In 2014 Croydon Citizen published an article by me on the Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko, who Ukrainians see as a national hero, as it was the year of his birth anniversary. The text is as follows, the only editing has been to delete website links that no longer exist and to add sub-headings. After the text there is a list of postings on the Internet since 2014. In the article I outlined some ideas for a cultural programme based around Shevchenko and other Ukrainians to be part of that Cultural Festival that was being planned. These ideas could be considered in the planning of Borough of Culture 2023/4.
The
Article
A few years before he set up home in Upper
Norwood, the American Negro actor Ira Aldridge toured Russia in 1858 and 1859.
Among those who reacted to his acting with rapture was the Ukrainian Robert
Burns, the poet and artist Taras Shevchenko.
On December 6, 1858, Shevchenko wrote, “The
African actor is here now; he does wonders on the stage. He shows us the
living Shakespeare.” They became good friends spending much time together
over two months, with the daughters of a mutual friend acing as translators.
They sang traditional Ukrainian folk melodies and Negro spirituals
together. Shevchenko also drew and painted him.
One of the daughters wrote: ‘These two individuals
had more in common than just similar traits of character; in his youth one had
been a serf, while the other was a member of a despised race; both experienced
much bitterness in life, and both passionately loved their unfortunate
peoples.’
Demonstration
At Statue 2014
Back in December one of the pro-Europe demonstrations
in Ukraine was at the Shevchenko statue in Lugansk. As the economic and
political situation in the Ukraine becomes more complex and the clashes between
the Government and the protest movement become more fraught, as a result of
Russia’s pressure using the threat of higher gas prices, Ukrainians will be
using this year’s 200th Anniversary of his birth to re-affirm their independent
nationalism.
Universal
Humanist
Although Shevchenko was a nationalist he also believed that a free republican
Ukraine should be friends with Russia, Poland and other Slavic peoples. As Dr Rory Finnin of Cambridge University will be arguing at the British
Library on 17 March the poet ‘should be understood not as Ukraine's national
bard but as a universal humanist whose verse irrevocably changed the political
landscape of modern Europe.’ Through a close reading of selected poems, Finnin
will explain ‘how Shevchenko is best studied
as a Modernist who was generations ahead of his time’.
Shevchemcko
Jubilee
I was reminded about Shevchenko in conversation
with a Ukrainian resident in London who attended my Vauxhall/Nine Elms walk on
13 January. It was back in the 1960s that I became aware of the poet. The
Soviet Progress Publishers volume of his selective works published by the Ukrainian
Shevchenko Jubilee Committee has sat on my bookcase since.
Upbringing
Born into a serf family Taras experienced forced
labour from childhood. His mother died when he was 8 and his father when he was
10. He managed to get elementary education from a sexton in return for heavy
labour. He began to become interested in drawing. When he was 17 his master
Baron Engelhardt apprenticed him in Petersburg to the painter Shirayev. His
friends purchased his freedom in April 1838, the same year as the British
former slave apprentices in the West Indies were finally freed.
Poetry
& Politics
Alongside his artistic studies he began to write
poetry. The struggle of the Ukrainians against their enemies became a major
theme of his poems. He wrote in the language ordinary Ukrainians spoke. From 1844 he joined the secret political Brotherhood
Society of Cyril and Methodius. It wanted the abolition of serfdom, public
education, a federation of Slavic peoples with Russia being one of equals,
and freedom of speech, thought and religion.
Its members were arrested in 1847. He was exiled
and forced into the army. He was forbidden to write and paint, which he
ignored. Arrested again in 1850 he was exiled further east to the Caspian Sea area.
He was finally released from exile as a result of lobbying by his friends, and returned
to Petersburg. In 1859 he was arrested
on charges of blasphemy. He died aged 47
in 1861, his body buried in Ukraine.
European
Interest
Translations of his work and articles about spread across Europe. An
English advocate was William Richard
Morfill (1834 - 1909), who became the first Professor of Russian and the other Slavonic
languages in 1900 at Oxford University.
Ethel
Lillian Voynich & Croydon
In 1911 the Irish author Ethel Lillian Voynich
(1864-1960) published Six Lyrics From the Ruthenian of Taras
Shevchenko. Her novel The Gadfly about
revolutionary activities in Italy was made into a Soviet film released in 1956
with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich. Born Boole relatives lived in Croydon at 8
Friends Rd and then 47 Birdhurst Rise in the 1890s and 1900s, one of whom
Rosemary became a nun and was involved in running the Old Palace School.
Growth
Of Global Interest
Later translations into English of Shevchecko’s
poetry were undertaken by the British based Australian Jack Lindsay, a prolific
author and Communist. Another was Aldridge’s biographer the writer and film
director Herbert Marshall (1906-1991), some of whose translations appeared in
the Soviet volume.
Interest in him spread eastwards to India, China,
Vietnam and Japan, and westwards to Canada and the United States. The Canadian
John Weir edited the Soviet volume. Despite the Cold War the Soviet film Taras
Shevchenko (1951) was
shown in New York in 1952. (www.nytimes.com/1952/07/28/archives/the-screen-tribute-to-soviet-poet.html)
Speaking about him in 1961 the American artist
Rockwell Kent said: ”Why is it that sometimes a poet of one language becomes a
poet of all languages, although it is very difficult to translate poetry from
one language to another, and the native language is one-half of the poetry?”
200th
Anniversary
The 200th Anniversary has the backing
of UNESCO: www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unesco-calls-for-celebration-of-taras-shevchenkos-200th-birthday-233322931.html.
Cambridge University is re-naming the central avenue on the Sidgwick site
‘Taras Shevchenko Way’ for the duration of the bicentennial. See more
at: www.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-makes-way-for-taras-shevchenko#sthash.iiTRM4ZU.dpuf.
We can expect activities in Britain organised by
Ukrainians living and working here, especially the Association of Ukrainians in
Great Britain which calls its Library and Archive after the poet.
Shevchecko
And British Authors
Although developing his own individual style he
was widely read and knew works by Byron, Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Defoe, Richardson,
Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Gibbon and Charles Dickens. He held Robert Burns in
high esteem.
Ideas
For Croydon Festival
Croydon Festival organisers might want to consider
including activities about Shevchenko in their programmes perhaps on the theme
of the cultural contributions of Ukrainians, like Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky,
Gilels, Horowitz, Moiseiwitsch (who settled in Britain), Richter, The Oistrachs,
Babel, Bulgakov, Ehrenburg, and Gogol,
and of those of Ukrainian heritage like ‘Herb’ Alpert and Andy Warhol. Add into the mix Joseph Conrad, the Pole who
settled in Britain and who was born in Ukraine. Just before he died David Lean
was preparing to shoot an adaptation of Conrad’s adventure novel Nostromo. We could have the makings of interesting events of mixed
music and readings.
Further
reading etc:
Images of Shevchenko’s art can be seen at the Toronto
Museum that bears his name.
Demetrius M Corbett, “Taras Shevchenko and Ira
Aldridge: (The Story of Friendship between the Great Ukrainian Poet and the Great
Negro Tragedian),” The Journal of Negro Education 33:2 (Spring
1964) pp. 143-150.
The Booles: www.freewebs.com/boole-family.
Update
March 2015: Ukrainian Museum Talk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Z0nd_z3Qk
March 2015: Shevchenko: a voice for unsung heroines
https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2015/03/shevchenko-a-voice-for-unsung-heroines.html
March 2019: British Ambassador Reads Shevchencko
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xF6xTXXXlY
February 2022: Americans Honour
Ukrainian Poet
https://ge.usembassy.gov/americans-honor-ukrainian-poet-shevchenko
March 2022: Poem In Financial Times
www.ft.com/content/1e227089-e764-4b6d-8610-3075654fca4b
March 2022: Kobzar
Book Of The Week In The Idler
www.idler.co.uk/article/shevchenko
March 2022: The
Creators of ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ Will Bring an Experience Dedicated to Shevchenko
to Six North American Cities
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/immersive-shevchenko-2082159
March 2022: 208th Anniversary of Birth
https://ukrainer.net/taras-shevchenko
See
also:
US National Parks Memorial1964
www.nps.gov/places/000/taras-shevchenko-memorial.htm
Rory Finnin. Nationalism
and the Lyric, Or How Taras Shevchenko Speaks to Compatriots Dead, Living, and
Unborn. The Slavonic and East
European Review. Vol. 89. No. 1 (January 2011). pp. 29-55
www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.89.1.0029
Peter Fedynsky (ed.) The Complete Kobzar. The Poetry of Taras Shevchenko. Glagoslav Publications B.V. 2013
Zinaida Tulub. The Exile. A Novel about Taras Shevchenko. Glagoslav Publications B.V. 2015
