Years of life of Taras Shevchenko. Modern Kobzar from the past: What was Taras Shevchenko

There are many talented people in the world. But so that several abilities are combined in one person is a rarity. The great native of Ukraine, whom we want to talk about, is just one of those - generously gifted by God. He is known as a great poet and also as an artist.

In a large family

There is a village of Moryntsy in the Cherkasy region. Taras Shevchenko was born here (March 9, 1814). The poet died on 03/10/1861. This is the year And Shevchenko Taras Grigoryevich was "served". Not the master of himself, his life, activities and hobbies.

Father - Grigory Ivanovich - was also a serf. And all his many children. They are the property of the landowner, whose name was Vasily Engelhardt. On the father's side, Taras's ancestors descended from Andrey. And in the family of the mother (Katerina Yakimovna) - settlers from the Carpathian region.

With an unkind stepmother

Soon the family moved to the village of Kirillovka. Shevchenko Taras Grigoryevich spent his early years here. Yes, soon grief fell upon all of them - their mother died. My father married a widow. She had three children of her own. She especially disliked Tarasik. His older sister Katya looked after him - she was kind, compassionate. Soon she got married and left the family. And literally two years after the death of his mother, his father also died.

Taras turned 12. At first, he worked with a teacher. Then he got to the icon painters. They moved from village to village. Shevchenko Taras Grigoryevich also grazed sheep as a teenager. Served a priest.

In the master's house

But now he is 16. Shevchenko Taras Grigoryevich became the servant of the new landowner - Pavel Engelhardt. The very one whose portrait he would paint later, in 1833. This would be Shevchenko's earliest known watercolor work. It was made in the style of the then fashionable miniature portrait.

But first, Taras played the role of a cook. Then he was assigned to the Cossacks. However, he was already carried away by painting and fell in love with it.

Thanks barin. Noticing all this in the serf guy, when he was in Vilna (now Vilnius), he sent Taras to Jan Rustem, a teacher at the local university. He was a good portrait painter. And when his master decided to settle in the capital, he took a talented servant with him. Like, you will be a kind of house painter with me.

Dating in the park

Taras was already 22 years old. Once he was standing in the Summer Garden and redrawing the statues. Started a conversation with one artist, who turned out to be his fellow countryman. It was Ivan Soshenko. He became a close friend of Taras. For a while they even lived in the same apartment. When Shevchenko died, Ivan Maksimovich accompanied his coffin all the way to Kanev.

So, this Soshenko, having talked with the Ukrainian poet Yevgeny Grebenka (who was one of the first to understand how talented Shevchenko Taras Grigorievich is an artist), led the newcomer to get acquainted with the “necessary” people. He was brought to Vasily Grigorovich. It was the secretary of the Academy of Arts. He, himself a native of Pyriatyn, in many respects contributed to the development of art education in Ukraine and in every possible way helped novice painters. He also did everything he could to ransom Shevchenko from serfdom. It was to him that the poet dedicated the poem "Gaydamaki" on the day of his release.

Taras was also introduced to the master of genre scenes from peasant life, teacher Alexei Venetsianov. And also with the eminent Karl Bryullov, as well as with the famous poet. It was a real elite.

Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko aroused great sympathy among them. His creative biography was just beginning.

The recognition of this outstanding Ukrainian was important.

Free at last!

Everything rested on his master - Engelhardt. They appealed to a sense of humanism. It did nothing. And the personal petition for Shevchenko of Karl Bryullov himself - this most famous academician of painting - only fueled the desire of the landowner to make a round sum on the servant. Professor Venetsianov, accepted in the imperial court, also asked for Shevchenko! But even this high authority did not move the matter forward. The most venerable writers went to the master with bows. All in vain!

Taras was in despondency. He really wanted freedom. Hearing about another refusal, he came to Ivan Soshenko in the most desperate mood. He even threatened to take revenge on his master ...

Here all the artist's friends were already alarmed. No matter how much more trouble! They decided to act differently. They knew how to buy Engelhardt. They offered him an incredibly large amount for just one serf - 2500 rubles!

And that's where they came from. Zhukovsky agreed with Bryullov: he would paint his portrait. Then the picture was exhibited at one lottery - in the Anichkov Palace. This very portrait was a win. This is how the 24-year-old serf Shevchenko got his freedom. It was in 1838.

How could Taras thank his friends for this? He dedicated "Katerina" to Zhukovsky, his most significant poem.

In the same year - admission to the Academy of Arts. Shevchenko became both a student and a true friend of Karl Bryullov.

It was these years that were the brightest, most joyful in the life of the Kobzar. On the horse, as they say, was Shevchenko Taras Grigorievich. His creativity grew in strength.

Not only art flourished, but also the gift of poetry. Only two years later (after liberation from serfdom) the Kobzar saw the light of day. In 1842 - "Gaidamaki". And in the same year, the painting "Katerina" was created. Many people know her. The artist wrote based on his own poem of the same name.

The critics of St. Petersburg, and even the perspicacious Belinsky, not only did not understand at all, but also sharply condemned Ukrainian literature on the whole. The former peasant got it especially. They even ridiculed the language in which Shevchenko Taras Grigorievich wrote. In his poems they saw only provincialism.

But Ukraine itself correctly assessed and accepted the poet. He became her prophet.

In a distant exile

1845-1846 came. He draws closer to the Cyril and Methodius Society. These were young people who were interested in the development of the Slavic peoples. Particularly Ukrainian.

Ten of the circle were arrested, accused of creating a political organization. And Shevchenko was found guilty. Although the investigators could not clearly prove his connection with the Cyril and Methodius. He was charged with a “violation” for composing “outrageous” poems in terms of content. Yes, even in the Little Russian language. True, the same famous Belinsky believed that he "received" for his poem "Dream". For it is a clear satire on the king and queen.

As a result, 33-year-old Taras was recruited. Sent as a private in the Orenburg region. Where this region merges with Kazakhstan. But the worst thing was that the soldier was strictly forbidden to write or draw anything.

He sent a letter to Gogol, whom he did not personally know. I also sent an envelope to Zhukovsky. With a request to beg for him only one favor - permission to draw. Many other eminent people also worked for him. Everything is in vain. This ban has not been lifted.

Then Shevchenko took up modeling, trying to somehow show his creative nature. He wrote several books - in Russian. This, for example, is "Princess", also "Artist" and also "Gemini". They contain many details from his personal biography.

The poet returned to St. Petersburg in 1857. He immersed himself both in poetry and in painting. Even to start, but it did not work.

I also undertook to compile a school textbook - for the people. And in Ukrainian, of course, the language.

In St. Petersburg, he died. He was first buried in the local cemetery. And after a couple of months, according to the will of the poet himself, they transported the coffin with his ashes to Ukraine. And they buried it over the Dnieper - on Chernechi Mountain. This is near Kanev. He was only 47 years old.

There was not a single monument to the Kobzar in the Russian Empire. Its widespread perpetuation began after the revolution of 1917. Outside the country, monuments to an outstanding person were erected by the Ukrainian diaspora.

When the 200th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in 2014, all the monuments and other objects named after him were counted. There were 1060 of them in 32 countries. And on different continents.

Shevchenko (Taras Grigorievich) is a famous Ukrainian poet. Born on February 25, 1814 in the village of Morintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, in the family of a serf landowner Engelhardt.

After 2 years, Sh.'s parents moved to the village of Kirilovka, where Sh. spent his entire childhood. His mother died in 1823; in the same year, the father remarried a widow with three children. She treated Taras severely. Until the age of 9, Sh. was in the care of nature, and partly of his older sister Catherine, a kind and gentle girl. She soon got married. In 1825, when Sh. was in his twelfth year, his father died. From that time on, the hard, nomadic life of a homeless child begins, first with a sexton teacher, then with neighboring painters. At one time, Sh. was a shepherd of sheep, then he served as a chauffeur for a local priest. At the school teacher-deacon Sh. learned to read and write, and the painters got acquainted with the elementary techniques of drawing. In the 16th year, in 1829, he was among the servants of the landowner Engelhardt, first as a cook, then a Cossack. The passion for painting did not leave him. The landowner gave him to study first as a Warsaw painter, then to St. Petersburg, as a painting master Shiryaev. On holidays, the young man visited the Hermitage, copied the statues in the Summer Garden, where he met his fellow countryman, the artist I.M. Soshenok, who, after consulting with the Little Russian writer Grebenka, introduced Sh. to the conference secretary of the Academy of Arts Grigorovich, the artists Venetsianov and Bryullov, and the poet Zhukovsky. These acquaintances, especially the last one, were of great importance in the life of Sh., especially in the matter of releasing him from captivity. Zhukovsky was greatly helped by Countess Yu.E. Baranova, who stood close to the court. The first attempt to persuade Engelhardt to release Sh. in the name of humanity was unsuccessful. Bryullov went to negotiate with Engelhardt, but only received from him the conviction "that this is the largest pig in Torzhkov's shoes" and asked Soshenok to visit this "amphibian" and agree on a ransom price. Soshenko entrusted this delicate matter to Professor Venetsianov as a more authoritative person. Sh. was pleased and consoled by the care of highly enlightened and humane representatives of Russian art and literature; but at times he was overcome with despondency, even despair. Learning that the cause of his release stumbled upon the stubbornness of the landowner, Sh. came one day to Soshenok in terrible agitation. Cursing his bitter fate, he threatened to repay Engelhardt, and in such a mood he went home to his dirty attic. Soshenko was very worried about his fellow countryman and was expecting a big disaster. According to Princess Repnina, Zhukovsky, having learned about the terrible state of mind of a young man close to suicide, wrote a soothing note to him on a piece of paper. Sh. kept this note in his pocket as a shrine, and showed it to the princess in 1848. “After agreeing with my landowner,” said Sh. private lottery. The great Bryullov immediately agreed, and his portrait was ready. Zhukovsky, with the help of Count Vielgorsky, arranged a lottery of 2,500 rubles, and my freedom was bought at this price, April 22, 1838. " As a sign of special respect and deep gratitude to Zhukovsky, Sh. dedicated to him one of his largest works: "Katerina". Upon his release, Sh. became, in his own words, one of Bryullov's favorite students and comrades and became close friends with the artist Sternberg, Bryullov's favorite student. The years 1840 - 1847 were the best in Sh.'s life. During this period, his poetic talent flourished. In 1840, under the title "Kobzar", a small collection of his poems was published; in 1842 "Gaidamaki" was published - his largest work. In 1843, Mr.. Sh. received the degree of free artist; in the same year, Sh., traveling through Little Russia, met Princess V.N. Repnina, a kind and intelligent woman who later, during Sh.'s exile, took the warmest part in him. In the first half of the 1840s, "Perebendia", "Poplars", "Kateryna", "Naymichka", "Khustochka" were published - major works of art. Petersburg critics and even Belinsky did not understand and condemned Little Russian literature in general, Sh. in particular, seeing narrow provincialism in his poetry; but Little Russia quickly appreciated Sh.

zilos in the warm receptions Sh. during a trip in 1845 - 1847. in Chernihiv and Kyiv provinces. "Let me be a muzhik poet," Sh. wrote about the reviews of criticism, "anyhow only a poet; then a mini is more than nothing and not necessary." By the time Sh. was in Kyiv in 1846, his rapprochement with N.I. Kostomarov. In the same year, Sh. entered the Cyril and Methodius Society, which was then formed in Kyiv, which consisted of young people who were interested in the development of the Slavic peoples, in particular the Ukrainian. The members of this circle, including 10 people, were arrested, accused of forming a political society and suffered various punishments, and Sh. got the most for his illegal poems: he was exiled as a private to the Orenburg Territory, with a ban on writing and drawing. The Orsk fortress, where Sh. first ended up, was a sad and deserted outback. “Rarely,” Sh. wrote, “you can find such a characterless terrain. Flat and flat. The location is sad, monotonous, the lean rivers Ural and Or, naked gray mountains and the endless Kyrgyz steppe” ... “All my previous sufferings,” says Sh . in another letter of 1847, - in comparison with the real ones, there were children's tears. Bitter, unbearably bitter. For Sh. was very painful prohibition to write and draw; especially depressing was his severe prohibition to draw. Not knowing Gogol personally, Sh. decided to write to him "by right of a Little Russian lyricist", in the hope of Gogol's Ukrainian sympathies. "Now, as if falling into the abyss, I am ready to grab hold of everything - hopelessness is terrible! So terrible that only Christian philosophy can fight it." Sh. sent a touching letter to Zhukovsky asking him to apply for only one favor - the right to draw. In this sense, Count Gudovich and Count A. Tolstoy fussed for Sh. but it turned out to be impossible to help Sh. Sh. turned with a request to the head of the III department, General Dubbelt, wrote that his brush had never sinned and would not sin in the political sense, but nothing helped; the ban on painting was not lifted until his release. Some consolation was given to him by participation in an expedition to study the Aral Sea in 1848 and 1849; thanks to the humane attitude towards the exile of General Obruchev and in particular Lieutenant Butakov, Sh. was allowed to copy the views of the Aral coast and local folk types. But this indulgence soon became known in St. Petersburg; Obruchev and Butakov were reprimanded, and Sh. was exiled to a new desert slum, Novopetrovskoye, with a repeated prohibition to paint. In exile, Sh. became close friends with some educated exiled Poles - Serakovsky, Zalesky, Zhelikhovsky (Antony Sova), which helped to strengthen the idea of \u200b\u200b"merging brothers of the same tribe" in him. He stayed in Novopetrovsky Sh. from October 17, 1850 to August 2, 1857, that is, until his release. The first three years in the "stinky barracks" were very painful; then various reliefs followed, thanks chiefly to the kindness of commandant Uskov and his wife, who fell in love with Sh. for his gentle nature and affection for their children. Not being able to draw, S. was engaged in modeling, tried to do photography, which, however, was very expensive at that time. In Novopetrovsky Sh. wrote several stories in Russian - "Princess", "Artist", "Twins", containing many autobiographical details (subsequently published by "Kievskaya Starina"). The release of Sh. took place in 1857, thanks to the persistent petitions of Count F.P. Tolstoy and his wife Countess A.I. Tolstoy. With long stops in Astrakhan and Nizhny Novgorod, Sh. returned along the Volga to St. Petersburg, and here, at liberty, indulged in poetry and art. The difficult years of exile, due to alcoholism taking root in Novopetrovsk, led to a rapid deterioration in health and talent. An attempt to arrange a family hearth for him (actress Riunova, peasant woman Kharita and Lukerya) was not successful. Living in St. Petersburg (from March 27, 1858 to July 1859), Sh. was friendly received in the family of the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Count F.P. Tolstoy. The life of Sh. of this time is well known for his "

Diary ", transmitted in detail by his biographers of the new time (mainly Konissky). In 1859, Sh. visited his homeland. Then he had the idea to buy himself an estate on the Dnieper. A beautiful place near Kanev was chosen. Sh. strenuously fussed about the acquisition, but he did not have to settle here: he was buried here, and this place became a place of pilgrimage for all admirers of his memory Distracted by numerous literary and artistic acquaintances, Sh. and evenings, S. gave engraving, which then became very interested in. Shortly before his death, S. took up the compilation of school textbooks for the people in the Little Russian language. S. died on February 26, 1861. Sh. has a double meaning, as a writer and as an artist. His novels and stories in Russian are rather weak in artistic terms. All literary strength of Sh. is in his Kobzar. The volume of "Kobzar" is not large, but in terms of internal content it is a complex and rich monument: it is the Little Russian language in its historical development, serfdom and soldiery in all their severity, and along with it, memories of Cossack liberty have not faded away. There are surprising combinations of influences here: on the one hand, the Ukrainian philosopher Skovoroda and folk kobza players, on the other hand, Mickiewicz, Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Lermontov. The "Kobzar" reflects Kyiv shrines, Zaporozhye steppe life, the idyll of the Little Russian peasant life - in general, a historically developed people's spiritual warehouse, with peculiar shades of beauty, thoughtfulness and sadness. Through his closest source and main tool - folk poetry, Sh. closely adjoins the Cossack epic, to the old Ukrainian and partly Polish culture, and even stands in connection, according to some images, with the spiritual and moral world of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". The main difficulty in studying Sh.'s poetry lies in the fact that it is thoroughly saturated with nationality; it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to determine where Little Russian folk poetry ends and where Sh.'s personal work begins. Such a source was the poetry of Mickiewicz (see Mr. Kolessa's article in "Notes of Shevchenko's Comradeship"), partly N. Markevich (see Mr. Studinsky's article in the 24th issue of Zorya, 1896). Sh. loved Pushkin, knew many of his poems by heart - and for all that, Pushkin's influence on the poetry of Sh. difficult to identify behind the Ukrainian layers. The influence of the "Brothers of the Robbers" on Vernack, the influence of "Egyptian Nights", "The flying ridge is thinning clouds" is noticeable. There is another obstacle to the scientific analysis of Sh. - the artistic integrity, simplicity and sincerity of his poems. His poems are difficult to cold and dry analysis. In order to determine Sh.'s views on the tasks and goals of poetic creativity, one must pay attention not only to those confessions that are in "My yelling, nivo", "I do not scold God", "A thought is thought"; it is necessary to attract also those places where it is said about happiness, as the poet understands it, about glory. Especially important in the sense of poetic confessions are all those places where it is said about the kobzar, about the prophet and about thoughts, like beloved children. In most cases, the poet means himself by the kobzar; therefore, he introduced a lot of lyrical feeling into all the outlines of the kobzar. The historically formed image of a folk singer was to the liking of the poet, in whose life and moral image there really was a lot of kobzar. Sh. spoke about the kobzar very often; rarer, comparatively, is the prophet. Closely adjoining the poems about the prophet is a small but strong poem about the apostle of truth. In the depiction of the prophet, especially in the poem "Nachche righteous children", the influence of Lermontov is noticeable. Sh.'s nationality, like that of other outstanding poets, is composed of two related elements - external nationality, borrowings, imitations, and internal, mentally hereditary nationality. The definition of external, borrowed elements is not difficult; enough for that

get acquainted with ethnography and find direct sources in folk tales, beliefs, songs, rituals. Determining the internal psychological folk elements is very difficult and impossible in full. Sh. has both those and other elements. The soul of Sh. is saturated with nationality to such an extent that any, even an outsider, borrowed motif receives a Ukrainian national coloring in his poetry. External, borrowed and to a greater or lesser extent reworked folk poetic motifs include: 1) Little Russian folk songs, cited in places in their entirety, in places in reduction or alteration, in places only mentioned. So, in "Perebend" Sh. mentions well-known thoughts and songs - about Chaly, Gorlytsya, Gryts, Serbyn, Shinkarka, about poplars at the edge of the road, about the ruin of Sich, "vesnyanka", "at the guy". The song "Pugach" is mentioned as Chumatskaya in "Kateryna", "Petrus" and "Gryts" - in "Chernyts Maryana"; "Oh, no noise, puddle" is mentioned twice - in "Perebend" and "Before Osnovyanenko". In "Gaidamaki" and in "Slavnyk" there is a thought about a storm on the Black Sea, in a slight alteration. Wedding songs were included in "Gaidamaki". Echoes, imitations and alterations of folk lyrical songs are scattered throughout the Kobzar. 2) Legends, traditions, fairy tales and proverbs are less common compared to songs. From the legends about the walk of Christ, the beginning of the poem "God had a secret lying behind the door" was taken. From the legends, the story is taken that "priests once did not walk, but rode in people." The proverb "jump the enemy, yak pan seems to be" - in "Perebend". A few sayings side by side in Katerina. Many folk proverbs and sayings are scattered in "Gaidamaki". 3) Folk beliefs and customs are found in large numbers. Such are the beliefs about sleep-grass, many wedding customs - the exchange of bread, the donation of towels, baking a loaf, the custom of planting trees over graves, beliefs about witches, mermaids, etc. 4) A lot of artistic images are taken from folk poetry, for example, the image of death with oblique in the hands, the personification of the plague. In particular, folk images of share and nedolya are often found. 5) Finally, in "Kobzar" there are a lot of borrowed folk-poetic comparisons and symbols, for example, the declination of sycamore - grief for a lad, harvest - battle (as in "The Word and Igor's Campaign" and in thoughts), overgrowing of paths - a symbol of the absence of a sweetheart, viburnum - girl. Folk song is often found in "Kobzar" because it was of great importance for maintaining the spirit of the poet in the most sorrowful hours of his life. Sh.'s nationality is determined, further, by his worldview, his favorite points of view on external nature and society, and in relation to society, the historical element - its past, and the everyday element - modernity are distinguished. The external nature is depicted in an original way, with a peculiar Ukrainian flavor. The sun spends the night behind the sea, peeking out from behind the gloom, as the groom in the spring looks at the earth. The moon is round, pale-faced, walking across the sky, looking at the "endless sea" or "stepping out with your sister dawn." All these images breathe an artistic and mythical worldview, reminiscent of ancient poetic ideas about the matrimonial relationship of heavenly bodies. The wind at Sh. appears in the form of a powerful creature that takes part in the life of Ukraine: at night it quietly talks with sedge, then it walks across the wide steppe and talks with mounds, then it starts a violent speech with the sea itself. One of the most important and basic motifs of Sh.'s poetry is the Dnieper. Historical memories and love for the motherland were associated with the Dnieper in the mind of the poet. In Kobzar, the Dnieper is a symbol and sign of everything characteristically Little Russian, like the Vater Rhein in German poetry or the Volga in Great Russian songs and legends. "There is no other Dnipro," Sh. said in a message to the dead, living and unborn countrymen. With the Dnieper, the poet associated the ideal of a happy folk life, quiet and content. The Dnieper is wide, arched, strong as the sea; all the rivers flow into it, and it carries all their waters to the sea; by the sea, he learns about the Cossack grief; he roars, groans, speaks softly, gives answers; because of the Dnieper thoughts, glory, share arrive. Here are rapids, mounds, a rural church on a steep bank; a number of historical monuments are concentrated here

ominany, because the Dnieper is "old". Another very common motif in Sh.'s poetry is Ukraine, sometimes mentioned in passing, but always affectionately, sometimes with a depiction either natural-physical or historical. The description of the nature of Ukraine includes alternating fields and forests, highways, small gardens, and wide steppes. All sympathetic descriptions of the Little Russian flora and fauna - poplar, tumbleweed, lily, queen of flowers, ryast, periwinkle, and especially viburnum and nightingale - came out of the fundamental psychological love for the motherland. The rapprochement of the nightingale with the viburnum in the poem "In memory of Kotlyarevsky" is built on their rapprochement in folk songs. Historical motifs are very diverse: the Hetmanate, Cossacks, Zaporizhian weapons, captives, pictures of sad desolation, historical paths, Cossack graves, oppression by the Uniates, historical areas - Chigirin, Trakhtemirov, historical figures - Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Doroshenko, Semyon Paliy, Pidkova, Gamalia, Gonta , Zaliznyak, Golovaty, Dmitry Rostovsky. On the borderline between history and modernity, there is a motif about Chumaks. During Sh. plague was still a purely everyday phenomenon; it was later killed by the railroads. In "Kobzar" chumaks appear quite often, and most often they talk about the illness and death of a chumak. Under favorable circumstances, the Chumaks bring rich gifts, but sometimes they return with only “batozhki”. In general, plague is described in the spirit of folk songs, and in places under their direct influence, which can be clearly seen by the corresponding parallels from the collections of Rudchenko, Chubinsky, and others. Sh. : pans are still being hired as soldiers, the service is long; comparatively the most complete and sympathetic image of a soldier is in "Pustka" and in "Well, it was supposed to be words." Sh.'s poetry is very rich in religious and moral motives. A warm religious feeling and the fear of God permeate the entire Kobzar. In a message to his living and unborn countrymen, the pious poet takes up arms against atheism and explains unbelief by the one-sided influence of German science. As a very religious person, Sh. speaks warmly about the power of prayer, about Kyiv shrines, about the miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, about the praying man, constantly puts forward Christian principles of goodness, especially forgiveness to enemies. The poet's heart is filled with humility and hope. All this saved him from pessimism and despair, only at times, under the influence of the difficult conditions of his personal life and the life of his homeland, which made their way into the poetry of Sh. In close connection with the main religious and moral mood of the poet are motives about wealth and poverty, about the meaning of labor. The poet is embarrassed by the property inequality of people, their need, and the fact that wealth does not provide happiness. His principle is "and learn from someone else's and do not shy away from your own." The poet, however, was completely alien to the idea of searching for truth and serving it, regardless of any traditions. Sh. reveals in places a narrow national-applied understanding of science, in places the identification of science with morality, and unsuccessful irony over people "written and drukovannye". The political motifs of Sh.'s poetry, now largely obsolete, are known from foreign editions of the Kobzar (the best edition of Ogonovsky). Many pages are devoted to his Slavophilism in Kobzar. This also adjoins the poem "Slavs", published in the October book "Kievskaya Antiquity" in 1897. In some places ethnographic motifs are scattered - about Poles, Jews, gypsies, Kirghiz. Autobiographical motifs, such as the message to Kozachkovsky, which is valuable in this respect, and motifs about individual writers, such as Skovoroda, Kotlyarevsky, Shafarik, and Marko-Vovchka, can be singled out as special groups. All the motifs of Sh.'s poetry listed above, with the exception of two or three (Dnepr, Ukraine, Cossacks), recede before the main family-related motifs. The family is the real essence of the whole "Kobzar"; and since the basis of the family is a woman and children, they fill all the best works of the poet. P.I. Zhitetsky, in "Thoughts on Little Russian Thoughts," says that in the works of Little Russian

th poetry, both school and folk, folk ethics is reduced mainly to family morality, based on a sense of kinship; in folk poetry, truth is called mother ridna, and mother - truth virna, and in the image of the mother a great moral force is created, like the force of love. All these judgments are quite applicable to Sh.'s poetry, which, in terms of the development of family-kindred ideals, adjoins directly to folk poetry. The arena for the development of family-related principles - the village - is outlined very sympathetically. As in folk poetry, in Sh. the village usually rhymes with the word fun. The ideal of the poet was that "the desert should be filled with the joy of the village." There are "wretched villages", and "the village burned out for nothing" - everything from the panshchina. The hut, Sh's favorite motif, is increasingly mentioned and in some places more fully described. In unfortunate families, the hut is "empty rotting", the chambers are not smeared, the scum is unwashed. The best descriptions of the hut are in the poem "Khatyna" and "Vechir". Comparisons and images are peculiar: a burnt hut is a weary heart, a hut is Slavic, a hut is a grave. Youth, young years are depicted in the spirit of folk literature, in places as imitation and rehashing. The girl is included in many poems; most often a description of girlish beauty, love, wonder. The attitude of the poet to the girl is deeply humane. One of Sh.'s best poems in this regard, "And the Camp of the Gnuchky," was written under the influence of Lermontov's famous "Prayer." With a feeling of sincere grief, the poet draws the fall of a girl. In "Chernitsa Maryana" and "Nazar Stodolia" there are descriptions of evening parties, conspiracy, loaf, fun, marriage unequal in years, marriage unequal in social status. The need for family life is noted in many places in Kobzar. Children are of particular importance in Sh.'s poetry. There is not a single writer in Russian literature who devotes so much space to children. The reason for this was the strong personal impressions of the poet from his difficult childhood and his love for children, confirmed, in addition to the Kobzar, by many biographical data, especially the characteristic reminiscences of Mrs. Krapivina. Illegitimate children, or baystruks, are found on many pages of the Kobzar, like a dark spot of serf life. Family relations are expressed in the description of the mother in general, the relationship between mother and son, the relationship between mother and daughter. Many folk-poetic elements are scattered everywhere, partly as a result of direct borrowing from folk poetry, partly as an observation of living reality. The relationship of father to son in "The Centurion" is built on a somewhat exclusive motive of love for one and the same woman. One of Sh.'s favorite motifs is the veil. Sh. had a predecessor concerning this motive - G.F. Kvitka. In folk poetry, the covering is rare, in some places in songs, and even then mostly in passing and descriptively. Sh. owes the merit of a detailed study of the social conditions that gave rise, under serfdom, coverings, and the merit of depicting them not only artistic, but also humane. The poet did not spare dark colors when describing the miserable share of the coating, in places not without major exaggerations. In fact, the “covering” came off the girl more easily, with a significant indulgence of public opinion (on coverings, as an everyday phenomenon, see the note by Fon-Nos in Kievan Antiquity, 1882, III, 427 - 429). The hirelings also enjoyed great sympathy for Sh. A whole poem, the best work of Sh., is dedicated to the hired hand and received such a title. If Sh. had not written a single line, except for Naimychka, then this poem would have been enough to put him at the head of Little Russian literature and on a par with the largest Slavic humanitarian poets. While folk poetry ignores old age, Sh. loves old men and old women - poor widows. Such is the sympathetic image of the grandfather reminiscing about his youth, the grandfather in a family setting, with his grandchildren, the old kobzar Perebendi. The image of death in the poem "Across the Field Ide" and in "The Slave

"in the form of a mower - a traditional image, closely related to works of poetry and art, both South Russian and Western European. This poem, for all that, is distinguished by an extremely peculiar, purely Ukrainian character, as an exemplary national processing of a broad international cultural motif. The study of S., as a painter, is a difficult task, due to the scattered nature and low availability of his works, which were only accidentally and in a very small number of exhibits. There are few studies and descriptions (Shugurova, Rusov, Gorlenka, Kuzmin, Grinchenko); studies are brief, concern particular issues; more recently, in December 1900, Mr. Kuzmin complained, not unreasonably, that about Sh. said. " Opinions about Sh., as a draftsman, differ significantly. Thus, Mr. Kuzmin says that "Shevchenko can rightly be attributed the glory of perhaps the first Russian etcher in the modern sense of the word. Even earlier, Soshenko saw in Sh. the painter is not the last test. Mr. Rusov looks differently (in "Kievskaya Starina", 1894). In his opinion, Sh. in painting was only "a photographer of the surrounding nature, to which his heart did not lie, and in creating the genre he did not go beyond student trials, jokes, sketches, in which, with all the desire to find any artistic idea , we are not able to catch it, the composition of the drawings is so indefinite. Both Kuzmin and Rusov acknowledge in Sh.'s painting that it does not correspond to his poetic subjects, but while Mr. Rusov sees this as a drawback, Mr. Kuzmin, on the contrary, sees dignity. To determine Sh.'s significance as a painter and engraver, it is necessary to evaluate his works in the aggregate and from different historical points of view, without adjusting them to one or another favorite requirement. Sh. deserves to be studied as a force that reflected the mood of the era, as a student of certain artistic trends. Whoever wishes to get acquainted in detail with the school of Bryullov and find out his influence, he will find some share of the answer in the drawings and paintings of Sh. Whoever wishes to study the influence of Rembrandt in Russia, he also cannot bypass Sh. He treated art with deep sincerity; it brought him comfort in the bitter moments of his life. Drawings Sh. are of considerable importance for his biography. There are drawings taken directly from the everyday environment surrounding the poet, with chronological dates. Distributed over the years (which has already been done in part by Mr. Grinchenko in the 2nd volume of the Tarnovsky Museum catalog), the drawings together outline the artistic tastes and aspirations of Sh. and constitute an important parallel to his poems. In addition to autobiographical significance, Sh.'s drawings have historical significance. At one time, the poet, on behalf of the Kyiv archaeological commission, copied the Little Russian monuments of antiquity in Pereyaslavl, Subbotov, Gustyn, Pochaev, Verbki, Poltava. There are drawings of the Kotlyarevsky house, the ruins of the Gustynsky monastery before correction, the burial place of Kurbsky, etc. At present, many genre drawings have historical value. Such, for example, is the drawing "In the Past" (in the collection of S.S. Botkin in St. Petersburg). The picture shows the punishment with gauntlets, the sad "green street". The man sentenced to punishment threw off his shirt; heavy iron shackles are lying at his feet. Before him stretches a long line of his involuntary executioners. Nearby is a bucket, probably filled with water. Far away on the mountain is the outline of a fortress. This is a true page from the history of Russian life. Remembering once, at the end of his life, soldiering, Sh. took out this drawing from the album and gave his student Sukhanov such an explanation that he was moved to tears, and Sh. hastened to console him, saying that this brutal torture was over. The drawing "Comrades", depicting a prison cell with two shackled prisoners, with an iron chain going from the hand of one prisoner to the foot of another, is of historical importance now and at one time - prevost

a similar illustration to the book by A.F. Horses about Dr. Haase. The entire prison environment is characteristically outlined. There is another side to the drawings Sh., very curious - ethnographic. If you analyze the numerous drawings of Sh. with folklore purposes, then you will end up with a valuable ethnographic collection. So, to get acquainted with the buildings, an old building in a Ukrainian village, a komora in Potok, a Batkovskaya hut may come in handy; to get acquainted with the costumes - a fair, a girl examining a towel, a woman in a napkin, leaving the hut, "kolo porridge" (four peasants eat porridge from a cauldron under a willow tree), "healer", in a costume characteristic of the peasants of the Kyiv province, "headman "at an interesting moment when the bride gave towels, and much more. For the Little Russian genre of the old time, drawings of chumaks on the road among the barrows, a bandura player, the grandfather of the queen, a beekeeper, a volost court ("a court of council") with the caption: "otaman gathering a bulk to the village, when the meal is unusual, for joy and judgment. The crowd, having rejoiced and judged good, disperses, drinking according to the charms, etc. In these drawings, Sh. is a worthy contemporary of Fedotov. Of limited local significance are numerous drawings of Central Asian nature - that desert, steppe environment, among which Sh. was forced to drag out his life: poor nature, sand dunes, rocky river banks, rare shrubs, groups of soldiers and Tatars with camels, Mohammedan cemeteries. Drawings of this kind, preserved in a significant number and mostly beautifully executed, can serve as a good illustration of some of the sorrowful poems of Sh. from the first painful years of his exile. There are very few oil paintings by Sh. Sh. only occasionally resorted to a brush. Judging by the detailed catalog of Mr. Grinchenko, in the rich collection of Tarnovsky in Chernigov (over 300) there are only four oil paintings by Sh. - Katerina, Head of a Young Man, Portrait of Princess Repnina and Kochubey. G. Gorlenko in the "Kyiv Antiquity" in 1888 points to three more paintings by Sh. in oil paints - a beekeeper, a portrait of Mayevskaya and his own portrait. In Kharkov, in the private museum of B.G. Filonov, there is a large painting "The Savior" attributed to Sh., two arshins high and one and a half wide. The work is clean, the colors are fresh, perfectly preserved, but the style is purely academic. Christ is depicted waist-deep, in profile, with his eyes turned to heaven. The Museum of Arts and Antiquities of Kharkov University has a small painting by Sh. , painted on canvas with oil paints, with an inscription in white paint: "That is dumb for no one, like a young burlatsi." The picture shows a half-length image of an elderly Little Russian, with a small mustache, no beard and sideburns. The smile on the face does not match the inscription. The background of the picture is almost completely black. The influence of Rembrandt, whom S. fell in love with early, is noticeable. According to V.V. Tarnovsky, Sh. at the academy was called the Russian Rembrandt, according to the then customary practice of giving the most gifted students the names of their favorite exemplar artists, with whose manner the work of these students had the most similarities. In the etchings of Sh., characteristic features of the works of the great Dutchman are found: the same irregular strokes intersecting in a wide variety of directions - long, frequent - for backgrounds and dark places, small, almost breaking off into dots in light places, and each point, each smallest curl, are organically necessary, either as a characteristic detail of the depicted object, or to enhance a purely light effect. Recently, Sh.'s drawings accidentally ended up at the Gogol-Zhukov exhibition in Moscow in 1902, and at the exhibition of the XII Archaeological Congress in Kharkov in 1902, but here they were lost in the mass of other objects. In Kharkov, two engravings by Sh. 1844 were exhibited - "The Judgment of the Rada" and "Gifts in Chigirin", both from the collection of Professor M.M. Kovalevsky in Dvurechny Kut, Kharkov district. The wish was repeatedly expressed in the press (for example, by Mr. Gorlenok in "Kievskaya Starina" in 1888) that all drawings and paintings of Sh. be reproduced and published in the form of a collection, which would be very useful

and for the history of Russian art, and for the biography of Sh. Literature about Sh. is very large and very scattered. Everything published before 1884 is indicated in Komarov's “Indicator of New Ukrainian Literature” (1883) and in “Essays on the History of Ukrainian Literature of the 19th Century” by Professor Petrov, 1884. Many memoirs about Sh. (Kostomarov, Chuzhbinsky, Chaly, Bang, Turgenev) and others), many biographies (the best ones are M.K. Chaly, 1882, and A.Ya. Konissky, 1898), many popular brochures (the best ones are Maslov and Vetrinsky), many critical analyzes of individual works (for example , Franco about "Perebend", Kokorudza about "Message"). Every year, the February book "Kyiv Antiquities" brings research and materials about Sh., sometimes new and interesting. In Lvov, a scientific society (“Companionship”) named after Sh. has been operating for many years, in whose publications valuable studies about Sh. are found, for example, Mr. Kolessa’s study on the influence of Mickiewicz on Sh. And many articles about Sh., sometimes original in terms of point of view, for example, Studinsky's article on Sh.'s attitude to N. Markevich in Zora in 1896. Both historical and journalistic publications give place to articles about Sh.; for example, Junge’s memoirs were printed in Vestnik Evropy, Zhukovsky’s letters to Countess Baranova about the ransom of Sh. from captivity in Russkaya Starina, and an article about Sh. lectures of Professor O.F. Miller on the history of modern literature. In the best general courses (for example, "Essays" by Professor N.I. Petrov), Sh. is given a lot of space. In various provincial newspapers and literary collections, articles about Sh. are scattered, sometimes not devoid of interest, for example, Konissky's article about the sea in Sh's poems, in No. about Sh. in "Kharkovskiye Vedomosti" in 1894, No. 62, etc. The complete editions of the "Kobzar" are foreign (the best is Lviv, in 2 volumes, edited by Ogonovsky). In Russia, all editions of "Kobzar" are abridged, with sharp political poems omitted. The history of publications of "Kobzar" indicates its extremely rapid spread in modern times, depending on the development of education. The first edition (by Martos) came out in 1840. Four years later, the 2nd edition of Kobzar appeared, which included Gaidamaki. The third edition appeared in 1860, after the poet's return from exile. It appeared thanks to material support from the famous sugar producer of the Kyiv province, Platon Simirenko. This publication met in St. Petersburg with very strong obstacles from censorship, and only thanks to the intercession of the Minister of National Education Kovalevsky saw the light of God. In 1867, "Chigirinsky torban player - singer" appears (4th edition of "Kobzar"). In the same year, Kozhanchikov published the works of Sh., in two volumes, containing 184 plays. Two years later, the 6th edition of Sh. Since then, for 14 years (1869 - 1883), Sh.'s poems have not been published in Russia, but survived in the shortest possible time (1876 - 1881) four editions in Prague and Lvov. The 7th edition (1884) of S.'s "Kobzar" appeared in St. Petersburg. Since that time, "Kobzar" has gone through more than 7 editions in a significant number of copies (one edition, for example, 60 thousand, another 20 thousand, etc.). Of the individual works of Sh. in large quantities (50 thousand copies) was published "Naymichka" (Kharkov, 1892).

Ukrainian poet, prose writer and artist Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko was born on March 9 (February 25 according to the old style), 1814 in the village of Morintsy, Kyiv province (now Cherkasy region, Ukraine) in the family of a serf.

The last prose works of Taras Shevchenko were the stories "A walk with pleasure and not without morality" (1856-1858) and diary entries "Journal". In 1858, a number of high examples of intimate and landscape lyrics were written.

In the last years of his life, Shevchenko was actively engaged in educational activities. He prepared for publication the "Primer" for evening schools, which was published in a circulation of 10 thousand copies at the expense of the author, together with other members of the St. Petersburg Ukrainian society "Gromada" prepared the first issue of the magazine "Osnova" for publication.

In addition, Shevchenko worked in the fields of easel painting, graphics, monumental and decorative painting and sculpture. In 1859-1860 he made etchings from the works of foreign and Russian artists. For success in this art, the Academy of Arts awarded Shevchenko the title of Academician of Engraving.

Taras Shevchenko died on March 10 (February 26, old style), 1861. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg, and two months later the coffin with his body, in accordance with the will of the poet, was transported to Ukraine and buried on Chernecheya Mountain near Kanev.

Shevchenko's works have been translated into almost all languages of the world, many works have been set to music by Nikolai Lysenko and other composers.

The poems "My thoughts, my thoughts", "Testament", the beginning of the ballad "Spoiled" ("Roar and Stogne Dnipr wide") became folk songs.

Educational institutions, theaters, squares, streets are named after Shevchenko in Ukraine. The National Opera of Ukraine, Kyiv National University, the central boulevard of Kyiv are named after Taras Shevchenko. To date, there are 1384 monuments to Taras Shevchenko in the world: 1256 in Ukraine and 128 abroad - in 35 states.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Shevchenko's works have been translated into almost all languages of the world, many works have been set to music by Nikolai Lysenko and other composers.

The poems "My thoughts, my thoughts", "Testament", the beginning of the ballad "Spoiled" ("Roar and Stogne Dnipr wide") became folk songs.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich

(Shevchenko-Grushevsky) - famous Ukrainian poet; was born on February 25, 1814, in the village of Morintsakh, Zvenigorod district of the Kyiv province, in a serf peasant family of the landowner Vasily Engelhardt. The Grushevsky family, which began to be called first Shevchenko-Grushevsky, then simply Shevchenko, belonged to the number of peasant families that had long lived in the village. Kirillovka, Zvenigorod district. The poet's father, Grigory Shevchenko-Grushevsky, having married the daughter of a peasant in the village of Morynets, Akim Boyk, moved to Morintsy and settled in the estate purchased for him by his father-in-law; soon, however, Shevchenko moved back to Kirillovka, where Taras Grigorievich spent his childhood. The Shevchenko family was numerous and poor, and Taras had to get acquainted early with the need. Until the age of 9 Taras lived, however, tolerably. He was left to himself and partly to the care of his elder sister Catherine. About nine years old, Taras experienced significant changes in his family environment: his beloved sister Ekaterina married in another village, and soon his mother died. Taras's father, left a widower with a large family, remarried in order to have a mistress in the house. Taras Grigoryevich's stepmother was a widow who had three children of her own and had a very quarrelsome disposition. Between the children of the stepmother and father there was an eternal enmity and fights. The stepmother tortured her husband's children at the slander of her children; so, once, at the age of about 11, Taras Grigoryevich was suspected of stealing 45 kopecks, hid for 4 days in the bushes and, finally, found by his stepmother's children, was severely beaten and locked in a barn. Subsequently, it turned out that the stepmother's son, Stepanko, stole the money. Soon after this fact, the father, it is believed, in order to save his son from the eternal persecution of his stepmother, sent him to school. What kind of school it was is not exactly established. It is believed that it was a parochial school, where the dismissed priest Gubsky taught. In the 12th year, Taras Grigorievich also lost his father, who died on March 21, 1825. After that, Shevchenko's situation at home became even more difficult. In order to get away from domestic troubles, and also to satisfy his desire to study, T. G. entered the school again, where not Gubsky, but two deacons, were already teaching. There was no one to pay for T. G., and he fell into complete bondage to one of the deacons, for whom he had to work for the right to study. Shevchenko earned his own livelihood by reading the psalter over the dead, but even this meager income almost entirely went to the deacon's benefit. At that time Taras Grigoryevich had to severely starve and get cold, and boots and a hat were an unattainable luxury for him. Shevchenko also had to experience a lot from the sexton, who was an ardent admirer of the rod and the triad and beat his pupils, and especially Taras, for whom there was no one to intercede, mercilessly. The deacon brought the boy to such bitterness that one day, finding his teacher dead drunk, Shevchenko tied him hand and foot and whipped him himself. After that, Taras could only run, which he did, leaving at night for the town of Lysyanka. There were many icon painters in Lysyanka and neighboring villages, among whom were clerics. Shevchenko, who from an early age felt a passion for painting, entered Lysyanka as an apprentice to one of these icon painters, a deacon; however, he soon left this deacon for the village of Tarasovka, to a deacon-painter, who was famous in the vicinity; but this painter, who was engaged in palmistry, on the basis of this science did not recognize any abilities in the boy, and Shevchenko had to return to his homeland in c. Kirillovka. Here Shevchenko fell into the shepherds of the public herd, but, due to his absent-mindedness, turned out to be completely incapable of such an occupation. The same absent-mindedness and inability to completely surrender to petty interests made him of little use for agricultural work. In the end, he turned out to be a "chasing" boy with the priest s. Kirillovka, Grigory Koshytsy. Here, too, the boy proved incapable and lazy. From Kosice, where he stayed for a short time, Shevchenko left and again tried to enter the teachings of a painter in the village of Khlipnovka. This painter recognized Shevchenko's abilities, but refused to accept him without the written permission of the landowner. Going for this permission to the manager of the estate, Shevchenko, as a lively boy, attracted the attention of the manager; the latter appreciated his talented teenager, and Shevchenko was taken to the yard boys, and soon he was made an apprentice cook. He did not show talent in the study of the art of cooking, and in the end the manager Dmitrenko sent him to the son of the owner, Pavel Engelhardt, in whose "staff" he was intended, with certification that Shevchenko was capable of painting, and with a proposal to make him a "room painter" ". Young Engelhardt made Shevchenko a room Cossack, and Taras Grigoryevich had to spend whole days in the hall, waiting for orders to serve a glass of water or fill his pipe. The passion for painting, however, did not leave Shevchenko, and in his free time he copied the paintings that were in the front. Once, carried away by sketching a portrait of ataman Platov, he did not notice the appearance of the owner during this work, who, angry that Shevchenko did not hear his appearance, sent him to the stable. The passion for painting did not weaken in Shevchenko after this incident, and in the end, the landowner, making sure that he would not make an intelligent Cossack and lackey, decided to apprentice him to a painter in Warsaw. The painter six months later informed the landowner about the outstanding abilities of the young man and advised him to give him to the portrait painter Lumpy. Engelhardt realized the advantage of having his own portrait painter and followed the advice of the house painter. The Polish uprising that was being prepared forced the prudent Engelhardt, who did not want to become hostile to any of the parties (Engelhardt was Orthodox in religion, a colonel in the Russian service, but a Pole in language), to leave for Petersburg. Behind him was to move to St. Petersburg and Shevchenko. In St. Petersburg, Shevchenko again fell into the painful position of a Cossack under Engelhardt, which, of course, was much more difficult after working for Lampi. He began to ask to study painting again. Engelhardt again gave him to the painter, Shiryaev. He was a rude, despotic and ignorant man. The work that Shevchenko had to do for him had nothing to do with art; the external environment of life was terrible. Shevchenko had to live with Shiryaev for several years in complete bondage. The passion for art, however, did not die out even in this unfavorable environment. The case brought him to fellow artist Sotenko, who drew attention to a talented young man. Sotenko introduced Shevchenko to Bryullov, Venetsianov, Zhukovsky, Grebenka. The fate of the serf painter interested them; took part in Shevchenko, and a turn for the better began in his life. Shevchenko's friends took care of some of his education and began to prepare his release from serfdom. Grebenka and Sotenko supplied him with books; the latter supervised his artistic studies, begged Shiryaev for a month of freedom for Shevchenko, for which he undertook to paint a portrait of Shiryaev. In order to free Shevchenko from serfdom, Bryullov and Venetsianov went to Engelhardt, hoping to convince him to give Shevchenko freedom, taking into account his talent. Engelhardt demanded 2,500 rubles for Shevchenko's freedom. This money was collected in the following way: Bryullov painted a portrait of Zhukovsky, and this portrait was raffled off in a lottery. In April 1838, Shevchenko finally received his freedom. Then he began to attend classes at the Academy of Arts and soon became one of Bryullov's favorite students. In Bryullov's workshop, Shevchenko was already thinking over his poems. His biographers, however, do not find out when he began to write poetry. The earliest mention of Shevchenko's poetry is Sotenok, who is angry with Shevchenko for his "verses" that distract him from the real deal. It is very likely that write Shevchenko began poetry late, after his acquaintance with Sotenko and writers, when he became aware of Kotlyarevsky's Aeneid, Pushkin's Poltava translated by Grebenka, etc. Before that, he composed only folk songs, which is quite understandable, since the form of folk poetry was so "own" for Shevchenko that it is difficult to doubt that his poetic work developed directly from the folk poetic tradition. But, on the other hand, Shevchenko himself says that his first poetic experiments began "in the Summer Garden, on bright moonless nights," and that "the strict Ukrainian muse for a long time shunned his taste, perverted by life in captivity, in the landowner's anteroom, at the inns yards, in city apartments"; this Muse "embraced and caressed Shevchenko" in a foreign side, as the breath of freedom returned to his feelings the purity of the first years. Thus, probably, the first works of Shevchenko were written not in Little Russian, during his stay in St. Petersburg with Shiryaev (Sotenko met him for the first time in the Summer Garden). He began to write Little Russian works, apparently, already after his release (in the workshop of Bryullov, he pondered some of his early works). The Little Russian works of Shevchenko first appeared in print in 1840, when the first issue of Kobzar was printed at the expense of the Poltava landowner Martos. This issue includes "My Thoughts, Thoughts", "Perebendya", "Katerina", "Poplars", "Ivan Pikdova", "Tarasova Nich" and some other works. A prominent role in the emergence of "Kobzar" was played by Grebenka, who, apparently, belongs to the very idea of publishing Shevchenko's Little Russian works and the merit of obtaining funds for publication. Martos, apparently, was attracted to the case by Grebenka. Russian criticism met Shevchenko's works very harshly, and Belinsky's review was the most severe. Belinsky denied the very legitimacy of the existence of Little Russian literature. Shevchenko's biographer, Konissky, believes that these reviews were the reason Shevchenko started writing in Russian. But how unsympathetically the works of Shevchenko were met by Russian criticism, they aroused just as warm sympathy in his fellow countrymen.

Shevchenko soon became a beloved Ukrainian poet, the pride of his compatriots. Until 1843, Shevchenko wrote either in Little Russian or in Russian. In 1843, he finally settled on the Little Russian language and did not write anything in Russian until the middle of the 50s. In the same 1843, Shevchenko plans to publish "Picturesque Ukraine" (this publication did not take place). In order to collect material for this edition, Shevchenko went to Little Russia in 1843, first of all to Tarnovsky, known as a Little Russian patron of the arts, in his estate in the Chernihiv province. At the same time, in the Chernigov province, he met the family of the Repnin princes. With Princess Varvara Nikolaevna Repnina, Shevchenko established strong friendly relations for many years. On the same trip, Shevchenko visited his homeland in Kirillovka, visited the place of the last battle, Khortitsa and the place of the Zaporizhzhya shrine - the Mezhigorsky Monastery. Surrendering to literature, Shevchenko did not abandon, however, painting. From 1839 to 1841 Shevchenko repeatedly received awards from the Academy of Arts. Returning from a trip to his homeland, he again took up academic work, dreaming of a business trip abroad. However, work on the "Picturesque Ukraine" and other troubles related to Shevchenko's national interests interfered with his studies at the Academy, and the trip abroad did not take place. In February 1844 Shevchenko traveled to Moscow. There he saw fellow countrymen Shchepkin and Bodyansky, in the same place he wrote his poem "Chigirin". In June of the same year, Shevchenko wrote the poem "Dream", which later served as one of the main reasons for exile. In the summer of 1844, Shevchenko again made a trip to Little Russia. He was in his native Kirillovka, staying, among other things, with the landowner Zakrevsky, whom he had met the previous summer. Zakrevsky was the head of the Mochemordia society. This society was something like the "Green Lamp", in which Pushkin once participated: its members spent their time in revelry. Shevchenko became close friends with Zakrevsky and the “poop-faces”, which greatly upset his friend, Princess Repnina, who did her best to distract the poet from this company. Shevchenko spent the autumn and part of the winter of 1844 with the Repnins, then returned to St. Petersburg, where he continued to work at the academy. March 25, 1845 Shevchenko received a diploma of a free artist. By the same time, Shevchenko's work on portraits of 12 commanders, for the publication of the same name, undertaken by Polevoy, dates back. In the spring of 1845 Shevchenko left Petersburg, this time for a long time. He went through Moscow, where he again saw Bodyansky and Shchepkin, and went to Little Russia. He lived with various acquaintances and in his native Kirillovka, but in the fall he came to Kyiv. Here he personally met Kulish (he had corresponded with Kulish before, and, according to some instructions, he had seen each other before). Kulish planned to attract Shevchenko to Kyiv, as a center of Little Russian education, and prepared his appointment as an employee of the Archaeographic Commission. Shevchenko filed a petition in August 1845 and again left for the Poltava province and home. Shevchenko's matchmaking dates back to this time. He fell in love with the daughter of the same priest Kosice, whom he once served as a chaplain; the girl also fell in love with him, but her parents did not consider it possible to have their recent "boy" as a son-in-law, and Shevchenko was refused. In October, Shevchenko was appointed an employee of the Kyiv Commission for the Analysis of Ancient Acts and immediately went to the Poltava province to look for and sketch ancient monuments. On this trip, Shevchenko visited the famous Gustynsky Monastery. In the same year he wrote several poetic works, including the poem "Caucasus". Shevchenko's excursions covered a significant part of the Poltava and Chernihiv provinces. At the end of April 1846 Shevchenko returned to Kyiv.

By this time, Shevchenko's acquaintance with Kostomarov, who in the autumn of 1845 was transferred from the city of Rovna, Volyn province, as a teacher to the Kyiv First Gymnasium. Kulish was no longer in Kyiv at that time, and Kostomarov was the center of Kyiv youth. Shevchenko soon met and became close friends with him. At Kostomarov's, Shevchenko met Gulak, Belozersky, and some others, who later became members of the so-called Cyril and Methodius Society. In May, Kostomarov was elected professor at St. Vladimir, and in the autumn the pan-Slavic Cyril and Methodius Society was formed, which had the goal of spreading the idea of Slavic reciprocity and the future federation of Slavic peoples on the basis of complete freedom and autonomy of individual nationalities. The program of the society included the liberation of the peasants and the enlightenment of the people. Members of the society had to wear rings with the names of Cyril and Methodius. The society was organized during Shevchenko's trip to the Poltava province, so that upon his return to Kyiv, he was soon introduced by Kostomarov into society. In the summer, Shevchenko, together with prof. Ivanishev carried out excavations in the Vasilkovsky district, near the town of Fastov. In the fall, Shevchenko was sent to the southwestern region to record songs and fairy tales, copy mounds and historical monuments. During this trip, Shevchenko visited Kamenets, Pochaev, the village of Verbki near the town of Kovel, Volyn province, where Prince Kurbsky was buried. In all these places, Shevchenko made drawings, of which, however, most have not survived. In December 1846, on the first day of Christmas, Shevchenko attended a meeting of the Cyril and Methodius circle, and spoke a lot and sharply. Others also took part in the conversation, and the conversation was frank. Meanwhile, a certain Petrov, a student at the University of St. Vladimir, recently introduced into society by Gulak, to whom he managed to ingratiate himself. This Petrov crept into the trust of society in order to track him down and after a while reported all the conversations to his superiors. The results of the denunciation did not affect now. After Christmas, Shevchenko left for the Chernigov province for Kulish's wedding, and then lived with various acquaintances in the Chernigov province until Easter. At this time, he was appointed as a teacher of drawing at Kiev University. After Easter, Shevchenko went to Kyiv, where he was in a hurry to attend Kostomarov's wedding. At the entrance to Kyiv, Shevchenko was arrested. The case of the Cyril and Methodius Society, despite the unconditional innocence of its program, was given great importance: all the accused were brought to St. Petersburg, where the investigation was carried out by the third department under the direct supervision of Count Orlov himself. The nature of the society was quite correctly defined by the investigation, which did not exaggerate its dangers.

“The goal, according to Orlov’s report, was to unite the Slavic tribes under the scepter of the Russian emperor. The means to achieve the goal were to inspire the Slavic tribes to respect their own nationality, establish harmony among the Slavs, persuade them to accept the Orthodox religion, establish schools and publish books for simple people". Despite the fact that these tasks do not in themselves represent anything criminal, Count Orlov considered it necessary to subject all these persons to "punishment without trial, but without keeping the decision of the case secret, so that everyone would know what fate those who are engaged in Slavism have prepared for themselves. in a spirit contrary to our government, and in order to turn other Slavophiles away from a similar direction.

The verdict in this case was unusually harsh. It was especially hard for Shevchenko, who, although he was recognized as not belonging to society, but, by outrageous spirit and audacity, one of the important criminals.

According to the assumption of Mr. Orlov guilty should have suffered the following punishment: to imprison in fortresses - Gulak in Shlisselburg for three years, Kostomarov in St. Petersburg for a year, Belozersky and Kulish for four months, Navrotsky to endure in a guardhouse for six months, send Andruzsky and Posyada to Kazan to finish their university course, Shevchenko, as gifted with a strong physique, should be appointed as a private in the Orenburg separate corps, with the rights of seniority, instructing the authorities to have strict supervision, so that outrageous and libelous writings could not come out of him under any circumstances. The punishment was reduced for everyone except Gulak, Kostomarov and Shevchenko. June 9th Shevchenko was already taken by courier to Orenburg and enlisted as a private in the fifth battalion, located in the Orsk fortress, where he was transferred on the 20th of June. The Orsk fortress was an insignificant settlement among the deserted Kirghiz steppe, with a population of military men and convicts. The landscape that surrounded the Orsk fortress was oppressive with its monotony and deadness. If we add to this the disenfranchised position of a soldier and the prohibition to write and draw, then it is difficult not to recognize the conditions in which Shevchenko found himself, mainly due to his “strong physique”, terrible. To a certain extent, they were softened by the solicitude of the Orenburg Little Russians: Lazarevsky, Levitsky and others, who managed to win over the battalion commander and some of the Orsk officials in favor of Shevchenko; but nevertheless, Shevchenko had to live in the difficult situation of the provincial barracks of the pre-reform era, to study the soldier's "literature", stepping, etc. All this, after a brilliant period of life in Kyiv, free work, a society of intelligent people he liked. It is not surprising that even a person experienced in misfortunes had a hard time with this; "All my previous sufferings," Shevchenko wrote to one of his friends, "compared to the present, were only children's tears." One of Shevchenko's major disasters was his complete inability to walk, which he never mastered during his entire military service. Shevchenko was deprived of the opportunity to read, to receive his former drawings, in a word, he was in the position of being buried alive. The terrible conditions of existence were reflected in Shevchenko's physical health, although he had a strong physique. In the autumn of 1847 he fell ill with rheumatism, and then with scurvy. In 1848, Shevchenko took part in an expedition to Kaim and along the Aral Sea, under the command of General Shreyberg and Lieutenant Commander Butakov. Shevchenko was appointed to the expedition as a draftsman, at the request of Butakov, who was asked for Shevchenko by Lazarevsky and his other Orenburg friends. The expedition reached the river on foot. Kaima, and from there on two schooners "Konstantin" and "Mikhail" went along the Syr Darya to the Aral Sea. The voyage in the Aral Sea lasted two months; Shevchenko at that time was engaged in sketching the shores of the Aral Sea. He lived in an officer's cabin and felt relatively tolerable. In autumn, the schooners anchored at the mouth of the Syr Darya, and the expedition stayed for the winter in the fortress of Kos-Aral. This wintering was very difficult for Shevchenko, who had to spend all the time in the barracks, without the company of intelligent people (the leaders of the expedition left for the winter in Orenburg) and without any news from the world dear to the poet. Mail came to Kos-Aral once every six months. In 1849, Butakov's expedition continued to work, and Shevchenko again participated in it. At the end of the expedition, Butakov asked to be seconded to Orenburg to complete the work of non-commissioned officer Thomas Werner (apparently also from exiles) and private Taras Shevchenko. The pretext was the impossibility of completing their work at sea, but in all likelihood Butakov simply wanted to give Shevchenko the opportunity to spend at least some time in tolerable conditions. Permission followed, and Shevchenko was in Orenburg in early November. There he manages to live a human life for a while. It was attended by the captain of the general staff Gern, who invited the poet to live in his house, taking him a whole wing; the same Gern offered Shevchenko the right to receive letters addressed to him. Thus, Shevchenko was able to resume correspondence with his friends and conduct it more freely than before. Little Russian fellow countrymen who served in Orenburg, and exiled Poles vied with each other in vying for the honor of receiving the Ukrainian poet. There were hopes for release, at least for the official lifting of the ban on writing and drawing. Governor-General Perovsky himself interceded for Shevchenko. Shevchenko had the idea to turn to the intercession of Zhukovsky. However, these hopes were soon dashed. In December 1849, Orlov informed the commander of the Orenburg Corps, Obruchev, that he came in with the most humble report on the permission of Private Shevchenko to paint, but "the highest permission was not followed." Meanwhile, Shevchenko's friends arranged things in such a way that, at the end of his work with Butakov, he was assigned to a battalion not in Kaim, where the mail went every six months, but in the Novopetrovsky fortification, to study coal discovered in the Kapa-Tau mountains. Thus, Shevchenko should have been freed from the barracks situation for some time. Fate, however, decided otherwise. Shevchenko had the imprudence to reveal the adventures of the wife of one of his friends with officer Isaev. By this, he made an enemy in Isaev, and the hero, beaten by her husband, wrote a denunciation to the corps commander. that Shevchenko not only violates the Supreme command not to draw or write, but also walks in a particular dress. The corps commander, who himself sent Shevchenko to Butakov's expedition and ordered him a portrait of his wife, fearing complications, ordered a search at Shevchenko's, reported the incident to the third department and arrested Shevchenko. As a result, Shevchenko spent half a year in different casemates, was sent to the Novo-Petrovsky fortification, but not to study coal, but to the front, under strict supervision. In Novo-Petrovsky Shevchenko was not only strictly forbidden to write and draw, but was not even allowed to carry pencils, ink, pens and paper. Shevchenko's position here was terrible. Novo-Petrovskoye itself was no less a dead corner than Kaim. Abandoned on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, in the remote steppe, it was cut off from the world for the time of the cessation of navigation. In addition, Shevchenko ended up in the company of the rude and cruel Captain Potapov, with strict instructions to monitor all his actions. This situation was worse than hard labor. Supervision of Shevchenko was so strict that for about 2 years he could not write a single letter. He lived in common barracks, a special "uncle" was assigned to supervise him, and he was taken out to work and to study.

The drunken Potapov mocked Shevchenko in every possible way, bringing him, a battered old man, to tears. To this it must be added that Shevchenko was deprived of the opportunity to receive letters from his friends: Princess Repnina and Lizogub, who, under the threat of very unpleasant consequences, were invited to gr. Orlov to stop correspondence with the disgraced poet. From the middle of 1852, the oppression that Shevchenko had to endure began to weaken somewhat. Obruchev left Orenburg, and Potapov left Novopetrovsk. The commandant of Novopetrovsk, Mayevsky, a kind but fearful man, was now able to make some indulgences to Shevchenko, and he was able to correspond with friends. However, even now he did not have the opportunity to write and draw and did not get this opportunity soon. More significant improvements in Shevchenko's life occurred with the appointment of Major Uskov as commandant of Novopetrovsk. Uskov, partly on his own initiative, partly under the influence of Shevchenko's Orenburg friends and some hints from Perovsky, decided to do what Mayevsky lacked the courage to do. He suggested to the officers not to pester Shevchenko at the front and to release him from hard work; when Uskov's wife arrived, an educated and humane woman, Shevchenko began to visit their house and soon became his own person there. He became especially attached to the children of the Uskovs. Under Uskov, Shevchenko got the opportunity, albeit in a minimal proportion, to satisfy his need for creativity - he began to sculpt figurines from local clay. This activity raised the question among Shevchenko's superiors as to whether Shevchenko was allowed to sculpt? Uskov had the courage to admit that what is not forbidden is allowed. Shevchenko also lived under Uskov in the barracks, although one of the artillery officers offered him to settle in his apartment. Extremely characteristic is one of the facts that took place during this period of time. To enable Shevchenko to paint, Uskov petitioned for permission to paint an image for the local church, but this petition was denied. Nevertheless, Uskov gave Shevchenko the opportunity to occasionally draw "thieves" and write, but not in the Little Russian language. Shevchenko could indulge in these occupations in the arbor of the garden bred on his initiative, in which, with the permission of Uskov, he lived in the summer. Here his stories were written in Russian. The ensuing new reign, which brought liberation to many political exiles, revived hopes for freedom in Taras Shevchenko as well. However, the manifesto of March 27 did not touch him. Shevchenko's biographer, Mr. Konissky, says that Shevchenko's name was struck off the list of political exiles receiving amnesty by the emperor himself. Despite the efforts for him by the president of the Academy of Arts, gr. F. P. Tolstoy, Shevchenko did not wait for the relief of his fate and for the coronation. Gr. Tolstoy and Shevchenko's Petersburg friends, however, continued to fuss, and on April 17, 1857, the amnesty was signed. However, Shevchenko, even after this joyful day for him, had to wait three months for his actual release, and at that time the authorities, who had not yet received official notification, continued to demand front-line service from him. Shevchenko had a particularly hard time during the arrival of the battalion commander Lvov, who did not like Shevchenko and mocked him after the pardon. At the same time, a very unpleasant incident happened to Shevchenko, which threatened to again deprive him of his newly acquired freedom. The engineering officer Campioni invited Shevchenko to a feast. Shevchenko flatly refused, and an offended Campioni filed a report that Shevchenko had insulted him. Uskov tried to hush up this matter, but Shevchenko had to ask Campioni for an apology and involuntarily get drunk with his company, but at Shevchenko's expense. Already on the eve of liberation, in July (the official notice of liberation was received on July 21), Shevchenko was again diligently trained in the front in order to be appointed to the guard of honor to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, who was expected in vain in Novopetrovsk. Finally, a paper on the release of Shevchenko was received, and on August 2, 1857, Shevchenko left Novopetrovsk. In total, he stayed in the soldiers for 10 years and several months.

From Novopetrovsk Shevchenko went by boat to Astrakhan. Shevchenko had to live in Astrakhan for about two weeks. Local Little Russians, having learned about his arrival, hurried to the closet hired by him to welcome the release of the poet. Shevchenko was followed by intelligent Great Russians and Poles. Millionaire Sapozhnikov arranged an evening in honor of Shevchenko. On August 22, Shevchenko set off on a steamer along the Volga to Nizhny. On the way, Shevchenko met in Saratov with the mother of Kostomarov, who was at that time in Stockholm. On September 20, Shevchenko reached Nizhny. Shevchenko had to stay in Nizhny for quite a long time. The fact is that he left Novopetrovsk with a visa issued to him by Uskov, who, not knowing that Shevchenko was forbidden to stay in the capitals, issued a visa to travel through Moscow to St. Petersburg. Having received an order a few days after Shevchenko's departure to send him to Orenburg, Uskov sounded the alarm and informed the police of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod that, upon Shevchenko's arrival, it was necessary to announce to him a ban on staying in the capitals and invite him to go to Orenburg, where he should live henceforth "until the final dismissal to their homeland." The Nizhny Novgorod administration treated Shevchenko very considerately. He was advised to fall ill, the certificate of examination was sent to Orenburg, and the Nizhny Novgorod governor issued permission to live in Nizhny "until he recovered." Meanwhile, efforts began to lift the ban on Shevchenko from entering the capitals. In Nizhny Shevchenko energetically began to make up for lost time - he read a lot, began a correspondence with Kulish about a Little Russian magazine and books in Little Russian for the peasants. Here he read Shchedrin and the stories of Mark Vovchka. In Nizhny Shevchenko wrote the poem "Neophytes", painted a lot, however, mainly portraits, in order to raise funds, which he really needed. He was surrounded by intelligent people who sympathized with him, however, he was strongly drawn to St. Petersburg. Much joy brought him the arrival of the seventy-year-old old man Shchepkin, who came specially to see Shevchenko and spent 6 days in Nizhny. Schepkin's arrival served as the beginning of Shevchenko's novel. Shchepkin performed several times on stage in Nizhny Novgorod, among other things, in "Moskal-Charivnik". For the main female role of this play, he chose a young, pretty actress Piunova and instructed Shevchenko to study Little Russian pronunciation with her. Shevchenko became interested in Piunova and, despite a very significant age difference, decided to get married. This courtship did not bring Shevchenko anything but grief: he was exploited for some time, but that's all.

In March 1858, Shevchenko received permission to enter the capitals and left Nizhny on March 8th. On March 10, Shevchenko arrived in Moscow. Here he stayed a little longer than expected, owing to illness. Shevchenko's stay in Moscow was marked by a meeting with many old friends and new interesting acquaintances. Here he again saw Princess Repnina, Maksimovich, Shchepkin, the Aksakovs, Bodyansky, and many others. Maksimovich arranged an evening for him, at which, among other things, Pogodin and Shevyrev were present. Here Shevchenko met the old Decembrist Volkonsky, Chicherin, Babst, Korteli and other representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia. Altogether, T. G. stayed in Moscow for a little over two weeks and on March 26 he left for St. Petersburg by rail. In St. Petersburg, after a date with friends and acquaintances, dinners, evenings, etc., Shevchenko gets to work; he is preparing the publication of his works, written in exile, and is engaged in engraving. The first painting that Shevchenko undertook to engrave was Murillo's Holy Family. Shevchenko lived in the building of the Academy, which was the reason for the permission to enter, in the form of "observation", which was entrusted to c. Tolstoy. In addition to etchings, Shevchenko drew with a pencil, sepia and paints. At this time, he painted several large paintings on subjects from the history of Little Russia. Soon Kostomarov returned to St. Petersburg. Old friends barely recognized each other, but their relationship was restored. Kostomarov, speaking of the impression that Shevchenko made on him at that time, notes that Shevchenko had changed little in his views and moral disposition, but his talent was significantly weakening. His health was also noticeably deteriorating, which was facilitated by the addiction to alcoholic beverages that arose during exile. Although Shevchenko enjoyed general attention at this time; although society itself was preparing a deed that was the best dream of Shevchenko's entire life - the liberation of the peasants, these years were far from being for Shevchenko what his Kyiv years before exile were. Shevchenko was also burdened by the Petersburg climate and homesickness. In June 1859, Shevchenko undertook a trip to his homeland, which he had not seen for more than ten years. In Little Russia, Shevchenko visited surviving old friends. He visited Dr. Kozachkovsky and Maksimovich. From Maksimovich, he went to his native Kirillovka, where his brothers and sisters lived. Staying in his father's hut with his brother Nikita, Taras Grigoryevich found few changes. Shevchenko did not live long in Kirillovka: the picture of the serfdom of his relatives was too difficult for him. A few days later he left for the town of Korsun, to his relative Bartholomew Shevchenko, who served as a manager for the owner of Korsun, Prince Lopukhin. Korsun is famous for its park, which is one of the most picturesque places in the southwestern region. Shevchenko, according to the recollection of his relative, painted a lot in this park, but his sketches have not been preserved. At this time, Shevchenko had the idea to buy a small piece of land on the banks of the Dnieper and settle on it. A suitable site was already found, but the case was upset due to the arrest of Shevchenko. Shevchenko had the misfortune to somehow offend the gentry Kozlovsky, whom he met during negotiations regarding the purchase of land. He wrote a denunciation, and police officer Tabachnikov arrested Shevchenko and sent him to Kyiv. The motive for the arrest was Shevchenko's "blasphemy", allegedly committed by him during a dispute with Kozlovsky. The case was dismissed by order of the Governor-General Prince Vasilchikov. Shevchenko was allowed to stay in Kyiv as long as he liked, but under the special supervision of a gendarmerie colonel. Shevchenko lived in Kyiv for several days and moved to Prevarka. From Prevarka, Shevchenko went to town to visit his old friend Sotenko.

From Kyiv, Shevchenko again went to Pereyaslavl to Kozachkovsky, where he stayed for less than a week, and went via Konotop to Petersburg. On the way, he stopped in Moscow and arrived in St. Petersburg in early September.

There he continues, through Varfolomey Grigoryevich Shevchenko, his efforts to purchase land, but these efforts ended in failure. The rather strange courtship of Shevchenko at Dovgopolenkova belongs to the same time. She was a serf girl of Prince Lopukhin and served under Bartholomew Shevchenko. The courtship did not succeed - Dovgopolenkova preferred the young clerk to the old poet, whom she married. However, this failure did not discourage Shevchenko from marrying.

In the summer of 1860, left alone in St. Petersburg, where all his friends had left for the summer, and feeling a particularly strong longing for loneliness, Shevchenko again decided to marry. The object was again the young serf girl Lukerya Polusmakova. This time things went further. Shevchenko saw Lukerya, had the opportunity to really fall in love with her. On the other hand, Lukerya, literate, more developed and, perhaps, more cunning than Kharita Dovgopolenkova, was able to understand that Shevchenko was an enviable groom, and accepted his offer. For quite a long time, Taras Grigoryevich and Lukerya were in the position of bride and groom, but in the end there was a gap between them, the reasons for which, as well as the most moral image of Lukerya Polusmakova, remained unclear.

Shevchenko's literary activity in recent years has not been particularly productive. Shevchenko published his "Kobzar", the funds for printing of which were given by one of the southern friends of the poet Simirenko. At that time, Shevchenko was strongly occupied with the issue of publishing a Little Russian magazine. The first attempt to realize this dream of the Ukrainian literary circle was made by Kulish, who applied for permission to publish the journal Khata. This magazine was not allowed, but soon one of the members of the circle, Belozersky, managed to get permission to publish the Osnova magazine, which was published in St. Petersburg in 1861-1862. The Little Russian circle in St. Petersburg was organized at that time into a "mass" that met with one of its members, Chernenok, weekly. Needless to say, Shevchenko played an outstanding role in this mass. This did not satisfy, however, the poet. He still felt lonely and could not suppress his dreams of family life. After breaking up with Lukerya, almost on the eve of his death, Shevchenko is planning a new matchmaking for the daughter of an official Vitovsky. This time, Shevchenko did not see not only his bride, but also her portrait. All matchmaking went through a third person - one of Shevchenko's friends - Tkachenko. Shevchenko's biographer, Konissky, quite rightly considers this matchmaking to be the result of despair, to which Shevchenko's loneliness led. Meanwhile, Shevchenko's health deteriorated greatly. In December 1860, he felt unwell and turned to Dr. Bari. Bari drew Shevchenko's attention to the seriousness of the disease, without telling the whole truth - he was beginning to have dropsy. Shevchenko, however, attached little importance to the warning: he did not beware, he did not refuse to drink alcohol. Dreams about arranging his life did not leave him either: he continued to fuss about buying land over the Dnieper and, having learned that his last bride, Vitovskaya, was betrothed, instructed Tkachenko to find him a new bride. In February 1861, Shevchenko could no longer descend the stairs. At this time, he still dreamed of a trip to Ukraine, thinking that this trip would save him. In the last days of his life, Shevchenko passionately waited for a manifesto for the liberation of the peasants. On February 19, when this manifesto was supposed to be signed, which everyone already knew by rumors, Shevchenko was very worried, waiting for the manifesto. The manifesto, however, was not announced due to the fact that February 19 fell on Shrovetide and people were afraid of unrest. The announcement of the manifesto was postponed until March 4, but Shevchenko could not wait for it. February 25 was Shevchenko's birthday and name day. He spent that day in terrible agony. The next day, Shevchenko still had the strength to go down to his studio, but there he immediately fell and died. Shevchenko was buried in St. Petersburg, but in April his friends, fulfilling the last will of the poet, transferred his ashes to their homeland. Shevchenko's grave is located on a high mountain, above the Dnieper, near the city of Kanev. Thus, only after death did Taras Grigorievich manage to calm down over his native Dnieper.

The main benefit is the work of A. Ya. Konissky: "The Life of the Ukrainian poet Shevchenko", Odessa, 1898 (in more detail the Little Russian edition printed in Galicia) and Mr. Chalago, "The Life and Works of T. G. Shevchenko", Kyiv, 1882 In addition, it is necessary to indicate Mr. Maslov's essay "T. G. Shevchenko", 2nd edition 1887; memories of Shevchenko: Jung (daughter of Count Tolstyh), Vestnik Evropy, 1883, 8; Uskova (the wife of the commandant of the Novopetrovsky fortification), "Kyiv Starina", 1889, II; A. Chuzhbinsky, "Russian Word", 1861 and separately; Bartholomew Shevchenko, "Ancient and New Russia", 1876, 6; Turgeneva I. S. (at the Prague edition of "Kobzar"). Articles and reviews: Belinsky, "Domestic Notes", 1842, book. 5 (not included in the collected works); Grigoriev A., "Time", 1861, 4; Kolessa, "Zap. Scientific Comrade."; Sumtsov, Brockhaus Encyclopedic Dictionary. Also in the "History of Ukrainian literature." Petrov, in the "History of Slavic Literature" by Pypin and Spasovich. There are a lot of materials about Shevchenko in the "Notes of the Shevchenko Scientific Association" and in the "Kyiv Starina". Mezhov's bibliography, in Mezière's work (the latest of the indexes), is specially devoted to Shevchenko's bibliography, the work of M. Komarov "Bibliographic index of materials for studying the life and works of T. G. Shevchenko", "Kyiv Starina", 1886, III, IV.

H. K-a.

(Polovtsov)

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich

Famous Ukrainian poet. Genus. February 25, 1814 in the village of Morintsy, Zvenigorod district of the Kyiv province, in the family of a serf landowner Engelhardt. After 2 years, Sh.'s parents moved to the village of Kirilovka, where Sh. spent his entire childhood. His mother died in 1823; in the same year, the father remarried a widow with three children. She treated Taras severely. Until the age of 9, Sh. was in the care of nature, and partly of his older sister, Catherine, a kind and gentle girl. She soon got married. In 1825, when Sh. was in his twelfth year, his father died. From this time begins the hard nomadic life of a homeless child, first with a sexton teacher, then with neighboring painters. At one time, Sh. was a shepherd of sheep, then he served as a chauffeur for a local priest. At the school teacher-deacon Sh. learned to read and write, and the painters got acquainted with the elementary techniques of drawing. In the 16th year, in 1829, he was among the servants of the landowner Engelhardt, first as a cook, then a Cossack. The passion for painting did not leave him. The landowner gave him to study first as a Warsaw painter, then to St. Petersburg, to the painting master Shiryaev. On holidays, the young man visited the Hermitage, copied the statues in the Summer Garden, where he met his fellow countryman - the artist I. M. Soshenko, who, after consulting with the Little Russian writer Grebenko, introduced Sh. to the conference secretary of the Academy of Arts Grigorovich, the artists Venetsianov and Bryullov, the poet Zhukovsky . These acquaintances, especially the last one, were of great importance in the life of Sh., especially in the matter of releasing him from captivity. Zhukovsky was greatly helped by Countess Yu. E. Baranova, who stood close to the court. The first attempt to persuade Engelhardt to release Sh. in the name of humanity was unsuccessful. Bryullov went to negotiate with Engelhardt, but received from him only the conviction "that this is the largest pig in Torzhkov's shoes" and asked Soshenko to visit this "amphibian" and agree on a ransom price. Soshenko entrusted this delicate matter to Professor Venetsianov, as a more authoritative person. Sh. was pleased and consoled by the care of highly enlightened and humane representatives of Russian art and literature; but at times he was overcome with despondency, even despair. Having learned that the cause of his release stumbled upon the stubbornness of the landowner, Sh. once came to Soshenko in terrible excitement. Cursing his bitter fate, he threatened to repay Engelhardt, and in such a mood he went home to his dirty attic. Soshenko was very worried about his fellow countryman and was expecting a big disaster. According to Princess Repnina, Zhukovsky, having learned about the terrible state of mind of a young man close to suicide, wrote a soothing note to him on a piece of paper. Sh. kept this note in his pocket as a shrine, and showed it to the princess in 1848. “After agreeing with my landowner,” says Sh. private lottery. The great Bryullov immediately agreed, and his portrait was ready. Zhukovsky, with the help of Count Vielgorsky, arranged a lottery of 2,500 rubles, and my freedom was bought at this price, April 22, 1838. " As a sign of special respect and deep gratitude to Zhukovsky, Sh. dedicated to him one of his largest works: "Katerina". Upon his release, Sh. became, in his own words, one of Bryullov's favorite students and comrades and became close friends with the artist Sternberg, Bryullov's favorite student.

The years 1840-47 are the best in Sh.'s life. During this period, his poetic talent flourished. In 1840, under the title "Kobzar", a small collection of his poems was published; in 1842 "Gaidamaki" was published - his largest work. In 1843, Mr.. Sh. received the degree of free artist; in the same year, Sh., traveling through Little Russia, met Princess V. N. Repnina, a kind and intelligent woman who later, during Sh.’s exile, took the warmest part in him. In the first half of the 1840s, "Perebendya", "Topol", "Kateryna", "Naymichka", "Khustochka" were published - large and artistic works. Petersburg critics and even Belinsky did not understand and condemned Little Russian literature in general, Sh. in particular, seeing narrow provincialism in his poetry; but Little Russia quickly appreciated Sh., which was expressed in the warm receptions of Sh. during his travels in 1845-47. in Chernihiv and Kyiv provinces. "Let me be a peasant poet," Sh. wrote about the reviews of criticism, "if only a poet; then nothing more is required." By the time Sh. was in Kyiv in 1846, his rapprochement with N. I. Kostomarov belongs. In the same year, Sh. entered the Cyril and Methodius Society, which was then formed in Kyiv, which consisted of young people who were interested in the development of the Slavic peoples, in particular the Ukrainian. The members of this circle, including 10 people, were arrested, accused of compiling a political society and suffered various punishments, and Sh. got the most for his illegal poems: he was exiled as a private to the Orenburg Territory, with a ban on writing and drawing.

The Orsk fortress, where Sh. first ended up, was a sad and deserted outback. "Rarely," Sh. . in another letter of 1847, - in comparison with the real ones, there were children's tears. Bitter, unbearably bitter. For Sh. was very painful prohibition to write and draw; especially depressing was his severe prohibition to draw. Not knowing Gogol personally, Sh. decided to write to him "by right of a Little Russian lyricist", in the hope of Gogol's Ukrainian sympathies. "Now, as if falling into the abyss, I am ready to grab hold of everything - hopelessness is terrible! So terrible that only Christian philosophy can fight it." Sh. sent a touching letter to Zhukovsky asking him to apply for only one favor - the right to draw. In this sense, Count Gudovich and Count A. Tolstoy fussed for Sh. but it turned out to be impossible to help Sh. Sh. turned with a request to the head of the III department, General Dubbelt, wrote that his brush had never sinned and would not sin in the political sense, but nothing helped; the ban on painting was not lifted until his release. Participation in an expedition to study the Aral Sea in 1848 and 1849 gave him some consolation; thanks to the humane attitude towards the exile of General Obruchev and in particular Lieutenant Butakov, Sh. was allowed to copy the views of the Aral coast and local folk types. But this indulgence soon became known in St. Petersburg; Obruchev and Butakov were reprimanded, and Sh. was exiled to a new desert slum, Novopetrovskoye, with a repeated prohibition to paint. In exile, Sh. became close friends with some educated exiled Poles - Serakovsky, Zalesky, Zhelikhovsky (Antony Sova), which helped to strengthen the idea of \u200b\u200b"merging brothers of the same tribe" in him. He stayed in Novopetrovsky Sh. from October 17, 1850 to August 2, 1857, that is, until his release. The first three years in the "stinky barracks" were very painful; then various reliefs followed, thanks chiefly to the kindness of commandant Uskov and his wife, who fell in love with Sh. for his gentle nature and affection for their children. Not being able to draw, S. was engaged in modeling, tried to do photography, which, however, was very expensive at that time. In Novopetrovsky Sh. wrote several stories in Russian - "Princess", "Artist", "Twins", containing many autobiographical details (ed. later "Kievskaya Starina").

Sh.'s release took place in 1857, thanks to the persistent petitions of Count F. P. Tolstoy and his wife, Countess A. I. Tolstoy, for him. With long stops in Astrakhan and Nizhny Novgorod, Sh. returned along the Volga to St. Petersburg, and here, at liberty, indulged in poetry and art. The difficult years of exile, due to alcoholism taking root in Novopetrovsk, led to a rapid deterioration in health and talent. An attempt to arrange a family hearth for him (actress Piunova, peasant women Kharita and Lukerya) were unsuccessful. Living in St. Petersburg (from March 27, 1858 to June 1859), Sh. was friendly received in the family of the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Count F. P. Tolstoy. The life of Sh. of this time is well known from his "Diary", which was described in detail by his biographers of the new time (mainly Konissky). In 1859, Sh. visited his homeland. Then he had the idea to buy himself an estate on the Dnieper. A beautiful place near Kanev was chosen. Sh. strenuously fussed about the acquisition, but he did not have to settle here: he was buried here, and this place became a place of pilgrimage for all admirers of his memory. Distracted by numerous literary and artistic acquaintances, Sh. wrote little and drew little in recent years. Almost all of his time, free from dinner parties and evenings, Sh gave engraving, which was then very fond of. Shortly before his death, Sh. took up the compilation of school textbooks for the people in the Little Russian language. Sh. died on February 26, 1861. Funeral speeches were published in the "Basis" of 1861 (March).

Sh. has a dual meaning, as a writer and as an artist. His novels and short stories in Russian are rather weak artistically. All the literary strength of Sh. - in his "Kobzar". In terms of external volume, the Kobzar is not large, but in terms of internal content it is a complex and rich monument: it is the Little Russian language in its historical development, serfdom and soldiery in all their severity, and along with this, memories of Cossack liberty have not faded away. There are surprising combinations of influences here: on the one hand, the Ukrainian philosopher Skovoroda and folk kobza players, on the other hand, Mickiewicz, Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Lermontov. The "Kobzar" reflects Kyiv shrines, Zaporozhye steppe life, the idyll of the Little Russian peasant life - in general, a historically developed people's spiritual warehouse, with peculiar shades of beauty, thoughtfulness and sadness. Through his closest source and main tool - folk poetry, Sh. closely adjoins the Cossack epic, to the old Ukrainian and partly Polish culture, and even stands in connection, according to some images, with the spiritual and moral world of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". The main difficulty in studying Sh.'s poetry lies in the fact that it is thoroughly saturated with nationality; it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to determine where Little Russian folk poetry ends and where Sh.'s personal work begins. Such a source was the poetry of Mickiewicz (see Mr. Kolessa's articles in "Notes of Shevchenko's Comradeship"), partly N. Markevich (see Mr. Studinsky's article in No. 24 of Zori, 1896). Sh. loved Pushkin, knew many of his poems by heart - and for all that, Pushkin's influence on Sh.'s poetry is difficult to determine behind Ukrainian layers. The influence of the "Brothers of the Robbers" on "Varnak", the influence of the "Egyptian Nights", "The flying ridge is thinning clouds" is noticeable. There is another obstacle to the scientific analysis of Sh. - the artistic integrity, simplicity and sincerity of his poems. His poems are difficult to cold and dry analysis. In order to determine Sh.'s views on the tasks and goals of poetic creativity, one must pay attention not only to those confessions that are in "My yelling, nivo", "I do not scold God", "A thought is thought"; it is necessary to attract also those places where it is said about happiness, as the poet understands it, about glory. Especially important in the sense of poetic confessions are all those places where it is said about the kobzar, about the prophet and about thoughts, like beloved children. In most cases, the poet means himself by the kobzar; therefore, he introduced a lot of lyrical feeling into all the outlines of the kobzar. The historically formed image of a folk singer was to the liking of the poet, in whose life and moral image there really was a lot of kobza. Sh. speaks about the kobzar very often; rarer, comparatively, is the prophet. Closely adjoining the poems about the prophet is a small but strong poem about the apostle of truth. In the depiction of the prophet, especially in the poem "Nachche righteous children", the influence of Lermontov is noticeable.

The nationality of Sh., like that of other outstanding poets, is composed of two related elements - the external nationality, borrowings, imitations, and the internal nationality, mentally hereditary. The definition of external, borrowed elements is not difficult; for this it is enough to get acquainted with ethnography and find direct sources in folk tales, beliefs, songs, rituals. Determining the internal psychological folk elements is very difficult and impossible in full. Sh. has both those and other elements. The soul of Sh. is saturated with nationality to such an extent that any, even an outsider, borrowed motif receives a Ukrainian national coloring in his poetry. External, borrowed and to a greater or lesser extent reworked folk poetic motifs include: 1) Little Russian folk songs, cited in places in their entirety, in places in reduction or alteration, in places only mentioned. So, in "Perebend" Sh. mentions well-known thoughts and songs - about Chaly, Gorlytsya, Gryts, Serbyn, Shinkarka, about poplars at the edge of the road, about the ruin of Sich, "vesnyanka", "at the guy". The song "Pugach" is mentioned as Chumatskaya in "Kateryna", "Petrus" and "Gryts" - in "Chernyts Maryana"; "Oh, no noise, puddle" is mentioned twice - in "Perebend" and "Before Osnovyanenko". In "Gaidamaki" and in "The Slave" there is a thought about a storm on the Black Sea, in a slight alteration. Wedding songs were included in "Gaidamaki". Echoes, imitations and alterations of folk lyrical songs are scattered throughout the Kobzar. 2) Legends, traditions, fairy tales and proverbs are less common compared to songs. From the legends about the walk of Christ, the beginning of the poem "God had a secret lying behind the door" was taken. From the legends, the story is taken that "priests once did not walk, but rode in people." The proverb "jump the enemy, yak pan seems to be" - in "Perebend". A few sayings side by side in Katerina. Many folk proverbs and sayings are scattered in "Gaidamaki". 3) Folk beliefs and customs are found in large numbers. Such are the beliefs about sleep-grass, many wedding customs - the exchange of bread, donating towels, baking cows, the custom of planting trees over graves, beliefs about witches, mermaids, etc. 4) A lot of artistic images are taken from folk poetry, for example, the image of death with a scythe in the hands, the personification of the plague. In particular, folk images of share and nedolya are often found. 5) Finally, in the "Kobzar" there are many borrowed folk-poetic comparisons and symbols, for example, the declination of sycamore - the grief of a lad, harvest - a battle (as in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" and in thoughts), overgrowing of paths - a symbol of the absence of a sweetheart, viburnum - girl. Folk song is often found in "Kobzar" because it was of great importance for maintaining the spirit of the poet in the most sorrowful hours of his life. Sh.'s nationality is determined, further, by his worldview, his favorite points of view on external nature and society, and in relation to society, the historical element is distinguished - its past, with the household element - modernity. The external nature is depicted in an original way, with a peculiar Ukrainian flavor. The sun spends the night behind the sea, looks out from behind the darkness, like a groom in the spring, looks at the earth. The moon is round, pale-faced, walking in the sky, looking at the "endless sea" or "going out with the sister dawns." All these images breathe an artistic and mythical worldview, reminiscent of ancient poetic ideas about the matrimonial relationship of heavenly bodies. The wind at Sh. appears in the form of a powerful creature that takes part in the life of Ukraine: at night it quietly talks with sedge, then it walks across the wide steppe and talks with mounds, then it starts a violent speech with the sea itself. One of the most important and basic motifs of Sh.'s poetry is the Dnieper. Historical memories and love for the motherland were associated with the Dnieper in the mind of the poet. In Kobzar, the Dnieper is a symbol and sign of everything characteristically Little Russian, like the Vater Rhein in German poetry or the Volga in Great Russian songs and legends. "There is no other Dnipro," - says Sh. in a message to the dead, living and unborn fellow countrymen. With the Dnieper, the poet associated the ideal of a happy folk life, quiet and content. The Dnieper is wide, hefty, strong, like the sea; all the rivers flow into it, and it carries all their waters to the sea; by the sea, he learns about the Cossack grief; he roars, groans, speaks softly, gives answers; because of the Dnieper thoughts, glory, share arrive. Here are rapids, mounds, a rural church on a steep bank; a number of historical memories are concentrated here, because the Dnieper is "old". Another very common motif in Sh.'s poetry is Ukraine, sometimes mentioned in passing, but always affectionately, sometimes with a depiction either natural-physical or historical. The description of the nature of Ukraine includes alternating fields and forests, highways, small gardens, and wide steppes. All sympathetic descriptions of the Little Russian flora and fauna - poplar, tumbleweed, lily, queen of flowers, ryast, periwinkle, and especially viburnum and nightingale - came out of the fundamental psychological love for the motherland. The rapprochement of the nightingale with the viburnum in the poem "In memory of Kotlyarevsky" is built on their rapprochement in folk songs. Historical motifs are very diverse: the Hetmanate, Cossacks, Zaporizhian weapons, captives, pictures of sad desolation, historical paths, Cossack graves, oppression by the Uniates, historical areas - Chigirin, Trakhtemirov, historical figures - Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Doroshenko, Semyon Paliy, Pidkova, Gamalia, Gonta , Zaliznyak, Golovaty, Dmitry Rostovsky. On the borderline between history and modernity, there is a motif about Chumaks. During Sh. plague was still a purely everyday phenomenon; it was later killed by the railroads. In "Kobzar" Chumaks appear quite often, and most often they talk about the illness and death of the Chumaks. Under favorable circumstances, the Chumaks bring rich gifts, but sometimes they return with only “batozhki”. In general, plague is described in the spirit of folk songs, and in some places under their direct influence, which can be clearly clarified by the corresponding parallels from the collections of Rudchenko, Chubinsky, and others. Sh. : pans are still being hired as soldiers, the service is long; comparatively the most complete and sympathetic image of a soldier is in "Pustka" and in "Well, it was supposed to be words."

Sh.'s poetry is very rich in religious and moral motives. A warm religious feeling and the fear of God permeate the entire Kobzar. In a message to his living and unborn countrymen, the pious poet takes up arms against atheism and explains unbelief by the one-sided influence of German science. As a very religious person, Sh. speaks warmly about the power of prayer, about Kyiv shrines; about the miraculous image of the Most Holy Theotokos, about the pilgrimage, constantly puts forward the Christian principles of goodness, especially forgiveness to enemies. The poet's heart is filled with humility and hope. All this saved him from pessimism and despair, only at times, under the influence of the difficult conditions of his personal life and the life of his homeland, which made their way into the poetry of Sh. . The poet is embarrassed by the property inequality of people, their need, and the fact that wealth does not provide happiness. His principle is "and learn from someone else, and don't shy away from your own." The poet, however, was completely alien to the idea of searching for truth and serving it, regardless of any traditions. Sh. reveals in places a narrow national-applied understanding of science, in places the identification of science with morality, and unsuccessful irony over people "written and drukovannye".

The political motifs of Sh.'s poetry, which are now mostly obsolete, are known from foreign editions of the Kobzar (the best edition of Ogonovsky). Many pages are devoted to his Slavophilism in Kobzar. This also adjoins the poem "To the Slavs", published in the October book "Kievskaya Starina" for 1897. In some places ethnographic motifs are scattered - about Poles, Jews, gypsies, Kirghiz. Autobiographical motifs, such as the valuable epistle to Kozachkovsky, as well as motifs about individual writers, such as Skovoroda, Kotlyarevsky, Shafarik, and Marko Vovchka, can be singled out as special groups.

All the motifs of Sh.'s poetry listed above, with the exception of two or three (Dnepr, Ukraine, Cossacks), recede before the main family-related motifs. The family is the real essence of the whole "Kobzar"; and since the basis of the family is a woman and children, they fill all the best works of the poet. P. I. Zhitetsky, in "Thoughts on Little Russian Thoughts," says that in the works of Little Russian poetry, both school and folk, folk ethics are reduced mainly to family morality, based on a sense of kinship; in folk poetry, truth is called the mother of rida, and the mother is called the truth of the virna, and in the image of the mother a great moral force is created, like the force of love. All these judgments are quite applicable to Sh.'s poetry, which, in terms of the development of family-kindred ideals, adjoins directly to folk poetry. The arena for the development of family-related principles - the village - is outlined very sympathetically. As in folk poetry, in Sh. the village usually rhymes with the word fun. The ideal of the poet was that "the desert should be filled with the joy of the village." There are "wretched villages", and "the village burned out for nothing" - everything from the panshchina. The hut, a favorite motif of Sh, is mentioned even more often and in some places more fully described. In unfortunate families, the hut is "empty rotting", the chambers are not smeared, unwashed scum. The best descriptions of the hut are in the poems "Khatyna" and "Vechir". Comparisons and images are peculiar: a burnt hut is a weary heart, a hut is Slavic, a hut is a grave. Youth, young years are depicted in the spirit of folk literature, in places as imitation and rehashing. The girl is included in many poems; most often a description of girlish beauty, love, wonder. The attitude of the poet to the girl is deeply humane. One of Sh.'s best poems in this regard, "And the Camp of the Gnuchky," was written under the influence of Lermontov's famous "Prayer." With a feeling of sincere grief, the poet draws the fall of a girl. In "Chernytsya Maryana" and "Nazar Stodolia" there are descriptions of evening parties, conspiracy, Korovai, merriment, marriage of unequal age, marriage of unequal social status. The need for family life is noted in many places in Kobzar. Children are of particular importance in Sh.'s poetry. There is not a single writer in Russian literature who devotes so much space to children. The reason for this was the strong personal impressions of the poet from his difficult childhood and his love for children, confirmed, in addition to the Kobzar, by many biographical data, especially the characteristic reminiscences of Mrs. Krapivina. Illegitimate children or baystruks are found on many pages of the Kobzar, like a dark spot of serf life. Family relations are expressed in the description of the mother in general, the relationship between mother and son, the relationship between mother and daughter. Many folk-poetic elements are scattered everywhere, partly as a result of direct borrowing from folk poetry, partly as an observation of living reality. The relationship of father to son in "The Centurion" is built on a somewhat exclusive motive of love for one and the same woman.

One of Sh.'s favorite motifs is the veil. Sh. had a predecessor concerning this motive - G. F. Kvitka. In folk poetry, the covering is rare, in some places in songs, and even then mostly in passing and descriptively. Sh. belongs to the merit of a detailed study of the social conditions that gave rise to veils during serfdom, and the merit of depicting them not only artistic, but also humane. The poet did not spare dark colors when describing the miserable share of the coating, in places not without major exaggerations. In fact, the "covering" came off for the girls more easily, with a significant indulgence of public opinion (on coverings, as an everyday phenomenon, see Fon-Nos's note in "Kievskaya Starina" for 1882, III, 427-429). The hirelings also enjoyed great sympathy for Sh. A whole poem, the best work of Sh., is dedicated to the hired hand and received such a title. If Sh. had not written a single line, except for Naimychka, then this poem would have been enough to put him at the head of Little Russian literature and on a par with the largest Slavic humanitarian poets. While folk poetry ignores old age, Sh. loves old men and old women - poor widows. Such is the sympathetic image of the grandfather reminiscing about his youth, the grandfather in a family setting, with his grandchildren, the old kobzar Perebendi. The image of death in the poem "Over the Field of Ide" and in "The Slave" in the form of a mower is a traditional image, closely related to works of poetry and art, both South Russian and Western European. This poem, for all that, is distinguished by a highly original, purely Ukrainian character, as an exemplary national adaptation of a broad international cultural motif.

The study of Sh., as a painter, seems to be a difficult task, due to the scattered nature and low availability of his works, which were only accidentally and in a very small number included in exhibitions. Most of Sh.'s drawings are kept in Chernihiv in the Tarnovsky Museum. Very little and in fragmentary form has been published. There are few studies and descriptions (Shugurova, Rusova, Gorlenko, Kuzmina, Grinchenko); researches are short, concern private questions; not long ago, in December 1900, Mr. Kuzmin complained, not unreasonably, that "almost nothing was said about Sh. as an artist." Opinions about Sh., as a draftsman, differ significantly. Thus, Mr. Kuzmin says that "Shevchenko can rightly be credited with the glory of perhaps the first Russian etcher in the modern sense of the word." Even earlier, Soshenko saw in Sh. the painter is not the last test. Mr. Rusov looks differently (in "Kievskaya Starina", 1894). In his opinion, Sh. in painting was only "a photographer of the surrounding nature, to which his heart did not lie, and in creating the genre he did not go beyond student trials, jokes, sketches, in which, with all the desire to find any artistic idea , we are not able to catch it, the composition of the drawings is so indefinite. Both Kuzmin and Rusov admit in Sh.'s painting that it does not correspond to his poetic subjects, but while Mr. Rusov sees this as a drawback, Mr. Kuzmin, on the contrary, sees dignity.

To determine Sh.'s significance as a painter and engraver, it is necessary to evaluate his works in the aggregate and from different historical points of view, without adjusting them to one or another favorite requirement. Sh. deserves to be studied as a force that reflected the mood of the era, as a student of certain artistic trends. Whoever wishes to get acquainted in detail with the school of Bryullov and find out his influence, he will find some part of the answer in the drawings and paintings of Sh. Whoever wishes to study the influence of Rembrandt in Russia, he will also not be able to bypass Sh. He treated art with deep sincerity; it brought him comfort in the bitter moments of his life. Drawings Sh. are of considerable importance for his biography. There are drawings taken directly from the everyday environment surrounding the poet, with chronological dates. Distributed over the years (which has already been done in part by Mr. Grinchenko in 2 vols. of the Tarnovsky Museum catalog), the drawings together outline the artistic tastes and aspirations of Sh. and constitute an important parallel to his poems.

In addition to autobiographical significance, Sh.'s drawings have historical significance. At one time, the poet, on behalf of the Kyiv Archaeographic Commission, copied Little Russian monuments of antiquity in Pereyaslavl, Subbotov, Gustyn, Pochaev, Verbki, Poltava. There are drawings of the Kotlyarevsky house, the ruins of the Gustynsky monastery before correction, the burial place of Kurbsky, etc. At present, many genre drawings have historical value. Such, for example, is the drawing "In the Past" (in the collection of S. S. Botkin in St. Petersburg). The picture shows the punishment with gauntlets, the sad "green street". The man sentenced to punishment threw off his shirt; heavy iron shackles are lying at his feet. Before him stretches a long line of his involuntary executioners. Nearby is a bucket, probably filled with water. Far away on the mountain is the outline of a fortress. This is a true page from the history of Russian life. Remembering once, at the end of his life, soldiering, Sh. took out this drawing from the album and gave his student Sukhanov such an explanation that he was moved to tears, and Sh. hastened to console him, saying that this brutal torture was over. The drawing "Comrades", depicting a prison cell with two shackled prisoners, with an iron chain going from the hand of one prisoner to the foot of the other, is of historical importance now and at one time, the drawing "Comrades" - an excellent illustration for A.F. Koni's book about Dr. Haase. The entire prison environment is characteristically outlined.

There is another side to the drawings Sh., very curious - ethnographic. If you analyze the numerous drawings of Sh. with folklore purposes, then you will end up with a valuable ethnographic collection. So, to get acquainted with the buildings, an old building in a Ukrainian village, a komora in Potok, a Batkovskaya hut may come in handy; to get acquainted with the costumes - a fair, a girl examining a towel, a woman in a napkin leaving a hut, "kolo porridge" (four peasants eat porridge from a cauldron under a willow tree), a "healer" in a costume characteristic of the peasants of the Kyiv province, "headmen" at an interesting moment when the bride gave towels, and much more. For the Little Russian genre of the old time, drawings of chumaks on the road among the mounds, a bandura player, the grandfather of the tsarina, a beekeeper, a volost court (“a court of a council”) with the caption: “otaman gathering a bulk, cola to the village what a meal is extraordinary, to the joy and judgment. The crowd, having rejoiced and judged good, disperses, drinking according to the charms, etc. In these drawings, Sh. is a worthy contemporary of Fedotov. Of limited local significance are numerous drawings of Central Asian nature - that desert, steppe environment, among which Sh. was forced to drag out his life: poor nature, sandy burkhans, rocky river banks, rare shrubs, groups of soldiers and Tatars with camels, Mohammedan cemeteries. Drawings of this kind, preserved in a significant number and mostly beautifully executed, can serve as a good illustration of some of the sorrowful poems of Sh. from the first painful years of his exile.

There are very few oil paintings by Sh. Sh. only occasionally resorted to a brush. Judging by the detailed catalog of Mr. Grinchenko, in the rich collection of Tarnovsky in Chernigov (over 300 No. No.) there are only four oil paintings by Sh. . Mr. Gorlenko in "Kyiv Antiquities" for 1888 points to three more paintings by Sh. in oil paints - "Beekeeper", a portrait of Mayevskaya and his own portrait. In Kharkov, in the private museum of B. G. Filonov, there is a large painting "The Savior" attributed to the brush of Sh., two arshins high and one and a half wide. The work is clean, the colors are fresh, perfectly preserved, but the style is purely academic. Christ is depicted waist-deep, in profile, with his eyes turned to heaven. In the Museum of Arts and Antiquities of Kharkov University there is a small painting by Sh., painted on canvas with oil paints, with an inscription in white paint: "That is dumb for no one, like a young burlatsi." The picture shows a half-length image of an elderly Little Russian, with a small mustache, no beard and no sideburns. The smile on the face does not match the inscription. The background of the picture is almost completely black. The influence of Rembrandt, whom S. fell in love with early, is noticeable. According to V. V. Tarnovsky, Sh. was called the Russian Rembrandt at the academy, according to the then customary practice of giving the most gifted students the names of their favorite exemplar artists, with whose manner the work of these students had the most similarities. In the etchings of Sh., characteristic features of the works of the great Dutchman are found: the same irregular strokes intersecting in a wide variety of directions - long, frequent - for backgrounds and dark places, small, almost breaking off into dots in light places, and each point, each smallest curl, are organically necessary, either as a characteristic detail of the depicted object, or to enhance a purely light effect. Recently, Sh.'s drawings accidentally ended up at the Gogol-Zhukov exhibition in Moscow in 1902, and at the exhibition of the XII Archaeological Congress in Kharkov in 1902, but here they were lost in a mass of other objects. In Kharkov, two engravings of Sh. 1844 were exhibited - "The Court of Rada" and "Gifts in Chigirin", both from the collections of Professor M. M. Kovalevsky in Dvurechny Kut, Kharkov district. The press repeatedly expressed the wish (for example, by Mr. Gorlenko in "Kievskaya Starina" for 1888) that all drawings and paintings of Sh. be reproduced and published in the form of a collection, which would be very useful for the history of Russian art, and for the biography of Sh.

Literature about Sh. is very large and very scattered. Everything published before 1884 is indicated in Komarov's "Indicator of New Ukrainian Literature" (1883) and in "Essays on the History of Ukrainian Literature of the 19th Century" by Professor Petrov, 1884. Many memoirs about Sh. (Kostomarov, Chuzhbinsky, Chaly, Jung, Turgenev) etc.), many biographies (the best ones are M. K. Chaly, 1882, and A. Ya. Konissky, 1898), many popular brochures (the best ones are Maslov and Vetrinsky), many critical analyzes of individual works (for example , Franco about "Perebend", Kokorudza about "Message"). Every year, the February book "Kyiv Antiquities" brings research and materials about Sh., sometimes new and interesting. In Lvov, a scientific society (“Companionship”) named after Sh. has been operating for many years, in whose publications valuable studies about Sh. are found, for example, Mr. Kolessa’s study on the influence of Mickiewicz on Sh. articles about Sh., sometimes original in point of view, for example, Art. Studinsky about the attitude of Sh. to N. Markevich in "Zora" for 1896. Both historical and journalistic publications give place to articles about Sh.; so, in the "Bulletin of Europe" Junge's memoirs are printed, in the "Russian Antiquity" - Zhukovsky's letters to Countess Baranova about the ransom of Sh. from captivity, in "Nedelya" for 1874 (No. to the lectures of Professor O. F. Miller on the history of modern literature. In the best general courses (for example, "Essays" by Professor N. I. Petrov), Sh. is given a lot of space. In various provincial newspapers and literary collections, articles about Sh. are scattered, sometimes not devoid of interest, for example, Art. Konissky about the sea in the poems of Sh. in No. 30 of the discontinued Odessa edition. "By sea and land" for 1895, information about folk legends or myths about Sh. in "Kharkov Vedomosti" for 1894, No. 62, etc. Complete editions of "Kobzar" - foreign (the best - Lviv, in 2 volumes ., edited by Ogonovsky). In Russia, all editions of "Kobzar" are abridged, with sharp political poems omitted. The history of publications of "Kobzar" indicates its extremely rapid spread in modern times, depending on the development of education. The first edition (by Martos) came out in 1840. Four years later, the 2nd edition of Kobzar appeared, which included Gaidamaki. The third edition appeared in 1860, after the poet's return from exile. It appeared thanks to material support from the famous sugar producer of the Kyiv province Platon Simirenko. This publication met in St. Petersburg with very strong obstacles from censorship, and only thanks to the intercession of the Minister of National Education Kovalevsky saw God's light. In 1867, the "Chigirinsky torbanist-singer" appeared (4th edition of "Kobzar"). In the same year, Kozhanchikov published Sh.'s works in two volumes, containing 184 plays. Two years later, the 6th edition of Sh. Since then, for 14 years (1869-83), Sh.'s poems have not been published in Russia, but survived in the shortest possible time (1876-81) four editions in Prague and Lvov. The 7th edition (1884) of S.'s "Kobzar" appeared in St. Petersburg. Since that time, "Kobzar" has gone through more than 7 editions in a significant number of copies (one edition, for example, 60 thousand, another 20 thousand, etc.). Of the individual works of Sh. in a large number (50 thousand copies), "Naimichka" was published (Kharkov, 1892).

N. Sumtsov.

(Brockhaus)

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich

(Chevtchenko); writer, painter and engraver; from the serfs of the landowner Engelhardt; genus. 25 Feb. 1814 in the village of Marni, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province. Left an orphan, he first served as a "cossack" for his landowner; and during his absence he copied the paintings that adorned the walls of his house, for which he was cruelly "flogged" by the master; but then he was apprenticed to a guild master in St. Petersburg. Here K.P. Bryullov, Zhukovsky and V.I. Grigorovich. Bryullov painted a portrait of Zhukovsky, which was raffled off in 2,400 rubles, and with this money Shevchenko was bought free on April 22. 1838. In 1830 he received the 2nd silver medal for natural drawing, and in 1844 the title of free artist. He died in St. Petersburg on February 26, 1861 and was buried in Kanev.

Shevchenko was engaged in etching engraving at the academy in 1844 and in 1859-1860; in 1859 he was elected for two engravings to the appointed. An almost complete collection of his etchings (27 sheets in total) is in the collection of V.V. Tarnovsky (in Kyiv), who published an album of phototypes from them in 1891, in a reduced form.

1. Portrait of Shevchenko in his youth; he paints by candlelight. There is an inscription on paper: "T. Shevchenko".

2. He is completely bald: "T. Shevchenko 1860". In 1 print. a large letter W is sewn on the chest; the background is all drawn with a tape measure; in 2 rosin blackness from the frock coat and from the background is cleaned off; the background is shaded by lines only on the left; the letter Ш is destroyed; a strand of hair is engraved on the right temple.

3. He is completely bald; head slightly tilted down, to the left: "T. Shevchenko 1860"; in 1, a dark background is around the head; on the left, as if splattered with ink; in 2 the shadow on the left is destroyed; the head and face were pierced with a needle.

4. He, in a high hat; in an octagon; the entire right hand is visible: "T. Shevchenko 1860".

5. The same portrait in a hat and fur coat; hands are not visible: "1860 | Shevchenko", and in the circle the letter: "T".

6. "Fyodor Antonovich Bruni. - Taras Shevchenko 1860"; last signature inside out.

7. Portrait of Gornostaev; on the chest, 3/4 to the right; in a frock coat fastened with one button; the background on the right is slightly shaded. Without a signature.

8. "Baron Pyotr Karlovich Klodt. | 1861 T. Shevchenko". This signature is reversed.

9. "Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy. | T. Shevchenko 1860 (inverted). | For memory, August 22, 1858". 5.7 x 4.2.

10-15. In 1844, Shevchenko published the 1st and only issue of "Picturesque Ukraine", consisting of the following six sheets [The publication includes the following items:

1. The views are remarkable for their beauty, or for historical recollections: temples, fortifications, mounds and everything that time has spared.

2. Folk life of the present time, customs, rituals, beliefs, superstitions, fairy tales and songs.

3. The most important historical events from Gediminas to the destruction of the Hetmanate and a brief description of the paintings in South Russian and French.

In 1845 the following pictures will be released: 1st. Views: Chigirin, Subotov, Baturin, Intercession Sich Church.

2nd. The funeral of a young (bride) oh hodyv chumak sim rik across the don (song); perezva (wedding ceremony) and harvest - 3rd. Ivan Pidkova in Lvov, Sava Chaly, Pavlo Polubotok in St. Petersburg, Semyon Palia in Siberia. - The price for 12 paintings is 5 rubles in silver.]:

1) "Sudnya Rada - 1844 Taras Shevchenko - Otoman gathering; ... reconciliation"; 2) "Gifts in Chygryn 1649 to rock. - T. Shevchenko 1841. - From Tsaryagrad ... du tzar de Moscovie"; 3) "Elders - les starostis Shevchenko 1844 - after poking around .... de ses propres mains"; 4) "Vydubetsky Monastery y Kyevi - Vue du Monastère de Widoubetck à Kiev - Shevchenko 1844"; 5) "Kazka ... Shevchenko 1844 - A vidkil ... truly Lubensky"; 6) "At Kyevi - 1844 Shevchenko"; landscape, bank of the Dnieper. There are copies printed on Chinese paper.

16. Beggar at the cemetery: "T. Shevchenko 1859". There are bad prints from the transfer on the stone.

17. Two Khokhlushkas: "T. Shevchenko 1858"; there is a print. on Chinese paper.

18. Willow; on the right is a seated figure: "T. Shevchenko 1859".

19. Forest: "grav. T. Shchevchenko 1829. - M. Lebedev 1836". There are prints on Chinese paper*.

20. Oak: "engraved. T. Shevchenko 1860. - A. Meshchersky 1860".

21. Bathing Bathsheba: "Karl Bryulov 1831 - Engraving T. Shevchenko 1860". The original painting, not quite finished, is in the K.T. Soldatenkov. There are prints made from a translation on stone, with the inscription: "Pleased by the censorship Lithography of A.P. Chervyakov."

22. Sleeping woman, with a half-open chest: "1859. T. Shevchenko". There are prints from the translation on the stone.

23. Sleeping odalisque, almost completely naked: "T. Shevchenko 1860"; in an oval.

24. There are three figures in the tavern: "I. Sokolov. - Engraving. T. Shevchenko 1859". In the 2nd condition of the board, an inscription was added: "Oh, stand up Hardka, oh, stand up dad - people are asking you."

25. The Holy Family, after a sketch by Murillo, engraving. T. Shevchenko 1858.

26. The parable of the vineyard, from a painting by Rembrandt, in the Hermitage; engraver. T. Shevchenko 1858.

27. King Lear; he goes with his jester to the sea, during a thunderstorm: "T. Shevchenko."

Shevchenko made three more copies from Rembrandt's engravings (or rather, from Bazan's copies of Rembrandt): a) Rembrandt au sabre (Ba. No. 23); b) Lazarus Klap (Ba. 171); and c) Polonais portant saber et bâton (Ba. 141). Bad copies. Presented to me by Ya.P. Polonsky.

I also have a small landscape that I received for Shevchenko's work - but its authenticity is more than doubtful. As for the engraving for Pushkin's Gypsies, which was also attributed to Shevchenko, it turned out to be the work of K. Afanasyev; see his name in Dictionary No. 456.

(Rovinsky)

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich

(1814-1861) - the largest Ukrainian poet, artist and politician, a brilliant spokesman for the revolutionary aspirations of the poorest and most oppressed sections of the peasantry in the era of the most acute crisis of the feudal serf system. Lenin characterized Sh. "as a great Ukrainian writer," "a great creator of the living Ukrainian word, the best representative of his literature." “Sh. is so great,” Herzen wrote about him, “that he is a completely popular writer, like our Koltsov; but he is much more important than Koltsov, because Sh. is also a politician and a fighter for freedom.”

The era to which Sh. belonged and which is so remarkably vividly reflected in his brilliant works of art is the era of the 30-50s. 19th century, when economic development was drawing Russia more and more onto the path of capitalism, when the old forms of feudal economy were collapsing irrevocably, when the rottenness and impotence of serfdom Russia became more and more obvious, and peasant "revolts", growing with every decade, forced the tsarist landlord government to take up reforms. Sh. acted as a great revolutionary artist in the darkest time in the history of the serf-slave way of life - in the time of Nicholas. In Ukraine, the situation of the working people was further worsened by the most severe national oppression. The Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture were under unconditional prohibition. Tens of millions of poor people were doomed to darkness, oppression, poverty and hard labor. The Russian landowners, capitalists, the numerous state apparatus and bureaucracy, the army, the police, the gendarmerie, the Orthodox Church, tens of thousands of juggernauts and executioners stationed in all cities and villages acted here as colonizers, who, together with Ukrainian, Polish landowners and industrialists, brought social and national oppression of the working masses of Ukraine to unheard-of proportions. "And if," says Lenin, "the centuries of slavery so beaten and dulled the peasant masses that during the reform they were incapable of doing anything except fragmented individual uprisings, rather even "revolts" not illuminated by any political consciousness, then there were then already in Russia there were revolutionaries who stood on the side of the peasantry and understood all the narrowness, all the squalor of the notorious “peasant reform”, all its feudal character. Sh is one of these extremely few revolutionaries at that time. In his literary and social activities, Shevchenko is one of the most consistent, most irreconcilable, most profound exponents of the slogans of the peasant revolution, a courageous and courageous fighter for the overthrow of the monarchy and the power of the landowners, for the destruction of all feudal and bondage methods of exploitation. Sh.'s fiery works inspired the peasant movement, which was growing on the eve of the reform of 1861. At a time when the old noble elements, from the surviving Decembrists up to Herzen, are almost completely carried away by the stream of "renewal" coming from above, Sh., along with other few revolutionaries 40 -50s, fought to raise the oppressed peasant masses to the social revolution, to create a society of free and equal small peasants, a society "without a serf and without a master." Sh.'s historical role cannot be separated from his personal fate: in the entire galaxy of great fighters of the revolutionary front, Sh. stands out for his firmness of will, unbending loyalty to his convictions, carried through the greatest trials. “I am in the flesh and in spirit,” Sh. wrote in one of his letters, “the son and brother of our unfortunate people; then how can I unite myself with dog pansky blood?”

Sh. was born in with. Morintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province. in the poor peasant family of the landowner Engelhardt. “I don’t know why,” says Sh., “they call the hut in the grove a quiet paradise: I once suffered in the hut, my tears shed there, the first tears. I don’t know if there is a fierce evil in the world that did not live I would have been in that hut. My mother swaddled me there and, swaddling, she sang, she poured her longing into her child; in that grove, in that hut, in “paradise”, I saw hell ... There is bondage, hard work. mother, still young, need and labor were put in the grave; there the father, crying with the children (and we were small and naked), could not endure the evil fate, died in the panshchina ..., and we crawled among people like little mice. In early childhood, it is already a hard life for hire: he "carries water", "hires" from more possible fellow villagers, grazes public sheep, later - a laborer at the priest, "puff", and all this time the boy is looking for someone who could teach him art drawing, for which he feels an increasing attraction and ability. Sh. is whipped for drawing at night, he is mocked in every possible way, mercilessly exploited. Even then, the young man worries Sh. thought: "Why shouldn't we, slaves, be free people?" At the beginning of 1831, Sh., together with Engelhardt, as the latter's lackey, ended up in St. Petersburg, where the master gave him on "lease" for 4 years to be trained by the master fist Shiryaev. Hiding from his master, Sh. while sketching one of the statues in the Summer Garden, he meets the artist Soshenko, who introduces a talented young man to the circle of the artist K. Bryullov. Through the efforts of Bryullov and the poet V. A. Zhukovsky, Sh. was redeemed from the landowner (1838). He receives a higher art education, becoming a person of a high cultural level for his time. By the time of his stay at the Academy of Arts, the first of his poetic works that have come down to us (1838 - "Cause", "Wild Vitre", "Leaking water in the blue sea", "Kotlyarevsky", etc.) also belong to the time of his stay at the Academy of Arts. In May 1840, the first book of his poems "Kobzar" (first edition) was published, containing: "My thoughts", "Perebendya", "Poplars", "Before Osnovyanenko", "Dumka", "Ivan Pidkov", "Tarasov Nich", "Catherine"). Sworn critics of the monarchist, reactionary St. Petersburg journals greeted the first literary attempts of the "muzhik poet" with ridicule. But Sh. stubbornly continues the literary activity he began in the "peasant spirit": "They call me an enthusiast," wrote Sh., "that is to say, a fool. Let me be a peasant poet, if only a poet, I don't need anything else!" . The poet solves the problem of his poetic creativity in this way: on the one hand, the poetry of noble salons, "sultan", "parquet", "spurs", on the other hand, "hulk in sermyagas" with its "dead (i.e. At the end of December 1841, Sh.'s historical poem "Gaidamaki" was published. The nobles already assessed these early works with extreme hostility: "Shevchenko's works -" Gaidamaki "," Taras Night ", - wrote the marshal of the nobility of the Kanevsky district , - although they are allowed by censorship, they contain stories that breathe inexorable hatred for our nobility and, moreover, sharply. depict pictures of the Haidamak massacre, that it is in our parts, where the people themselves to this day preserve the traditions of these bloody events, that it is extremely dangerous for the nobility and all other classes of society, because the people, seeing in them only images of revenge, massacre, bloodshed, - In 1842 Sh. wrote in Russian the drama Nikita Gaidai, the poem Blind, in Ukrainian the poem Gamalia; and also appears for the first time as an illustrator.In the spring of 1843, after an absence of almost 15 years, Sh. comes back to Ukraine, visits his native places, again sees terrible pictures of the labor-serf hell and, returning to St. Petersburg, gives a number of new highly poetic works ( "Owl", "Chigirin", "Why is it hard for me", "Pustka", "Gogol"), among which we find a masterpiece of murderous criticism of the contemporary state system, the sharpest political satire on the bureaucratic monarchy - "Sleep" (July, 1844). In St. Petersburg, S. draws close to the underground circle of Polish revolutionaries, with the most radical Petrashevites (Mombelli), reads illegal revolutionary literature and studies French, dreaming of "escaping" abroad. In March 1845, Sh. again comes to Ukraine and writes a number of his outstanding works (Heretic, Great Lyoh, Subottov, Caucasus, Message, Cold Yar, David's Psalms, Zapovit) and etc.). Sh. himself, as contemporaries tell about it, often acts as a direct agitator among the oppressed peasantry, trying to raise the "chained slaves" to a revolutionary uprising. In Kyiv, on Podil, on Kurenevka, in the village of Maryinsky, in Pereyaslav, in Vyunyshchi, speaking to the peasants and the city "badness", he mercilessly scourged the royal guardsmen, exposed the cowardice and meanness of the Ukrainian pans - "patriots", who kowtowed before tsarism, mercilessly exploiting their "compatriots" peasants. Sh. is now rising to his full height not only as a brilliant artist, but also as a fiery political fighter. While in his early works Sh. , in search of a way out of the surrounding serf hell, idealized the peasant movements of past centuries, often turned to pictures of the past, glorifying the Cossack-senior way of life and even hetmans under the influence of bourgeois-landowner historiography - in the future, he is increasingly freed from these nationalist ideas, all goes deeper to understanding the class essence of the Hetmanate and the Cossacks. Stigmatizing his countrymen as "evil gentlemen", exposing and ridiculing their fascination with the Ukrainian past, Sh. mercilessly debunks the leaders of "Cossack glory".

On April 5, 1847, a detachment of gendarmes arrests Sh. at the “entrance to Kyiv” (due to a donor to the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, to the left, “immoderate” wing of which Sh. adjoined), and the governor-general, under the strictest guard, sends him from Kyiv to St. the famous III Branch of the Secret Royal Chancellery. Andrusky, who was involved in the case of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, during interrogation testified: “In Kyiv, the Slavic Society has two heads: Kostomarov and Shevchenko, of which the first belongs to the moderate party, and the second to the immoderate ones, that Shevchenko’s main rule is: “who is devoted to the sovereign - that scoundrel, and who fights for freedom - that noble person. The chief of gendarmes in a memorandum to Nicholas I emphasized that Sh. "composed poems in the Little Russian language of the most outrageous content. In them, he either expressed lamentation about the imaginary enslavement and disaster of Ukraine, or with incredible audacity shed slander and bile on the persons of the imperial house ... ". During his stay in the casemate of the III Branch, in April - May 1847, Sh. wrote a number of new poems ("For the bayrak, the bayrak", "I am the same", "It's hard in captivity", "The sea did not sleep, but the sea" and others.) , in which he exposes the treacherous role of the Ukrainian foremen and hetmans, pours out his anger on the stranglers of the people - the landowners, especially his "compatriots", is sad that he did not finish the work he started - the liberation of "slave laboring hands". 30 / V 1847, the "highest" sentence was announced: "Artist Sh. for composing outrageous and extremely daring poems, as gifted with a strong physique, to determine the private in the Orenburg separate building, instructing the authorities to have the strictest supervision, so that from him under no circumstances outrageous and libelous writings could not come out." Nicholas I adds to this sentence with his own hand: "under the strictest supervision with the prohibition to write and draw." Ten years (1847-57) of the fortress, penal servitude of the Nikolaev soldiery and the distant Transcaspian exile for seven years of hard work - such is the payment that Sh. received for raising the banner of the struggle for social and national liberation. Despite the prohibition and the regime of cane discipline, Sh., constantly hiding from "the most vigilant supervision", still continues to write and draw. In the course of 1848-50, he wrote works that were outstanding in their strength and revolutionary scope: "Princess", "Irzhavets", "To Kozachkovsky", "Moskaleva Krinitsa", "Varnak", "Tsar", "Titarivna", "Marina", " I’m not a villain among the rocks”, “I’m expelled”, “Chumak”, “Sotnik”, “Petrus”, “Yak-be you knew, panic”, “Be in captivity I’ll guess” and a large number of small, but very important from the point of view of the ideological and artistic development of the poet of poems. In exile Sh. also wrote several stories in Russian; among them are especially remarkable: "Musician", "Unfortunate", "Captain", "Artist", "Walk with pleasure and not without morality", which, in addition to deep biographical interest, also have enormous historical and literary significance, giving an unvarnished picture of rampant serfdom, "noble" officers and bureaucracy. In exile Sh. is subjected to a new arrest in 1850 for "violating the prohibition to write and draw." Gene. Obruchev ordered Sh. to be sent to Orsk "by stage under the strictest guard, appointing one non-commissioned officer and at least 3 privates from village to village." All papers and letters selected during the search were sent to St. Petersburg; the chief of gendarmes, the minister of war and other dignitaries were immediately informed about the "case".

Shevchenko spent more than six months in the Orenburg, Orsk and Ural prisons, and finally in October 1850 he was brought under the strictest guard to continue his exile in the Novopetrovsky fortification, an "open prison", an abandoned settlement on the Mangyshlak peninsula, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. For the period 1850-57, we know only one small poem of only eight lines - the response of the imprisoned "political criminal" to the Sevastopol war, but how much anger and revolutionary indignation can be heard in these lines: "The peasant blood has flowed again ... Crowned executioners, how the dogs are hungry because of the bone, they gnaw again." In 1857, under an amnesty, Sh. was finally released from exile, remaining further under the "strictest supervision" of the police. The years spent in the fortress brought Sh. closer to outstanding revolutionaries - political exiles (Serakovsky and others), further aggravated his hatred of the contemporary system, and deepened the revolutionary content of his work. So, Sh. writes his powerful works, filled with revolutionary anger, "Neophyte", "Holy Fool", "Share", "Muse", "Glory", "They will envelop the insatiable kings in iron chains and their" glorious "hand fetters will encircle and condemn the unrighteous judgment by his right!" - this is the main idea of his poems.

Returning finally to St. Petersburg (1858), Sh. draws closer to the circle of Russian revolutionary democracy, headed by Chernyshevsky, with the Polish revolutionaries, preparing the ground for a new uprising (Serakovsky). During his last trip to Ukraine (1859), he was again arrested for persuading the peasants that "neither a tsar, nor priests, nor gentlemen" was needed and was deported to St. Petersburg with a ban on further entry into Ukraine as "a person who compromised itself in a political sense." Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Shevchenko gives a number of new poetic works: "Maria", "Osіі Ch. XIV", "Prayers", "Hymn. Chernenchiy", "Clear Light", "Saul", There were wars and military welds" and many others. etc. The preaching of insurrection and revenge against the oppressors is now taking on the character of the slogans of a revolutionary tribune. Faithful to the end to his revolutionary convictions, unbending and adamant, surrounded by rabid hatred, wild malice, reckless flow of lies and slander, constant persecution, Sh. descended into the grave. Initially, the body of Sh. was buried in St. Petersburg, later (May 1861) was transported according to his poetic testament to Ukraine, where he was buried in Kanev on a mountain overlooking the Dnieper. Soon, the marshal of the nobility Gorvat was forced to inform the Kyiv governor-general: “To the grave of Sh., whom, at the suggestion of his friends, the common people began to regard as a prophet, and every word of his was a covenant for the people, many visitors flock and a rumor spread about the hopes of the peasants to take possession free of charge in the future landowner's land, about the sacred knives buried in the grave over the ashes of Sh., about the fact that the hour will soon come when pans, officials and clergy who hide the rights of the people will continue to be cut. So after his death, the name of Sh. - an ardent fighter for the liberation of the oppressed masses - instilled terrible anxiety in the hearts of the noble landowners and called for "severe vigilance" of the entire apparatus of tsarist, autocratic Russia.

Sh. came to literature as a fighter: he puts into each of his works a fighting "peasant temperament", his deep hatred for the nobility and landlord system. He came to public life and literature in order to tell the bitter truth about life and declare his fiery protest against its slavish conditions, which is torn from every page of his works. The contradiction of public interests, understood as indignation at the "unfair" attitude of the rich and noble towards the poor, was not yet realized by the young Sh. as a class contradiction and class struggle. But soon the poet of the oppressed poor peasant-farm-handled masses freed himself from bourgeois-nationalist influences hostile to the poet himself, ripped off the web of nationalist romance, debunked the "national heroes" he had recently sung by himself, and from glorifying the "past Cossack glory" moved on to the main theme of his artistic works. works - exposing the nobility-landowner system, to tearing off all and sundry masks from the "kingdom of unsatisfied executioners." "Sh's poetry is a condensed, concentrated, crystallized reality," says I. Franko, an outstanding Ukrainian poet and critic, about Sh.'s work. But Shevchenko not only captures the life of the autocratic feudal system: showing without embellishment, in all its nakedness, the hard life of serfdom, the blood and dirt of panorama, unfolding amazing pieces of life - he calls for a fight. Shevchenko's work is a wonderful example of revolutionary, realistic art. The best works of Sh. are imbued with the idea of a peasant revolution, with the idea of mass struggle. The richness of the revolutionary content also corresponds to the extraordinary richness of artistic forms. The realism of S.'s poetic style is expressed both in the very attitude to reality - in the desire to convey the most diverse phenomena of life and his own experiences with maximum truthfulness and revolutionary depth - and in the method of his handling of the word, in his images, rhymes, intonations. Shevchenko's artistic innovation was reflected in the creation of a new poetic language, new images that expressed the ideology, feelings and thoughts of the rising exploited social classes. Sh.'s work is deeply national; Sh. is full of a sense of national pride: he loves his language and his homeland, he most of all strives to raise the working masses of Ukraine to the struggle for social and national liberation. His poems, "Diary", "Letters" show how painful it was for him to see and feel the violence, oppression and mockery subjected to his "cordial", "homemade" Ukraine by the royal satraps, executioners, priests and landowners. Sh. is proud that these acts of violence have repeatedly provoked a rebuff from the working people, that the Ukrainian popular masses have been participants in the great revolutionary movement. Shevchenko is striving for a free, independent, self-sustaining, poor-farm labor Ukraine, striving to create a new Ukraine on the ruins of the "prison of peoples" of tsarist Russia - the Ukraine of the liberated poorest peasantry, "a free, new family." And these aspirations of his coincided with the liberation interest of the oppressed masses of all other nationalities. No wonder he, exposing the history of the conquests of tsarism as a history of violence and robbery, courageously and ardently defended the freedom of Poland and the oppressed peoples of the Caucasus; It was not for nothing that he tirelessly scourged the suppressors, executioners, hangings and serfs of the Russian autocracy, calling on the joint forces of the oppressed peoples to overcome their common oppressors. "Freedom and brotherhood of peoples," S. Kulish testifies, "were his dream."

Sh. hated Russia nobles and priests, but at the same time revered the memory of the first Russian revolutionaries, the Decembrists, was very close to the Russian revolutionary circles of the 40s, especially to the left wing of the Petrashevskys. “In every nation there are two nations,” wrote Lenin, and the greatness of the poet - serf Sh. is that in every nation he was on the side of the oppressed slaves, slaves and farm laborers, calling on them to “rise up, break the chains, and the enemy, evil sprinkle the will with blood."

Sh.'s poetry, national in its form and content in its main works, is the poetry of a peasant uprising: the tense atmosphere of the revolutionary situation of the 1950's. breathes on us from every page, and this is what makes Sh. especially close to the next

revolutionary generation. The best revolutionary works of his for many years were strictly forbidden. "Kobzar" was published mutilated by tsarist censorship; the hands of the gendarmes and priests carried out the direct extermination of Sh. government that better agitation cannot be imagined. I think that all our best Social-Democratic agitators against the government would never have achieved in such a short time such dizzying successes as this measure has achieved in the anti-government sense. After this measure, millions and millions of "philistines “began to turn into conscious citizens and become convinced of the correctness of the saying that Russia is a “prison of peoples.”

The enormous significance of Shevchenko as a poet pushed his works as an artist into the shadows. His paintings and drawings were not collected for many years, were not as widely known as his poetic work. Meanwhile, Shevchenko also left a large legacy in this area, more than 1000 paintings, drawings and sketches, proving that Shevchenko was a great and very original master in the field of fine arts. During his studies at the Academy of Arts (1838-45), Sh. was to some extent fascinated by the works of academic classicism, with its far-fetched pathos and high mastery of composition and drawing. Bryullov, who spoke out against the deadness and coldness of the old school, who brought a lot of life and movement to art, one of the first to teach his students to the demands of life and nature, had a tremendous influence on Sh. the artist, but soon Sh. moves away from dazzling brilliance and romanticism Bryullov towards in-depth psychologism and realism, thereby revealing a protest against the dazzlingly elegant, aristocratic academic art. Painting Sh. many points in contact with his poetry. "Katerina" (1842), created according to the pictorial techniques of the Bryullov school, but already realistic in all its content, challenged the entire system of oppression and violence. In 1844, Sh. published a series of etchings "Picturesque Ukraine" (6 sheets in total), where the artist, contrary to his academic upbringing, contrary to Bryullov's precepts, strives to give a true idea of the nature and life of his homeland. Sh. is increasingly moving away from academic canons, giving not elegant, sweetened with false sentimentalism, festive characters of the Venetian type, but real folk types, real folk scenes, drawing ordinary people crushed by heavy serf labor in their real environment. During his stay in Ukraine, Sh. worked a lot in various branches of art: he painted landscapes, portraits, etchings, up to icons made "for bread." At the same time, for the purpose of revolutionary agitation, Sh. gives a number of political cartoons, which is confirmed by the fact that “when examining the papers (during the arrest of 1847), badly drawn most immoral pictures were found in Sh.’s portfolio, most of which were caricatures of special imperial family, especially the empress" (from the testimony of General Dubelt). During the exile, Sh. manages only to secretly make sketches of the Kirghiz, dull steppe landscapes, and in the Novopetrovsky Fort he prepares for etching a series of drawings on the theme of "The Prodigal Son", conceived as a satire on the merchant class, which, however, sounds like such a formidable social protest, to which not rose not a single artist of his time. The plots that Sh. introduces into painting have never before been touched upon in Russian and Ukrainian art. Pictures of soldiers, punishments of the "Prodigal Son" ("In the barracks in front of the punishment", "Spitsruteny", "In the hard labor prison") are a merciless, harsh illustration of the life and life of one of the darkest eras of the slave way of life. Returning from exile, Sh. has been working on etching for the last 2-3 years, first under the guidance of Jordan, then studying Rembrandt's etchings. Sh. was fond of Rembrandt before, and these influences are noticeable in his early self-portraits and in Kyrgyz landscapes. Now he began to study it. The truth of life, simplicity, direct feeling, thoroughly hostile to formal prettiness and ceremonial conventionality - that's what attracted S. in the works of Rembrandt - this brilliant Dutch artist. Engravings from paintings by Rembrandt, Murillo and Bryullov create Sh. fame "Russian Rembrandt", and on 2/IX 1860 he was awarded the title of academician "for the art and knowledge in the art of engraving" by the Council of the Academy. Sh. did not recognize art for the few. An artist for him is a "bearer of the light of truth", which should be "useful to people". It is from here that Sh.'s desire for engraving. "To be a good engraver means to be a distributor of the beautiful and instructive in society. It means to be useful to people ... The most beautiful, noblest calling of an engraver. How many finest works, accessible only to the rich, would be smoked in gloomy galleries without your miraculous cutter!" (Shevchenko, "Diary"). The significance of Shevchenko in the history of the social movement in Ukraine was so great that bypassing his work would have meant refusing to influence broad sections of the working people. Along with direct attacks on Sh., his work was simultaneously falsified, the poet-fighter turned into a harmless icon, his name was canonized, the revolutionary social essence of his work was emasculated, and his revolutionary edge was blunted. The leaders of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, the leaders of all its nationalist groups - the Hrushevskys, the Efremovs, the Vinnichenkos - created the cult of "father Taras" or lit lamps in front of the emasculated "Kobzar", and Sh.'s "chobots" and "shirts" were turned into fetishes for. "folk worship". When the thunders of the October Revolution of 1917 thundered, when the red banner of the proletarian dictatorship was hoisted, all these Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries, Social-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, all these "Squares" and "independence" - the "dobrodii" Efremov, Grushevsky, Shapoval, Petliura, Vinnichenko - tried to dress powerful figure of the popular, beloved among the masses Sh. in the "zhovto-Blakit" attire of a hetman, a Petliurist, an autocephalist, blasphemously covering up political banditry and pogroms with the name of Sh., putting forward the emasculated "dad Taras" as a banner for bloody reprisals against revolutionary workers and peasants, as a shield to cover up their treacherous deals with international counterrevolution . The leaders of the Ukrainian and Russian counter-revolutions, the Polish and German fascists, in their struggle against socialist Ukraine, tried and continue to try to poison the minds of the working people with the poison of nationalism and, using various means of ideological preparation for war and intervention, falsify Sh. elements of religiosity (characteristic of the early Sh.), inflating them in every possible way, while carefully bypassing the deeply revolutionary social essence of the singer of the oppressed serf peasantry. In the system of the proletarian dictatorship, the work of Sh., critically evaluated in the light of Marxism-Leninism, has been and will be an instrument of revolutionary education, the all-round strengthening of the fraternal unity of the working people of all nations.

For the proletariat building a new socialist world, Sh.'s work, along with the literary heritage of the great democrats Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, is indisputably included in the fund inherited from the militant revolutionary past, which should be used in the creation of a new socialist culture.

Cit.: Academic edition of the VUAN: "About the selection of the works of Taras Shevchenko", vol. III - Listuvannya, Kharkiv, 1929, vol. IV - Schodenny notes, Kharkiv, 1927 (so far only these two volumes have been published, under the editorship of the former acad. S. Efremov, who was convicted as the organizer of the SVU Work on the publication of the complete collection of works by T. G. Shevchenko continues under a new edition); Kobzar (under the editorship and with notes by I. Aizenshtok and M. Plevakr), Kharkiv, 1930; Kobzar (introductory article by V. Koryak), Kharkiv, 1928 (popular ed.); The latest collection of works by T. G. Shevchenko, edited by D. Doroshenko, Katerinoslav, 1914 (ed. with censorship passes, including the Ukrainian translation of Sh.'s stories written in Russian); in Russian lang.: Diary, Kharkov, 1925; Kobzar, trans. I. A. Belousova, M., 1919 (very poor translation).

Lit.: Koryak V., Fight for Shevchenko, Kharkiv, 1925; Shablovsky E. S., Proletarian Revolution and Shevchenko, Kharkiv - Kiev, 1932; Bagpiy O. V., T. G. Shevchenko, vol. I - II, Kharkiv, 1930-31; Plevako M., Shevchenko and criticism (Evolution looking at Shevchenko), "Chervoniy Shlyakh", Kharkiv, 1924, No. 3; Filippovich P., Shevchenko and the Decembrists, [Kharkiv], 1926; Navrotsky B., Shevchenko's creativity (Selection of articles), Kharkiv, 1931; Ukrainian malaria. Taras Shevchenko, [Kharkiv], 1930 (collection of Sh.'s most important paintings and drawings. The description of Sh., sent to him as an artist by academician Novitsky, is nationalistic and extremely primitive); in Russian lang.: Skvortsov A. M., Life of the artist Taras Shevchenko, M., 1929.

E. Shabliovsky.

Shevch e NCO, Faina Vasilievna

Genus. 1893, mind. 1971. Actress. She played on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater (since 1914). Twice winner of the State Prize of the USSR (1943, 1946). People's Artist of the USSR (1948).

Big biographical encyclopedia. - Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko. SHEVCHENKO Taras Grigoryevich (1814 61), Ukrainian poet, artist. In 1838 he was redeemed from serfdom. Graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1838-45). For participation in the secret Cyril Methodius Society given to ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (1814 61), Ukrainian. poet, artist, thinker, revolutionary democrat. The name L. is repeatedly found in letters sent from exile (1847 57), and in the diaries of Sh. In letters to M. Lazarevsky (December 20, 1847), A. Lizogub (February 1, 1848), F. Lazarevsky (April 22 ... Lermontov Encyclopedia

- (1814 1861), Ukrainian artist; poet, thinker, revolutionary democrat. Until 1838, the serf of the landowner P. V. Engelgard. He studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1838-45) under K. P. Bryullov. The realistic orientation of his artistic creativity ... ... Art Encyclopedia

- (1814 61) Ukrainian poet, artist. Born into a family of a serf. In 1838, after being bought from the landowner, he entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1847, for participation in the Cyril and Methodius Society, he was arrested and assigned as a private in a separate ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Shevchenko (Taras Grigorievich) famous Ukrainian poet. Born on February 25, 1814 in the village of Sorintsakh, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, in the family of a serf landowner Engelhardt. After 2 years, Sh.'s parents moved to the village ... ... Biographical Dictionary

- (1814 1861), Ukrainian poet and artist, revolutionary democrat. In St. Petersburg he lived from 1831 as a serf "Cossack" of the landowner Engelhardt, from 1832 "assistant of the painting workshop" with the master Shiryaev (Zagorodny Prospekt, 8; memorial plaque), in ... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia) Wikipedia, V.P. Maslov. This book will be produced in accordance with your order using Print-on-Demand technology. Reproduced in the original author's spelling of the 1874 edition (publishing house "Typography A. A. ...

Portal for the student. Self-training

In a large family

With an unkind stepmother

In the master's house

Dating in the park

Free at last!

In a distant exile

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