Tuesday 22 March 2022

Taras Shevchenko: The Poet of Ukrainian Freedom

 

Clarence A . Manning  (Translator). Independent. 2020

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