Chapter IV: Introduction (3)

At all events we do not know what occasion set Shevchenko to writing. We do not have any of his first attempts and the earliest poem which we know is the _Prychynna_, (the Mad Woman) which is very definitely based upon the weird, supernatural type of ballad which was so popular at the time and which had been acclimatized in Russian by Zhukovsky and in Polish by Mickiewicz on the basis of Bürger’s _Lenore_.

It is interesting in this poem that Shevchenko has completely Ukrainianized the scene. The lover is a Kozak who has fallen in battle. There is a sympathetic description of the Ukrainian landscape and unlike the vast number of ballads of this period, the stanza form has been completely neglected and can be marked only by the rhyming sequence which already has taken the form which is characteristic of most of the mature poems of our author. There is the same variation in metre which we are to find in his later poems and it is with good reason that critics regard this as one of his most successful works. Wonder grows when we reflect that this is the work of a twenty-three year old poet who was still a serf at the time when he composed it.

The same characteristics can be found in the other ballads which were included in the original _Kobzar_ and in those which he wrote before his arrest. They are ostensibly based upon the Ukrainian folklore; they handle the traditional themes in a highly original way, but at the same time they fall well within the limitations of the form as it was worked out by the general Romantic movement. The same question comes up again and again in Gogol’s Ukrainian stories, _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_, when there can be no decision how far the author is using exclusively peasant material and how far he has been influenced by literary models.

A careful examination of these ballads will show that Shevchenko was by no means the guileless and unthinking poet of nature that he appeared to Russian critics as Belinsky. When the _Kobzar_ appeared, Belinsky with all of his critical sense was so hostile to the use of the Ukrainian or Little Russian language for literary purposes, that he emphasized with malice aforethought the use of the vernacular and of peasant words, and regarded the poems as unimportant and unliterary. The Russian radicals and progressives certainly interpreted the brotherhood of man and the superiority of Russian to the other Slavonic languages as organs for their attempts to unify all inhabitants of the Russian Empire and their opposition to the Tsar and the system of Nicholas I did not lead them to have a shred of sympathy for any one who sought for himself the same privileges which they were so proudly acclaiming. From the beginning to the end of Shevchenko’s career he did not find among the Russian radicals any who appreciated what he was really endeavoring to do. They might sympathize with his attacks on tyranny and slavery but they all looked askance at his use of the native speech of Ukraine as much as did the tsarist officials.

In the historical ballads as _Ivan Pidkova_ and the _Night of Taras_, we have likewise the use of Ukrainian subjects and the adaptation of the ballad form for historical episodes, such as we find in Schiller and Byron. They are filled with the wild ferocity, the careless love of freedom that were the traditional features of the Zaporozhtsy throughout their history.

When we turn to _Katerina_, we are on different ground, for here we are dealing with the story of the peasant girl abandoned by her noble lover that was familiar in the Romantic period and which had been introduced into Russian literature as early as Karamzin’s _Poor Liza_. It is typical also of Shevchenko that he dedicated this poem to Zhukovsky who had been so instrumental in securing his freedom. A lesser and less outspoken person might have hesitated to do this, for Zhukovsky was himself the illegitimate son of a Russian nobleman and a Turkish slave girl. Yet apparently there had been a happy outcome to this situation, for the girl and Mme. Bunina, the wife, remained friendly and Zhukovsky was not faced with the hardships that confronted Ivas.

Through all these poems runs the fervent belief in Ukraine and her tragedy. Perhaps in _Perebendya_, Shevchenko modelled his old bard on the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ in the poem of Sir Walter Scott, who was himself an apologist for the long overthrown Stuart dynasty in England. The minstrel had been compelled to suffer by the changes of politics and Shevchenko could easily parallel him to the blind bards wandering around Ukraine and singing of the past glories of the Kozaks and the Ukrainian people. The Romantic glorification of the past fitted in well with his point of view and in the _Kobzar_ almost every poem breathes the poet’s sadness over the loss of his country’s liberty and the present hardships of the people. They emphasize his dislike for Poland and his aversion to the indifference of the Moskals to the people of Ukraine.

Thus the _Kobzar_ is far more than a mere imitation of peasant songs. It goes far beyond the talented reworking of peasant themes and it shows us Shevchenko as already a person well familiar with the literatures of Europe as reflected through Russian and Polish, with the Russian influence predominating. This was only natural for he was living at the time in the Russian capital, and his associates were drawn from the Russian cultural circles. The _Kobzar_ appealed to the Ukrainian people. It set forth their case and their sufferings as well as their past glory, and it naturally won for the poet their love and esteem.

The next year he produced the _Haydamaki_, the longest of all his works. It is a long epic poem describing the revolt of the Koliishchina, the last outbreak of Western Ukraine against the Polish domination. The movement had been convulsive and brutal and the poet has endeavored to catch that fierce spirit of revolt that animated the unfortunate peasants. He studied the materials available for the history of the movement but he was also influenced by the stories which he had heard from his grandfather and his associates in childhood and like epic poets in general he did not content himself with a mere versified history. He followed the better artistic method of creating a relatively minor figure as hero, in this case Halayda and here again Shevchenko followed the favorite device of Scott, which had also been adopted by Pushkin in his novel, _The Captain’s Daughter_, a study of the revolt of Pugachov, the last great outbreak of the Russian peasants against the new order in Russia at almost the same time as the Koliishchina.

There are passages in this poem, which seem to the modern reader unnecessarily brutal but on the whole Shevchenko was not a military poet. The parts of the _Haydamaki_ which will live forever are not so much the scenes of battle and of bloodshed, as the descriptions of Ukrainian nature, the oppression of the peasants by their overlords, the blessing of the arms, and the introduction and epilogue which give the motif of the poem, “Ukraina’s weeping.”

The work met with the same reception as the _Kobzar_. The Ukrainians in St. Petersburg and at home welcomed the work. It was appreciated by many of the foremost Russian poets, but the leaders of liberal thought like Belinsky attacked it savagely. The great liberal and lover of freedom remarked of it (Vol. VII, p. 214 ff.) “Works of such a character are published only for the pleasure and edification of the authors themselves.” They rest “on an abundance of vulgar and commonplace words and expressions, lacking simplicity of conception and story, filled with pretensions and mannerisms natural to all bad poets--often not at all popular, although they are supported by reliance upon history of song and tradition.” Belinsky had nothing better to say than to urge the poet if he desired to help his people “to talk to the people in a simple, intelligible language about various useful subjects of civil and family life, as Osnovyanenko commenced (but unfortunately did not continue) in his pamphlet, _Thoughts for my dear countrymen_.” Incidentally this pamphlet had aroused amusement and irritation, because Kvitka-Osnovyanenko as a provincial nobleman was giving vent to views on the divine rights of the Tsar which had long been unpopular even with the most reactionary circles in the capital. Such comments on the _Haydamaki_ can be explained only by the ardent desire of Belinsky and his friends to bar the development of literature in the Ukrainian or Little Russian language as they insisted upon calling it.

Belinsky did not change his opinions and about the time of Shevchenko’s arrest, the great liberal critic wrote to Count Annenkov in December 1846 that “common sense must see in Shevchenko an ass, a fool and a scoundrel, and above all a bitter drunkard, a lover of spirits because of _Khokhol_ patriotism.”

Perhaps it was as a result of these attacks, that Shevchenko came to feel himself even more isolated in the Russian capital. He wrote very little during the next year and what he wrote breathes with every syllable the feeling that he was a stranger in a strange land and that the glory of Ukraine had definitely departed. He gradually ceased to glorify the past and to hope that it might return and he came to bewail the past.

It was in this state of mind that he returned to Ukraine for a visit in 1843 and was overwhelmed with the tragedy, the poverty, and the unhappiness which he found in his own country and his own family. His naturally radical propensities were reinforced and he felt on his return that his stay in St. Petersburg was rather taking him away from the field of action and of practical life. The pleasant associations which he had with Bryulov and his friends, his occupations with painting and writing, all seemed to him insignificant in comparison with the festering sore which he had seen at home. In _Three Years_ he deplored the passing of his youth in unimportant occupations and he yearned to be able to do something more positive, more immediate for his fellow men. In this he was probably stirred by the general note of sentimentalism that swept over Russian literature in the forties and the beginnings of definite sympathy with the people and a call for the liberation of the serfs.

A striking result of this visit was a mitigation of his hostility for the Poles. In the more romantic dreams of his youth, he had harked back to the Kozak exploits against the Polish state. Now he definitely turned upon Bohdan who had been the first to sign a formal treaty with Moscow. It is idle to argue that Shevchenko was thinking only of the Russian tsar and the Russian landowners. The whole trend of his works, his denunciation of the German bureaucracy, his attitude toward individuals all indicate that he sharply differentiated the Russians and the Ukrainians and was willing to risk his life in order to create again an independent Ukraine.

The poems of the years between his first visit to Ukraine and his arrest are perhaps his greatest consistent mass of writing and in them he allows his imagination to play over the whole field of life. Working in the Archaeological Commission, he resented the Russian excavation of the Ukrainian funeral mounds and the removal of the contents, where they were of artistic character, to the capital. He resented the glorification of Peter the Great and Catherine, the two rulers who had wiped out the Ukrainian self-government. He resented the praise of Bohdan for his subservience to Moscow and the condemnation of Mazepa for his joining with Charles XII against Peter. He resented the Russian advance in the Caucasus and the attempts of Russia to strengthen her power without solving her internal difficulties. He resented the willingness of many of the Ukrainian landowners to climb upon the band wagon of Moscow and to avoid their own culture. He hated the injustice of the people themselves towards the unfortunate girl who had been seduced, especially by a Russian stranger. His moral indignation urged him to speak out against every form of oppression.

He therefore willingly accepted the ideas of Kollár, a Slovak, when he wrote the _Heretic_ and glorified Jan Hus as a Slav hero, but it is to be noted that in the introduction which was dedicated to Šafařík, he definitely criticized Pushkin’s views on the necessity of Slavonic union under Russia and demanded a real Slavonic brotherhood in which all the Slavs would appear as brothers.

Naturally the Society of Sts. Cyril and Methodius and the association of the United Slavs made a strong appeal to him. Here was a group of young idealists who seriously believed, following Kollár, that all the Slavs should be brothers, that the German influence should be eradicated, and that a great Slav republic should be set up. Like the Decembrists a quarter century before, these young leaders had very little idea as to the ultimate consequences of their acts and the methods by which they would realize their ideals. Shevchenko saw in them a standard which would help humanity and he turned to it.

Naturally it was impossible for any author to express these thoughts openly under the iron rule of Nicholas I. To the administration, the problem of Ukraine had been settled when the country had been divided into governments and the full Russian administrative system introduced. It was therefore necessary for the poet to indicate rather than to state definitely the goals for which he was striving and hence it is that we have such poems as the _Dream_ and the _Great Grave_. There is much that is unclear about them. The _Great Grave_ is a masterpiece of allusion and of vague indirection but the reader is able from it to grasp a full sense of the indignation which Shevchenko felt over the ruin of his country and his guarded expressions of hope that it will rise again free of Russian domination. The old nostalgic note of sorrow for the failures of the past still continues but the pressing needs of the present and the realization that there is much internal reform, much increase of brotherhood, much hard and unromantic work to be done, before the glorious days of the past can return, now take precedence over the old laments for a golden age. Shevchenko had come to realize that it was internal disunion as well as foreign pressure that had brought the country to its present state and he believed that this had to be fought at home as well as on the field of battle.

Just as before Ukraine is pictured as a poor widow, an orphan, abandoned by all in a cold world, and he poured out his heart over it. At the same time he expressed his bitter condemnation of the court and in the _Dream_ he produced an unforgivable and unforgettable satire on the slavish manners of the court itself. He must have been aware that he was risking his own personal liberty and fortune on such attacks. At times they were hardly tactful or in good taste but the bitterness which rankled in Shevchenko’s soul made him oblivious to this.

It is perhaps idle to wonder what change would have taken place in him, had he received a fellowship to study abroad. He had already come a long way culturally from the little village where he was born and he was familiar with the accomplishments of the world outside. He lacked that personal knowledge that even a short trip to the West would have given him. We cannot tell how he would have reacted to a freer and a better life. He might have become a potent factor as an emigré in the life of his country as Drahomaniv was in after years. He might have, but it is hardly likely, been swept from his feet by the allurements of the outside world. Almost certainly his active mind would have drawn some lesson for his people, would have gained some experience, had he had the opportunity to make friends and to observe.

It was not to be and perhaps we are not going too far when we ascribe to the introduction of the second _Kobzar_ which never appeared a fairly good summary of Shevchenko’s views on the very eve of the catastrophe. He had planned to publish some of his poems and they were already in the hands of the censor when he was arrested. In the introduction which he submitted with the text and which was only discovered in the files of the police in 1906, he bewailed the fact that all the Slavonic races were able to print freely, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Bulgars, Montenegrans, Moskals but not his own people, and he complains even more bitterly that a large part of the Ukrainian educated class are ashamed of their own mother tongue and try to read and write Russian. “Do not pay attention to the Moskals; let them write in their fashion, and let us write in ours. They have a people and language--and we have a people and language, and let people decide which is the more beautiful. They rely upon Gogol, because he wrote not in his own language, but in Muscovite, as on Walter Scott, because he did not write in his language. Gogol grew up in Nizhen and not in Little Russia, and does not know his own language; and W(alter) S(cott) in Edinburgh and not in Scotland--and perhaps there was some reason why they gave it up.... I do not know. But Burns was also a great folk poet, and Skovoroda would have been, had he not been beaten from his course by Latin and then by Muscovite.” “Why were not V. S. Karadjić, Šafařík and others not turned into Germans (it would have been easier for them) and why did they remain Slavs, sincere sons of their mothers, and acquire good fame?” This and other passages disposes of the widespread idea that Shevchenko was only opposed to the Russian autocratic rule. The whole trend of his thinking and development shows that he regarded Ukraine and the Ukrainians as entirely different from the Russians and on a par with the other Slavonic races. His comparison with Scott and Burns shows his general feelings and also his acquaintance with what European literature had to offer. He had worked through many of his original difficulties, and if he was of a radical term of mind, he still viewed his radicalism only through the eyes of his own people. It naturally made it harder for him in the capital and it alienated him from many of his more easy-going countrymen and more than that it prepared the way for the great catastrophe that was to overtake him.

Up to this time with the single exception of the _Heretic_ he had confined himself entirely to Ukrainian themes. But during these years his understanding had broadened. He was as devoted as before to the cause of Ukraine but in his shift from the Romantic glorification of the past of his country to an eloquent plea for the elimination of the evils which he saw there, he had come to realize that these evils were universal. The sins of injustice, of cruelty, and of meanness were everywhere and the poor of all nations suffered as did the Ukrainians. This gave to his poetry a far wider human significance than before. From this time on, the suffering and insulted girl who had been conceived as a Ukrainian phenomenon now becomes a universal figure. This type which had figured in world literature and been naturalized in Russian, Polish, and then in Ukrainian, now is seen as a universal phenomenon. The appeals for justice for the mother, for the poor are universal appeals, placed in a Ukrainian setting with a background of Ukrainian nature and reality. They can be read with sympathy throughout the civilized world and not merely as local peculiarities. A sort of national ethnography had served as the basis for many of the early Ukrainian writings and the authors had vied with one another to see how accurately they could describe the minutiae of village life. Shevchenko was not satisfied with this and he laid the weight of emphasis on the individual and the universal rather than on the local background.

It all marked another step in the transformation and broadening of the poet and the process would have continued with beneficent results, had it not been for his unfortunate arrest and exile. During the weeks of confinement, his poetry became more purely lyrical, more definitely personal than before and the little collection _In the Fortress_, shows a newer and deeper insight into his own psychology and that of his people. He realized that it meant the shattering of his hopes, the possible ending of his career, and the regret that he could not have done more burned him deeply. Yet it is interesting that in this very series, there grew in his mind the comparison between Ukraine and the poor girl driven from her own village. This was to be one of the main themes of his later verses.

Then came the stunning sentence that he was to be exiled and put in the army without permission to write or paint. He at first made attempts to have the ban on painting lifted. We cannot tell whether this was because painting was nearer to his heart or because it was his verses that had brought his condemnation and he believed that since his pencil and brush were less guilty of political opposition, he might be granted more mitigation of his sentence on this score than on the field of poetry in which he had definitely offended the Tsar.

The sentence was carried out spasmodically. Thus at Orsk he was apparently able to write a little. During the winter at Kos-Aral, he had still more liberty and while he was at Orenburg, he was able both to write and paint. It was only after his second arrest that the ban was ruthlessly and rigorously enforced for some years and apart from some reworking of old themes in Russian, he did not attempt anything.

Life in the army was not kind to the poet. The needlessly harsh and stern discipline hurt his sensitive soul. His companions were largely ignorant peasants; many of them were political exiles and criminals. Their rough and obscene language, their brutal cynicism disgusted him as much as did the ignorance and lack of culture of many of the officers. He never became a good soldier and by his rigid performance of his duties never won some sort of alleviation of the hardships of his life. In addition, even on the expedition to Kos-Aral, there was a surprising lack of the necessaries of life for all, high and low, willing and unwilling. All this coupled with the prohibition of indulging openly in his favorite pastimes wore him down and his health was gravely shattered by scurvy and other diseases. In short by the time of his liberation, he had become a prematurely old man.

Intellectually he was, like Dostoyevsky at almost the same period, cut off from all the currents of literature and confined in his reading to the New Testament. Unlike him, Shevchenko did not grow and expand his range of interest during this period. He did not drink in and transcend his new experiences but he retreated more into himself and maintained his intellectual poise by meditating upon the same themes which had been stirring in his brain before he was arrested. He deepened his meditations and his thoughts and universalized them instead of absorbing the world around him and meditating upon it.

It is highly typical of Shevchenko and indeed of all the Russian intelligentsia of the period that this sudden forcible intrusion into a new and strange life did not produce in his writings any pictures of his experiences. The treeless steppe and the impoverished and nomadic Kirghiz might become the proper subjects for his painting and sketching. They leave on his poetry only his feeling of isolation from Ukraine. The hardships on the expedition do not rouse him to song to describe them nearly as much as do his memories of the green fields of Ukraine and the sufferings of the unfortunate serfs.

More than ever his poetry re-echoes the same motifs that we have already seen--the unwedded mother, a comparison of her with the widowed and desolated Ukraine, his solitude, his dreams of liberty. A Lermontov or a Tolstoy could thrill to the beauty of the Caucasus, the grandeur of the mountains, the sandy desert. Shevchenko could not but every step, every new event only increased his nostalgia and led him to a deeper and deeper lyricism which contrasts with the narrative themes which he reworked with slight variations. We can explain this in many ways, his feelings of alienation from his surroundings, his dislike of the army, his sufferings from the discipline, but the fact remains that his experiences remained apart from his poetry and his mind dwelt upon the past and the dreams that he had once cherished.

In Orenburg he came to know many of the exiled Poles and Ukrainians. On his release he met some of the Decembrists who were returning after a quarter of a century in Russian prison camps. The period taught him to overlook many of the Polish misdeeds in Ukraine. This was foreshadowed by that memorable passage in the epistle where he told his countrymen that the Kozaks had overthrown Poland but that her fall had ruined them. So in the poem _To the Poles_ he was able to plead for a renewal of brotherly relations.

The Decembrists impressed him but it is highly significant again that not one word of his poetry pleaded for a reconciliation between them and Ukraine. He viewed them as martyrs, he eulogized them, but the fact that Pushchin, the Decembrist, the poet, and the friend of Pushkin, had an illegitimate daughter just like a gay hussar, shocked him to the depths. He must have remembered that passage in _Katerina_,

Yes, the Moskal loves you lightly,
Lightly he will drop you.

But there is a difference in his last period. He returned unbroken in spirit and almost his first experiment in poetry was the _Neophytes_ written while he was detained at Nizhni Novgorod. His friend Kulish who was always cautious and fearful warned him that the poem was dangerous but that made no difference to Shevchenko. Even after his experiences in the army and while he was still in doubt as to whether he might be returned to the cheerless steppe, he wrote a poem which pointedly drew a comparison between the Russian tsar and the Emperor Nero. It is a sharp criticism of the abuse of Christianity by the modern despots. In form it is a retelling of a story that might have been the theme of a painting by Bryulov, the picture of decadent, luxurious, persecuting Rome, and the fate of the early Christian martyrs. In a sense the poem offers a conventional picture. Shevchenko chooses however, and this is in line with his development, the emotions of a mother of a martyr who is converted by her son’s courageous death to a belief in the Crucified. There are phrases which express the poet’s dissatisfaction with organized Christianity but they reveal nothing more than his belief that truth and right are being mocked by their so-called observers and believers. We can read the story as it stands or we can take the very obvious comparison of the mother and Ukraine, and read the moral that Ukraine can only arise when truth is restored to its supreme position on earth, and men live again as brothers.

Shevchenko’s return to St. Petersburg was almost a triumphal procession. He was entertained everywhere by the Slavophile leaders, as Sergey Timofeyevich Aksakov who had pleasant memories of that remote area among the Bashkirs which was somewhat similar to the land where Shevchenko had suffered. In St. Petersburg he met Count Aleksyey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his relatives. He also became friends with Chernyshevsky and this friendship is of course exploited by the Communists who have tried to translate Shevchenko into their own language. It is true that the great radical spoke of the 1860 edition of the _Kobzar_ in terms more favorable than did Belinsky but it is equally clear that he persisted in seeing in it only the folk elements and refused to grant it a proper place in the literature of a civilized nation. To him like Belinsky, Ukrainian had no right to exist except as a vehicle for folksongs. He rebuked the language and the writers for borrowing Russian and European words and believed that one East Slavonic language was all that had a right to appear and be counted. He denied to the Ukrainians that right which Russian in the eighteenth century had so generously utilized of modernization. He could quote Shevchenko on the abuses of serfdom with an easy conscience but both he and Turgenev were very sceptical of the validity of the underlying thesis of Shevchenko that Russia had its people and language and so had Ukraine.

Shevchenko had returned broken in body. His fiery will was unbroken but he was weary and the main notes in his later poems were a universal call for action against injustice and a personal lamentation for his bachelor life outside of Ukraine. Only rarely as in the attack on Bohdan did he revert to direct laments for the fall of his country. For the most part his works are adaptations of the Old Testament, breathing the moral indignation and the call to repentance that inflamed the Old Testament prophets. Again and again he emphasizes the need for truth and love and brotherhood, if mankind is to be truly happy.

To this series may be ascribed _Mary_. This is a striking study of the Blessed Virgin and Shevchenko deliberately changed the sacred story in order to make Mary typical of the lot of the average peasant woman. He also used apocryphal tales that were current among the peasants. Yet despite the surface variations in the story which take away much of the scriptural character, the story cannot fairly be called irreverent. It is not even unmiraculous in character, for the Star of Bethlehem, here called a comet, certainly plays a distinct role.

In writing this poem Shevchenko prefaces it with a glorious invocation of the Blessed Virgin, but exactly as he did in the _Neophytes_, the emphasis is laid upon the devoted woman, that truly human figure who carries on the work of her Son in the great cause of human freedom and human brotherhood after his untimely death at the hands of evil men. There is none of that spirit of deliberate blasphemy which appears so markedly in Pushkin’s _Gavriliada_ or in most of the attempts to humanize the sacred story. It brought down upon the unfortunate head of the poet a great deal of criticism but here as elsewhere a more careful reader will see the fundamentally religious nature of the poet, even when he at first sight seems to turn his back upon the adherents of conventional religion.

The other note of his last days is the more personal one of grieving over his own unfortunate fate. His one ambition in life was to have a wife and a little home on the banks of the Dniper and his last years were a pathetic search for the girl who was to share it with him. His last poem written only a few days before his death is a real swansong and a definite assurance that it will be in the next world that he can satisfy these innocent desires.

Taras Shevchenko finished his sad and thwarted career at the age of forty-seven. For only nine years was he free to write as he would and even during that period publication was denied his works. He could be known officially only by the _Kobzar_ and the _Haydamaki_. A second edition of the _Kobzar_ was stopped by his arrest. Another edition which did appear in 1860 could contain only those early poems which had appeared before his arrest. All his other works were known either by manuscript copies which were in the hands of devoted friends and were circulated at the risk of arrest and imprisonment or were buried in his own notebooks or in the more inaccessible files of the Imperial police. All this makes it more remarkable that he was so widely known and highly valued during his own lifetime.

There is a deceptive simplicity about his works. He seems to be the mere imitator of the folksongs and the traditions of his people but he is far more than that. He possessed a command of language and a degree of metrical skill which overshadows that of many of his famous Slavonic contemporaries. Pushkin was content to ring changes upon the iambic metre. Shevchenko uses with equal skill iambics, trochees (perhaps his favorite) and anapaests. He was a master in the art. He could employ the simple measures of the folksong and give them a real dignity and he was equally at home with the formal rhythms but always he was the master of his medium and the freedom which he uses in his system of rhyming and of accentuation show a skill in technique that is not rivalled by any poet of his own or later times. The very simplicity and artlessness which he reveals conceal the master artist and are the more amazing when we realize that he has left us no hints as to the way in which he attained his skill, for the earliest poems which we possess from his pen are as perfect in their own way as are his greatest masterpieces.

Shevchenko commenced his work at the height of the Romantic period, when the poets of eastern and western Europe were heavily under the spell of the supernatural and the historical and from there with the ripening of his talent, he passed by evolutionary stages into the age of realism and of social reform. Through it all there is a majestic dignity that is characteristic of the finer passages of the Old Testament together with a tender and sympathetic understanding of all the sufferings and sorrows of humanity. It is this characteristic that has made him a timeless poet of the human heart and has given to his works not only national but permanent and universal value.

It is now nearly a century since the promising career of Taras Shevchenko was blighted by arrest and exile. The Russian authorities hoped that they had silenced him and with him the cause for which he stood and the uncomfortable and dangerous ideas which he was expressing. They failed miserably. They isolated him for ten years and warped his spirit; they broke his health but he never wavered in his ideas and to the end of his life he proclaimed the selfsame undying truths. Year by year his poems have been recovered, they have been studied, edited and reedited. Year by year his fame has increased and to-day it is abundantly evident that he was not a petty revolutionist and plotter, a poet who repeated in more or less agreeable form the old village folksongs, the last remains of a passing phase of life in one small period of human history, but that he was a man who against tremendous obstacles developed his heaven-given gift of song by long and serious study, who assimilated the best that the civilization of his time had to offer, and who was a flaming guide to the hearts of men and a prophet of a new and better world in which all that stains and ruins and tortures the human spirit will disappear. The poet of Ukraine, he is also a poet of humanity. His works have more than a purely local significance. To-day we realize as never before that freedom and truth and justice and mercy and brotherhood must be worldwide in scope and universal and eternal, if man is to be free and happy and peaceful. There are poets who express some of these ideals. There is none who speaks out more clearly, more artistically, and more touchingly to men everywhere than Taras Shevchenko. Those qualities which are local and temporal disappear. The underlying merits come to the surface and shine more brightly. Efforts to deride him or to bend him to the uses of aggressors and tyrants must fail and Taras Shevchenko appears to-day as some of the more keensighted and understanding of his contemporaries both at home and abroad realized, a poet of the first rank who deserves the ear and the study of every civilized man.

_CHAPTER FOUR_

THE RELIGION OF SHEVCHENKO

What was Shevchenko’s attitude toward religion? The best critics of the poet, whether they are Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, or Protestant, have come to the conclusion that he was fundamentally a religious man but that at times he employed certain phrases which have allowed the advocates of militant atheism to claim him for their party. Yet to prove their point, this latter group is compelled to believe that he distinctly concealed his own thoughts to satisfy the dictates of the censorship in a way that he did on no other subject and their comments are so biassed that it is difficult to take them too seriously.

There can be little doubt that, especially after his visit to Ukraine in 1843, Shevchenko was carried away by his bitterness over the lot of the Ukrainian people. This is expressed again and again in his attack on the official representatives of the Orthodox religion, which had been definitely bureaucratized by Peter the Great, destroyer of Ukrainian freedom, and Shevchenko could not resist the temptation to attack the Church on all counts. Thus in both the _Dream_ and the _Caucasus_ there are lines that reflect his distaste for the established Church of Russia. In the _Heretic_ he employs his choicest invectives against the condemnation of Hus. Later while he was in exile, he expressed himself very sharply about the role of the Jesuits in Poland. After his return he inserted certain phrases in _Mary_ that vary from the traditional thought of the Church.

All this might be interpreted as an extreme form of that type of anti-clericalism that is not uncommon in nineteenth century authors, except for the fact that at times when his sense of social injustice gets the better of him and he is writing with a burning zeal against the social order, he seems at times to include God Himself in his condemnations. It must be admitted by the best friends of the poet that on occasion he indulged in decidedly intemperate language.

On the other hand there are remarkable examples of Shevchenko’s deep interest in the religion of the people. We must remember that the Russian occupation of Ukraine had led to a transfer of the clergy from the supervision of Constantinople (where it had been during the great days of Kiev) to Moscow and that the change bore as hardly upon the religious life of the villages as it did upon the political and cultural. The Russian tsars were trying to standardize and organize everything under their own supervision and upon their own system and while they did not change in any important degree the native rites and practices, they tried to fit them into a different framework.

Nowhere in the whole of the poet’s writings does he cast any shadow of contempt or brand as superstitious the peasant practices of making the sign of the cross or of lighting candles or praying. The normal religious life of the village where it concerns the peasants and God he treats with the greatest respect. He recognized very clearly that there was in it a something that answered the religious needs of the people, that brought them into contact with a superior Power that alone could make life tolerable, and he never deliberately cast any aspersions upon it. It was part of the poet’s endeavor to build his future Ukraine on all sound principles in the national life.

Similarly he makes absolutely no attacks upon the teachings of Christ, on His pleas for brotherly love, on the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The birth of Christ and the redemption of humanity form the central point in the entire history of mankind. He acknowledges and glorifies His teachings, even if at moments of vexation he complains that God is waiting too long, is allowing too much innocent blood to be shed, too many abuses to continue on this planet.

So too with the Blessed Virgin. In the introduction to the poem _Mary_ he pays a glowing tribute to her, as sinless, the sacred power of all saints, and he implores Her to give to the suffering poor the power of Her martyr Son. In the introduction to the _Neophytes_, he again appeals to Her as “Blessed among women, the holy, righteous Mother of Her holy Son on earth.” All these references fit in strangely with the arguments that the poet was in any way hostile to religion.

Besides this, there is abundant evidence that Shevchenko knew the Bible thoroughly. In his letters from exile, he writes to Princess Repnina that he read the Gospel constantly and he asked her to send him also a copy of Saint Thomas à Kempis. He declares that only a Christian philosophy could encourage a person in his hopeless position. We certainly do not need to assume that in these passages he was writing only with an eye to the effect that it would produce upon the Princess, his friends in the capital and the censors.

More than that, Shevchenko drew heavily upon the Bible for themes for his poems, especially in his later years. A favorite device might almost be called a meditation upon the Old Testament, particularly upon passages where the ancient prophets condemned severely the abuses and the faults of their own day. Then in a direct manner he used the present situation in Ukraine to illustrate the great truths of the past. It is certainly interesting that it is not in these poems that he resorts to expressions which are really in bad taste, for the great majority of these occur in the poems written after his first return to Ukraine, when he was deeply shocked by the conditions which he saw there. Again on his last visit he apparently made remarks that irritated some of the Polish landowners and involved him in trouble with the police and the authorities.

The religious development of the poet thus seems to move along with the general development of his thought. In the poems of the early period through the _Haydamaki_ and _Hamaliya_, when he was interested in picturing the romantic tales of the Kozaks, he accepts without a murmur the popular rites and devotions. There is a deep sincerity in the picture of the priests blessing the army before the uprising of the _Haydamaki_. It is a scene of deep piety and also one that a cynic could easily have turned into an attack on religion. The same is true of the prayers of the Kozaks in prison in _Hamaliya_. Even in _Katerina_, while he recognizes the harsh treatment of the poor mother, he goes little further than to ask God why such things are allowed to exist on earth.

It was after his visit to Ukraine in 1843 that the horrible position of his people burst upon him with all of its terror, cruelty, and injustice. To him the violation of the Christian law of love and charity was the overwhelming fact in life. He became openly rebellious against every institution--whether religious or civil--which seemed even remotely to imply toleration for a social order that could be so near a hell on earth. Yet even in his attacks on these institutions, we can always feel the underlying belief of the poet that religion and God are being deliberately misrepresented and that all would be well, if we could only break through the iron wall that seems to surround this world and penetrate the mystery beyond. There is much of the spirit of Job in these poems, although the author could not at all times hold fast to his vision of God’s justice and mercy. Here there is undoubtedly a limitation on the thought of Shevchenko but it is a limitation that is liable to confront any forthright thinker who bounds his horizon with this planet and with life on earth. He was not a mystic to indulge in the contemplation of the Divine but a man suffering for the sad fate of his fellowmen, who believed with all his heart in truth and justice and who was willing to sacrifice himself for the good and true.

His arrest and imprisonment undoubtedly had a definite effect upon him. We know from his letters to Princess Repnina and others that he attended church services during his stay in the fortress. Later he endeavored to secure permission to decorate both a Roman Catholic and an Orthodox chapel and it can hardly be supposed that he did this only to have an opportunity to draw and to paint. It was rather the feeling that he could dedicate some part of his work to God at the moment when it seemed impossible for him to carry on his work for his country.

On his return to St. Petersburg, he was of course thrown into company with the fashionable radicals of the day with their deliberate and unadulterated atheism and we might expect that he would give some definite sign of their influence. He does nothing of the kind. Rather he turned to the Old Testament for its harsh judgments on kings and rich men who robbed and oppressed the poor and the downtrodden. He had long dreamed of analyzing the character of the Blessed Virgin as a typical mother and it is this that he does in _Mary_. While he might have been influenced by some of the more irreligious of the popular authors, the work emerged on an entirely different plane with an ardent religious introduction and a reverent treatment of the entire theme. So too with all of his writings.

In his last days Shevchenko had to some degree softened in his ideas. Perhaps he had learned by experience. He certainly was not terrorized. The man who had spoken so boldly in the _Neophytes_ that he had frightened the timid Kulish would hardly have added a religious introduction merely to silence opposition. Such an idea conflicts with all that we know of Shevchenko’s character but he came to differentiate more carefully between those elements of evil in the formal religion of the day and religion itself and sharp as are some of his criticisms, it is impossible for any honest scholar to claim that his works are deliberately irreligious.

An additional sign of this is his _Primer_, which he secured permission to publish only a few months before his death. It was definitely written for the Sunday Schools which were springing up in Ukraine under the new order. Shevchenko introduced a large amount of religious material into it and he shows again in this the same interest in seeing the social ideas of Christianity worked to the fullest possible extent. It would have been so easy for him to have created a purely secular book, had he been so inclined.

Thus at every stage of his life, we can find distinct traces of the religious interests of Shevchenko. He was no trained theologian, he was not a mystic, he was not a man who sought to evade the troubles of earth by taking refuge in heaven. He felt that here on earth there was a crying need for reform and human brotherhood and he never indicated for a second that there was any other possibility for achieving this than through the pure and applied teachings of the Gospel.

We know that he was familiar with the ideas of Skovoroda and of other writers of a similar character. We know too that in his own time there were various movements aiming for a new social order. He was influenced by the ideas of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and he was led to revolt against the more formal and ritualistic sides of a Christianity which neglected its task of teaching the people and was willing to follow the dictates of a tyrannical government.

Despite all criticisms, the overwhelming impression that the poems, the stories, and the letters of Shevchenko leave upon the careful reader is that he is a man who profoundly appreciates the Crucified and Risen Savior and who is only too ready to support his teachings and suffer for his fellowmen. Some of his outbursts may be extreme but it is very doubtful, if a single intelligent reader has ever found his faith shaken by any poem of Taras Shevchenko. When we subtract from his criticized remarks those that may be influenced by literary models and those that come from blazing indignation, we shall find an amazing residue of serious moral instruction, of deep respect for the worship and practices of his people, of his own deep and abiding belief in the traditional teachings and doctrines of Christianity in their true development and application. His prayers and invocations are no sham, no attempt to curry favor or to escape responsibility. They are a product of a believing mind and a great soul.

SELECTED POEMS OF TARAS SHEVCHENKO

The day doth come, the night doth come,
And with your head in hands clasped tight,
You wonder why there does not come
The Herald of the truth and right.

THE KOBZAR

The eight poems included in the _Kobzar_ were selected by Shevchenko himself for publication in a single volume of poems and are the only group which appeared during his lifetime and under his editorship as a collected whole. They date from his early residence in St. Petersburg before his visit to Ukraine in 1843 and reflect the thoughts and interests of the poet in his first phase, when he was still under the influence of Romanticism. They consist of ballads, supernatural and historical, written under the influence direct or indirect of the Western Romantic writers. They emphasize Shevchenko’s feelings that he was a stranger in a strange land in St. Petersburg, and that however much he was enjoying his work in the Academy of Arts, his heart was back in Ukraine and he was dreaming of the old free life there, of the heroic deeds of the past as contrasted with the sadness of the present.

The ideas of the later Shevchenko are all here. Ukraine, bereft of her Hetmans and the Sich, is tacitly compared to an orphan girl or a poor widow. The opposition to the Poles is clearly expressed but his dislike of Russian domination is more than hinted and it is certain, as General Dubelt, the Commander of the Gendarmes, thought at the time of the poet’s arrest that there is a connection in thought between the poems which serve to illustrate the various aspects of the sad condition of Ukraine.

The Kobzars were the old bards who travelled through the country, singing tales of the past and of the supernatural. Shevchenko pretends to pitch his poems on the key struck by these wandering singers of the people but only a superficial observer does not see that the poet is far more than a singer of folksongs, that he has a real literary knowledge and skill far transcending the traditional bards and is familiar with modern literature.

The first poem which serves as an introduction really enumerates all the themes that are treated and it is small wonder that the censor in allowing the collection to be published eliminated lines 28-100 which express the poet’s feeling of exile in the north and glorify the past of Ukraine.

The collection well shows the versatility of Shevchenko’s genius and the way in which he succeeds in grouping a number of poems on varied subjects around the central theme, the sufferings of Ukraine. It was received most favorably by his fellow countrymen and made him famous almost at once and respected by all who were interested in Ukrainian rights and liberties.

+Dedication+

Songs of mine, O songs of mine,
You’re a worry to me.
Why do you stand out on paper
In sad rows before me?...
Why did not the wind remove you
To the steppe as dust?
Why did fate not overlay you
Like a mortal child?

For misfortune brought you to this world to mock you,
Tears have flowed.... Why did they not drown you,
Wash you to the sea, or lose you in the field?
If so, people would not ask me of my pain,
Would not ask me why I curse my evil fate,
What I seek on earth?... “No, there is naught to do.”
There would be no mocking....