Kobzar

By Taras Shevchenko

Masterfully fulfilled by Peter Fedynsky, Voice of America journalist and expert on Ukrainian studies, this first ever English translation of the complete Kobzar brings out Ukraine's rich cultural heritage. As a foundational text, The Kobzar has played an important role in galvanizing the Ukrainian identity and in the development of Ukraine's writte

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glagoslav Publications B.V.
• Release date: Oct 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909156562

Taras Shevchenko

Тарас Григорович Шевченко (1814 - 1861) - видатний поет, художник. Народився 9 березня 1814 року в Київській губернії в селі Моринці. Спочатку Шевченко втратив матір, потім в 1825 році помер батько. Так почалася його важке, суворе життя. Незабаром він навчився грамоті, став потроху малювати. У 1829 році почав служити у поміщика Енгельгардта. У Вільні (Вільнюсі) в біографії Тараса Шевченка проходило навчання у викладача університету Рустема. У 1840 році почався найбільш плідний у житті поета період. Вийшла збірка «Кобзар» Шевченка, були написані кілька найвідоміших його творів («Гайдамаки», «Катерина», «Хусточка», «Наймичка»). Вірші Шевченка були сприйняті критиками негативно, зате були близькі народу. Як художник, Шевченко також не переставав творити. Ним був створений ряд картин у дусі критичного реалізму (наприклад, «Катерина»). Після зближення з київським Кирило-Мефодіївським товариством, його заарештували. Потім в біографії Шевченка послідувало заслання до Орської фортеці Оренбурзької області. Йому заборонили писати, малювати, що було дуже важко для творчої людини. Після експедиції на Аральське море, Шевченка перевели до Новопетровського, де він перебував до 1857 року. Там було написано кілька Повістей: «Художник», «Княгиня» та інші. Звільнившись (головним чином завдяки графу Ф.П. Толстому), повернувся до Петербурга. В останні роки в біографії Шевченка було створено мало віршів, картин. 26 лютого 1861 великий поет помер. Пам'ятники Шевченку встановлено не тільки на території України, а також у Росії, США, Парагваї, Франції.

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KOBZAR

by Taras Shevchenko

Illustrations by Taras Shevchenko

Translated by Peter Fedynsky

Edited by Svitlana Bednazh

Cover Art by Ivan Kramskoy

Cover Design by Hilary Zarycky

© 2013 Translation by Peter Fedynsky

© 2013 Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom

Glagoslav Publications Ltd

88-90 Hatton Garden

EC1N 8PN London

United Kingdom

www.glagoslav.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dates

LC control no.: 2013421026

LCCN permalink: http://lccn.loc.gov/2013421026

Shevchenko, Taras, 1814-1861.

Kobzar. English

Main title: Kobzar / Taras Shevchenko;

translated from the Ukrainian by Peter Fedynsky.

Published/Produced: London : Glagoslav Publications Ltd, [2013]

ISBN: 978-1-909156-56-2

CALL NUMBER: PG3948.S5 K613 2013

This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The translator and publisher express appreciation to the following institutions in Kyiv, Ukraine for providing digital copies of Shevchenko’s original art, manuscripts and photographs used in this edition:

Logo-1-copy_1.jpg

Shevchenko Institute of Literature at

The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences

http://www.ilnan.gov.ua/

shevchenko-logo.jpg

Taras Shevchenko National Museum

http://museumshevchenko.org.ua/

The translator and publisher express gratitude for generous grants provided by the following donors, without whose assistance the illustrated version of this translation would not have been possible:

The Self Reliance New York Federal Credit Union

http://www.selfrelianceny.org

The Ukrainian Institute of America

http://www.ukrainianinstitute.org

The Temerty Family

Toronto, Canada

Special thanks to the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America for promoting Taras Shevchenko over the decades and most recently this translation.

The translator recognizes Editor Svitlana Bednazh for her excellent advice, long hours, and commitment to this translation. My appreciation also to Maxim Hodak, Camilla Stein and Max Mendor at Glagoslav Publishers, as well as designers Hilary Zarycky and Dmytro Podolianchuk. And I am grateful to those who provided help, guidance and encouragement:

Michael Balahutrak, Oleksandr Boron, James Brooke, Roman Czajkowsky, Jurij Dobczansky, Andrew, George and Paul Fedynsky, Lesia Generaliuk, Bob Holman, Andrew Hruszkewycz, Taras Hunczak, Adrian Karatnycky, Vitaly Korotych, Bohdan Kurczak, Roman Kyzyk, Vasyl Makhno, Alexander Motyl, Michael Naydan, Sviatoslav Nowytski, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Adam Phillips, Yulia Schilenko, Dmytro Stus, Daniel Swistel, and Mykola Zhulynsky.

TITLES IN ENGLISH

(Poems not titled by Shevchenko are listed in italics by first lines)

A Kobzar For A New Millennium

Translator’s Introduction

Shevchenko: The Artist as Poet and Poet as Artist

A black cloud hid, a cloud of white

A Kozak steals like a thief at night

Alone it’s strange. But where to go?

A lovely dark-browed lass

A mist, a mist rolls through a valley

An axe once lay behind God’s door

Archimedes and Galileo

At a predawn hour

At times an old man does not know

At times it happens in captivity

Beer and mead will not be quaffed

Bending in the wind is not a poplar

Beside the house I’ll sit

Beside the setting sun

Blessed is he who has a home

Blind Man, The (A Poem)

Blind Woman, The (A Poem)

Branded Convict, The

By a Dnipro inlet

Caucasus, The

Children boasted

Chyhyryn, O Chyhyryn

Cold Ravine, The

Come on, let’s write some poems again

Czars (Kings)

I. There’s no one to be seen

II. David, the old prophet and a king

III. And here on earth

IV. Strolling quietly across his courtyard

V. Would that headsmen cut them down

Daisies blossom on a hill

Days go by, nights go by

Days of youth have passed

Destiny

Dream (A Comedy)

Dream, A (O my lofty hills)

Dream (She reaped wheat in serfdom)

Drink the first, you’ll be aroused

Drowned Maiden, The

Dubia

I’m down, it’s hard

I worry not, but do not sleep

Early Sunday mornings

Envy not the rich man

Fame

Fires burn, music plays

Funeral Feast

Gray geese honked

Great Vault, The (A Mystery)

Three Souls

Three Ravens

Three Lyrists

Haidamaks

Introduction

Vagabond

The Confederates

The Sexton

Holy Day in Chyhyryn

Third Roosters

Red Banquet

Thumping Grove

Banquet In Lysianka

Lebedyn

Gonta In Uman

Epilogue

Notes

Preface

Gentlemen Subscribers!

Hamaliya

Here and everywhere — it’s bad all over

Heretic, The

Hireling, The

Holy Fool

Hosea, Chapter 14 (Imitation)

How am I to worry

Hush-a-by, hush-a-by baby

H. Z. (There’s nothing worse in bondage)

I am wealthy, I am pretty

I beat a path, my dear, across the valley

I count the days and nights in bondage (1850)

I count the days and nights in bondage (1858)

I delight my aging eyes

I don’t complain of God

I fell in love, I got married

If I had a necklace, mama

If I had shoes, I’d go a dancing

If there was someone I could sit with

If you gentlemen, but knew

If you, the drunken Bohdan

I had a thought once in my silly head

I have, I have two lovely eyes

I’ll hone my friend

Imitation of Ezekiel (Chapter 19)

Imitation of Psalm XI

Imitation to Edward Sowa

Imitation to the Serbian

I’m not sorry, may you know

I’m not unwell, knock on wood

Improvisations on The Lay of Ihor’s Host

Yaroslavna’s Lament

Early morning in Putyvl-burg

From predawn till evening

In a verdant grove

In captivity and loneliness

In Everlasting Memory of Kotliarevsky

In Judea long ago

In our paradise on earth

In small measure in the autumn

In Solitary Confinement

Recall my brethren

I. Oh, alone am I, alone

II. There’s a glen beyond a glen

III. It’s all the same to me

IV. They said, Don’t leave your mother

V. Why are you walking to the mound?

VI. Oh three broad roads

VII. The joyous sun was hiding

VIII. A cherry orchard by the house

IX. Early morn the newlyweds

X. Captivity is hard

XI. The Reaper

XII. Will we ever meet again?

In the garden by the ford

In the valley bloomed

I roamed the thicket

Irzhavets

Isaiah. Chapter 35 (Imitation)

Is it misfortune and captivity

I squander on the devil’s father

I still dream

It seems indeed I need to write

It seems to me, though I don’t know

It’s not for people, not for fame

It’s not so much the enemies

It somehow came to me at night

Ivan Pidkova

I’ve no desire to marry

I was sleepless, and the night

I went for water in the valley

Kateryna

Kerchief, The

Like a soul tax

Like a verst traversed in autumn

L. (I’ll build a house and room)

Lily, The

Mad Maiden

Maiden’s Nights, A

Maria (A Poem)

Marry not a wealthy woman

Maryanne the Nun

Maryna

Monk, The

Muse

My dear God, again there’s trouble!..

My friend and I

My mother bore me in a lofty mansion

My mother did not pray for me

My thoughts, my thoughts (1840)

My thoughts, my thoughts (1848)

Neophytes (A Poem)

Night of Taras

N. N. (A lily just like you)

N. N. (My thirteenth year was passing)

N. N. (O my thoughts! O wicked fame!)

N. N. (The sun sets, hills grow dark)

Not returning from his mission

N. T. (O great martyr, o my friend!)

Nun’s Hymn, The

Oak forest — shady grove!

O bright light! O gentle light!

Oh I’ll glance, I’ll look

Oh, I sent my husband on a trip

Oh my aging father breathed his last

Oh why, green field

O Lord, allow none

On every road and everywhere

On foreign soil I grew up

On the street there is no joy

O people! Wretched people!

Owl, The

Owls, The

Petey (A Poem)

Plague, The

Plundered Mound, The

Poplar, The

Prayer, A

Send the czars, the universal tavern keepers

Bind the czars, the bloody tavern keepers

Stay the evil instigators

Princess, The (A Poem)

Prophet, The

Psalms of David

1. The blessed man won’t join

12. Do You forget me, my dear God

43. God, we’ve heard Your glory

52. In his heart the fool won’t say

53. God, save me, judge me

81. Among the czars and judges

93. The Lord our God punishes the wicked

132. Is there a thing upon this world

136. On the rivers ‘round Babylon

149. We’ll sing new praises to the Lord

P. S. (There’s no ire for the evil person)

Rambler, The

Ready! We set the sail

Recall me, brother

Roads leading to that country

Row by row

Saul

Sexton’s Daughter, The

She didn’t stroll on Sundays

Should it so happen

Should we, my humble friend

Shvachka

Slave, The (A Poem)

Dedication

Duma

Soldier’s Well, The (1847)

Soldier’sWell, The (1857)

Sometime ago in days of yore

Sotnyk

Tell me what’s in store for me

Testament (When I die, then bury me)

That Kateryna has a fancy house

That’s the vein I write in now

The broad valley

The day goes by, the night goes by

The great man in a haircloth died

The mail has yet again delivered

There were wars and army feuds

The sexton’s daughter of Nemyriv

The sky’s unwashed, the waves are spent

The snow is driven by the wind

The sun is cold on foreign land

The sun rises, the sun sets

The wind converses with the grove

This came to pass not long ago

Thought, A (Life on earth is tough and trying)

Thought, A (Raging wind, O raging wind!)

Thought, A (Water flows into the azure sea)

Thought, A (Why my dark brows)

Though they do not beat a soul asleep

Three Years

To A. O. Kozachkovsky

Together they grew up, matured

Together we once grew

To greedy eyes

To Hohol (Gogol)

To Little Maryanne

To Lykera

To Marko Vovchok

To M. Y. Makarov

To My Sister

To N. Markevych

To Osnovianenko

To the Dead, the Living, and to the Unborn

To the Poles

Tribute to Shternberg

Two lofty poplars grow

Water from beneath a sycamore

Water Nymph

We ask each other

Well, mere words, it seems…

We met, we married, bonded

Were we to meet again

We sang, we parted

Whether I was working, playing

Why is it so hard for me, so tedious

Why is it that we love Bohdan?

Why should I get married?

Witch, The (1847)

Witch, The (1859)

TITLES IN UKRAINIAN

(Poems not titled by Shevchenko are listed in italics by their first lines)

Кобзар на нове тисячоліття

Вступ перекладача

Шевченко: Художник як поет і поет як художник

А нумо знову віршувать

А. О. Козачковському

Барвінок цвів і зеленів

Буває, в неволі іноді згадаю

Буває, іноді старий

Бували войни й військовії свари

Було, роблю що, чи гуляю

В неволі, в самоті немає

Варнак

Великий льох (Містерія)

Три душі

Три ворони

Три лірники

Вип’єш перву

Відьма (1847)

Відьма. Поема (1859)

Вітер з гаєм розмовляє

В казематі

Згадайте, братія моя

I. Ой одна я, одна

II. За байраком байрак

III. Мені однаково, чи буду

IV. Не кидай матері, казали

V. Чого ти ходиш на могилу?

VI. Ой три шляхи широкії

VII. Н. Костомарову

VIII. Садок вишневий коло хати

IX. Рано-вранці новобранці

X. В неволі тяжко, хоча й волі

XI. Косар

XII. Чи ми ще зійдемося знову?

Во Іудеї во дні они

Г. З.

Гайдамаки

Інтродукція

Галайда

Конфедерати

Титар

Свято в Чигирині

Трeті півні

Червоний бенкет

Гупалівщина

Бенкет у Лисянці

Лебедин

Гонта в Умані

Епілог

Приписи

Передмова

Панове субскрибенти!

Гамалія

Гімн черничий

Гоголю

Готово! Парус розпустили

Давидові псалми

1. Блаженний муж на лукаву

12. Чи Ти мене, Боже

43. Боже, нашими ушима

52. Пребезумний в серці

53. Боже, спаси, суди мене

81. Меж царями-судіями

93. Господь Бог лихих

132. Чи є що краще

136. На ріках круг

149. Псалом новий

Дівичії ночі

Дівча любе, чорнобриве

До Основ’яненка

Добро, у кого є господа

Доля

Дубія

Не журюсь я

Нудно мені, тяжко

Думи мої, думи мої (1840)

Думи мої, думи мої (1848)

Думка (Вітре буйний, вітре буйний)

Думка (Нащо мені чорні брови)

Думка (Тече вода в синє море)

Думка (Тяжко-важко)

Дурні та гордії ми люди

Єретик

Заворожи мені, волхве

Закувала зозуленька

[Заповіт]

Заросли шляхи тернами

За сонцем хмаронька пливе

Заступила чорна хмара

Зацвіла в долині

За що ми любимо Богдана?

Зійшлись, побрались, поєднались

І Архімед, і Галілей

І багата я

І виріс я на чужині

І день іде, і ніч іде

І досі сниться: під горою

І знов мені не привезла

І золотої й дорогої

І мертвим, і живим...

І небо невмите, і заспані хвилі

І станом гнучим і красою

І тут, і всюди — скрізь погано

І широкую долину

Іван Підкова

Із-за гаю сонце сходить

Іржавець

Ісаія. Глава 35 (Подражаніє)

Кавказ

Катерина

Княжна. Поема

Колись, дурною головою

Колись-то ще, во время оно

Коло гаю, в чистім полі

Кума моя і я

Л.

Ликері

Лілея

Лічу в неволі дні і ночі (1850)

Лічу в неволі дні і ночі (1858)

Маленькій Мар’яні

Мар’яна-черниця

Марина

Марія (Поема)

Марку Вовчку

Меж скалами, неначе злодій

Мені здається, я не знаю

Ми вкупочці колись росли

Ми восени таки похожі

Ми заспівали, розійшлись

Минають дні, минають ночі

Минули літа молодії

Мій Боже милий, знову лихо

Мов за подушне, оступили

Молитва

Царям, всесвітним шинкарям.

Царів, кровавих шинкарів

Злоначинающих спини

Москалева криниця (1847)

Москалева криниця (1857)

Муза

Н. Маркевичу

На батька бісового я трачу

На Великдень на соломі

На вічну пам’ять Котляревському

На незабудь Штернбергові

На улиці невесело

Навгороді коло броду

Над Дніпровою сагою

Наймичка

Нащо мені женитися?

Не вернувся із походу

Не гріє сонце на чужині

Не для людей, тієї слави

Не додому вночі йдучи

Не женися на багатій

Не завидуй багатому

Не молилася за мене

Не нарікаю я на Бога

Не спалося, а ніч, як море

Не так тії вороги

Не тополю високую

Не хочу я женитися

Невольник. Поема

Посвященіє

Дума

Неначе степом чумаки

Неофіти. Поема

N. N. (Мені тринадцятий минало)

N. N. (О думи мої! О славо злая)

N. N. (Сонце заходить)

N. N. (Така, як ти, колись лілея)

Н. Т.

Ну що б, здавалося, слова

О люди! Люди небораки

Огні горять, музика грає

Один у другого питаєм

Ой виострю товариша

Ой гляну я, подивлюся

Ой діброво — темний гаю

Ой крикнули сірії гуси

Ой люлі, люлі, моя дитино

Ой маю, маю я оченята

Ой не п’ються пива-меди

Ой пішла я у яр за водою

Ой по горі роман цвіте

Ой стрічечка до стрічечки

Ой сяду я під хатою

Ой умер старий батько

Ой чого ти почорніло

Ой я свого чоловіка

Осія. Глава XIV. Подражаніє

П. С.

Перебендя

Переспіви зі «Слова о полку»

Плач Ярославни

В Путивлі-граді вранці-рано

З передсвіта до вечора

Петрусь. Поема

По улиці вітер віє

Подражаніє 11 псалму

Подражаніє Едуарду Сові

Подражаніє Ієзекіїлю. Глава 19

Подражаніє сербському

Полюбилася я

Полякам

Породила мене мати

Причинна

Пророк

Розрита могила

Росли укупочці, зросли

Русалка

Самому чудно. А де ж дітись?

Саул

Світе ясний! Світе тихий!

Сестрі

Сичі

Слава

Слепая (Поема)

Сліпий (Поема)

Сова

Сон (Гори мої високії)

Сон (Комедія)

Сон (На панщині пшеницю жала)

Сотник

Та не дай, Господи, нікому

Тарасова ніч

Тече вода з-під явора

Тим неситим очам

Титарівна

Титарівна-Немирівна

То так і я тепер пишу

Тополя

Три літа

Тризна

Туман, туман долиною

У Бога за дверми лежала сокира

У Вільні, городі преславнім

У нашім раї на землі

У неділеньку та ранесенько

У неділеньку у святую

У неділю не гуляла

У перетику ходила

У тієї Катерини

Умре муж велій в власяниці

Утоплена

Утоптала стежечку

Хіба самому написать

Холодний Яр

Хоча лежачого й не б’ють

Хустина

Царі

І. Не видно нікого

ІІ. Давид, святий пророк

ІІІ. І пожеве Давид на світі

IV. По двору тихо походжає

V. Бодай кати їх постинали

Чернець

Чи не покинуть нам, небого

Чи то недоля та неволя

Чигрине, Чигрине

Чого мені тяжко, чого мені нудно

Чума

Швачка

Юродивий

Я не нездужаю, нівроку

Як маю я журитися

Як умру, то поховайте [Заповіт]

Якби ви знали, паничі

Якби з ким сісти хліба з’їсти

Якби зострілися ми знову

Якби мені черевики

Якби мені, мамо, намисто

Якби тобі довелося

Якби-то ти, Богдане п’яний

Якось-то йдучи уночі

A KOBZAR FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM

When I was sent the first several pages of this translation of Ukrainian national bard Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar (The Kobzai Player) for perusal, I was immediately impressed both by the translator’s dedication to translate the entire work, and by his approach — to convey the poet’s verse in a modern English idiom that could be understood easily by readers of today. Shevchenko’s Kobzar, as his collected poetry is now known, is dotted with archaisms here and there, but remains just as vibrant a work now as when it first appeared in 1840. The style is virtually as accessible to Ukrainian readers and the message of Shevchenko’s poetry just as important as it was when it was written. Shevchenko combined the vernacular with folk rhythms of Ukrainian songs to capture and embody the sufferings and deepest strivings of his people. It may not be much of an exaggeration to say that today’s independent Ukraine could not have been realized without Shevchenko’s poetry and his presence as poet-prophet to galvanize Ukrainian identity. His prolific output includes a large volume of poetry; nearly one thousand paintings, etchings and drawings; several prose novellas; two plays; and a journal that he kept from 1857-1858.

Shevchenko’s entire oeuvre in its parts and sum comprises a compendium of the trauma of the Ukrainian people under czarist oppression. It is also an indictment of all authoritarian rule. The poet chronicles both imperial czarist abuse as well as an unquenchable thirst for Ukrainian freedom, self-determination and nationhood.ii From the publication at the age of twenty-six of his slim but critically acclaimed volume Kobzar, which originally contained just eight poems, Shevchenko inspired an entire population ranging from illiterate peasants, who only heard and memorized the poems as oral literature or song, to the leaders of a small but avid band of Ukrainian intelligentsia with the agenda of nation building.

To a Ukrainian, the name Taras Shevchenko is emblematic of Ukrainianness and greatness. What Homer is to the Greeks, Mickiewicz to the Poles, or Pushkin to the Russians, Shevchenko is to Ukrainians. He is the first great Ukrainian poet to infuse his poetry with a nearly magical reverence for the Ukrainian land and its distinctive nature. He also experiences a longing nostalgia for it and, in fact, elevates Ukraine’s natural features into symbols that serve to recreate Ukraine inside himself and to focus on what constitutes Ukrainian identity for all.

Shevchenko’s own story, which is reflected in his poetry, is one that moves from his birth as a serf to liberty, and then to exile in the farthest reaches of the Russian Empire along the Aral Sea in today’s Kazakhstan. Orphaned at an early age, his owner took the teenage Shevchenko from Ukraine to Warsaw, then Vilna (Vilnius in today’s Lithuania), and eventually to St. Petersburg, Russia. His freedom was purchased there by Russian and Ukrainian abolitionists of their time, who recognized Shevchenko’s talent as an artist. They included Karl Briullov, one of Europe’s finest painters. Briullov’s portrait of the poet Vasilii Zhukovsky raised 2500 rubles in an auction to free Shevchenko. Ironically, the winning bid was placed by the family of the Czar. Shevchenko then became one of Briullov’s favorite students, but soon began writing poetry not approved by the authorities, leading to his arrest and persecution.

The poet was forced into exile as a soldier under personal orders from Czar Nicholas I not to write or paint. Shevchenko initially ignored those orders and continued his creative activities in the city of Orenburg, a frontier outpost on the border of Europe and Asia. Upon discovery by the authorities, he was sent even deeper into exile at the Novopetrovsky Fort on the desolate eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, where he wrote no poetry for seven years. He did, however, serve as an artist on military scouting missions in Central Asia and left a record of many people and places. Thanks to lobbying on his behalf by influential nobles, including members of the prominent Tolstoy family, Shevchenko was allowed to return to St. Petersburg after ten years in exile. Nonetheless, he lived in the Russian capital under the watchful eyes of czarist agents.

Ostensibly free but bound to a foreign land, Shevchenko recreates Ukraine in his thoughts, in his paintings and etchings, and in his poetry. His emphasis on the common natural features of Ukraine (the Dnipro River, the steppe, the shady groves) serve on a symbolic level to rouse the Ukrainian people, to unify them with the palpable notion of their inheritance of the Ukrainian land through a sacred history built on the bones and burial mounds of ancestors who defended and developed that land. Hence Shevchenko’s strong emphasis on mounds, which represent Ukrainian historical continuity and are mentioned in the Kobzar more than 100 times.

The Dnipro River for Shevchenko becomes the sacred locus for his longing in exile. For him it is a living, breathing entity. We see this even in the now quite famous opening lines of his first poem, Mad Maiden (Prychynna), which many Ukrainians know by heart:

The mighty Dnipr’ roars and groans,

An angry wind resounds,

It bends tall willows to the ground,

It raises waves like mountains.

A pale moon just then

Peeked through the passing clouds,

And like a boat in azure seas

It rolled and pitched across the sky.

Third roostersiii had not crowed,

And nowhere was a soul astir,

The owls called out across the grove,

At times an ash tree creaked.iv

While the nature depicted in the passage is largely generic except for the mention of the Dnipro, the poem’s magical visual properties, rhythm and language anchor and elevate it in Ukrainian consciousness.

The Dnipro and the steppes become emblems for Ukraine, for which the poet longs. The mighty waterway represents vitality and power. It is also the river that joins the two distinct parts of Ukraine, the left and right banks, which to this day have different histories, political personalities and interests.

Shevchenko’s reverential and powerfully emotional attitude toward the Ukrainian land and the Dnipro is embodied in what is perhaps his most famous poem, commonly referred to as The Testament (Zapovit), which was written in 1845 during a dire illness:

When I die, then bury me

Atop a mound

Amid the steppe’s expanse

In my beloved Ukraine,

So I may see

The great broad fields,

The Dnipro and the cliffs,

So I may hear the river roar.

When it carries hostile blood

From Ukraine into the azure sea…

I will then forsake the

Fields and hills –

I’ll leave it all,

Taking wing to pray

To God Himself… till

Then I know not God.

Bury me, rise up,

And break your chains

Then sprinkle liberty

With hostile wicked blood.

And in a great new family,

A family of the free,

Forget not to remember me

With a kind and gentle word.

The poem has been set to music by several composers and is considered a powerful anthem that animates the Ukrainian spirit. Ukraine’s trauma as an imperial colony is presented on an individual as well as collective level and often focuses on women. For example, in Mad Maiden, a young girl loses her mind over fears that her beloved has died in battle, and then falls prey to nymphs that take her life during the witching hour. He returns only to die of grief on seeing her lifeless body. Similarities in the plot to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are unmistakable. In Shevchenko’s poem, fate, somehow, or a curse, stands in the way of the union of the lovers in this world. In the long poem Kateryna, the heroine fails to heed the Kobzar’s cautionary words not to fall in love with soldiers from Muscovy (moskali). She becomes pregnant and then, abandoned by her Muscovite lover, is shunned as a social outcast, leaving her with a single recourse — to drown herself in a pond. While this and other personal tragedies occur on a microcosmic level, they too are emblematic of the subservient relationship between a weaker Ukraine and a politically more powerful Russia that is played out in Shevchenko’s poetry in the female/male paradigm.

Shevchenko, too, both exalts and laments Ukraine’s Kozak warriors of the past in many poems such as The Night of Taras, Ivan Pidkova, and The Haidamaks. The latter, Shevchenko’s longest poem, is a vivid depiction and denunciation of indiscriminate killing during a series of bloody 18th-century peasant and Kozak uprisings in Ukraine against Polish landowners, Jews and Uniate Catholics. The historical enemies of the Kozaks, and, by analogy, Ukraine, are distinctly outlined in Shevchenko’s narratives: the Poles, the Golden Horde, and Muscovy. There are enemies, too, from within. There are images of glory and courage in battle as well as sadness over loss. One lesson learned from history is that unity leads to victory; disunity and the quest for unbridled revenge to failure. Violence always begets more violence in endless cycles. Shevchenko manages to create a living poetic history from an indigenous Ukrainian perspective, rather than the Empire’s rendition of it from the conqueror’s colonial viewpoint. That poetic history is not one of just dry facts, but an emotional and emotive one that seeks to generate a sense of common cultural heritage as well as empathy.

The collection, too, is largely about a quest for Ukrainian identity, connecting historical events that showed courage along with the shared trauma that serve to define Ukrainians as a people and nation. Shevchenko creates all this in a dynamic literary idiom that smashes the Russian Empire’s imposed stereotype of Ukrainians as a rural peasantry that speaks a dialect of Russian, which does not lend itself to higher thought. Myriad parallels, of course, can be made between Ukraine’s relationship with Russia to slavery in American history. Millions of Ukrainians were serfs, i.e., the property of other individuals during both Russian and Polish rule in Ukraine, which Shevchenko refers to as the land that’s ours — but not our own. The prominent essayist Mykola Riabchuk, in discussing the colonial context of Ukraine’s history, has referred to the supposed blackness of the Ukrainian language as a kind of stigma and sign of inferiority to Russians of a chauvinist bent. Shevchenko’s Kobzar establishes the maturity and high stature of the literary Ukrainian language.

One of the major themes throughout Shevchenko’s poetry is that of orphanhood, which, of course, mirrors Shevchenko’s own status in life without parents and without a free homeland. He depicts orphans in various contexts, including the parents in the poem Kateryna, who are orphaned in old age, and the river Dnipro that would be orphaned with the sacred mountains.  The ill-fated lovers in his first poem, Mad Maiden, are both orphans. In the long poem The Haidamaks, the murder of the sexton leaves his daughter orphaned, which motivates the rage that Halaida (Vagabond) directs against his enemies. The kobzar minstrel is an orphan in the poem The Rambler, so too is Stepan in The Blind Man. To be an orphan, as Shevchenko often says in his poems, is tough and trying.

Shevchenko also devotes considerable attention to religion. At times, he humbly praises God, and sometimes defiantly accuses the Creator of turning a blind eye to evil. The poet prefaces a number of his verses with quotations from the Bible and makes several mentions of Israel, Biblical figures and the Holy Land. He also wrote imitations of Hosea, Isaiah and Ezekiel, as well as several Psalms of David. In addition, Shevchenko paid homage to martyred Czech religious reformer Jan Hus (Heretic), the Blessed Virgin Mary (Maria), and to the first Christians (Neophytes). In that poem, a pagan mother watches a leopard slaughter her Christian son in the Roman Coliseum.

The arena roars a second day.

Its golden Lydianv sand

Is smeared with purplish red,

Turned to mud with blood.

And the Nazarenes of Syracuse

Have not yet stepped

Inside the Coliseum.

On the third day, they as well

Were led into the slaughterhouse

By guards with swords unsheathed.

The arena roared just like a beast.

And into the arena proudly stepped your son,

With a psalm upon his lips.

One, too, needs to address the fact that some of Shevchenko’s poetry on occasion has been criticized for its treatment of Jews. They happened to be historically allied with the Poles, and thus enemies of the Kozaks, during the haidamak uprisings and earlier in the time of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a 17th century Ukrainian leader considered a hero by many Ukrainians, but detested by Jews and also disparaged by Shevchenko as a fool who lost Ukraine’s independence in his ill-fated 1654 Pereyaslav Treaty with Russia. The poet at times gratuitously mentions Jews and particularly paints less than flattering pictures of tavern keepers, many of whom happened to be Jewish in Shevchenko’s day, largely because that was one of the few professions permitted for Jews by the Russian Empire that exiled them beyond the Pale of Settlement to the fringes of the empire.vi Yet on a personal level there is a documented instance in 1846 when Shevchenko ran into a burning home to help salvage the belongings of its Jewish owner in the Ukrainian town of Pryluky. The poet then berated others for not helping their neighbor in distress.vii And Shevchenko joined several other leading Ukrainian intellectuals to sign a public letter in 1858 that Canadian scholar Myroslav Shkandrij observes is ...one of the first public protests against anti-Semitism in the Russian empire.viii Shkandrij indicates that Shevchenko’s attitude toward Jews has been the subject of some ill-informed controversyix and argues for a more nuanced reading of his works in that regard. Shevchenko’s basic humanity encouraged sympathy for all the downtrodden and oppressed. This humanity was recognized by Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who wrote that Shevchenko gave his people and the entire world brilliant and unshakable proof that the Ukrainian soul is capable of flying at the highest reaches of cultural innovation.x The poet’s capacity for empathy also played a large role in his close friendship in the winter of 1858-59 with African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, with whom he shared a personal history of prejudice and oppression.xi

Shevchenko died of heart failure in St. Petersburg on March 10, 1861, forty-seven years and a day after his birth. He lived as a free man for merely thirteen of those years. Though monuments to him have been erected throughout Ukraine and the world, he has been largely unknown in the English-speaking world. It is a great tribute to Shevchenko and his stature that numerous Russian notables such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Nekrasov, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin attended his first funeral in the Russian capital on March 13, 1861. Nekrasov, a Russian poet, who like Shevchenko often depicted the downtrodden and those who suffer in society, penned a poem On the Death of Shevchenko, which outlines the myriad sufferings in the life of his friend whom he calls a remarkable man. By May of that year, Ukrainian friends honored the wish Shevchenko expressed in his Testament for his final resting place to be atop a mound amid the steppe’s expanse in beloved Ukraine and had his body transported to Kaniv, Ukraine where it was reburied on a hill overlooking the Dnipro River.

On a personal level, several of the poems in Shevchenko’s collection express the poet’s own doubts, as well as his anguish and loneliness in the wilderness far away from his homeland. Just as Moses was allowed only to see and not to step foot in the Promised Land, Shevchenko, a prophet for the Ukrainian people, never realized his dreams of living in a free and independent Ukraine. But like Moses, he was granted a vision of his deepest desires for his people that he could see from afar in his heart, in his poetry, and in his dreams.

Michael M. Naydan

Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies

The Pennsylvania State University

Footnotes

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i The kobza is a Ukrainian instrument similar to a lute and a precursor to the Ukrainian bandura.

ii For a dis1cussion of the impact of Shevchenko on Ukrainian culture, see the articles in George Luckyj, ed. Shevchenko and the Critics: 1861-1980 (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1980).

iii A cock can crow at any hour, but in Ukrainian, those that do so at midnight are referred to as first roosters. Second roosters are heard at two o’clock. Third roosters mark the end of night when evil spirits must disappear. [Translator’s note]

iv All the quotations of Shevchenko poems here are translated by Peter Fedynsky.

v Lydia – A Roman province in Asia Minor known for gold deposits.

vi By edict in 1791 Catherine II (the Great) forced Jews to live in a region outside of Greater Russia called the Pale of Settlement that are now located in present-day Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine.

vii As noted by Myroslav Shkandrij, Jews in Ukrainian Literature: Representation and Identity (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009): 22.

viii Ibid., 20. For a more in depth discussion of the subject regarding Shevchenko and his relationship toward Jews, I would recommend the Taras Shevchenko rubric on pages 19-30 in Myroslav Shkandrij’s book. For the most comprehensive biography of Shevchenko that discusses the Jewish question in detail in his works and life, see Ivan Dziuba, Taras Shevchenko. Zhyttya i tvorchist’, 2nd ed. (Kyiv: KM-Academy Publishing House, 2008). It is available only in Ukrainian at this time.

ix Ibid., 19.

x Volodymyr Zhabotynsky, Nauka z Shevchenkovoho iiuvileiu in Vybrani statti z national’noho pytannia, Trans. Israel Kleiner (New York and Munich: Suchasnist, 1983), p. 78.

xi For a discussion in English of that friendship, see Demetrius M. Corbett, Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge: The Story of Friendship between the Great Ukrainian Poet and the Great Negro Tragedian, The Journal of Negro Education. 33, 2 (Spring, 1964): 143-150.

Translator’s Introduction

It is a rare literary translation between any two languages that does not involve a compromise between aesthetics and meaning. Preservation of the former often comes at the expense of the latter and vice versa. This dilemma is particularly acute with Shevchenko’s Kobzar. Its eloquence is so light and effortless that it is extremely difficult to convey even in other Slavic languages. Shevchenko’s friend and first Russian translator, Aleksey Pleshcheyev, wrote to novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "I recently translated Shevchenko’s poem, The Hireling. I don’t know how the translation came out, but the original is a wonderfully poetic thing. It’s hard to translate. It becomes unsophisticated. It’s incredible."xii It is all the more difficult to translate Shevchenko into a Germanic language such as English, which does not share many of the linguistic mechanisms of Ukrainian, particularly diminutives for nouns and even adverbs. Shevchenko uses them routinely to underscore sympathy or sarcasm. Some of his words are neologisms derived from Church Slavonic, whose flavor is impossible to convey in English without resorting to archaic vocabulary. Shevchenko also relies heavily on syntactical inversion, which is endlessly flexible in Ukrainian. For example, the inverted word order for the phrase "Мої там сльози пролились," from the poem, If You Gentlemen but Knew, sounds loftier than what one might ordinarily say. There are 24 combinations of those words in Ukrainian, all of which make sense. Not so in English. Keeping the original word order in English, i.e. My there tears shed, would be gibberish. In addition, Shevchenko often uses the passive voice to underscore his emphasis on fate, which victimized millions of Ukrainians through their accident of birth into serfdom. English tends toward the active voice.

I have opted for a translation that focuses on Shevchenko’s content, which is as compelling as his poems are lyrical. His poems are alternately frightening, funny, despairing, hopeful, sacred and sacrilegious, but always illuminating and entertaining. They serve not only as a guide to long submerged, even prohibited elements of Ukrainian history, geography, personalities and folklore, but also to universal themes of love, envy, oppression and freedom. In addition, Shevchenko’s poems represent considerable courage, because he took on Russia’s imperial regime at a time when few dared to challenge it. The world should know that. And English-speakers who trace their heritage to Ukraine should realize that the bard of their ancestral homeland is more diverse and interesting than the cursory introduction they received on Saturdays in Ukrainian School. Shevchenko skewers autocrats, chauvinists, sell-outs, and fools. He muses about religion, fate, friendship and solitude; and charms the reader with tender tales of love and devotion. He laments the loss of Ukrainian independence and garroting of its language and culture, but raises the promise of national revival and social justice. He also employs metaphors, word pictures, and history to expose the blunt force realities and pathologies of serfdom and national oppression — the invaders, drunks, bastards, unwed mothers, marauders, rapists, murderers, poseurs, thieves, and the injustice those characters represent.

The Kobzar is not without dissonance. A selective reading will provide fodder for anyone seeking evidence of xenophobia or religious controversy ranging from atheism to anti-Catholicism. Shevchenko also makes occasional use of stereotypes and pejoratives against Russians, Poles and Jews, which could offend some readers. As translator, I found the poet’s lines about Jews to be especially grating, but I can no more dismiss him than I could such venerable writers as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, T.S. Eliot and many others accused of literary anti-Semitism. I note, however, that Shevchenko places many of his dubious statements about Jews into the mouths of characters who are drunk or demented. But he is direct in his criticism of Ukrainian leaders who betrayed their nation. Indeed, the poet rebukes his own people for apathy. With regard to Russia, Shevchenko condemns that country’s autocracy, not its people. Accordingly, he depicts Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov as a blessed angel, and he sketched a portrait of Alexander Herzen, referring to the influential Russian political thinker as an apostle. The poet penned a separate verse, To the Poles, in a call for friendship between the peoples of Poland and Ukraine. When it counted, Shevchenko showed courage by getting into the fray soon after exile in a public support for Jews, which Professor Michael Naydan notes in his introduction to this translation. So the despair and enmity in Shevchenko’s poetry is descriptive, not prescriptive, and The Kobzar, taken as a whole, is forgiving and redemptive. In essence, he is saying, such is life… but let’s do better. His longest poem, Haidamaks, for example, is a chilling catalog of bloodshed in a 1768 Ukrainian peasant uprising against Polish nobles, Jews and Ukrainian Catholics. In a postscript to the poem that he refers to as a preface, Shevchenko writes, Let the sons and grandchildren know that their parents were mistaken. Let them again be brothers with their enemies. Thus the poet resolves the dissonance and should ultimately be understood as an individual who knowingly sacrificed his well-being in a fervent commitment, evident in The Kobzar, to the liberty of his fellow Ukrainians and their peaceful coexistence with former foes. And just as hope saw him through a decade of banishment to a bleak corner of the world, so too Shevchenko believed that Ukrainians will not wait in vain for their own [George] Washington with his new and righteous law.

Shevchenko was a keen observer of human affairs. Unfortunately, many of the things he wrote about in the mid-19th century, I reported as a Moscow-based journalist in the 21st. The fatherless children and unwed mothers in his poetry, for example, were victims of rape by overlords who committed the most heinous of crimes against their serfs, including murder, with impunity. Then as now, the elites of Ukraine often escape justice if someone they assault or kill is not a member of the ruling class. This is also true in Russia. All too often, journalists are murdered; pedestrians are run down by speeding politicians or their children; property is seized by the rich and powerful; justice is rigged in their favor. And drunks? According to the World Health Organization, Ukraine has the sixth highest per-capita adult alcohol consumption rate in the world and the highest among adolescents. Unaccountable rulers? Mazhory is the Ukrainian word for unruly children of public officials who escape prosecution for brutal beatings and deadly car accidents; Serfdom? Ukrainians in rural areas today are virtual hostages to land they own on paper, but are forbidden to sell. Serfs? Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian girls have been trafficked as sex slaves. The belittling of Ukrainian culture? Senior Ukrainian government officials have referred to their own language as useless, or have dismissed entire Ukrainian-speaking regions of the country as not being genuinely Ukrainian. Trampling of property rights? The word raider has entered the Ukrainian and Russian languages as a term for well-connected groups that seize buildings and businesses by force and bureaucratic machinations. Chechens? The Caucasus, Shevchenko’s 1845 poem about the bloody Russian conquest of the the mountainous region could almost have been written yesterday. Ukrainian vs. Ukrainian? Ukraine’s Red Army veterans who fought for Soviet power are pitted against their countrymen who struggled for independence in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Elites feeding at the public trough? Kyiv abounds with palatial estates and $500,000 automobiles. The Holodomor? Shevchenko’s poem The Princess anticipates 20th century tyrants who planned and profited from the genocidal starvation of Ukrainian peasants. Therefore a comparison of Shevchenko and today’s news reports along with a reading of earlier narratives about the Russian Empire by the Marquis de Custine of France and 16th century British diplomat Giles Fletcher, among others, suggests that the difference between the past and present in that part of the world is one of degree, not kind.

Though Shevchenko wrote about Ukraine, he did so mostly in Russia, where he spent the greater part of his life. The first book I read when I arrived in Moscow for a three-year assignment as Voice of America Bureau Chief was a compelling biography of the poet entitled, Taras Shevchenko – My Sojourn in Moscow. It was written by Volodymyr Melnychenko, the director of the Ukrainian Cultural Center in the Russian capital. The book was not only a vivid account of Shevchenko’s brief visits to the city, but a Baedeker that allowed me to trace the poet’s steps in local streets and to appreciate him as a human being who saw friends, sipped tea, took ill, bought art supplies, and listened to Beethoven’s music. I also lived and worked just a brief walk from his monument on the Moscow River opposite the Russian White House. Thus the poet became a routine, if unseen presence in my life.

It seems that what is happening in contemporary Russia and Ukraine has been happening throughout history — the powerful exploit the weak, whether the former are called boyars, starshyna, commissars or siloviki and the latter kholopy, serfs, peasants, or lokhs. They are like hermit crabs that succeed one another in the same shell. Shevchenko suggests it has long been so. Poems such as The Princess, The Blind Woman, and Petey call attention to injustices still being perpetrated by authorities. Neophytes, a poem about the first Christians, anticipated dictator Josef Stalin and any authoritarian ruler elevated by satraps to the level of God. Dream, the satire that resulted in Shevchenko’s ten-year banishment, outlines the strict power vertical headed by the czar. The pecking order differs little today, running from the Russian president through his ministers, bureaucrats, pliant legislators, their relatives in the lucrative notary business on down to migrants from former Russian imperial holdings in Central Asia who sweep the country’s farmers’ markets.

All of the authoritarian injustice of Russia, the Kremlin’s continued sway over Ukraine, and the decency of ordinary people in both countries weighed on my mind when I took a long walk in Moscow in early June 2010 with only three weeks left in my tenure. As I crossed the Novo-Arbatsky Bridge over the Moscow River, I looked at Shevchenko’s monument, knowing I may never see it again. At that moment, an unmistakable feeling swept across my chest that told me to translate The Kobzar.

It is sad to say that mine is the first ever complete English version of Shevchenko’s poetry collection. That is not to claim special credit or to disparage his previous translators, whose work I admire and often referred to. It is instead grudging recognition of the Kremlin’s remarkable ability not only to have inhibited Ukrainian intellectual activity, but to have kept a country as large as Ukraine invisible to the outside world. It did so through prolonged enslavement, isolation and the slaughter of Ukrainians by the millions; through the murder, character assassination, exile or coopting of the country’s leaders; through selective revisions of history to deny Ukrainians their past, as well as czarist bans against the literary use of Ukrainian, and Soviet pressure to muzzle the language. Ukrainians who managed to flee oppression were dispersed around the globe, rendered mute and effectively disconnected from one another and their homeland. Such relentless pressures are the hallmarks of genocide, which made it exceedingly difficult for Ukrainians to multiply, establish a common identity and to find a place of their own on the world stage as a Slavic people no less worthy of independent statehood than Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians, Serbs or Russians for that matter.

Similar pressure came close to preventing the publication of even this translation. That it has seen the light of day is a testament to my father’s courage and devotion to his family. He left Ukraine in August 1939 with his fiancée, my mother. World War II, which broke out less than a month later, pinned him down in Krakow, Poland for a few years. My mother then returned with her newborn, my oldest brother, to her village in Western Ukraine, where NKVD agents came looking for my father when Soviets occupied the region. There is no doubt they came to execute him, because that is what they did to his brother, to my mother’s brother-in-law, and many other Ukrainian patriots and intellectuals. In 1946, my father crossed the newly descended Iron Curtain from Vienna with a series of forged travel documents, jumped from a train near my mother’s village, and smuggled her and my eldest brother back to Austria. It was an audacious life

Reviews for Kobzar

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A ‘Kobzar’ was a Ukrainian bard, often blind, who sang religious songs and national epics. It’s an appropriate title for Shevchenko’s work, which he first published in 1840, because his primary concern is with the freedom of his country. This is a beautiful edition, with a striking portrait of Shevchenko by Ivan Kramskoy on the cover, and with many sketches and works of art from Shevchenko’s own hand interspersed throughout, which is great because he was also quite an artist. There is also excellent introductory material and footnotes throughout, which really help to explain the historical and cultural references. I have to say that as poetry goes, the collection is just ‘so-so’ because Shevchenko’s style is not very lyrical, and his themes are too repetitive. These include young maidens taking advantage of by rich lords, usually Russians, mothers being left alone by sons drafted into the Russian army, orphans who suffer tough lives, and acts of violence and revenge, such as burning houses down with people inside. Shevchenko also expresses his own personal bitterness for being a captive in a foreign land, and his longing to once again be in Ukraine. It also reflects his bitterness for the history of Ukraine, which was taken advantage of repeatedly by Russia and Poland. Sometimes in its history there are heroes and courageous men who fight to the death for independence, and at other times there are cowards or incompetents who caused irreparable harm. It gets to be too much of the same thing, and this is made worse by having the Complete Kobzar represented, that is, all of his writings from 1837 to 1861 (the last one just a month before he died, at age 47), including a few re-writes of previous poems. An abridged selection would have been better.On the other hand, it was quite a history lesson, both for Ukraine and also for Shevchenko himself. This is what pulls it up for me. Some recurring themes in the history lesson: Ukraine losing its independence in 1654 when Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky signed the Pereyaslav Treaty with Russia. Ivan Mazepa allying with Sweden and fighting Peter the Great at Poltava in 1709, with the defeat leading to Russia’s rise to power. The Haidamaks rebellions in the mid-18th century against Polish nobility, Catholics, and Jews (which unfortunately leads to some anti-semitic comments from Shevchenko that, while not uncommon at all for 19th century literature, are hard to excuse). The brutal torture and execution of Ivan Gonta, one of the leaders of the 1768 uprising, following his being captured by Russian forces and being turned over to the Poles.The list of grievances before and after Shevchenko’s life go on and on: Peter the Great forcing Ukrainian Kozaks to work on the construction of St. Petersburg under abysmal conditions, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Being drafted into the Russian Army, which meant a lifetime in the 18th century, and which was “reduced” to 25 years in 1793, and then to 12 years in 1855. Russians considering Ukrainian a dead language and trying to abolish it. Catherine the Great instituting sefdom by decree in 1783. Imprisonment of political prisoners (and Shevchenko) in the Petropavlovsky Fortress in St. Petersburg. And years later, the last of the Kobzars being summoned to a congress under Stalin and being shot, thus destroying Ukraine’s oral tradition. Shevchenko’s own story is also striking. He was born in 1814 into a family of serfs, witnessing firsthand and experiencing misery as another person’s property. He left Ukraine with his owner in 1829 at age 15 (ponder the first part of that sentence), and was only freed when a group of intellectuals who recognized his talent befriended him and paid for him in 1838. He was not able to return to Ukraine until 1843, visiting his relatives, all of whom remained serfs. He had the audacity to participate in the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, which believed in public education, the abolition of serfdom, and the right of every Slavic nation to develop its own language and culture, which of course was deemed subversive by the czarist regime. His anti-Russian sentiment boiled over in his searing poem “Dream (A Comedy)” in 1844, which is one of my favorites. His personal criticism of Czar Nicolas I (the same repressive dude who cracked down on the Decembrists, censored Pushkin and Lermontov, and sent Dostoevsky to Siberia) and the Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna led to a decade-long exile from 1847 to 1857, a period in which he was also forbidden to write or draw. Clearly he was able to sneak by this at times, since the collection here includes poems in this interval, but the result was to significantly reduce his artistic output, which is a real shame. He was pardoned in 1857 and allowed to return to Ukraine in 1859, but was arrested shortly thereafter and forced back to St. Petersburg, where he would die a mere seven days before the emancipation of the serfs was announced. It’s such a sad life, one that moves you before you even crack open the book to read his words. Bottom line, Shevchenko is considered Ukraine’s national poet for good reason, and what comes through here is his raw love for Ukraine, and his passion for freedom. It’s no wonder he’s on countless statues in Ukraine, as well as being on the 100 hryvnia banknote, which I just loved to see during my short travels there. Given the events of Ukraine, you can’t help but feel empathy for those trying to keep their country out of Putin’s hands while reading these poems from the 19th century. It’s timely for that reason, and timeless. The struggle goes on. Ще не вмерла Україна, И слава, и воля!