From Lyman a black cloud covers
Both the sun and heavens;
The blue sea, an angry monster,
Groans and tosses wildly,
And Dnipro’s great mouths are flooded.
“Come now, boys, and revel!
To the boats! The sea is playing--
Let us go to revel!”
So the Zaporozhtsy started,
Filled Lyman with vessels.
“Play, O sea!”--they started singing
As the waves were foaming.
Waves rose round about like mountains,
Earth and sky were hidden.
Hearts might waver, but the Kozaks
Found it what they wanted.
Now they’re sailing and they’re singing,
Storm birds keep on flying ...
And the ataman who’s leading
Takes them where he wishes.
Up and down his deck he strideth,
His great pipe neglecting;
And he looks in every quarter
For a proper mission.
His black mustache he is twisting,
Pulls his black hair fiercely,
Lifts his cap--The boats come closer.
“Let the foeman perish!
Atamans, not to Sinop,
O my daring heroes,
But to Tsargrad to the Sultan
We will go for feasting.”
“Fine, ’tis fine, O noble father!”
Comes a roar resounding.
“Thank you, sons!”
Again he covers.
The blue sea keeps foaming.
Up and down his deck he strideth
In unceasing motion,
And the ataman in silence
Gazes at the tempest.
+The Night of Taras+
This poem describes the victory of the Kozaks under Taras Tryasilo
over the Polish troops of General Koniecpolski at Pereyaslav in 1630.
Kozak tradition described this as one of the greatest victories of the
Kozak armies and Shevchenko followed the tradition. It is striking that
he contrasts more clearly than in _Pidkova_ the present acquiescence
of the younger generation in their state of slavery with the valor of
their ancestors who were willing to fight even against overwhelming
odds. The concluding sections of the poem have been often taken to be
an appeal for the renewal of open hostilities but it is hardly likely
at this time with the collapse of the Polish revolt less than ten years
previously that the poet went as far as this. And even General Dubelt
in his attempt to read all possible evil intentions into the poems
did not regard it as a direct incendiary appeal but as a poem written
to drive home the evil of the present time and to rouse the people to
anti-Russian thoughts, if not actions.
+The Night of Taras+
At the cross roads sits the kobzar,
Playing on his kobza;
Round about are boys and maidens,
Red as poppy flowers.
Plays the kobzar and he’s singing,
Telling in his stories
How the Poles, the Horde, the Moskals
Struggled ’gainst the Kozaks;
How the brotherhood assembled
Early on a Sunday;
How they buried a young Kozak
In a boat of green leaves;
Plays the kobzar and he’s singing,
But his smile is evil.
“Formerly we had the Hetmans,
That is gone forever;
Formerly they knew to govern,
Nevermore we’ll do it.
Yet the former Kozak glory
We are ne’er forgetting!
Ukraina, Ukraina!
My dear heart! My darling!
When I tell of your misfortune,
Then my heart starts weeping!
What has happened to the Kozaks
With their crimson tunics?
Where are vanished our old freedom,
Standards, and the Hetmans?
What has happened? Are they ashes?
Has the blue sea swallowed
All your noble, holy mountains
And your tombs so lofty?
Mountains speak not, plays the blue sea.
And the tombs are mournful,
While above the Kozak children
Heathen pagans triumph!
Play, O sea! Speak up, O mountains!
Blow, winds, o’er the meadows!
Weep, O children of the Kozaks!
Such is now your fortune!
“From Lyman a cloud is rising,
From the field, another;
Ukraina’s plunged in sadness--
Such is its misfortune!
Plunged in sadness, drenched with weeping,
Just as little children.
There is no one who can save her
And the Kozaks perish;
Lost is glory and the country;
Nowhere it is sheltered.
So the little Kozak children
Grow up unbaptized,
They must love apart from marriage;
Without priests, they’re buried;
To the Jews the faith is traded;
Churches are barred to them ...
As the crows the meadows cover,
So the Poles and Uniats
Fly around--and there is no one
Who can give good counsel.
“Nalivayko gave the signal,--
He is gone forever.
Then Pavlyuha raised his banner--
Quickly too he vanished.
Then Taras Tryasilo challenged
With his tears so bitter;
‘Oh my wretched Ukraina,
Whom the Poles have trampled.’
--------------
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Then Taras Tryasilo challenged
That the faith he’d rescue.
Gave the signal, the gray eagle,
Let the Poles know of it.
Pan Tryasilo gave the signal:
‘There’s enough of weeping!
Let us go, my noble brothers,
’Gainst the Poles to struggle!’
“More than three days and three nights too
Fought there Pan Tryasilo.
From Lyman unto Trubaylo,
Filled the field with corpses.
The poor Kozak was exhausted,
And was filled with sadness,
While the cursed Koniecpolski
Felt more happy daily,
For he gathered all the szlachta,
To produce a triumph!
But Taras called to his Kozaks,
Asked them for their counsel;
‘Otamani and my comrades,
Brothers dear, and children!
Give to me your wisest counsel,
What can we accomplish?
Now the Poles are celebrating,
For we have no leaders.
Let them banquet for their pleasure
And for their successes!
Let the cursed devils banquet,
Till the sun is setting.
Mother night will give good counsel;
Kozaks Poles can locate!’
“The sun set behind the mountains,
Then the stars appeared,
Like the clouds, then came the Kozaks
And the Poles surrounded.
When the moon reached the high heavens,
Thundered out a cannon.
Then the little Polish masters
Fled--but found no refuge!
Then the little Polish masters
Fled--to rise no more;
But at sunrise, Polish masters
Lay stretched out in masses.
Like a winding serpent crimson,
Alta bore the tidings,
That the ravens were assembling
To consume the masters;
That black ravens came together
To awake the nobles,
While the Kozaks came together
Unto God to pray.
The black ravens cawed and cried out,
Eating out the eyeballs;
But the Kozaks kept on singing
Of that wondrous battle,
Of that night that was so bloody,
That created glory
For Taras and for the Kozaks
Who the Poles had vanquished.
“O’er the river in the meadow,
Now a tomb looms blackish;
Where the Kozak blood was flowing,
Now green grass is growing;
On the tomb a raven’s sitting
And it shrieks in hunger.
When a Kozak thinks of Hetmans,
As he thinks, he’s weeping.”
The sad kobzar ceased his music,
For his hands betray him!
Round him all the boys and maidens
Strive to hide their weeping.
Formerly the Kozaks cherished
Freedom and great glory.
Glory lives but bitter slavery
Freedom has devoured.
Formerly they knew to govern.
Nevermore we’ll do it,
But that former Kozak glory
We remember always.
Down the street the kobzar wanders
With his sorrow playing!
Round about the boys are dancing
And he says on parting:
“Let it be without a sequel!
Sit upon the stove, my children.
For the inn I’ll sadly enter
And a burning drink I’ll ask for,
Ask for, drink it to the bottom,
And I’ll laugh at all those foemen.”
+Katerina+
The theme of the country girl seduced by a nobleman and deserted by
him was very popular in all European literature from the time of the
sentimental novels of the eighteenth century. It was carried into
Russian by Karamzin in _Poor Liza_ and into Ukrainian by Kvitka in such
a story as _Serdeshna Oksana_ (The Unfortunate Oksana). Shevchenko
followed the tradition in this poem but he added the other idea of
making the lover a foreigner. The message of the bard in the beginning
specifically warns the Ukrainian girls against the Moskals and there is
not a word to imply that the manners of the ordinary Russian soldiers
as distinct from the officers would be any different.
The poem completes the original collection of the _Kobzar_ with a
tragic story of the present. It is the only poem that definitely pins
the stigma of oppression upon the Russians, although this is inherent
in the other poems. When we remember the frequent identification of
an orphan or a widow with Ukraine, we can see that the poet wants the
readers to see in the sad fate of Katerina driven into banishment
the fate of Ukraine but at the same time he is pleading the case of
the seduced girls who have been driven out of their homes. The poem
fittingly concludes the _Kobzar_ with its comparison of the past and
the present and the survival of that past only in songs and legends.
+Katerina+
_To V. A. Zhukovsky_
_In memory of April 22, 1838_
I
Have your love, you black haired maidens,
But avoid the Moskals,
For the Moskals--they are strangers,
And they treat you foully.
Yes, the Moskal loves you lightly,
Lightly he will drop you,
Goes away unto his country,
And the maiden’s ruined.
Were that all, it would be nothing,
But her aged mother
Who into God’s world once brought her,
She must perish with her.
So her heart will pine a-singing,
If she knows the reason;
People will her heart not notice,
And they’ll say: “She’s nothing.”
Have your love, you black haired maidens,
But not with the Moskals,
For the Moskals--they are strangers,
And they always mock you.
Katerina did not listen
To her father, mother,
But she went and loved a Moskal,
As her heart had urged her.
So she loved the youthful stranger,
Went into the garden,
And she ruined there her fortune
And herself, unthinking.
Mother calls her to have supper,
Daughter does not listen;
Where she dallies with her Moskal,
There the night she spendeth....
Not two nights she spent caressing
His black eyes so charming,
Till the gossip in the village
Had condemned her roundly.
Let the people talk about her,
Say whate’er they’re thinking;
She’s in love and will not notice
That there’s evil brewing.
Suddenly bad news is coming--
He must go on service--
Unto Turkey went the Moskal,
It Katrusya startled.
She cared not, as ’twere a trifle,
That her head was covered,
For her lover she would either
Sing or grieve at random.
He, the black haired lover, promised,
If he did not perish,
That he would come back unto her,
And then Katerina
Should become herself a Moskal
And forget her sorrow;
In the meanwhile let the people
Say whate’er they’re wishing--
Katerina does not worry!
Wipes away her weeping,
For the maidens who surround her
Sing their songs without her,
And she takes the pails at nightfall
To go for the water,
That her foes may never see her;
To the spring she’s coming,
Takes a place beneath the bushes
And of Hrits she’s singing;
So she sings and so repeats it
Till the bushes sorrow.
She comes back--in perfect quiet
That no one may see her.
Katerina does not worry,
She has no forebodings;
In her new and modern kerchief
She looks out the window.
Katerina looks around her--
Six months now are passing.
At her heart a pain is gnawing,
And her side is aching.
Katerina feels her illness,
It prevents her breathing.
She recovers. In her cradle
There’s a child now lying.
And the women foully murmur,
Jest unto her mother,
That the Moskals are returning
And in her are resting.
“Yes, you have a black haired daughter,
And she is not lonely,
On the stove she has in training
A good Moskal baby.
She has now a black haired baby,
Mayhap she has studied.”
May the devil, scandalmongers,
Beat you as severely
As that mother whom you’re mocking
For her little baby.
Katerina, O my darling!
You are so unhappy!
Where can you go to find refuge
With a little orphan?
Who will feed you or receive you
Without your dear lover?
Father, mother now are strangers,
Hard ’tis to live with them.
Katerina was now healthy,
Left her little quarters,
Looked upon the street around her,
And caressed her baby;
As she looks, there’s no one friendly!
What is next to happen?
If she went into the garden,
People there would see her.
At the sunrise Katerina
Walks around the garden,
In her arms her son she carries,
And her eyes she covers;
“Here I looked at them parading,
Here I used to greet him,
There, O there ... my son, my baby!”
More she never uttered.
In the garden soon the cherries
Hung all full of blossoms.
When the first came out in flower,
Katerina walked out,
Walked out but she was not singing,
As was her old custom,
When she waited for the Moskal
In the cherry orchard.
Now the black haired maiden sings not,
Curses her ill fortune,
While the bitter, hateful women
Say whatever moves them,
Hammer out their unkind speeches.
What will be her future?
Were the black haired lover present,
He could stop their talking.
But the black haired lover’s distant,
Hears not, does not notice
How her enemies laugh at her,
How Katrusya’s weeping.
Has the black haired lover perished
By the quiet Danube?...
Or in Muscovy he’s staying
With another darling?
No, the lover has not perished,
He is well and living.
Where can he find eyes so handsome,
Black hair so alluring?
There in Muscovy the distant
Or across the blue sea--
There he has no Katerina.
Here she’s doomed to sorrow!
Mother knew to give her black hair,
Coal black eyes to give her,
But she knew not how to give her
Fortune for her lifetime.
Without fortune is her beauty
But a fading flower;
In hot sunshine, raging breezes,
Soon it ’gins to wither.
Wash your white face every hour
With your tears so bitter,
For the Moskals have gone homeward,
Other roads they’ve taken.