Taras Shevchenko was born on March 9, 1814 in the Ukrainian village of Moryntsi. His parents were serfs and lived in bitter poverty, both died before Taras was twelve years old. What saved the boy from being submerged in the sea of indigence were his native intelligence and artistic talent. The overseer of the estate selected him for duties in the manor house of the landowner, Engelhardt, to whose young son Shevchenko became a page-boy. The new duties provided Shevchenko with the opportunity of travelling in the retinue of his master and of copying pictures and works of art. When Engelhardt discovered his serf's unusual skill he promptly apprenticed him to various painters as he travelled to Vilno, Warsaw and St. Petersburg. It was in St. Petersburg that Shevchenko's talent was notice by some of his compatriots who who were eager to see him enrolled as a student at the Imperial Academy of fine Arts. This was impossible as long as Shevchenko was a serf. On the initiative of some professors and friends the money necessary to purchase his freedom was raised and in 1838 Shevchenko was liberated from serfdom.
The successes which Shevchenko attained as a student at the Academy did not satisfy him. Sometimes in the late 1830s he started to write poetry, at first ballads and lyrics in the current vogue of Romanticism, and later historical poems depicting the past glories of the Cossack Ukraine. Soon he directed his pen against the social injustices of his own time and above all against the political and cultural oppression of the Ukraine by the Russians. In 1840 his first collection of poems, Kobzar, stirred a wide response among his countrymen. Gradually, Shevchenko became an uncompromising revolutionay, a member of the liberal Ukrainian society, the Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, and rebel with the definite cause. His plea was not merely for the political independence of Ukraine, but for a just new order among all Slavs. Shevchenko was never narrowly nationalistic, for his hope lay in the regeneration of charity, tolerance and freedom among all men. In his satires he castigated with equal venom both the Russian rulers and bureaucrats and his opportunistic and philistine countrymen. His popularity in the Ukraine he owed also to his simple yet highly poetic language which laid the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature.
In 1847 Shevchenko was arrested and charged with belonging to an illegal society and with writing insolent, revolutionary poetry. He was sentenced to serve as a private soldier in the Orenburg districts. The tsar, in his own handwriting, demanded that the poet be placed "under the strictest supervision with a prohibition of writing and sketching." for the next 10 years Shevchenko lived the life of an exile under the military discipline of the empire he hated so much. However, he managed to write secretly and even to paint. The poems from that period show a more detached and philosophic attitude to life; his hostility to the regime was unchanged. After his release in 1857, Shevchenko was in poor health and he died, unmarried, in St. Petersburg on March 10, 1861.
The poet was first buried at the Smolensk Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Then Shevchenko's friends immediately undertook to fulfil the poet's Zapovit (Testament), and bury him in Ukraine. The coffin with the body of Shevchenko was taken by train to Moscow, and then by horse-drawn wagon to Ukraine. Shevchenko's remains entered Kyiv on the evening of May 6, and the next day they were transferred to the steamship Kremenchuh. On May 8 the steamship reached Kaniv, and Taras was buried on Chernecha Hill (now Taras Hill) by the Dnipro River. A tall mound was erected over his grave, and it has become a sacred site for the Ukrainian people.
Testament (Zapovit)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 till that day
I nothing know 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.
Taras Shevchenko, 25 December 1845, Pereiaslav.
Translated by John Weir Toronto, 1961.
ЗАПОВIТ
Як умру, то поховайте
Мене на могилi,
Серед степу широкого,
На Вкраїнi милiй,
Щоб лани широкополi,
I Днiпро, i кручi
Було видно, було чути,
Як реве ревучий.
Як понесе з України
У синєє море
Кров ворожу... отодi я
I лани i гори -
Все покину i полину
До самого бога
Молитися... А до того -
Я не знаю бога.
Поховайте та вставайте.
Кайдани порвiте
I вражою злою кров'ю
Волю окропiте.
I мене в сiм'ї великiй,
В сiм'ї вольнiй, новiй
Не забудьте пом'янути
Незлим тихим словом.
Немає коментарів:
Дописати коментар