have Gogol’s _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_ and the collection
of _Mirgorod_ with the great story of _Taras Bulba_, a brilliant
description of Kozak life as Gogol conceived it. Yet Gogol had an
attitude of unbending loyalty to the Russian Tsars. He knew relatively
little of Ukrainian history, although he was proud of the fact that his
family had been famous in the Sich and his father had written several
plays in Ukrainian after the tradition of Kotlyarevsky.
It was necessary to widen the range of the Ukrainian subject matter
and to create new forms of writing but this was no easy task under the
conditions of the day. As at Poltava, so at Kharkiv there was a great
interest in things Ukrainian, especially after the foundation of the
university there in 1805 but there was a general aristocratic tone to
the entire social life and the same tradition that Kotlyarevsky had
opposed at Poltava.
Despite these handicaps certain steps in the development of the
literature were taken by Hrihori Kvitka, a landowner of the
neighborhood of Kharkiv. He was born in 1778 and received the usual
superficial education of the day and of his class. He had little
regular instruction and that little was entirely in Russian. Largely
through the influence of Skovoroda, he became deeply religious at the
age of twelve and wanted to enter a monastery. His parents prevented it
and they finally put him in the Russian army. In a short time he left
it and entered the civil service. Then he tried the army again and when
he was twenty he entered a monastery as a lay brother. This life too
proved uncongenial and finally he left it and returned home to busy
himself with the social life of the day and to dabble in intellectual
pursuits. Of course he read the _Eneida_ but it did not inspire him to
imitate it or to use the Ukrainian language.
Instead of that, he began to write in Russian under the pen name of
Falaley Povinukhin. His stories attracted a certain amount of attention
in Kharkiv but they made no impression on the literary world of the
two capitals. They were merely stories written by a provincial Russian
for a provincial audience. Kvitka would have remained unknown and
unnoticed, had chance not led him to try his native Ukrainian.
He was joking one day with a writer who was endeavoring to compose
in his native tongue and Kvitka asked him to write something serious
and sentimental in it. When the author replied that the language was
unfit for such subjects, Kvitka became displeased and to prove his
friend wrong, he decided to write himself some stories in Ukrainian
and soon he turned out two of his main works, _The Soldier’s Portrait_
and _Marusia_. Their success was immediate in Ukrainian circles and it
was not long before they were translated into Russian and brought the
author that fame which he had never achieved in his Russian writings.
Before this in 1812 he had become the director of the theatre in
Kharkiv and this inspired him to write dramas and especially comedies.
In 1831, he gave up most of his interests in Kharkiv and retired to his
estate at his native village of Osnova, from which he took the pen name
for his Ukrainian writings, Osnovyanenko. From that time he came to the
city only once a year to carry out his duties as Marshal of the local
nobility. Thus absorbed in society and his estates, he died in 1843 at
a ripe old age.
It is curious that in his later days the very success which he had won
for the Russian translations of his Ukrainian works, many of which he
had made himself, led him back to Russian and he again tried without
success to achieve fame in that language, while he prepared Ukrainian
translations of his Russian books. The result was a weakening of the
value of his works, for it can be truthfully said that Kvitka wrote
nothing of importance except in Ukrainian.
To a large extent Kvitka was typical of the vegetable existence of the
nobles of the day. The timeless life on the big estates gave to the
masters abundant and placid happiness and isolated them from the life
that was proceeding at an ever increasing tempo in both Ukraine and
Russia. Kvitka maintained the old conservative attitude toward life and
was always the talented amateur and the respectable reactionary in his
views. Thus in his _Letters to my dear Countrymen_ which appeared in
the thirties, he definitely set forth a type of reactionary doctrine
which had long since been repudiated by the great writers of the same
period in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He unhesitatingly declares “As
God is heaven, so is he (the tsar) on earth” and he explains to his
countrymen of the government of Kharkiv the glories and the virtue and
the divine origin of the imperial regime. Radical critics attacked him
for his views but we must never forget that throughout his entire life
he was a provincial nobleman who accepted uncritically the slogans of
the day as they were accepted in the Russianized circles of Kharkiv
society.
If these _Letters_ could be taken as the whole of Kvitka’s work, he
would hardly deserve mention but it was only a small part of his
activity. _The Little Russian Tales_ published in Moscow in 1834-37 and
in Kharkiv in 1841 were very different.
Let us take _Marusia_ as an example. Marusia, a young Ukrainian girl
and a paragon of all virtues, is the daughter of a fairly well-to-do
farmer. She falls in love with a poor young man, who, as an orphan, has
to serve in the army. To escape this and to make money to buy himself
off from this obligation, he leaves home. This moves the heart of old
Naum, Marusia’s father, and he consents to the wedding but sends the
young man on a business trip before the marriage takes place. The
lovers part in the cemetery and Marusia promises to meet him there.
Soon after she is taken ill and dies and her funeral is being held as
the future bridegroom returns. Broken-hearted, he gives up his career
and becomes a priest but after a short time he dies of grief in a
monastery.
The story is filled with ethnographical details. Kvitka knew the
colorful life of the peasants and the vast number of customs that were
carried out with almost religious scruples and he inserted them into
his tale. We learn of all the ritual of courtship and of love making
and in the hands of a less skillful writer, these details would make
the story drag. Kvitka avoids the danger and _Marusia_ is one of the
best tales of village life on its brighter side.
Yet the heroine is almost cloyingly sweet. There is little or
nothing of the earthly about her and she is a typical heroine of
the sentimental era which was attendant upon the introduction of
Romanticism. This fashion had been started by Zhukovsky in Russian with
his translation of the German ballads and now Kvitka adapted it to
Ukrainian. The theme bears striking similarities to the contemporary
Czech ballads of Erben and Celakovsky where we find the same
over-sentimentality particularly in the case of young girls.
In his tales Kvitka had adapted this ballad material to prose and
strange as it may seem, they really antedate similar works in French,
German and Russian. This heavily Russianized nobleman who admired and
almost worshipped the tsar wrote in Ukrainian a very strong plea for
the people and produced realistic peasants who shared the thoughts and
emotions of their fellows. He knew the life of the peasants around
Kharkiv and depicted them sympathetically and in glowing colors.
He also noticed the differences between the Ukrainians and the
Russians. He shows it in their reactions to various motives and he
makes at least a passing reference to the hostility or at least the
aversion that existed between them. Thus Vasil, the lover of Marusia,
says when he tells about his entrance into the business world, “I got
along at once with my companions, although they were Moskals.” In the
same way in another of his early stories, _The Soldier’s Portrait_, the
peasant artist who takes his painting to the fair for criticism, is not
impressed when a Russian is deceived by its realism, “for it is no feat
to deceive a Moskal.”
In his early peasant stories, Kvitka has a rather light and somewhat
humorous touch and many of his sketches of peasant life are
distinguished by the general gaiety that pervades the atmosphere.
Yet he soon became aware of the darker sides of the picture. Thus in
the _Unfortunate Oksana_, he gives us the same theme that was used
with such great effect by Shevchenko in _Katerina_, the story of the
unfortunate girl who is seduced and carried off by a Russian captain
who promises to marry her and then abandons her with her baby. She
finally returns to her home to her aged mother. Petro, a young man whom
she had formerly loved, now becomes her brother and when the captain
returns and gives the child, his child, a few coins for nuts, the
mother throws them out of the window into the street. The evil desires
of the captain have been helped by the pride and the beauty of Oksana
who has hoped and dreamed of a husband who would be of higher social
station than she is and it is this desire to rise above the other girls
of the village that leads to her downfall and tragedy.
In the dramas which Kvitka wrote for the Kharkiv stage, he has the
same attitude but he very often uses the same mixture of Ukrainian
and Russian that was the vogue before the dramas of Kotlyarevsky.
Thus in _Shelmenko the Orderly_, the hero who is saved from military
service into which he has been plunged by the scheming and unscrupulous
village clerk, talks Russian consistently whereas the orderly usually
speaks Ukrainian. The way in which the governor unmasks the rascality
of his subordinate and punishes him is typical of Kvitka’s attitude
toward the imperial regime. The crooked clerk is also a good example
of the climbing and corrupt Ukrainians who desire to get away from
their peasant past. As the inn keeper says, “The village clerk, a
peasant with money, is ashamed to be with his brothers and wastes money
for a costly meal and expensive wines,” because he thinks that this
represents enlightenment and improvement.
Again and again in these plays as in his stories, Kvitka the
reactionary does not hesitate to put down the truth as he sees it,
even though it runs counter to many of the preconceived ideas which
he elsewhere stubbornly defends. He does not idealize many of his
characters and almost unconsciously he gives us the attitude of the
people to their Russian rulers. Thus Nikita says in this same play, “My
father did not teach me to write in order that I should become evil
and worthless and he tried to put me on the right path.” It is also
interesting that he, speaking Russian, still cannot read and write his
native tongue, for he knows only the church language, that arbitrary
and artificial system to which Kotlyarevsky had given the death blow
with his _Eneida_.
After giving such rich and varied pictures of Ukrainian life, it
is strange that he returned to Russian and in such stories as _Pan
Halyavsky_, he describes in a fairly amusing manner the life of a
typical rich cub with his stupid Polish tutors and his inability
to accomplish anything. In great detail the author shows how he is
tyrannized over by his ambitious wife who succeeds in sending him to
the country, so that she can play around with the army officers who
seem to her more attractive. Perhaps in a way Kvitka is not so untrue
to his own feelings, for he draws a sharp differentiation between the
native life of the villages and the gay existence of the capital.
Kvitka then stands in a curious position in Ukrainian literature. He
undoubtedly deserves the praise which was showered upon him for his
ability in describing Ukrainian peasant life in excellent and readable
prose. He marks a definite advance over Kotlyarevsky in the greater
range of emotions and themes which he handles and in the more serious
moods that appear at times. Yet it was not in him to be a champion of
the cause of his people. It was not in him to break definitely with the
polished world of the great estates and to start a definite movement
for the assistance of the peasants. He recognized the dubious position
of Ukraine in its contacts with the Russians but at the same time he
appreciated the advantages which the connection with Russia had given
him and his aristocratic friends and he was constantly torn between the
two ideals.
Kvitka was really a passing phase in the development of Ukrainian
literature. In many ways he can be compared to Gogol who had definitely
stepped across the line into Russian. Kvitka was held back by his
success in his Ukrainian stories. He knew the village life around
him and felt that it was only from that life that he could draw his
best themes. Yet he did not analyze or think through his position.
He remained within the framework and lived the life of the average
Russianized Ukrainian nobleman and hence it was, as he swayed back
and forth, that he was condemned by Shevchenko and the ardent young
patriots of the next generation.
At the same time he found a deeper appreciation at home than in Russia.
Byelinsky, the great Russian critic and liberal, expressed himself very
strongly against the peasant stories of Kvitka, for he did not believe
that peasant life could furnish the material for serious literature and
despite his marked democratic leaning, he was opposed to the use of the
Ukrainian language for literary purposes. Hence he condemned Kvitka
on all counts. Nevertheless Kvitka has held his own for his peasant
stories especially in Ukraine. They have been often edited and reedited
and still find large masses of readers, despite the sentimental style
in which many were written. Had he been inclined to rest his fame
upon his Ukrainian stories, his place would have been higher, and he
could have polished them even more highly. As it is, his Russian work
has been forgotten, his Ukrainian stories have lived, and we must
consider him as another milestone in the resurrection of the Ukrainian
consciousness and in the development of the language. The great master
had not yet appeared to crown the work but Kvitka was one of the men
of the transition period who builded better and more solidly than they
knew or dared to imagine.
CHAPTER FIVE
TARAS SHEVCHENKO
It was a favorable time for poetry, if not for the poet himself. The
second quarter of the nineteenth century saw a great flowering of
poetry in Russia and in Western Europe. The first wave of interest in
folk poetry was reaching its height and together with the Romantic
movement was spreading into the Slavonic countries. There was a lively
interest everywhere in the collecting of folk songs and not only
in Western Europe but throughout the Balkans there were the first
rumblings of the new nationalistic interest in language. Goethe was
translating and praising the Serb ballads which had been brought to his
attention. The Czechs were discussing with vehemence the authenticity
of the ancient manuscripts recently discovered by Hanka. Safarik was
working on the history of all Slavonic literatures. Mickiewicz had
already achieved fame as a poet and his residence in St. Petersburg
during the twenties had spread a knowledge of his works throughout
Russia. The Polish Romantic movement was dominating the Polish scene
and the great trio of Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Krasinski were doing
their best work.
In Russia too poetry was in its Golden Age. It was the period of
Alexander Pushkin, the greatest of the Russian lyric poets. Around
him was gathered a group of the gilded youth who had mastered the art
of elegant verse and who had wide human interests, even though they
cloaked them under a mask of aristocratic dilettantism. As their patron
and adviser, Zhukovsky was still the master critic. With his excellent
court connections, where he was the tutor of the young Tsarevich, later
Alexander II, he was able to save the poets from the consequences of
their own pranks and to give them good advice on their literary work.
More than that Gogol with his Russian stories on Ukrainian and Kozak
life had concentrated the attention of the general public on the life
of Little Russia, for the name of Ukraine was still taboo in official
circles. Now, if ever, was the time in Russia when there might be a
hearing for Ukrainian culture, even if there were still no feeling for
any change in the political situation. The era of the Russian literary
gentlemen was at its climax. That of the plebeian realists was yet to
come.
It was an ominous time for the poet himself. The Russian armies,
returning from the defeat of Napoleon, had brought with them the
seeds of modern democratic and republican influences. This had led
the progressive aristocracy to embark upon the ill-fated Decembrist
Revolution and when the tragic consequences of that evil day had
passed, it was realized that Nicholas I with his narrow bureaucratic
tendencies had destroyed the political power of the liberal elements of
the country. Many of the literary men had suffered and even Pushkin was
for a while under suspicion and in real danger. Then came the Polish
revolt of 1831 and the Russian armies stormed Warsaw and destroyed the
little autonomy that had previously existed in that land. Nicholas was
suspicious of new outbreaks and as he firmly bound the universally
recognized Pushkin with golden chains and broke his heart at the
Russian court, so he was on the watch for any new malefactors who might
venture to preach the hated liberal ideas.
It was just at this moment that a young Ukrainian serf, Taras
Shevchenko, arrived in St. Petersburg, little dreaming of the changes
that a few short years would make in his life.
He had been born on February 25, 1814, in the little village of
Morintsy in the government of Kiev and was therefore a Ukrainian of
the right bank of the Dnieper, far to the west of the home of both
Kotlyarevsky and Kvitka. His father, though a serf on the estate of
Vasily Vasilyevich Engelhardt, was able to read and write. His mother
was also of a superior type and the boy always respected her memory
and admired her, even though she died when he was nine years old. His
father married again but the step-mother was not kind to him, and when
his father died in 1826, the twelve year old Taras was left as an
orphan amid the hard conditions of serfdom.
He had already been attracted to painting and he made several attempts
to study with various local painters but his experiences were so
unpleasant that he finally gave up and returned to his native village
to pasture the cattle. A new attempt to get permission to study brought
from the overseer of the estate merely an order to serve in the bakery
but his failure there was so evident that he was appointed instead a
page in the mansion.
This gave him at least the opportunity to feast his eyes on the
beautiful works of art that it contained and encouraged him in his
early attempts to copy them. He had to do this secretly and when his
master discovered his copying and painting, the boy was soundly
flogged. Nevertheless Engelhardt, like many other nobles of the day,
liked to have educated serfs on his estate, and since Taras seemed
competent, he took the boy with him first to Vilna and then after the
outbreak of the Polish revolt to St. Petersburg and apprenticed him to
the painter Shirayev.
Shevchenko learned relatively little here and life was very hard but he
had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the Ukrainian artist
Ivan Soshenko. This was a piece of good fortune, for Soshenko soon
introduced him to Karl Petrovich Bryulov, the most fashionable painter
of the day.
Bryulov was then at the height of his fame. He was of a French Huguenot
family which had long been domiciled in Russia and had been allowed
to Russianize his name, only when he received a fellowship to study
in Italy in 1821. He stayed there twelve years and took the Italian
capital by storm. There he painted his masterpiece, the _Last Days of
Pompeii_, which encouraged Bulwer-Lytton to write his novel on that
subject. He had come to know personally Sir Walter Scott and the other
English authors who visited Italy. Now in 1833, back in Russia, his
studio was frequented by the most fashionable people of the day. His
courses at the Academy were the goal of all students and the approval
of Bryulov meant success or failure for the average artist.
It was this man who took an interest in the young serf and desired to
have him as a student, but no serf could be admitted to the Academy.
Engelhardt refused to give Shevchenko his liberty but finally offered
it in return for 2500 rubles. To secure this sum Bryulov painted a
portrait of the Russian poet Zhukovsky and this was sold in court
circles by a lottery. The money was easily raised and on April 22,
1838, Shevchenko, then twenty-four years of age, became a free man,
just one year after the death of Pushkin. He commenced his formal
studies at the Academy of Art and finished the course in 1845 as a free
artist.
Probably as early as 1837 he had begun to write poetry but his writings
began to attract attention only after he was set free. In 1840 he
brought out a slender volume, the first edition of the _Kobzar_, at
the expense of a Ukrainian landowner Petro Martos, whose portrait he
was painting. There was something new and startling in the quality of
this first work with its emphasis upon the decay of the old Ukraine and
the pictures of the sufferings of the people. It was typical of the
spirit of Shevchenko that one of the poems _Katerina_ (named after his
beloved sister) portraying the sufferings of a Ukrainian girl betrayed
by a Russian lover was dedicated to Zhukovsky. Incidentally it may be
mentioned that Zhukovsky was himself the illegitimate son of a Russian
officer and a Turkish girl who had been captured in war.
He then set to work upon the _Haydamaki_, his longest and greatest
poem. He finished it in 1841 and published it in the same year.
In 1843 he paid a short visit to Ukraine and everywhere he was received
with the greatest honors as the Ukrainian poet _par excellence_. He
was entertained by the various magnates including Prince Repnin, the
governor, who was of Ukrainian origin, and his daughter Barbara. He
visited his native village and he could not fail to be impressed as he
never had been with the hardships which the people were compelled to
undergo.
As soon as he completed his course in the Academy, he returned to
Ukraine and spent the summer of 1845 travelling around the country,
visiting the sites of famous buildings. He soon found a position in the
Archaeological Commission where his skill in painting stood him in good
stead.
He finally settled in Kiev and soon found himself among a group of
enthusiastic young men and scholars, including Nikolay Ivanovich
Kostomariv and Panteleimon Kulish. Filled with the enthusiasm of youth
and stirred by those revolutionary currents which were preparing the
movements of 1848, they organized the Society of Saints Cyril and
Methodius, for the purpose of creating a great free union of all the
Slavonic peoples under a republican form of government. It was typical
of the change that had taken place in Russian and Ukrainian life since
the time of the Decembrists that this new movement was headed not by
members of the gentry or army officers but by a group of professors,
scholars, and men of letters. The naturally radical instincts of
Shevchenko and his ardent patriotism for Ukraine led him to associate
himself with them and he shared their dreams as well as their activity.
The authorities soon heard of the movement and acted swiftly and
savagely to suppress it. Apparently its existence was revealed to
the authorities on February 28, 1847. The matter was referred to St.
Petersburg and on April 5, Shevchenko and his friends were arrested.
An investigation and trial followed and on May 30, he received the
verdict that he was to be enrolled in the army in the Orenburg
Independent Corps with the rank of private and the tsar added in his
own handwriting, “under the strictest supervision with the prohibition
of writing and drawing.”