Taras Shevchenko was born in Ukraine in the village of Morintsy in the
district of Zvenihorod, Government of Kiev on the right bank of the
Dniper River. The situation of this community was of great importance
in the formation of the character of the poet. It was in this general
vicinity that the bloody outbreak of the Koliischchina had taken place
in 1768, when the infuriated Orthodox population of the province had
risen against their Polish masters and had burned the city of Uman.
This war was to be the theme of Shevchenko’s great poem, _Haydamaki_.
The revolt was bloodily suppressed, especially after Catherine the
Great had listened to the pleadings of King Stanislas Poniatowski of
Poland and had sent her troops to aid in the defeat of the rebels who
had erroneously believed that they were acting in accordance with the
will of the Russian Empress.
The only result of the war was the still deeper subjugation of the
Ukrainian population and the hardening of the rule of the Polish
masters. The second division of Poland which brought this right bank
of the Dniper under the control of Russia did not aid the unfortunate
Ukrainians. They found themselves bound still more strictly to the soil
and they soon learned to their discomfiture that Russia would herself
back up the claims of the Polish landlords. The demands of the masters
were carried to a new high and there was little or no redress for the
unfortunate victims. They had only their memories of the past and the
traditions and folksongs which they had inherited to remind them that
their ancestors and the Kozaks had once been free men and able to
control their own destiny.
Among the survivors of this merciless struggle was Ivan Shevchenko,
the grandfather of the poet and he lived well into the lifetime of his
grandson and was wont to tell him and the other members of the family
of the savage events of 1768 and the unfortunate consequences. He was a
living contact between the old and the new.
The old man must have been a superior type of peasant for he had seen
to it that his son Hrihori Shevchenko had been taught to read and
write. The son was a prosperous serf at a time when his prosperity
could bring him few advantages, and he constantly sought for a new
and better life on the estates of his master, Vasily Vasilyevich
Engelhardt. After his marriage to Katerina Boykivna, who seems to have
been also a very kind and intelligent woman, the two lived in the
village of Kirilivka, where his father lived, as a carriage maker and
he owned a cart with a team of bulls. His father-in-law soon bought him
a little cabin and some land in Morintsy about a mile away and it was
in a typical Ukrainian peasant cabin that the poet was born on February
25-March 9, 1814. Conditions here were unsatisfactory and it was not
long before the Shevchenkos returned to Kirilivka where Taras spent his
boyhood.
Kirilivka was a typical large Ukrainian village of the right bank.
It was in a fertile region with an abundance of orchards and fruit
trees and gardens. Picturesquely located, it seemed a real paradise
but beneath the charming exterior, the institution and the practice of
serfdom made the village for its inhabitants a perfect hell, where all
kinds of evil and injustice prevailed and where the hours of forced
labor demanded by the master made life almost impossible.
Taras was the third of six children and was always attached to his
older sister Katerina who married when he was still very young. His
father tried to give him an education but the opportunities were very
scanty. Taras always remembered his parents with the greatest kindness
but when he was nine years old, his mother died of poverty and of
overwork on the lands of the master. This meant the ending of the happy
period of his life.
With six small children, the father Hrihori could not maintain his
household without a wife and so he soon married a widow, Oksana
Tereshchenchikha, from Morintsy. She brought her three children with
her to her new home. The marriage was not a happy one. The stepmother
was very cruel to the children of her husband, begrudged them the food
they ate, and quarreled unceasingly. It was a sore disappointment for
the young Taras and to avoid the perpetual beatings which he received,
he used to take refuge with his older sister who was married and living
in a neighboring village. Finally when he was twelve years old, his
father died too and the young Taras was thrown on his own resources,
since his uncle who was his guardian paid little attention to him.
As a means of finding some respite from the cruelty that was going on
at home, he went to a village clerk Bohorsky in an endeavor to learn
something about painting, for he already had been attracted to this and
also had developed a fertile imagination. His stay with Bohorsky was
none too successful.
The clerk was an incorrigible drunkard and besides nearly starving
the poor boy, he tyrannized over him in every way but he did succeed
in making him literate and in teaching him to read the Psalter. In
fact Taras became so successful in this that the clerk sent him out to
read the Psalms at peasant funerals and thus allow himself more time
for drinking with his friends. Taras finally had his revenge. One day
when he found his teacher drunk, he flogged him as hard as he could
and then made off with a volume of art works. This was apparently a
book containing some of the stock designs for ikon painting and for
lettering.
Disgusted with the worthless and brutal teacher from whom he had
imbibed only a feeling that violence was wrong, he made his way to the
village of Lisanka to study under another clerk. This likewise was
unsuccessful. For four days the teacher employed him only in preparing
paints and in bringing water from the river Tykych. At the end of that
day Taras again disappeared and turned up at Tarasivka, where there was
a still more locally famous painter of Saint Nicholas and of Ivan the
Soldier, but here again he met only a rebuff. Finally he had exhausted
all the clerks in the neighborhood who had any reputation for painting,
and there was nothing for him to do but to return to his native village
and there as an orphan secure a scanty living by acting as a herdsman
for the village cattle and by doing any odd jobs that might appear in
the community.
It was apparently at this moment when he was about thirteen years of
age that Shevchenko had his first taste of love. While he was pasturing
the village sheep, he suddenly started to shed bitter tears and a young
girl who was gathering hemp near by came over to console him and kissed
him. Her name was Oksana Kovalenkivna and her memory remained with him
for many years as a type of sympathetic friend and love. That was all.
It was only a moment in the drab life of the poor boy but it gave him
an ideal of sympathy and affection that he had not had since the death
of his mother and the image of Oksana appeared in many of his later
verses.
From this idle existence Shevchenko was suddenly torn away by the
overseer of the estate. He had shown little promise in his efforts
to master the old fashioned and then decadent art of ikon painting.
His physical stature did not promise that he would develop into a
valuable laborer in the fields and yet the overseer had no intention
of allowing him to live in idleness. So the boy suddenly found himself
sent into the kitchen of the manor house to work as an assistant baker.
Again Shevchenko failed to acquire the necessary skill and he was
again in disgrace. Another task was sought for him and this time he
was appointed a Kozak servant for the young master Pavel Vasilyevich
Engelhardt.
His work here was boring and insignificant. He had only to remain
dressed in a Kozak uniform in the anteroom of the master and to serve
his slightest whims and needs. It meant long hours of doing nothing,
the hardest kind of useless labor. He had to hand the young master
his pipe, when he so desired, for it was beneath the dignity of Pavel
Engelhardt to pick up his own pipe, even if it were beside him. All
his other tasks were of the same non-essential character and the boy
accustomed to his freedom was absolutely disgusted with his fate.
There was however one consolation. The master could not prevent the
young serf from admiring the objects of art that were scattered around
the house. The mansions of the day were very different from the rough
houses of the peasantry. The latter were impoverished representatives
of the past. The mansions were filled with the newest productions of
western Europe and these gave to the sensitive boy a very different
conception of art from that which he had received from the rude
ikonostases of the village churches. He feasted his eyes upon them and
apparently endeavored in stolen moments to make copies of them.
He also had the opportunity to travel. Pavel Engelhardt was perpetually
going somewhere and he had to travel with an entire retinue of
servants. This meant that the young Shevchenko was torn away from his
native village and his native surroundings. In 1829 Engelhardt who was
a Guards officer took him to Wilno and for fourteen years Shevchenko
did not see again his beloved Ukraine.
It was at Wilno that an accident happened which determined his fate.
On December 6 Engelhardt and his wife went out to an entertainment and
the young Shevchenko was obliged to stay on watch until they returned.
To wile away the time he set himself to copying a print of the Kozak
Platon which he had acquired on the way to Wilno. He became so absorbed
in this that he did not notice the return of the master who accordingly
found him copying by candle light. Engelhardt became enraged at the
actions of the boy and scolded him violently because he might have set
fire not only to the house but to the whole city. The next day he gave
orders to have him soundly flogged. The episode might have ended here
but Engelhardt noticed that Shevchenko was making an excellent copy of
the work. This led him to inquire further and he saw some of his other
sketches. So, having roundly punished the young culprit, he sent him
to the Art Academy of Wilno, where he perhaps studied under Jan Rustem.
Still later he transferred him to Warsaw to take lessons from the
celebrated Franciszek Lampa.
It was a critical moment in the life of the young man. Now at least
part of his ambitions could be gratified but he still remained a serf
in his master’s service with no hope of any amelioration of his lot,
for the nobles of the day were only too happy to have under their
control artists, actors, and learned persons of every description. It
was a discouraging situation, for there was little hope of fame or of
satisfaction for a man who was compelled under penalty of flogging or
banishment to physical labor to draw sketches whenever it suited his
master’s whim.
While at Wilno Shevchenko had again fallen mildly in love with a Polish
seamstress, Dunia Haszowska, a free woman who spoke to him about the
coming Polish uprising. She was an ardent Polish nationalist and
apparently her influence, intended to win Taras to the Polish cause,
only drove him further in his devotion to the cause of Ukraine.
As the hour of revolt came nearer, Engelhardt suddenly left Warsaw and
went to St. Petersburg. It was a safer place in case of trouble and it
also gave him more opportunity for his social inclinations. Naturally
Shevchenko was taken along with him and here Engelhardt apprenticed him
for four years to the painter Shirayev in 1832.
There is something strange in this contract. It probably marked a
change in the plans of Engelhardt for his unusual serf. At Wilno and
Warsaw he had had him taught by painters in the best sense of the word
and had apparently not spared money for lessons. Now in St. Petersburg
he did not send Shevchenko to a portrait or landscape painter but to a
professional decorator who was already known for his work in several
St. Petersburg theatres. There was a plebeian and unidealistic side to
this work in the making of designs and transferring them automatically
to the walls and ceilings of buildings that displeased Shevchenko. He
missed all the artistic inspiration that had apparently inspired him
previously and felt that he was becoming a mechanical drudge.
The contract between Shirayev and Engelhardt must have ended by law
in 1836 but Engelhardt left him to work further as a laborer in the
atelier of Shirayev who was a determined exploiter of his subordinates.
Shevchenko had but two methods of relaxation--to make sketches of
a fellow serf, Ivan Nechuporenko, and to copy statues in the Winter
Garden.
In 1837 he suddenly made the acquaintance of another Ukrainian artist,
Ivan Maksimovich Soshenko, who was then living in St. Petersburg.
There are two versions of this meeting. The more romantic is that
Soshenko saw him first during one of the white nights of St. Petersburg
sketching a statue of Saturn in the Winter Gardens. The other, that
of Soshenko himself, is that he heard from a relative of Shirayev’s
of this wonderful young Ukrainian artist and decided to make his
acquaintance.
In either case Soshenko became enthusiastic over the artistic abilities
of Shevchenko and over his possibilities for independent work. He soon
took the opportunity to introduce his young friend to the leading men
in the Imperial Academy of Arts and desired to have him enrolled there
as a student. This was impossible for no serf was allowed to study in
this institution. Yet the Secretary of the Academy, Vasily Ivanovich
Grigorovich, and the celebrated professor, Karl Pavlovich Bryulov, both
desired to have him enrolled as a student. There was only one solution
for the difficulty. It was necessary to obtain freedom for Shevchenko.
Engelhardt was not sympathetic. He had expended considerable money on
the education of the young man and he was not going to be deprived
of his services now that he was becoming recognized as an artist.
He promptly demanded the payment of 2500 silver rubles. This was an
enormous sum and was apparently intended to be prohibitive.
The group of artists interested in Shevchenko was not to be discouraged
by this demand. They interested in the case Vasily Andreyevich
Zhukovsky, who naturally had great influence in Russian governmental
cultural circles. He was the tutor of the Tsarevich, later Alexander
II; he had been the Russian teacher of the Empress Charlotte of
Prussia, the wife of Tsar Nicholas I. He was the recognized authority
on European literature in Russia. With his court connections, it
was clear that if he would, he could secure the necessary funds. He
therefore arranged with Bryulov to paint his picture to be disposed of
by a private lottery. A portrait of Zhukovsky by Bryulov was an event
for the rich circles of Russia. The money was raised and paid over to
Engelhardt and on April 22, 1838, Taras Shevchenko became a free man
for the first time in his life.
Shevchenko was almost overcome by his new happiness. From that moment
he was free. Like any other citizen of Russia, he was able to apply
for a passport, to choose his own abode, to do what he liked without
any fear of the changeable moods of an autocratic master. The world
seemed rosy to him and he could hardly concentrate on anything. He at
once procured new clothes, filed the act of liberation in the official
bureau, and the next day registered at the Academy as a student of
Bryulov.
Karl Pavlovich Bryulov was then at the height of his fame. Originally
of French Huguenot descent, he had been allowed to take a Russian name
when he won a prize in the Academy of Arts and went to Rome. There he
had become acquainted with the leading artists and literary men who
had thronged to that city during the twenties. His painting, _The Last
Days of Pompeii_, had taken Italy and then France and finally Russia by
storm and when he commenced to teach at the Academy of Arts, he raised
its popularity and became the very center of everything artistic and
cultural in the Russian capital.
The effect of all this upon Shevchenko can hardly be overestimated.
Almost over night he had passed from a nobody, a mere serf eternally at
the beck and call of his master, to an independent student of the Art
Academy and a favorite pupil of the great Bryulov. His sensitive nature
could not fail to react to this overwhelming difference.
He worked hard every day in the Academy and made a very creditable
success. At the end of the first year he won a silver medal for drawing
from nature. Apparently his earlier instruction here came in handy.
In 1840 he won a silver medal of the second class for his attempt
in painting with oils and in 1841 he received the same award for a
painting on a historical subject and for portraiture. He had made good
use of his opportunities and had not allowed himself to be distracted
by the gay amusements of many of the young artists, although he
apparently had his share of entertainments and dinners.
More important than this for the young man were the opportunities which
came to him for general culture. His early education was extremely
defective. He had not had even the most irregular schooling outside of
the elementary instruction in reading and writing offered by the local
clerks under whom he had gone through the motions of studying. Now he
was able to read at his leisure and he applied himself ardently to
making up the defects in his training. He read abundantly in Ukrainian
history and he probably was already fairly well acquainted with what
there was in the modern Ukrainian literature. Yet he needed more than
that and his relations with his fellow students and still more with
Bryulov opened his eyes to the classical and Western European cultures.
While he had been in Rome, Bryulov had been the friend of Sir Walter
Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, and the various writers of France and Germany who
made Rome their headquarters. His great paintings had been on classical
themes and we can well ascribe to his influence Shevchenko’s interest
in classical antiquity, for the younger Russian poets were already
turning away from the classical tradition that had dominated Russian
literature through the period of Pushkin.
He dined frequently at Bryulov’s home and Bryulov came to dinner in
his poor quarters. The master warned him against marrying on the
ground that geniuses should not marry and then introduced him to the
fascinating actress whom he himself intended to marry and from whom he
was soon separated.
At the same time Shevchenko was very slow in seeking the society of
ladies whom he might consider above his own station in life. He never
forgot his origin and his chief romance in this period was with a young
girl, the daughter of a neighbor whom he tried to teach to read but
whom he found an unserious pupil. At times he enjoyed the society of a
higher class but there was something in him which urged him to confine
his closest women friends to those of his own class.
At some time during his stay in St. Petersburg, Shevchenko began
to write verse. It must have been before his emancipation, for the
oldest known poem is the ballad _Prychynna_ (The Mad Girl) which
is reminiscent of Bürger, Zhukovsky, and Mickiewicz with a strong
admixture of Ukrainian folklore. This was exactly the same type of poem
that was practiced throughout the Slavonic world with the coming of
Romanticism. It can be dated in 1837 but it is almost too perfect to be
the first attempt of the young artist and it must have been preceded
by many experiments. The modesty of Shevchenko and his devotion to
his painting made him at first very hesitant in regard to his poetic
performances and it was more or less by accident that they were brought
to the attention of the public. A few of his friends were aware of
his activity. Thus in 1838 Hrebinka wrote to Kvitka that there was in
St. Petersburg a young Ukrainian named Shevchenko writing verses and
excellent ones. Yet the poems attracted little or no comment until at
the end of 1839 a Ukrainian landowner, Petro Martos, met Shevchenko
and arranged for him to paint his portrait. As he was sitting in the
artist’s apartment, he happened to notice some poetry on various
sheets of paper. He succeeded in borrowing them and on reading them
became so thrilled that he resolved to publish them at his own expense.
The work appeared in 1840 under the title of the _Kobzar_ and it marked
a new era in Ukrainian literature. Kotlyarevsky had died in 1838 and
his passing made a gap which had seemed irreparable. Now the appearance
of the _Kobzar_, small as it was, showed to everyone, both friend and
foe, that his place had been taken by a still greater author. In vain
the Russian critics, including Belinsky and the Westerners, attacked it
as insignificant and peasantlike. The Ukrainians throughout the entire
area of Ukraine welcomed it and saw in it the answer to their confused
hopes for a worthy literature of their own.
The next year there appeared the _Haydamaki_, the longest of the epics
of Shevchenko. There was the same criticism of his work by the Russian
and Polish critics and the same enthusiastic reception of it by the
Ukrainians. The edition was soon sold out and Shevchenko received a
considerable amount of money for it. More than that, he was sought out
by all the Ukrainians who had occasion to come to St. Petersburg and
many of his later friends he came to know in this period. He had in a
very real sense become a national figure and was more sure of himself
in his relations with society and with all those whom he had to meet.
Yet despite the apparent success of all that he undertook, things were
not going too well with him. He had many firm friends in St. Petersburg
and his relation with his teacher Bryulov remained as close as before.
Yet he seemed to be dissatisfied. He was dissatisfied with the Academy,
perhaps because he was not making as much progress in his use of colors
as he would have liked. It is to be noted that he won no prize after
1841, that is, after he had become famous from his writings, but there
is no evidence that this was due to any antagonism on the part of the
authorities to his ardent Ukrainian attitude. It could not be that he
had neglected his painting for his writings, for it is remarkable that
at this same time he had almost stopped writing and 1842 was one of his
least productive years.
Undoubtedly his dislike for St. Petersburg affected him. He had seen
his works hostilely reviewed or scorned by the Russian critics,
especially those of the liberal camp from whom he might have expected
to receive consideration. He was busy with portraits and with his
social life, but at the same time he was struck by the contrast between
the life that he was leading and the misery of his brothers and
sisters in Ukraine. He had not seen them for fourteen years and he
was becoming homesick and he wanted at all costs to pay a visit to his
native land.
So in the summer of 1843, he succeeded in securing a leave of absence
from the Academy and obtained permission of the authorities to go home.
His return to Ukraine was a real event. He paid a visit to his family
but he was no longer a mere serf. He was the poet of Ukraine and all
the landowners and the persons of prominence vied with one another in
entertaining him. His trip was one triumphal procession, as he passed
from estate to estate. Almost everywhere he was asked to paint one or
more of the members of the family and the trip was successful not only
from the social but even more from the financial point of view.
Among the families which entertained him, one of the most hospitable
was that of Prince Repnin, the former governor general of Kiev and
the friend of Kotlyarevsky. He was now living on his estates and was
in disfavor with the government, for his wife was a granddaughter
of Kyrylo Rozumovsky, the last of the Hetmans, and his enemies had
charged that he was endeavoring to recover the title, even at the cost
of separation from Russia. Repnin was a good type of the Russianized
Ukrainian landlord who had not lost his interest in the people under
him and who was sincerely opposed to serfdom.
It was here at his house that Shevchenko met his daughter, Princess
Barbara. She was six years older than the poet but the two were
attracted to one another. The Princess was a little nettled that the
poet showed more interest in the beginning in a young friend than in
her but she was sincerely impressed by his personality and ability and
set herself to induce him to do more serious work and to avoid the
company of the more frivolous and gay young people to whom he might
be attracted. Shevchenko appreciated her interest and called her his
guardian angel. For a while it seemed as if they might fall in love but
the difference in their social position was a barrier to such a union,
and although the two were ardently in love, yet neither betrayed it
except through an extreme friendship in which they addressed each other
as brother and sister.
By the end of the summer Shevchenko, whose painting had considerably
improved, seriously considered not returning to the Academy. He even
went so far as to write to the Secretary, Grigorovich, to ask his
advice and when he was urged to come back and received a two months
extension of his leave, he paid a hurried visit to Moscow and was back
in St. Petersburg shortly after the beginning of 1844.
Yet this short trip greatly changed the temper and the work of the
poet. He was able to see the evils under which Ukraine was suffering
not through the memories of a young serf but through the eyes of an
enlightened and progressive and successful man of the world. His
old conceptions based upon the tales of his grandfather that these
ills were a result of Polish hostility and the suppression of the
Koliishchina were proved false. The worst evil was in the present
and that was a direct result of the Russian overlordship and the
suppression of Ukrainian liberties. The evils which came from the
union with Moscow by the so-called Treaty of Pereyaslav were more real
than the danger threatening from an already vanquished and broken
Poland. Henceforth his poems turned against Russia and he abandoned
the romantic scenes of the past that had formed such a large part of
the _Kobzar_. At the same time he increased his emphasis upon the
injustice of the villagers among themselves. He had touched this in the
_Katerina_ but he had learned in his native village of the sad fate of
Oksana Kovalenkivna whom he had once loved. She had been seduced by a
Russian and had later become insane, after she had been disowned by her
parents.
He occupied himself during this year with the bringing out of a series
of sketches, _Picturesque Ukraine_, and continued his usual life at the
Academy and with his friends. The ferment of opposition to injustice
was however working in him and toward the end of the summer he finished
the _Dream_, one of his most powerful attacks on the present situation
in Ukraine. It was impossible to think of publishing such a poem with
its caricature of the Empress and its open condemnation of both Peter
the Great and Catherine the Great. It did however begin to circulate in
manuscript form among the friends of Shevchenko and the adherents of
Ukrainian liberties.
This was no exceptional thing under the regime of Nicholas I. Even
such a masterpiece of Russian literature and such a harmless satire on
the social life of the day as the comedy _Sorrow out of Intelligence_
by Griboyedov was refused publication by the censor, despite the fact
that it was the favorite reading of St. Petersburg society and the work
of a distinguished and trusted diplomat. Most of the poems of Pushkin
and Lermontov were still unpublished, and it was generally understood
that there was in the two capitals a large amount of literature by
the leading writers which were known only to the reading public and
the police chiefs unofficially. The circulation of a poem as the
_Dream_ which might have serious consequences would therefore not
be threatening until it might suit the officials to take cognizance
of it. Shevchenko probably spent some anxious moments when he first
showed it to friends but apparently he gave very little thought to
the possibility that he might be denounced to the authorities and he
continued during the next years to write his great poems attacking the
alien domination of Ukraine.
On March 22, 1845, Taras Shevchenko finished the course at the Academy
of Arts and received the right to call himself a free artist of the
Academy and later in the same year on December 10 a diploma was
formally issued to him confirming this fact, granting him the rights
and privileges pertaining thereto and allowing him “with complete
freedom and liberty to enter the service into which he as an artist
desires to go.”
Without waiting for the arrival of the formal diploma, Shevchenko
returned to Ukraine. In fact he went within two days of his formal
departure from the Academy. He travelled by way of Moscow where he
saw again old friends as Prof. Bodyansky and the celebrated actor
Mikhaylo Shchepkin who had taken part in the first performance of
Kotlyarevsky’s drama _Natalka Poltavka_. He spent the summer travelling
around Ukraine and then in the late autumn he secured a position with
the Archaeological Commission which had been formed by the Governor
General Bibikov to study the ancient monuments of Ukraine. For this
he was recommended to receive the sum of 150 rubles a year. It was a
trifling sum even for those days but there was attached a permission to
travel and with his fame and the possibility of making portraits, it
was possible for him to live without too much hardship.
The year 1845 was one of his most productive years literarily. It
was the time when Shevchenko had the opportunity to acquaint himself
personally with all of the ancient monuments of his country and to
observe for himself the terrible conditions under which the people were
living. The year saw the continuation of the tendencies described in
the _Dream_ and in such poems as the _Great Grave_, the _Caucasus_,
and the _Epistle to my dead, living and unborn countrymen in Ukraine
and not Ukraine_, he expressed his bitter indignation at the denial of
independence and liberty to his people. He was skating on thin ice in
these poems but the blow which was hanging over him was deferred.
At this time in Kiev there was a very active intellectual life. There
had gathered around the University a group of young men who were
destined to become famous in the Ukrainian movement. Here were Mykola
Kostomariv, the historian, Panteleimon Kulish, Vasil I. Bilozersky, and
many others. They were all attracted by the ideal of doing something
for Ukrainian independence but their patriotic fervor was largely
tinged with romantic dreams.
The traditions of the Decembrists of 1825 were still alive among a
large part of the younger Russian thinkers, even though the centre
of activity had passed away from the aristocratic officers who had
risked their lives and careers in that abortive movement. They dreamed
of a liberated Russia and they apparently like most of the Russian
conservatives and radicals did not conceive of any dismemberment of
their country. On the other hand in 1824 the Czechoslovak writer Jan
Kollár had published the _Daughter of Slava_, a series of sonnets
appealing for Slavonic liberty and stressing the brotherhood of all the
Slavonic races. Kollár’s work gradually spread throughout the Slavonic
world and produced marked reactions everywhere. Some of the Russians
played with the idea. It found strong repercussions in the Balkans.
In Kiev it affected this group of young thinkers and its influence
was aided by the studies of Slavonic antiquities and general Slavonic
literature by Pavel Šafařík, another Czech scholar.
The immediate result was the organization of the Society of Saints
Cyril and Methodius in January, 1846. The young enthusiasts of the
Society dreamed of a great Slav republic which was to embrace all
the Slavonic nations with the various groups organized as states.
Perhaps there was much of the Masonic organization in this but there
is the strong likelihood that the example of the American Constitution
played a considerable role in the final method of government that was
proposed. For an internal policy the Society urged the development of
education to fit the people for their new responsibilities.
There was nothing particularly dangerous about this Society. It
contained the same kind of potential explosiveness as such modern
organizations as Union Now and similar plans for world organization.
The members seem to have believed in the possibility of peaceful change
and the very unmilitary character of the leaders could easily have
shown the Tsar that they were little more than idealists who might
have been used to further the interests of the Russian Empire. Yet to
Nicholas I, anything which savored of free institutions was actually
and not only potentially dangerous. Russia was rushing on to the
debacle of the Crimean War and the Tsar was engaged in a futile effort
to stop all discussion and the appearance of western ideals. It was
evident that danger threatened the entire group and they were compelled
to act as a secret organization. They adopted their own flag, their own
seal, and ritual.
During the summer of 1846, the members of this Society scattered on
their own business. Shevchenko passed the time on various estates and
dreamed of going abroad to Italy to continue his studies in painting.
He had received an offer of assistance and he did not realize that
Anna Bilozerska, who was marrying Panteleimon Kulish, was planning to
sell her jewels to secure for him the necessary funds which were to be
given anonymously. At the same time he was building high hopes on the
possibility of receiving a definite position as teacher of painting at
the University of Kiev, and this was definitely given him in February,
1847.
Everything seemed to be favorable for a happy future, when the blow
suddenly fell. Shevchenko had returned to Kiev for the wedding of
Mykola Kostomariv and several of the friends assembled at the same
time, while Kulish who had been called to St. Petersburg and then
given a fellowship to travel abroad was on his way to the border.
Unknown to them, Oleksy Petrov, a student who had lived in a room
near that of Bulak, another member of the group, had listened to the
lively discussions that had gone on at various times when some of the
scattered members had come to Kiev during the preceding months, and
had become convinced that there was some conspiracy afoot. Perhaps he
had even made friends with Shevchenko with the idea of discovering
something about the society.
At all events on February 28, he suddenly informed M. V. Yuzifovich,
the supervisor of education in the district, of the conspiracy.
The latter at once suspended Shevchenko from his position with the
Archaeological Commission on the technicality that he had gone to Kiev
without permission. Still there was no real suspicion on the part
of the group. Shevchenko appeared at Kostomariv’s wedding. In the
meanwhile Yuzifovich had forwarded the complaint to Bibikov who was
then in St. Petersburg and on March 17, the latter had referred the
matter to Count Orlov, the chief of the gendarmes.
The police acted speedily, when we consider the difficulties of
transportation and the transmission of news. On April 5, 1847, the
thoroughly unsuspecting Shevchenko together with his friends was
arrested and sent to St. Petersburg. He arrived there on April 17 and
the trial took place almost immediately.
At an inquiry made at the Academy of Arts, Count Lakhtenberg, the
President, replied after giving Shevchenko’s record at the Academy,
“It is necessary to add that Shevchenko has a gift for poetry and in
the Little Russian language has written several poems, respected by
people who are familiar with the Little Russian language and the former
life of this region; he was always considered as a moral man, perhaps
something of a dreamer and an honorer of the Little Russian past, but
nothing prejudicial came to the knowledge of the Academy.”
In his examination, Shevchenko denied membership in the
Ukrainian-Slavonic Society but admitted that he had written some
insolent and satirical works, “forgetting his conscience and the fear
of God.” He had nothing to say about his associates in the Society.
In the summing up of the evidence Count Orlov placed the case of
Shevchenko almost entirely upon his verses. “Shevchenko instead of
feeling eternal gratitude to the persons of the Most August Family,
which had deigned to free him from serfdom, composed verses in the
Little Russian language of the most revolting character. In them he
expressed lamentation for the so-called enslavement and misery of
Ukraine, proclaimed the glory of the old Hetman rule and the former
freedom of the Cossacks, and with incredible boldness poured out
slanders and bile on the persons of the Imperial House, forgetting
that they were his personal benefactors. Besides the fact that all
that was prohibited attracted persons of weak character, Shevchenko
acquired among his friends the fame of a celebrated Little Russian
writer, and so his poems became doubly harmful and dangerous. With his
poems which were beloved in Little Russia there could be sowed and
consequently take root thoughts of the so-called happiness of the times
of the Hetmanate, the happiness of bringing back those times and of the
possibility of Ukraine existing as a separate country. Judging by the
extraordinary respect which all the Ukraine-Slavonians felt personally
for Shevchenko and for his poems, it at first seemed that he might be,
if not the active head among them, yet the tool which they wished to
use in their designs; but on the one hand these designs were not so
important as they appeared at first sight, and on the other, Shevchenko
had begun to write his revolting poems already in 1837, when Slavonic
ideas had not interested the Kiev scholars; similarly the whole case
shows that Shevchenko did not belong to the Ukrainian-Slavonic Society
but acted separately, attracted by his own corruption. Nevertheless by
his revolting spirit and boldness which passes all bounds, he must be
acknowledged one of the chief culprits.”
The sentence came on May 26 with the verdict, “The artist Shevchenko,
for his writing of revolting and in the highest degree impudent poetry,
as a person of a healthy constitution, is to be sent as a private
to the Orenburg Separate Corps, with the right of freedom through
honorable service and instructions are to be sent to the command to
have the strictest supervision that from him, under no pretext, can
there come any revolting and satirical works.” The Tsar with his own
hand added to this “Under the strictest supervision with a prohibition
of writing and sketching.”
The sentence was carried out at once and by June 11, Shevchenko was
already in Orenburg and duly outfitted as a soldier. He was attached to
the 5th battalion of the Corps which was stationed at the Fortress of
Orsk, 267 versts (about 150 miles) east of Orenburg in the heart of the
barren steppes. It was an uninviting place amid uninviting surroundings.
Shevchenko had no desire to become a soldier and he loathed army life
and discipline. It seemed to him a worse slavery than that which he had
known as a serf. Every detail awoke his disgust. It was in vain that
the commanders endeavored to teach him to drill and to march. He was
shocked at the filth and the language of the privates who surrounded
him and with whom he had to associate. They were the exact opposite of
the cultured and intellectual people with whom he had associated at St.
Petersburg and in Ukraine. They were a tough and foul-mouthed gang of
ruffians, and this is not to be wondered at for many of them had been
sent there as a punishment. Yet much of his reaction must be attributed
to the dissatisfaction of a sensitive intellectual with the dreary life
of the barracks in peace times.
Besides that, the prohibition of writing and painting took away from
Shevchenko the inspiration which he might have drawn from the unusual
surroundings in which he was. He could only dream of Ukraine, think
of its sufferings, bemoan his fate, and hope and pray for something
better. He wrote letters to Princess Repnina and to others of his
friends, lamenting especially the prohibition against painting. The
Princess interceded for him with Count Orlov and in reply merely
received a warning against corresponding with such an evil character.
One of his friends sent him some paints. If he tried to write verses,
he was compelled to do so secretly and to hide them in his boot.
Apparently the officers were not too hard upon him, and the
intercession of friends as Princess Repnina and Count Aleksyey K.
Tolstoy, the celebrated Russian writer, had some effect, for on January
30, 1848, Count Orlov had sent to Orsk to inquire about the conduct of
Shevchenko and the possibility of removing the ban on his painting. It
is possible that some favorable reply was given for early in May, he
was attached as a sketcher to an expedition which was setting out to
explore the east coast of the Sea of Aral. However Shevchenko looked
upon this unofficial modification of the original sentence, the work
was difficult and attended with many hardships. His mission lasted for
a year and half and he returned to Orenburg in November, 1849.
The little expeditionary force of infantry, engineers, Kirghiz and
camels had set out from Orsk, gone to the Sea of Aral, built a fleet
of ships and then sailing along the coast to Raim, had landed, built
a fort at Kos-Aral and had passed the winter there. During this time
Shevchenko made many sketches of the scenery under government orders,
despite the official prohibition, and during the winter he was able to
work on several poems. Yet it was a disagreeable journey. The Sea of
Aral was a salt sea. Its banks were monotonous and bare, quite unlike
the blooming fields of Ukraine. In addition to that, he was definitely
cut off from the world. For a year and a half no mail reached him or
the expedition and he imagined that he was entirely forgotten, while
his friends at home thought that he had forgotten them.
When he returned to Orenburg at the end of 1849, he again presented a
petition to be allowed to paint and in it he stated--what was perhaps
not the exact truth--that never in his painting had he ventured to
commit any impropriety. His officers, knowing his services on the
expedition, seconded his request.
In the meanwhile they allowed him to live in the city of Orenburg,
to wear civilian clothes instead of the hated uniform, and to paint
as many portraits as he desired. The city was filled with Polish
and Ukrainian exiles and in their company the time passed much more
pleasantly and fruitfully than during the fatiguing and difficult days
in the fortress and on the expedition.
It was too good to last. In the spring a certain ensign (it is not
sure whether his name was Isayev or Illashenko) presented a complaint
that contrary to the Imperial edict Shevchenko was both writing and
painting. Lieutenant Obruchev, who knew very well that Shevchenko
had been acting under official authority, was yet afraid that the
matter might reach the Third Section and make trouble. As a result he
searched the quarters of Shevchenko and found what he had long known
were there--civilian clothes, paintings, and writings. The poet was
immediately rearrested on April 27 and sent back to the Fortress of
Orsk where his battalion was still stationed. There he was placed in
the guardhouse and his trial lasted from June 28 to July 5 before
General-Adjutant Ignatyev.
The ground covered was already known to every one. Shevchenko denied
any deliberate wrongdoing and stated that he had supposed that the
prohibition against writing had applied only to imaginative works
and had not been intended to cover private correspondence, which the
authorities forwarded and which had not violated any law of propriety
but had been merely personal greetings and requests for assistance.
There was no defence possible on the charge of having civilian
clothes, but this was a matter that might become far more serious for
his superiors who had allowed him to remain at Orenburg than for the
unfortunate victim. It was to be expected that the Tsar would take a
more serious view of a private wearing civilian clothes than of the
other accusations, for that directly touched his personal views of
discipline. On August 26, the order came to release Shevchenko from the
guardhouse and to send him to the First Battalion at Novopetrovsk under
the strictest supervision. His former commanding officers were also
punished and the results had disagreeable consequences for many of the
friends with whom he had corresponded.
He arrived on September 13 at his new post. Novopetrovsk was in a still
more forbidding region on the east coast of the Caspian Sea and had
been built four years before to protect the region from depredation by
Kirghiz raiders. It was on a barren peninsula reaching into the Caspian
Sea from the treeless steppe. His reputation had preceded him and also
the knowledge that the Tsar himself had ordered him not to write and
paint. As a result, the commanding officer, Colonel Mayevsky, did not
feel able to mitigate the Imperial order. The company officers, Captain
Potapov and Lieutenant Obryadin, were men of slight culture and of the
most limited military outlook. They were willing to enforce the orders
to the limit and were only interested in compelling the poet to become
an efficient soldier, to drill and march accurately and to go through
the necessary motions in the proper way.
This was doubly depressing for the poor poet. He was a remarkably bad
soldier. Whether this was because of his stubborn determination not to
be a good one but to maintain his theories to the end or whether he was
temperamentally unmilitary, it is hard to say. It is to be noted in
this connection that even in his youth he had failed in any technical
occupation at the Engelhardt estate, while he made progress so soon as
he was allowed to study art and to write poetry.
For two years the unequal struggle continued. Shevchenko was watched
minutely and hourly. He was not allowed a scrap of paper and during his
service at Novopetrovsk there was no opportunity for him to write even
the shortest poems. He was able to get out only a very few letters to
Princess Repnina and to some of his closest friends. Yet his spirit
never wavered. He maintained the same unwavering attitude in his
feelings, treating himself as a sufferer for the cause of Ukraine.
About two years later Major Irakly Uskov was sent to command the
garrison. He was a more determined and broad-minded man and he decided
to do what he could to make the fate of Shevchenko a little more
tolerable. He invited him frequently to his house, acquainted him with
his family, and asked him to paint their pictures. The favor shown to
the prisoner was so marked that gossip arose about his wife Agatha
and Shevchenko and made it very difficult for the old relationship to
continue. Yet Uskov did not on that account turn against the poet. When
Shevchenko conceived the idea of painting the altar picture in the post
chapel, Uskov warmly approved the idea but again the authorities in
Orenburg sternly forbade it on the basis of the Tsar’s orders, and this
new hope of enjoyable activity was abandoned.
Nicholas I died February 17, 1855 and a new era seemed to dawn for
Russia. The new Tsar, Alexander II, was the pupil of that Zhukovsky who
had had so much to do with the liberation of Shevchenko from serfdom.
The new reign was opening with an appearance of liberality and with a
general amnesty and Shevchenko could hope for his release. Yet he was
not included in the general list of pardons. His attack on the Dowager
Empress in the _Dream_ had been so bitter that she was believed to have
influenced her son against the act.
Shevchenko was nearly in despair but his friends at St. Petersburg did
not lose heart. Count Feodor Petrovich Tolstoy of the Academy of Arts,
and his wife continued to work through all possible social channels to
secure the release of the poet. It was a hard and thankless task but
by the spring of 1857 his friend Mikhaylo Lazarevsky could write that
a pardon had been secured and that the days of Shevchenko’s exile were
numbered.
Then came one of the hardest parts of his confinement--the tedious
waiting until the order could travel through official channels to
Orenburg or Astrakhan and then be forwarded to the isolated post. Mail
arrived rarely. Shevchenko began a journal and in it he noted down
with despair the numbers of mails that arrived without bringing the
desired letter. He was continually passing from the heights of hope to
the depths of despair as week followed week without the desired news.
Finally it came on July 21 and as often with such delayed greetings,
Shevchenko was not on hand to receive it. He was living in the city
and in the morning he went to the fortress for a shave “and from the
non-commissioned officer Kulikh I first learned that at nine o’clock in
the morning a mail boat had arrived. Having shaved, and with sinking
heart, I returned to the city and, leaving the fort, I met Bazhanov
who was in charge of the post hospital. And he first greeted me with
Liberty: July 21, 1857, at eleven o’clock in the morning.”
Shevchenko was now free but he was miles from any vestige of
civilization and eager to return to his friends in the capital.
There were two ways of leaving. The official route was via the corps
headquarters at Orenburg but this meant a journey of 1000 versts across
the desolate steppe before he could reach Astrakhan on the lower Volga.
The simpler way was to board a boat and go directly to Astrakhan.
His definitive orders for departure had not arrived and Uskov had no
power to approve the direct route. He finally did so and on August 2,
Shevchenko boarded a fishing boat for Astrakhan.
He arrived on the 4th in the late afternoon. For the first time in ten
years he was free of military service. For the first time in ten years
he was able to move around without fear of punishment. He greedily
looked around Astrakhan and made many friends. The Ukrainians there
welcomed him as a great poet and it relieved him to find that he had
not been forgotten during his long exile.
Finally on August 22 he started with some friends on a river steamship
along the Volga for Nizhni Novgorod. It was a revelation to him and he
endeavored to make sketches of the scenery along the river but it was
all so new and startling in its beauty after ten years of the steppe
that he did not complete any of his drawings. He stopped at Saratov for
a short visit with the mother of his old friend Kostomariv. Finally on
September 20, the boat reached Nizhni and he was able to go ashore.
Here the police were again waiting for him. His amnesty had not granted
him permission to live in St. Petersburg and Major Uskov had from
ignorance granted him this permission, when he let him go without
requiring him to travel via Orenburg. Under any interpretation of
the orders for his arrest, he would be required to return there for
a formal receipt of future instructions. Yet he found friends at
Nizhni and the Chief of Police and the Police physician very willingly
allowed him to remain and forwarded to Orenburg a statement that he was
too sick to travel. This left him temporarily safe but it postponed
his hope of meeting with his friends for it was not until March 1,
1858, that he received the desired permission and then there was the
disagreeable clause added that he was to remain under the supervision
of the police.
The winter was not an unpleasant one. Everywhere he was received
as a distinguished writer. He was invited to the Nizhni Club, was
entertained by all the most distinguished social and artistic circles
of the provincial city, and painted pictures of most of the outstanding
persons, supporting himself largely in this way.
At the same time he wrote to Kulish and also to his old friend, the
actor, Mikhail Semenovich Shchepkin, and asked them to visit him. With
his usual caution Kulish refused to risk his career by visiting the
banished poet but Shchepkin came down from Moscow and spent Christmas
with him. He was the first of his old friends whom he had met since his
return and it gave the poet great pleasure.
It also helped to precipitate a rather unpleasant episode. Shevchenko
had never in his heart given up thoughts of marriage and while he
was in Nizhni, he became enamored with an attractive young actress,
Katerina Borisivna Piunova. She was apparently of Ukrainian stock for
he saw her in Kotlyarevsky’s _Moskal-Charivnik_. She was dissatisfied
with her position in Nizhni and was trying to secure one in Kazan.
Shevchenko, fascinated by her and thinking as always of Ukraine, tried
to use his influence and that of Shchepkin to get her to Kharkiv. She
seemed to like his attentions but it was not long before he discovered
that she was merely using them in order to secure a better contract and
his devotion resulted only in disillusionment.
While he was in Nizhni, he had the opportunity of meeting some of the
Decembrists who had been exiled by Nicholas I in 1825 and who were just
being released after thirty years of Siberia. He went into ecstasies
over their high principles. His comments on this group were more
enthusiastic than on most of his friends of his own age.
As a matter of fact Shevchenko had grown more radical in prison or we
might perhaps put it better by saying that he had become aware that
the Russian government was inflicting upon its own people most of the
same hardships that it had upon the Ukrainians. As a result he read
constantly the various writings of Herzen and of the other radicals
which appeared abroad and from this time on came to have closer kinship
with the leaders of the intelligentsia.
In productive work during this winter he wrote the _Neophytes_, a
study of the Christian persecutions under the Roman Emperor Nero.
The comparison between him and the Tsar is so obvious that the poem
terrified Kulish and he advised Shevchenko to be slow about letting
its existence be known. This advice did not satisfy the poet who was
utterly fearless and not to be swerved from what he considered right,
but there were no ill effects from its production.
On March 8, he went by sleigh to Vladimir and there he met Captain
Butakov who had commanded the expedition with which he had gone to
the Sea of Aral. Shevchenko’s remark on meeting his old commander is
very significant. “My heart grows cold at the very memory of that
wilderness, but I think he is ready to settle down there forever.”
(Journal, March 10.)
From Vladimir he went to Moscow late on the 10th and was taken sick
with some disease of the eyes and for some days he was not allowed to
go out on the street. However he disobeyed this order to go and see
Princess Repnina. She had been his closest friend in the old days and
now when he saw her, he says only in his diary “She has changed for the
better; she looks as if she had grown younger, and were rushing into
matrimony, a thing which I had not noticed previously. Has she not met
in Moscow a good confessor?” (March 17). This seems to have been almost
the end of another dream. He saw her again on the 24th but the old
correspondence seems to have ended.
The years had treated Shevchenko very unkindly. He was only forty-four
but the exile had made him prematurely aged. His health had suffered
under the harsh regime and the difficult living conditions of the
frontier. Even though his spirit remained unbroken, he was no longer
a young and vigorous man. He still cherished his dreams of a home
and children but from this time on he apparently gave up the hope of
charming any one who might appeal to his mind and fit into the position
to which he could honestly feel that he had risen. With the loss of his
unconfessed love for Repnina and the episode with Piunova, Shevchenko
turned more and more toward the peasantry from which he had sprung.
Yet it did not affect his dealings with men. He had the opportunity
of making the acquaintance of Sergey Timofeyevich Aksakov, one of
the grand old men of Russian literature and the author of the most
delightful pictures of the good side of the old patriarchal life.
Shevchenko had a sincere admiration for the old Slavophile who was then
sixty-seven years old and whose early life had been spent in pleasant
surroundings on the Bashkir steppes very similar to those where he
himself had suffered. Aksakov invited him to his estates for the summer
and Shevchenko apparently desired to accept. He also renewed his
acquaintance with the family of Stankevich and with M. V. Maksimovich.
At this time also he met the younger Aksakovs, Khomyakov and in fact
all of the important Slavophile leaders, who accepted him as a great
poet. Of course his closest friend was Shchepkin who was with him
constantly but who was unfortunately compelled to leave for Yaroslavl.
Shevchenko left the same day for St. Petersburg where he arrived on
March 27, just about eleven years from the time when he had been
brought there as a prisoner for his trial and sentence. He went at once
to his old friend, Mikhaylo Mikhaylevich Lazarevsky, who had helped
him so much during his exile and then to see Count Feodor Petrovich
Tolstoy, the Vice-President of the Academy of Arts.
It was largely through the Tolstoys that he had finally been pardoned
and both the Count and Countess entertained him royally. They gave a
dinner in his honor and acquainted him with many of the leaders of
the cultivated artistic and literary set in the capital. Among these
we may mention Count Aleksyey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, the celebrated
dramatist novelist and poet, who with all of his liberal ideas was
attracted and repelled by the strange figure of Ivan the Terrible, his
cousins, the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov, the poet Lev Aleksandrovich Mey,
the mathematician M. V. Ostrogorsky, Admiral Golenishchev, and many
others. They all accepted the broken Ukrainian, they admired his poetry
and Mey translated several of his poems into Russian.
On the other hand he also became acquainted with the leading
radicals of the day as Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky and Nikolay
Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov. Both of these men were connected with
the _Sovremennik_, for which Kostomariv and Kulish also wrote.
Chernyshevsky relied heavily upon Shevchenko in pointing out that the
evils that befell the Ukrainians were due to the master-class, which
was identical whether it was Russian, Polish or Ukrainian. To some
extent Shevchenko agreed with him and this is greatly stressed by the
Soviet critics as L. P. Nosenko (Velyky Poet-Revolyutioner, Odesa,
1939, pp. 51 ff.). It is very likely that there is some basis for their
claims but on the other hand in a few poems which Shevchenko wrote
after his return, his references to Khmelnitsky and to Ukraine show
well that he had no desire to see his native country in any connection
with Moscow and the Russian Empire.
He resumed his studies at the Academy of Arts but this time in etching.
He achieved in this great success and his work under Prof. Yordan was
so distinguished that in the spring of 1859 he was authorized to submit
engravings for a promotion to the grade of Academician. He did this
and on October 31, 1860, he was formally made an Academician of the
Imperial Academy of Arts.
His life in St. Petersburg was relatively pleasant but he could not
forget Ukraine and his unfortunate brothers and sisters who were
still in serfdom. He finally secured permission to go there and left
St. Petersburg for his last visit early in June, 1859. He planned to
visit several friends and to pay a visit to his brothers and sister at
Kirilivka. He met his sister Irina. They sat down under a pear tree, he
placed his head in her lap, and listened to her sad story of all that
she had had to suffer, especially since she became a widow. Shevchenko
told her of his troubles also and asked her to find him a wife, for now
that he was more or less free, he was determined to marry and have a
home in Ukraine before he died.
From Kirilivka, he visited other friends and then new troubles overtook
him. He was suddenly arrested at the town of Moshni. The police
authorities at St. Petersburg had notified the police of the various
sections where he would be of his coming and asked them to keep watch
of him. He seems to have expressed himself incautiously to some friends
and apparently some Polish landowners reported him to the police. He
was arrested in Moshni on July 13, taken to Cherkasy, and then to Kiev.
Here his case was brought before the Governor General Ivan Vasilchikov,
who studied it with interest and very soon decided that Shevchenko
had been unjustly accused. He advised the poet to return to St.
Petersburg, “where the people are wiser and do not worry about trifles,
in order to serve well.”
The poet who had been brought to Kiev on July 27, stayed a few days
longer at liberty under police supervision and then on August 14, he
started back for St. Petersburg. He had been negotiating for a little
piece of land near Mezhirich on the bank of the Dniper but this plan
had fallen through with his arrest, and there was nothing for him to do
but to see a few friends again and make his way back to the capital.
He arrived there on September 7, profoundly convinced that nothing had
changed in Ukraine with the accession of the more liberal Alexander II.
There was still the problem of his marriage. After his experiences
with Piunova and perhaps with Princess Repnina, he had come to the
conclusion that he should marry a peasant girl as much for symbolic
reasons as for inclination. But where to find one?
By now he had become friendly with Vartolomey Shevchenko whom he
addressed as his brother. This was not strictly accurate. Osip, the
brother of Taras, had married the sister of Vartolomey, so that
Vartolomey was really the brother of the sister-in-law of Taras. He
had known him earlier but now the two men became very friendly, for
Vartolomey was a practical and business-like man and the manager of the
Korsun estate of Prince Lopukhin. He did not agree with the poet in his
revolutionary and extreme views but Taras recognized his fundamental
honesty and often was willing to follow his advice.
At this moment he met and became devoted to a servant in the family of
Vartolomey. She was the sixteen year old Kharyta Dovhopolenkivna, an
attractive but illiterate serf on the estate of Prince Lopukhin. She
seemed to Taras to represent exactly the type of girl that he wished
to marry. It was in vain that his friends advised him against the
union, for they realized that Kharyta could not share in any of his
higher interests, in his poetry or his painting. It was all in vain.
Shevchenko insisted on formally offering her his hand. The girl solved
the problem by refusing him because she was unwilling to marry an
aged _pan_ and she had no intention of becoming the slave to another
nobleman. The fame of the poet was so great that the girl insisted upon
looking at him as a person of a higher social stratum and Shevchenko
despite his efforts could not disillusion her on this point. Besides
she already had her own fiancé whom she had selected herself.
It was another blow to the aged man, but he even yet did not lose hope.
He spent some time in the composition of his last great poem, _Mary_,
an unconventional retelling of the life of the Blessed Virgin, largely
on the basis of the apocryphal legends. His choice of material and the
realistic tinge which he gave to the sacred story annoyed many of his
friends and his enemies used it to spread a charge of atheism. The work
is however fundamentally religious but the poet modified the story to
bring it closer to the fate of Ukraine.
He was friendly at that time with a nephew of Aksakov, Karteshevsky.
The latter’s wife was a sister of Mykola Makarov, a Ukrainian landowner
and literary man, and at their house many of the Ukrainian and Russian
writers used to gather for pleasant evenings. It was here for example
that Shevchenko met Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, although the two
men never became close friends. At one of these parties, to honor
Shevchenko, they dressed in an elegant Ukrainian costume a young serf
girl, Lykeria Polusmakivna.
She was a clever, coquettish and scheming little creature who knew
both Russian and Ukrainian but for the occasion she pretended to know
only Ukrainian. Her charm and beauty completely fascinated the poet
and still saddened by the rebuff of Kharyta, he decided to marry her.
He had her taught to read and tried to educate her. The girl responded
quickly but it was soon clear to all, even to Shevchenko, that she was
hoping to marry him only to get to Paris and to move in society. This
completely broke the poet’s heart and he began to feel that his chances
for a happy married life in Ukraine were doomed never to be realized.
At the same time, however, he was busy with other plans. He was working
hard on his etching and was achieving real success. He also reopened
negotiations with the censor to bring out another edition of the
_Kobzar_ and he secured it in 1860, provided only it did not include
poems written after his arrest and exile.
His visit to Ukraine and his new realization of the hardships of his
family in serfdom aroused in him the desire to have them liberated.
It was certain that a general emancipation would not be long delayed,
but the poet would not wait. He opened negotiations with their master,
V. E. Fliorkovsky, to emancipate, with a little piece of land, his
two brothers, Mykola and Osip, and his sister Irina with their
families. Fliorkovsky refused and demanded a considerable sum for the
emancipation but refused to give them land, even when the Society
for Aid to Russian Writers, with such imposing names as those of
Turgenev, Kavelin, a professor of the University of St. Petersburg,
Chernyshevsky and various others appealed to him. Finally on July 10,
1860, Fliorkovsky succeeded in coming to an agreement with his serfs
and gave them their liberty in return for 900 silver rubles but without
land. The poet was angry at this solution but there was nothing that he
could do. He saw his relatives freed but they were compelled to rent
their land on disadvantageous terms until 1865 when as a result of the
emancipation settlement they were able to receive some.
During the exciting year when it seemed as if the general emancipation
would come almost daily, Kulish and his friends worked energetically on
educational plans for the Ukrainians. Sunday schools were established,
textbooks prepared in the Ukrainian language, and in general the
future seemed rosy. Shevchenko was not behind in his interest and he
set to work on a _South Russian Primer_ for the Ukrainian children. It
consisted of an alphabet, prayers, and easy selections for reading,
with somewhat moralizing texts. It was an unimportant work which the
poet had prepared to meet a real national need and it came out early in
1861.
It was about the end. By the fall of 1860, the hardships which he had
undergone began to tell upon his health. He complained of pains in
his chest but continued to work. In vain doctors and friends tried to
persuade him to be careful. At Christmas he insisted upon visiting his
friends but it was too much of an exertion. In the middle of January,
1861, he became worse and for some weeks was unable to leave his bed or
to go out of his room. A watery swelling came in his chest and it grew
constantly worse. Towards the end of February he was in constant pain.
On February 25, his birthday, his friend Lazarevsky visited him and the
dying poet asked him to write to Vartolomey about his condition. Late
that evening he came back with a friend and they found Taras sitting
up, breathing heavily but unable to speak. All that night he suffered
greatly and could not sleep. In the morning he asked to be taken to his
study but he had hardly crossed the threshold into the hall, when he
staggered and fell--and never rose again.
The poet had lived to be one day over forty-seven. Out of those years
he had been a serf for twenty-four, a free man for nine, a Russian
soldier for ten and under police supervision for four. It was a sad
life.
Two days later on February 28, there was an enormous funeral in the
Academic Church and his friends and admirers gave glowing eulogies of
his life and merits. Among the speakers were Kulish, Bilozersky, and
Kostomariv. He was buried in the Smolensky cemetery.
Meanwhile his friends planned to have the body taken back to Ukraine.
The necessary permission was secured and on May 8, the body left the
capital. It was taken through Moscow, Tula and Orel to Kiev. In every
city ever increasing crowds welcomed the funeral procession. Finally
on May 18, it reached Kiev but again there was a question whether the
body could be taken to the Church of the Nativity. Permission was
finally granted by the same Governor Vasilchikov who had freed the poet
at his last arrest. At the bank of the Dniper, his friend Mikhaylo
Chaly made a last eulogy: “The poetry of Shevchenko has won for us the
right of literary citizenship and has spoken aloud in the family of
Slavonic nations. In this is the great merit of Taras Shevchenko and
his glory, which will never perish.” He told the truth. The Dniper was
in full flood but the enthusiastic admirers succeeded in getting the
body across and in burying it on the Chernecha Hora, one of the poet’s
favorite spots. In 1892 Vartolomey bought this ground and handed it
over to the local duma of Kaniv to preserve as a memorial to the poet.
Shevchenko lived a life of tribulation and sorrow. There was little
that was joyous about it. His muse is one of sadness but of firm belief
in the ultimate triumph of the right and of human brotherhood and he
saw the Ukrainian cause as a part of this noble movement. Whatever he
did for it politically, from the standpoint of spirit and of literature
he placed his native land and literature on a firm basis among the
Slavonic nations. He perfected the work of his predecessors and he
still remains the greatest example of the Ukrainian genius.
_CHAPTER THREE_