the Kaniv Museum-Preserve.
Dogged by terrible misfortune in love and life, the poet died seven days before the Emancipation of Serfs was announced. His works and life are revered by Ukrainians throughout the world and his impact on Ukrainian literature is immense.

Poetic works

237 poems was written by Taras Shevchenko but only 28 of this was published in the Russian Empire and other 6 in the Austrian Empire over his lifetime.

Example of poetry: "Testament" (''Zapovit'')

Shevchenko's "Testament",, has been translated into more than 150 languages and set to music in the 1870s by H. Hladky.


Як умру, то поховайте
Мене на могилі,
Серед степу широкого,
На Вкраїні милій,
Щоб лани широкополі,
І Дніпро, і кручі
Було видно, було чути,
Як реве ревучий.
Як понесе з України
У синєє море
Кров ворожу... отоді я
І лани, і гори —
Все покину і полину
До самого Бога
Молитися... а до того
Я не знаю Бога.
Поховайте та вставайте,
Кайдани порвіте
І вражою злою кров'ю
Волю окропіте.
І мене в сiм'ї великій,
В сiм'ї вольній, новій,
Не забудьте пом'янути
Незлим тихим словом.




When I die, then make my grave
High on an ancient mound,
In my own beloved Ukraine,
In steppeland without bound:
Whence one may see wide-skirted wheatland,
Dnipro's steep-cliffed shore,
There whence one may hear the blustering
River wildly roar.
Till from Ukraine to the blue sea
It bears in fierce endeavour
The blood of foemen — then I'll leave
Wheatland and hills forever:
Leave all behind, soar up until
Before the throne of God
I'll make my prayer. For till that hour
I shall know naught of God.
Make my grave there — and arise,
Sundering your chains,
Bless your freedom with the blood
Of foemen's evil veins!
Then in that great family,
A family new and free,
Do not forget, with good intent
Speak quietly of me.




When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.
When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes... then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields—
I'll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I'll pray.... But until that day
I know nothing of God.
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.

Artwork

835 works survived into modern times in original form and partly in prints engraved on metal and wood by Russian and other foreign engravers, while some works survived as copies done by painters while Shevchenko still lived. There is data on over 270 more works which were lost and have not been found yet. Painted and engraved works at the time of completion are dated 1830-1861 and are territorially related to Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. The genres are - portraits, compositions on mythological, historical and household themes, architectural landscapes and scenery. The techniques used for that were oil painting on canvas, watercolor, sepia, inking, lead pencil, as well as etching on separate sheets of white, colored and tinted paper of different sizes and in five albums. A significant part of Shevchenko's artistic heritage consists of completed paintings, however there are also sketches, etudes and outlines which are no less valuable for understanding Shevchenko's methods and artistic path. Of all Shevchenko's paintings only a small part has any authorial signatures or inscriptions and even smaller part has dates.

Family

Shevchenko never married. He had six siblings and at least three step-siblings, of whom only Stepan Tereshchenko is known. Some sources connect him to the Tereshchenko family of Ukrainian industrialists.
  1. Kateryna Hryhorivna Krasytska married Anton Hryhorovych Krasytsky
  2. # Yakym Krasytsky
  3. # Maksym Krasytsky
  4. # Stepan Krasytsky
  5. # Fedora Krasytska, known painter
  6. Mykyta Hryhorovych Shevchenko
  7. # Iryna Kovtun
  8. # Prokop Shevchenko
  9. # Petro Shevchenko
  10. Maria Hryhorivna Shevchenko
  11. Yaryna Hryhorivna Boiko married Fedir Kondratievych Boiko
  12. # Maryna Boiko
  13. # Ustyna Boiko
  14. # Illarion Boiko
  15. # Lohvyn Boiko
  16. # Ivan Boiko
  17. # Lavrentiy Boiko
  18. Maria Hryhorivna Shevchenko
  19. Yosyp Hryhorovych Shevchenko married Matrona Hryhorivna Shevchenko, a distant relative
  20. # Andriy Shevchenko
  21. # Ivan Shevchenko
  22. # Trokhym Shevchenko

    Heritage and legacy

Impact

Taras Shevchenko's writings formed the foundation for the modern Ukrainian literature to a degree that he is also considered the founder of the modern written Ukrainian language. Shevchenko's 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. Influenced by Romanticism, Shevchenko managed to find his own manner of poetic expression that encompassed themes and ideas germane to Ukraine and his personal vision of its past and future.
In view of his literary importance, the impact of his artistic work is often missed, although his contemporaries valued his artistic work no less, or perhaps even more, than his literary work. A great number of his pictures, drawings and etchings preserved to this day testify to his unique artistic talent. He also experimented with photography and it is little known that Shevchenko may be considered to have pioneered the art of etching in the Russian Empire
His influence on Ukrainian culture has been so immense, that even during Soviet times, the official position was to downplay strong Ukrainian nationalism expressed in his poetry, suppressing any mention of it, and to put an emphasis on the social and anti-Tsarist aspects of his legacy, the Class struggle within the Russian Empire. Shevchenko, who himself was born a serf and suffered tremendously for his political views in opposition to the established order of the Empire, was presented in the Soviet times as an internationalist who stood up in general for the plight of the poor classes exploited by the reactionary political regime rather than the vocal proponent of the Ukrainian national idea.
This view is significantly revised in modern independent Ukraine, where he is now viewed as almost an iconic figure with unmatched significance for the Ukrainian nation, a view that has been mostly shared all along by the Ukrainian diaspora that has always revered Shevchenko.
He inspired some of the protestors during the Euromaidan.

Contribution to Russian literature

Some of Shevchenko's prose, as well as some of his poems were written in Russian, thus, some biased russian researchers consider Shevchenko as a Russian writer.

Monuments and memorials

There are many monuments to Shevchenko throughout Ukraine, most notably at his memorial in Kaniv and in the center of Kiev, just across from the Kiev University that bears his name. The Kiev Metro station, Tarasa Shevchenka, is also dedicated to Shevchenko. Among other notable monuments to the poet located throughout Ukraine are the ones in Kharkiv, Lviv, Luhansk and many others.
The first statues of Shevchenko were erected in the Soviet Union as part of their Ukrainization-policies. The first one was revealed in Romny on 27 October 1918 when the city was located in the Ukrainian state. The following were erected in Moscow and Petrograd. The monuments in Moscow and Petrograd did not survive because they were made of inferior materials. The concrete statue in Romny also began to decay, but was remade in bronze and re-unveiled in 1982. The original Romny statue is currently located in Kiev's Andriyivskyy Descent.
After Ukraine gained its independence in the wake of the 1991 Soviet Collapse, some Ukrainian cities replaced their statues of Lenin with statues of Taras Shevchenko and in some locations that lacked streets named to him, local authorities renamed the streets or squares to Shevchenko. There is also a bilingual Taras Shevchenko high school in Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania.
Although the relationship between Ukraine and Russia is currently tense, there is still a monument erected in his name in the city of Saint Petersburg, which was rebuilt with the new materials, replacing the old one in 2000.
Outside of Ukraine and the former USSR, monuments to Shevchenko have been put up in many countries, usually under the initiative of local Ukrainian diasporas. There are several memorial societies and monuments to him throughout Canada and the United States, most notably the monument in Washington, D.C., near Dupont Circle. The granite monument was carved by Vincent Illuzzi of Barre, Vermont. The Washington DC monument was designed by Ukrainian Canadian sculptor Leo Mol & architect Radoslav Zhuk There is also a monument in Soyuzivka in New York State, Tipperary Hill in Syracuse, New York, a park is named after him in Elmira Heights, N.Y. and a street is named after him in New York City's East Village. There is also a Taras Shevchenko Park in Northeast Philadelphia, PA. A section of Connecticut Route 9 that goes through New Britain is also named after Shevchenko.
There is a statue of Taras Shevchenko at Ukraine Square in Curitiba, Brazil. A monument to Shevchenko was put up in Zagreb, Croatia on May 21, 2015.
There is also a statue of Taras Shevchenko in the central park near the St. Krikor Lusavorich Cathedral in Yerevan, Armenia.

Footnotes

a. At the time of birth of Taras Shevchenko metrical books in village Moryntsi were carried out in Russian and he was recorded as Taras. At that time serfs' patronymic names were not identified in documents. During Shevchenko's lifetime in Ukrainian texts were used two variants: "" and "". In Russian it is accepted to write «Тарас Григорьевич Шевченко», in Ukrainian—«Тарас Григорович Шевченко», in other languages—transliterating from the Ukrainian name, for example "Taras Hryhorovich Shevchenko.

b. Note #10 in metric book of Moryntsi for 1814 : ""

c. This episode is described in the Taras Shevchenko's novel Princess. It is also retold by Oleksandr Konysky in his book Taras Shevchenko-Hrushivsky, claiming that the first who told the story of "iron pillars" was :uk:Лазаревський Олександр Матвійович|Oleksandr Lazarevsky.

d. Metric book of village Moryntsi for 1823, note #16. Preserved at the Shevchenko National Museum in Kiev.

e. See article on Oksana Antonivna Tereshchenko in the Shevchenko dictionary.