Taras Shevchenko history. Meeting famous artists

Shevchenko (Taras Grigorievich) - famous Ukrainian poet. Born on February 25, 1814 in the village of Morintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, in the family of a serf peasant, 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 married a second time to a widow who had three children. She treated Taras harshly. Until the age of 9, Sh. was in the care of nature, and partly of his older sister Ekaterina, a kind and gentle girl. Soon she got married. In 1825, when Sh. was 12 years old, his father died. From this time on, the difficult, nomadic life of a street child begins, first with a teacher-sexman, then with neighboring painters. At one time Sh. was a sheep shepherd, then served as a driver for the local priest. At the school of the sexton teacher, Sh. learned to read and write, and from the painters he became acquainted with elementary drawing techniques. In his 16th year, in 1829, he became one of the servants of the landowner Engelhardt, first as a cook, then as a Cossack. The passion for painting never left him. The landowner apprenticed him first to a Warsaw painter, then to St. Petersburg, to master Shiryaev as a painter. On holidays, the young man visited the Hermitage, sketched statues in the Summer Garden, where he met his fellow countryman, the artist I.M. Soshenko, 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 Sh.’s life, especially in the matter of freeing him from captivity. Zhukovsky received a lot of help from Countess Yu.E. Baranova, standing close to the courtyard. The first attempt to persuade Engelhardt to release Sh. in the name of humanity was unsuccessful. Bryullov went to negotiate with Engelhardt, but all he got from him was the conviction “that this is the most large pig in Torzhkov's shoes" and asked Soshenko to visit this "amphibian" and agree on the 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 for him; but at times he was overcome by despondency, even despair. Having learned that the matter of his liberation had encountered the stubbornness of the landowner, Sh. came one day to Soshenko in terrible excitement. Cursing his bitter lot, he threatened to repay Engelhardt and in such a mood went home to his dirty attic. Soshenko was greatly worried about his fellow countryman and was expecting great trouble. According to Princess Repnina, Zhukovsky, having learned about terrible condition the spirit of a young man close to suicide, wrote a reassuring note to him on a piece of paper. Sh. kept this note in his pocket, like a shrine, and showed it to the princess in 1848. “Having previously agreed with my landowner,” Sh. said in his autobiography, “Zhukovsky asked Bryullov to paint a portrait of him in order to play him in private lottery. The Great Bryullov immediately agreed, and his portrait was ready. Zhukovsky, with the help of Count Vielgorsky, organized a lottery of 2,500 rubles, and at this price my freedom was purchased, April 22, 1838." As a sign of special respect and deep gratitude to Zhukovsky, Sh. dedicated one of his largest works to him: “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, a small collection of his poems was published under the title “Kobzar”; in 1842, “Haydamaky” was published - his largest work. In 1843, Sh. received the degree of free artist; in the same year, Sh., traveling around 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”, “Topolya”, “Katerina”, “Naimichka”, “Khustochka” - major works of art - were published. St. Petersburg criticism 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 had grown

received a warm welcome from Sh. during his travels in 1845 - 1847. in Chernigov and Kyiv provinces. “Let me be a peasant poet,” Sh. wrote regarding the critics’ reviews, “just a poet; then a mini is more than anything else.” During Sh.’s stay in Kyiv in 1846, his rapprochement with N.I. Kostomarov. In the same year, Sh. entered the Cyril and Methodius Society, which was then being formed in Kyiv, consisting of young people interested in the development of Slavic peoples, in particular the Ukrainian. The participants of this circle, including 10 people, were arrested, accused of forming a political society and suffered various punishments, and Sh. suffered most of all for his illegal poems: he was exiled as a private to the Orenburg region, with a ban on writing and drawing. The Orsk fortress, where Sh. first ended up, was a sad and deserted outback. “It’s rare,” wrote Sh., “one can come across such a characterless area. Flat and flat. The location is sad, monotonous, skinny rivers Ural and Or, naked gray mountains and the endless Kyrgyz steppe...” “All my previous sufferings,” says Sh. . in another letter from 1847, “in comparison with real ones there were children’s tears. Bitter, unbearably bitter.” For Sh., the prohibition to write and draw was very painful; He was especially depressed by the strict prohibition on drawing. Not knowing Gogol personally, Sh. decided to write to him “by right of Little Russian virsheplath,” in the hope of Gogol’s Ukrainian sympathies. “Now, like someone falling into an abyss, I am ready to grab hold of everything - hopelessness is terrible! So terrible that only Christian philosophy can fight it.” Sh. sent Zhukovsky a touching letter asking for only one favor - the right to draw. In this sense, Count Gudovich and Count A. Tolstoy worked for Sh.; but it turned out to be impossible to help Sh. Sh. also addressed the head of the III department, General Dubbelt, with a request, writing that his brush had never sinned and would never sin in a political sense, but nothing helped; the ban on drawing was not lifted until his release. Participation in the 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 especially Lieutenant Butakov, Sh. was allowed to copy views of the Aral coast and local folk types. But this leniency soon became known in St. Petersburg; Obruchev and Butakov were reprimanded, and Sh. was exiled to a new deserted slum, Novopetrovskoye, with a repeated ban on drawing. In exile, Sh. became close friends with some educated exiled Poles - Sierakowski, Zaleski, Zhelikhovsky (Antony Sowa), which helped to strengthen in him the idea of ​​​​"merging brothers of the same tribe." He stayed in Novopetrovsky Sh. from October 17, 1850 to August 2, 1857, i.e., until liberation. The first three years of my stay in the “stinking barracks” were very painful; then various reliefs came, thanks mainly to the kindness of Commandant Uskov and his wife, who loved Sh. very much for his gentle character and affection for their children. Unable to draw, Sh. took up modeling and tried photography, which, however, was very expensive at that time. In Novopetrovsky, Sh. wrote several stories in Russian - “Princess”, “Artist”, “Twins”, containing many autobiographical details (later published by “Kyiv Starina”). Sh.'s release took place in 1857, thanks to the persistent petitions of Count F.P. on his behalf. 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 in freedom he indulged in poetry and art. Difficult years exile, due to the alcoholism that had taken root in Novopetrovsky, led to a rapid weakening of health and talent. An attempt to arrange a family home for him (actress Riunova, peasant woman Kharita and Lukerya) were unsuccessful. While living in St. Petersburg (from March 27, 1858 to July 1859), Sh. was friendly received into the family of the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Count F.P. Tolstoy. Sh.'s life of this time is well known from his "

Diary", described in detail by his biographers of modern times (mainly Konissky). In 1859, Sh. visited his homeland. Then he had the idea of ​​​​buying himself an estate above the Dnieper. A beautiful place was chosen near Kanev. Sh. worked hard for 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. devoted himself to engraving, which he then became very interested in. 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 Osnova, 1861 (March) Sh. has a double meaning, as a writer and as an artist. His stories and stories in Russian are rather weak in artistically. Sh.’s entire literary power lies in his “Kobzar”. In terms of external volume, "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 the unfaded memories of Cossack freedom. There are amazing combinations of influences here: on the one hand, the Ukrainian philosopher Skovoroda and the folk kobzars, on the other, Mitskevich, Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Lermontov. “Kobzar” reflected Kyiv shrines, Zaporozhye steppe life, the idyll of Little Russian peasant life - in general, a historically developed folk mentality, with peculiar shades of beauty, thoughtfulness and sadness. Through its closest source and main tool - folk poetry, Sh. is closely related to 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 is that it is thoroughly imbued with nationality; It is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to determine where Little Russian folk poetry ends and where Sh.’s personal creativity begins. Closer study reveals literary sources that Sh. used either successfully or unsuccessfully. Such a source was the poetry of Mickiewicz (see the article by Mr. Kolessa in “Notes of the Shevchenko Partnership”), and partly by N. Markevich (see the article by Mr. Studinsky in the 24th issue 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 beyond the Ukrainian layers. The influence of “The Robber Brothers” on Vernak, the influence of “Egyptian Nights”, “The Flying Ridge of Clouds is Thinning” are noticeable. There is another obstacle to scientific analysis Sh. - artistic integrity, simplicity and sincerity of his poems. His poems are difficult to analyze coldly and dryly. To determine Sh.’s views on the tasks and goals of poetic creativity, you need to pay attention not only to those confessions that are found in “My Orysa, Nivo”, “I don’t yell at God”, “Behind my thoughts”; It is also necessary to include those places where they talk about happiness, as the poet understands it, about glory. Particularly important in the sense of poetic confessions are all those places where they talk about the kobzar, the prophet and about thoughts as beloved children. In most cases, the poet means himself by kobzar; therefore, he introduced a lot of lyrical feeling into all the sketches of the kobzar. Historical image folk singer was to the poet's liking, in life and moral character of which there really was a lot of kobzar. Sh. spoke about the kobzar very often; A prophet is found comparatively less frequently. Closely related to the poems about the prophet is a small but powerful poem about the apostle of truth. In the depiction of the prophet, especially in the poem “Nearly Righteous Children,” the influence of Lermontov is noticeable. The nationality of Sh., like that of other outstanding poets, is composed of two related elements - external nationality, borrowings, imitations, and internal nationality, mentally hereditary. Defining external, borrowed elements is not difficult; enough for this

get acquainted with ethnography and find direct sources in folk tales, beliefs, songs, rituals. Determining internal psychological folk elements is very difficult and completely impossible. Sh. has both those and other elements. Sh.'s soul is so saturated with nationality that any, even foreign, borrowed motif receives a Ukrainian national coloring in his poetry. External, borrowed and more or less reworked folk poetic motifs include: 1) Little Russian folk songs, sometimes cited in their entirety, sometimes in abbreviation or alteration, sometimes only mentioned. So, in “Perebend” Sh. mentions famous thoughts and songs - about Chaly, Gorlytsya, Grytsya, Serbyn, Shinkarka, about the poplar at the edge of the road, about the ruin of Sicha, “vesnyanka”, “at the guy”. The song "Pugach" is mentioned as a Chumatsky song in "Kateryn", "Petrus" and "Gryts" - in "Chernyts Maryana"; “Oh, no noise, puddle” is mentioned twice - in “Perebend” and “Before Osnovyanenka”. In "Haydamaky" and in "Slave" there is a thought about a storm on the Black Sea, in a slight alteration. Wedding songs were included in "Haydamaki". Throughout “Kobzar” there are echoes, imitations and adaptations of folk lyrical songs. 2) Legends, traditions, fairy tales and proverbs are less common compared to songs. The beginning of the poem “At God’s door lay a falcon” is taken from the legends about the walk of Christ. The story is taken from legends that “priests once did not walk, but rode on people.” The proverb “jump the enemy, yak pan is the same” - in “Perebend”. Several sayings nearby in "Katerina". A lot of folk proverbs and sayings are scattered in "Haydamaky". 3) Folk beliefs and customs are found in large numbers. These are the beliefs about dream grass, many wedding customs - exchanging bread, donating 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 with a scythe in his hands, the personification of the plague. Particularly common folk images shares and sub-shares. 5) Finally, in “Kobzar” there are many borrowed folk-poetic comparisons and symbols, for example, the declination of the sycamore - woe is the wood, the harvest - a battle (as in “The Word and Igor’s Campaign” and in the Dumas), the overgrowth of the roads - a symbol of the absence of a dear one, viburnum - girl. The 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. The nationality of Sh. is determined, further, by his worldview, his favorite points of view on external nature and on society, and in relation to society, the historical element - his 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, like a groom looking at the earth in the spring. The moon is round, pale-faced, walking across the sky, looking at the “endless sea” or “stepping out with my sister to the dawn.” All these images breathe an artistic and mythical worldview, reminiscent of ancient poetic ideas about the marital relationships of heavenly bodies. Sh.'s wind appears in the form of a powerful creature taking part in the life of Ukraine: either he quietly talks with the sedge at night, or walks along the wide steppe and talks with mounds, or starts a violent speech with the sea itself. One of the most important and fundamental motifs of Sh.’s poetry is the Dnieper. Historical memories and love for the homeland were associated with the Dnieper in the poet’s mind. In "Kobzar" the Dnieper is a symbol and sign of everything characteristically Little Russian, like Vater Rhein in German poetry or the Volga in Great Russian songs and legends. “There is no other Dnieper,” Sh. said in a message to his dead, living and unborn fellow countrymen. The poet associated the ideal of a happy people's life, quiet and contented, with the Dnieper. The Dnieper is wide, arcing, strong, like the sea; all rivers flow into it, and it carries all their waters to the sea; by the sea he learns about the Cossack mountain; he roars, groans, speaks quietly, gives answers; Thoughts, glory, and share come from across the Dnieper. There are rapids, mounds, a rural church on a steep bank; a number of historical memories are concentrated here

mentions, because the Dnieper is “old”. Another very common motif in Sh.’s poetry is Ukraine, which is mentioned sometimes in passing, but always affectionately, sometimes with an outline either natural-physical or historical. The description of the nature of Ukraine includes alternating fields and forests, forests, small gardens, and wide steppes. From the fundamental psychological love for the homeland came all the sympathetic descriptions of the Little Russian flora and fauna - poplar, tumbleweed, lily, queen flower, rostrum, periwinkle and especially viburnum and nightingale. The rapprochement of the nightingale with the viburnum in the poem “On the Victory Day in Memory of Kotlyarevsky” is built on their rapprochement in folk songs. Historical motifs are very diverse: hetmanate, Cossacks, Zaporozhye weapons, captives, pictures of sad desolation, historical roads, Cossack graves, oppression by the Uniates, historical areas - Chigirin, Trakhtemirov, historical figures - Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Doroshenko, Semyon Paliy, Pidkova, Gamalia, Gonta, Zaliznyak, Golovaty, Dmitry Rostovsky. At the border between history and modernity there is a motif about the Chumaks. During Sh., plagues were 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, plagues are 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. Soldatchina in Sh. is closely intertwined with panshchina and now, in his depiction, largely appears to be an archaic phenomenon : lords still enlist as soldiers, the service is long; comparatively, the most complete and sympathetic image of a soldier is in “Empt” and in “Well, I thought, words.” Sh.'s poetry is very rich in religious and moral motives. A warm religious feeling and fear of God permeate the entire “Kobzar”. In a message to his living and unborn fellow countrymen, the pious poet arms himself against atheism and explains unbelief by the one-sided influence of German science. As a very religious person, Sh. speaks in warm terms about the power of prayer, about the Kyiv shrines, about the miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, about the praying prayer, and 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 from time to time, under the influence of the difficult conditions of his personal life and the life of his homeland, making their way into the poetry of Sh. Closely connected with the basic religious and moral mood of the poet are motifs about wealth and poverty, about the meaning of work . The poet is embarrassed by the property inequality of people, their need, and is also embarrassed by the fact that wealth does not ensure happiness. His principle is “learn from others and don’t fight your own.” The poet, however, was completely alien to the idea of ​​seeking truth and serving it regardless of any traditions. Sh. displays in some places a narrow national-applied understanding of science, in others an identification of science with morality and unsuccessful irony at people who are “literate and spiritual.” The political motives of Sh.'s poetry, now mostly outdated, are known from foreign editions of "Kobzar" (the best edition of Ogonovsky). Many pages are devoted to his Slavophilism in Kobzar. This also includes a poem “to the Slavs”, published in the October book of “Kyiv Antiquity” of 1897. Ethnographic motifs are scattered here and there - about Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Kirghiz. Special groups include both autobiographical motives, for example, a valuable message in this regard to Kozachkovsky, and motives about individual writers, for example, about Skovoroda, Kotlyarevsky, Safarik, Marko-Vovchka. All of the above motives of Sh.’s poetry, with the exception of two or three (Dnieper, Ukraine, Cossacks), recede before the main motives of family and kinship. Family is the real essence of the whole "Kobzar"; and since the basis of the family is a woman and children, they fill everything best works poet. P.I. Zhitetsky, in “Thoughts about Little Russian Thoughts,” says that in the works of Little Russian

In poetry, both school and folk, folk ethics comes down mainly to family morality, based on a sense of kinship; in folk poetry, truth is called the mother of truth, and mother is called the truth of virna, and in the image of the mother a great moral force is created, like the power of love. All these judgments are quite applicable to Sh.’s poetry, which, in terms of the development of family and kinship ideals, is directly adjacent to folk poetry. The arena for the development of family and kinship principles - the village - is depicted very sympathetically. As in folk poetry, Sh. usually rhymes village with the word cheerfully. The poet’s ideal was that “the desert would be filled with the joy of the village.” There are “poor villages” and “the village somehow burned down” - all from the lordship. The hut, Sh’s favorite motif, is increasingly mentioned and in some places more fully described. For the most part, the hut is only mentioned, usually with the addition of the epithet “white”: “The bilenki huts are mov dits in beaten shirts,” “a khatyna, otherwise a maiden, stands on a prygori.” In unfortunate families, the house is “empty rotting,” the chambers are unoiled, and the bastard is unwashed. Best descriptions huts - in the poem "Khatyna" and "Vechir". The comparisons and images are unique: a burnt hut is a weary heart, a hut is Slavic, a hut is a grave. Youth and young summers are depicted in the spirit of folk literature, in places as imitation and repetition. The maiden appears in many poems; most often a description of girlish beauty, love, wonder. The poet's attitude towards the girl is deeply humane. One of Sh.’s best poems in this regard, “And We Will Become a Little Dog,” was written under the influence of Lermontov’s famous “Prayer.” With a feeling of sincere grief, the poet depicts the girl’s fall. “Chernitsya Maryana” and “Nazar Stodolya” describe 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 play a particularly prominent role 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 poet’s strong personal impressions from his difficult childhood and his love for children, confirmed, in addition to “Kobzar”, by many biographical data, especially the characteristic memories of Mrs. Krapivina. Illegitimate children, or baistruks, are found on many pages of Kobzar, like a dark spot of serf life. Family relationships are expressed in the depiction of the mother in general, the relationship between mother and son, and 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 the same woman. One of Sh.’s most favorite motifs is the cover. Sh. had a predecessor who dealt with this motive - G.F. Kvitka. In folk poetry, cover is rarely found, only here and there in songs, and then mostly in passing and descriptively. Sh. deserves the merit of a thorough study of the social conditions that gave rise to coverings under serfdom, and the merit of depicting them not only artistic, but also humanely. The poet did not spare dark colors when describing the miserable share of the covering, in some places not without major exaggerations. In fact, the “covering” came off easier for the girl, with significant leniency of public opinion (about coverings as an everyday phenomenon, see Fon-Nos’s note in “Kyiv Antiquity”, 1882, III, 427 - 429). Sh.'s mercenaries also enjoyed great sympathy. A whole poem, the best work of Sh. , is dedicated to the hired woman and received this 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 most prominent Slavic humanitarian poets. While folk poetry ignores old age, Sh. treats old men and women - poor widows - with love. This is a nice image of a grandfather reminiscing about his youth, a 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 “Slave

"in the form of a haymaker 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 very small numbers included in exhibitions. Most of Sh.'s drawings are kept in Chernigov in the Taranovsky Museum. Very little has been published and in fragmentary form. There are few studies and descriptions (Shugurova, Rusova, Gorlenka, Kuzmina, Grinchenko); the studies are brief and relate to specific issues; as recently as December 1900, Mr. Kuzmin complained, not unreasonably, that about Sh., as an artist, “almost nothing It was said." Opinions about Sh., as a draftsman, differ significantly. Thus, Mr. Kuzmin says that “Shevchenko can rightfully be attributed the glory of perhaps the first Russian etcher in the modern meaning of the word." Even earlier, Soshenko saw in Sh. a painter of no last quality. Mr. Rusov looks differently (in "Kyiv Antiquity", 1894). In his opinion, Sh. in painting was only “a photographer of the surrounding nature, to which his heart was not in, and in creating the genre he did not go beyond student tests, jokes, sketches, in which, with all the desire to find some artistic idea , we are not able to catch it, the composition of the drawings is so uncertain.” Both Kuzmin and Rusov recognize in Sh.’s painting the inconsistency of its poetic subjects, but while Mr. Rusov sees a drawback in this, Mr. Kuzmin, on the contrary, sees an advantage. To determine the significance of Sh. as a painter and engraver, it is necessary to evaluate his works in their entirety and from different historical points of view, without adjusting them to one or another favorite requirement. Sh. deserves study as a force that reflected the mood of the era, as a student of certain artistic movements. Anyone who wishes to become thoroughly acquainted with Bryullov’s school and find out his influence will find some of the answer in Sh’s drawings and paintings. Anyone who wishes to study Rembrandt’s influence in Russia cannot ignore Sh. He treated art with deep sincerity; it gave him comfort in the bitter moments of his life. Sh.'s drawings are of considerable importance for his biography. There are drawings taken directly from the everyday life surrounding the poet, with chronological dates. Distributed by year (which has already been done in part by Mr. Grinchank in volume 2 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 Little Russian ancient monuments in Pereyaslavl, Subbotov, Gustyn, Pochaev, Verbki, Poltava. Here are drawings of Kotlyarevsky's house, the ruins of the Gustynsky monastery before correction, the burial place of Kurbsky, etc. Currently, many genre drawings have historical value. Such, for example, is the figure "B" old times"(in the collection of S.S. Botkin in St. Petersburg). The drawing depicts punishment with spitzrutens, a sad “green street”. The person sentenced to punishment has thrown off his shirt; heavy iron shackles that have been removed lie at his feet. A long row of his involuntary executioners stretches in front of him ". Nearby there is a bucket, probably with water. In the distance on the mountain there is the outline of a fortress. This is a true page from the history of Russian life. Once, at the end of his life, remembering his soldier life, Sh. took this drawing out of the album and gave his student Sukhanov such an explanation of it that he was moved to tears, and Sh. hastened to console him, saying that this brutal torture had come to an end. The drawing “Comrades”, which was common in its time at the time, has historical significance, depicting a prison cell with two shackled prisoners, and an iron chain goes from the hand of one prisoner to the foot of another - provost

similar illustration to the book by A.F. Horses about Dr. Haase. The entire prison environment is depicted characteristically. There is another side to Sh.’s drawings, a very interesting one - ethnographic. If you analyze Sh.’s numerous drawings for folklore purposes, you will end up with a valuable ethnographic collection. Thus, to get acquainted with the buildings, an ancient building in a Ukrainian village, a komor in Potok, or a father’s hut may be useful; to get acquainted with the costumes - a fair, a girl examining a towel, a woman in a namitka leaving a hut, a “kolo of porridge” (four peasants eating porridge from a cauldron under a willow tree), a “witch doctor” in a costume typical of the peasants of the Kyiv province, “elder " V interesting point giving towels by the bride and much more. For the Little Russian genre of the old time, interesting are the drawings of Chumaks on the road among the burial mounds, a bandura player, the queen's grandfather, a beekeeper, a volost court ("court council") with the caption: "the otaman is gathering a crowd to the village, koli scho trapyttsa extraordinary , to the Rada and the Court. The community, having rejoiced and dished out good things, disperses, drinking according to the charci, calling "and others. 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 eke out his life: poor nature, sand dunes, rocky river banks, sparse bushes, groups of soldiers and Tatars with camels, Mohammedan cemeteries. Drawings of this kind, preserved in significant quantities and mostly beautifully executed, can serve as a good illustration of some of Sh.’s sorrowful poems from the first painful years of his exile. There are very few paintings by Sh. in oil paints; Sh. only occasionally resorted to a brush. Judging by Mr. Grinchenko's detailed catalogue, in Tarnovsky's rich collection 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 “Kyiv Antiquity” of 1888 points to three more oil paintings by Sh. - 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 and perfectly preserved, but the style is purely academic. Christ is depicted from the waist up, in profile, with his gaze turned to heaven. In the Museum of Arts and Antiquities of the Kharkov University there is a small painting by Sh., painted on canvas with oil paints, with the inscription in white paint: “Ta mute girshe so no one, like a young burlatsi.” The painting shows a half-length depiction of an elderly Little Russian, with a small mustache, no beard and sideburns. The smile on the face does not correspond to the inscription. The background of the picture is almost completely black. The influence of Rembrandt, whom Sh. fell in love with early on, is noticeable. According to V.V. Tarnovsky, Sh. at the Academy was called the Russian Rembrandt, according to the then existing custom of giving the most gifted students the names of their favorite artist-models, with whose style the works of these students were most similar. In Sh.'s etchings characteristic features of the works of the great Dutchman are revealed: 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, every smallest curl, are organically necessary, either as a characteristic detail of the depicted object, or to enhance purely light effect. IN Lately 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. Two engravings by Sh. from 1844 were exhibited in Kharkov - “The Court 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 “Kyiv Antiquities” in 1888) that all of Sh.’s drawings and paintings be reproduced and published in the form of a collection, which would be very useful

both for the history of Russian art and for the biography of Sh. The literature about Sh. is very large and very scattered. Everything published before 1884 is indicated in the "Indicator of the New Ukrainian literature"Komarov (1883) and in "Essays on the history of Ukrainian literature of the 19th century century" by Professor Petrov, 1884. Many memoirs have been published about Sh. (Kostomarov, Chuzhbinsky, Chaly, Bang, Turgenev, etc.), many biographies (the best are M.K. Chaly, 1882, and A.Ya. Konissky , 1898), many popular brochures (the best are Maslov and Vetrinsky), many critical analyzes of individual works (for example, Franco about “Perebend”, Kokorudzy about “The Message”). Every year the February book of “Kiev Antiquity” brings research and materials about Sh., sometimes new and interesting. A scientific society ("Tovarishtvo") named after Sh. has been working in Lvov for many years, in whose publications there are valuable studies about Sh., for example, Mr. Kolessa's study on the influence of Mickiewicz on Sh. And in other Galician -Russian periodicals There are many articles scattered about Sh., sometimes original in point of view, for example, Studinsky’s article about Sh.’s relationship to N. Markevich in “Zora” in 1896. Both historical and journalistic publications give space to articles about Sh.; Thus, in the "Bulletin of Europe" Jung's memoirs were published, in "Russian Antiquity" - letters from Zhukovsky to Countess Baranova regarding the ransom of Sh. from captivity, in "Week" 1874 (No. 37) - an article about Sh., in addition to lectures by 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. Various provincial newspapers and literary collections contain articles about Sh., sometimes not without interest, for example, Konissky’s article about the sea in Sh’s poems, in No. 30 of the discontinued Odessa edition “By Sea and Land” in 1895, information about folk legends or myths about Sh. in “Kharkovskie Vedomosti” 1894, No. 62, etc. Complete editions of “Kobzar” are foreign (the best is Lviv, in 2 volumes, edited by Ogonovsky). In Russia, all editions of "Kobzar" are abridged, omitting harsh political poems. The history of publications of "Kobzar" indicates its extremely rapid spread in modern times, depending on the development of education. The first edition (Martos) was published in 1840. Four years later, the 2nd edition of “Kobzar” appeared, which already included “Haydamaky”. The third edition was published in 1860, after the poet returned from exile. It appeared thanks to financial support from the famous sugar manufacturer of the Kyiv province, Platon Simirenko. This publication encountered very strong obstacles from censorship in St. Petersburg and only thanks to the intercession of the Minister of Public Education Kovalevsky saw the light of day. In 1867, “Chigirinsky torbanist - singer” (4th edition of “Kobzar”) appears. In the same year, Kozhanchikov published the works of Sh., in two volumes containing 184 plays. Two years later, the 6th edition of Sh. was published. Since then, for 14 years (1869 - 1883), Sh.'s poems were not published in Russia, but in a very short time (1876 - 1881) they went through four editions in Prague and Lvov. The 7th edition (1884) of Sh.'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 Sh.'s individual works, Naimichka was published in large quantities (50 thousand copies) (Kharkov, 1892).

Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko (February 25 (March 9), 1814, village of Morintsy, Kiev province (now Cherkasy region) - February 26 (March 10), 1861, St. Petersburg) - Ukrainian poet, prose writer, artist, ethnographer. Academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1860).
Shevchenko's literary heritage, in which poetry plays a central role, in particular the collection "Kobzar", is considered the basis of modern Ukrainian literature and, in many respects, the literary Ukrainian language.
Most of Shevchenko’s prose (stories, diary, many letters), as well as some poems, are written in Russian, and therefore some researchers classify Shevchenko’s work, in addition to Ukrainian, as Russian literature.

Born in the village of Morintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, in the large family of Grigory Ivanovich Shevchenko, a serf peasant of the landowner P.V. Engelhardt.
Two years later, Taras’s parents moved to the village of Kirilovka, where he spent his childhood. His mother died in 1823; in the same year, the father married a second time to a widow who had three children. She treated Taras harshly. Until the age of 9, Taras was in the care of his older sister Ekaterina, a kind and gentle girl. Soon she got married. In 1825, when Shevchenko was in his 12th year, his father died. From that time on, the difficult nomadic life of a homeless child began: first he served with a sexton-teacher, then in the surrounding villages with sexton-painters (“bogomazov”, that is, icon painters). At one time, Shevchenko tended sheep, then served as a driver for a local priest. At the school of the sexton-teacher, Shevchenko learned to read and write, and from the painters he became acquainted with elementary drawing techniques. In the sixteenth year of his life, in 1829, he became one of the servants of the landowner Engelhardt, first as a cook, then as a “Cossack” servant. The passion for painting never left him.

Noticing Taras's abilities, during his stay in Vilna, Engelhardt sent Shevchenko to study with portrait painter Jan Rustem, a teacher at Vilna University. Shevchenko stayed in Vilna for about a year and a half, and when he moved to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1831, Engelhardt, intending to make his serf a home painter, sent him in 1832 to study with “various painting craftsman guild master” V. Shiryaev.

In 1836, while sketching statues in the Summer Garden, Shevchenko met his fellow countryman, artist I. M. Soshenko, who, after consulting with the Ukrainian writer E. Grebenka, introduced Taras to the conference secretary of the Academy of Arts V. I. Grigorovich, artists A. Venetsianov and K. Bryullov, poet V. Zhukovsky. Sympathy for the young man and recognition of the talent of the Little Russian serf by prominent figures of Russian culture played a decisive role in the redemption of him from captivity. It was not immediately possible to persuade Engelhardt: the appeal to humanism was not successful. The personal petition of the famous academician of painting Karl Bryullov only confirmed the landowner in his desire not to sell things short. Bryullov told his friends “that this is the largest pig in Torzhkov’s shoes” and asked Soshenko to visit this “amphibian” and agree on the ransom price. Soshenko entrusted this difficult task to Professor Venetsianov, as a person accepted at the imperial court, but even the authority of the court artist did not help the matter.

The care of the best representatives of Russian art and literature for him touched and encouraged Shevchenko, but the protracted negotiations with his owner plunged Taras into despondency. Having learned about another refusal, Shevchenko came to Soshenko in a desperate mood. Cursing fate, he threatened to take revenge on the landowner and left in this state. Soshenko became alarmed and, wanting to avoid big trouble, invited his friends to act without delay. It was decided to offer Engelhardt an unprecedented amount for the ransom of a serf. In April 1838, a lottery was held in St. Petersburg at the Anichkov Palace, in which the prize was Bryullov’s painting “V. A. Zhukovsky." The proceeds from the lottery went to ransom the serf Shevchenko.
Shevchenko wrote in his autobiography:
Having previously agreed with my landowner, Zhukovsky asked Bryullov to paint a portrait of him in order to play it in a private lottery. The Great Bryullov immediately agreed, and his portrait was ready. Zhukovsky, with the help of Count Vielgorsky, organized a lottery of 2,500 rubles, and at this price my freedom was purchased on April 22, 1838.
As a sign of special respect and deep gratitude to Zhukovsky, Shevchenko dedicated to him one of his largest works - the poem “Katerina”. In the same year, Taras Shevchenko entered the Academy of Arts, where he became a student and friend of Bryullov. In the book “History of the Romanov Dynasty” Maria Evgenieva writes that T. G. Shevchenko bought the painting, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna.
1840s

The years 1840-1846 were the best in Shevchenko’s life. During this period his poetic talent flourished. In 1840, a small collection of his poems was published under the title “Kobzar”; in 1842, “Haydamaki” was published - his largest poetic work. In 1843, Shevchenko received the degree of free artist; in the same year, while traveling around Ukraine, he met Princess V.N. Repnina, a kind and intelligent woman who later, during Shevchenko’s exile, experienced the warmest feelings for him. In the first half of the 1840s, “Perebendya”, “Topolya”, “Katerina”, “Naimichka”, “Khustochka” - major poetic works of art - were published.
St. Petersburg criticism and even Belinsky did not understand and condemned the Ukrainian national literature in general, Shevchenko - in particular, seeing narrow provincialism in his poetry; but Ukraine quickly appreciated Shevchenko, which was reflected in the warm welcome of Shevchenko during his travels in 1845-1847. in the Chernigov and Kyiv provinces. Regarding the criticism, Shevchenko wrote:
“Let the peasant sing, or just sing; then I don’t need anything more. »

In 1842, “Katerina” was painted - the only surviving oil painting from the academic period. The painting was created on the theme of the artist’s poem of the same name. Shevchenko strove for the picture to be clear and understandable and to inspire sympathy. He was one of the first in the art of classicism to depict a pregnant woman, generalizing the image of his heroine to the level of a certain symbol that speaks of the metahistorical fate of an entire nation. Although Shevchenko has not yet moved away from academicism in the construction of composition, depiction human figures and landscape in this work, the ideological orientation of the painting makes it a real milestone in the development of critical realism in Ukrainian art.
Shevchenko for several months 1845-1846. worked as a staff artist for archaeological research at the Kyiv Archaeographic Commission at Kiev University, which subsequently, in 1939, received his name.
During Shevchenko’s stay in Kyiv (1846), he became close to N.I. Kostomarov. In the same year, Shevchenko joined the Cyril and Methodius Society, which was then formed in Kyiv, consisting of young people interested in the development of Slavic peoples, in particular the Ukrainian. The participants of this circle, including 10 people, were arrested, accused of creating a political organization and suffered various punishments, with Shevchenko receiving the most for his poem “Dream”. A satire on the empress, a mockery of her physical disabilities - thinness and a nervous tic that appeared after the Decembrist uprising (from nervous experiences and fear for her own life and the lives of her children, the empress suffered a nervous breakdown) played a very regrettable role in the fate of Taras. The Emperor personally read the poem "The Dream" provided to him by the Third Section. As Belinsky wrote, “reading the lampoon against himself, the sovereign laughed, and probably that would have been the end of the matter, and the fool would not have suffered just because he was stupid. But when the Emperor read another libel, he became very angry.” “Let’s say he had reasons to be dissatisfied with me and hate me,” Nikolai noted, “but why?”
By the decision of the Third Department, approved personally by the Emperor, on May 30, 1847, 33-year-old Shevchenko Taras Grigorievich was assigned to military service as a private in the Separate Orenburg Corps, located in the Orenburg region (the territory of the modern Orenburg region of Russia and the Mangistau region of Kazakhstan), “under the strictest supervision by the authorities” with a ban on writing and drawing.
Stay in the Orenburg region

The Orsk fortress, where the recruit Shevchenko first ended up, was a deserted outback. “It’s rare,” Shevchenko wrote, “one can encounter such a characterless area. Flat and flat. The location is sad, monotonous, skinny rivers Ural and Or, naked gray mountains and the endless Kyrgyz steppe...” “All my previous sufferings,” says Shevchenko in another letter from 1847, “were childish tears in comparison with the present ones. It’s bitter, unbearably bitter.” For Shevchenko, the ban on writing and drawing was very painful; He was especially depressed by the severe ban on drawing. Not knowing Gogol personally, Shevchenko decided to write to him “by right of the Little Russian virshes,” in the hope of Gogol’s Ukrainian sympathies. “Now, like someone falling into an abyss, I am ready to grab hold of everything - the hopelessness is terrible! So terrible that Christian philosophy alone can combat it.” Shevchenko sent Zhukovsky a touching letter asking for only one favor - the right to paint. In this sense, Count Gudovich and Count A. Tolstoy worked for Shevchenko; but it turned out to be impossible to help Shevchenko. Shevchenko also made a request to the head of the III department, General Dubelt, writing that his brush had never sinned and would never sin in a political sense, but nothing helped.
The ban on drawing was not lifted until the very end of the service. In 1848 - 1849, his participation in an expedition to study the Aral Sea gave him some consolation. Thanks to the humane attitude of General Obruchev and especially Lieutenant Butakov towards the soldier, Shevchenko was instructed to sketch views of the Aral coast and local folk types for the expedition report. However, this violation became known in St. Petersburg; Obruchev and Butakov were reprimanded, and Shevchenko was sent to a new desert slum - the military fortification of Novopetrovskoye - with a repeated ban on painting.

He was in Novopetrovsky from October 17, 1850 to August 2, 1857, that is, until the end of his service. The first three years of his stay in the “stinking barracks” were painful for him; then various reliefs came, thanks mainly to the kindness of Commandant Uskov and his wife, who fell in love with Shevchenko for his gentle character and affection for their children. Unable to draw, Shevchenko took up sculpting and tried photography, which, however, was very expensive at that time. In Novopetrovskoe, Shevchenko wrote several stories in Russian - “Princess”, “Artist”, “Twins”, containing many autobiographical details (later published by “Kyiv Antiquity”).
During his service, Shevchenko became close friends with some educated exiled Poles: Z. Sierakowski, B. Zalesski, E. Zhelikhovsky (Antony Sowa), which helped to strengthen in him the idea of ​​“merging brothers of the same tribe.”
Petersburg period
Shevchenko's release took place in 1857 thanks to persistent petitions for him by the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Count F. P. Tolstoy and his wife, Countess A. I. Tolstoy. With long stops in Astrakhan and Nizhny Novgorod, Shevchenko returned along the Volga to St. Petersburg and here, in freedom, he became completely interested in poetry and art. Attempts to establish a family home by marrying actress Piunova and peasant servants Kharita and Lukerya were unsuccessful. Living in St. Petersburg (from March 27, 1858 to June 1859), Shevchenko was friendly received in the family of Count F. P. Tolstoy. Shevchenko’s life of this time is well known from his “Diary” (from June 12, 1857 to July 13, 1858 Shevchenko led Personal diary in Russian).
Almost all of his time, free from numerous literary and artistic acquaintances, dinner parties and evenings, Shevchenko devoted to engraving.

In 1859, Shevchenko visited Ukraine.
In April 1859, Shevchenko, presenting some of his engravings to the discretion of the Council of the Academy of Arts, asked to be awarded the title of academician or to set a program for receiving this title. On April 16, the Council decided to recognize him “appointed as an academician and set a program for the title of academician in copper engraving.” September 2, 1860, along with the painters A. Beideman, Iv. Bornikov, V. Pukirev and others, he was awarded the degree of academician in engraving “in respect of art and knowledge of the arts.”
Shortly before his death, Shevchenko took up the task of compiling school textbooks for the people in Ukrainian.
He died in St. Petersburg on February 26 (March 10), 1861 from dropsy, caused, according to the historian N.I. Kostomarov, who saw him drinking, but only once drunk, “immoderate consumption of hot drinks.”
He was buried first at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery in St. Petersburg, and after 58 days the coffin with the ashes of T. G. Shevchenko, in accordance with his Will, was transported to Ukraine and buried on Chernechya Mountain near Kanev.
The funeral speeches were published in Kostomarov’s Osnova for March 1861.

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich

(Shevchenko-Grushevsky) - famous Ukrainian poet; born on February 25, 1814, in the village of Morintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, into the serf peasant family of the landowner Vasily Engelhardt. The Grushevsky family, which began to be called first Shevchenki-Grushevsky, then simply Shevchenki, 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 from the village of Morinets, Akim Boyk, moved to Morintsy and settled in the estate acquired for him by his father-in-law; soon, however, the Shevchenkos moved back to Kirillovka, where Taras Grigorievich spent his childhood. The Shevchenko family was large and poor, and Taras had to become acquainted with poverty early on. Until the age of 9, Taras lived, however, tolerably. He was left to his own devices and partly to the care of his older sister Catherine. About nine years old, Taras experienced significant changes in his family situation: his beloved sister Ekaterina married in another village, and soon his mother died. Taras's father, left a widower with a large family, married again in order to have a mistress in the house. Taras Grigorievich's stepmother was a widow who had three children of her own and had a very grumpy disposition. There was eternal enmity and fights between the children of the stepmother and father. The stepmother tortured her husband's children based on the slander of her children; So, one day, at the age of about 11 years, Taras Grigorievich was suspected of stealing 45 kopecks, hid in the bushes for 4 days and, finally found by his stepmother’s children, was severely beaten and locked in a barn. Subsequently, it turned out that the money was stolen by the stepmother’s son, Stepanko. 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 has not been established exactly. It is believed that this was a parochial school, where the removed priest Gubsky taught. In his 12th year, Taras Grigorievich also lost his father, who died on March 21, 1825. After this, Shevchenko’s situation at home became even more difficult. To get away from domestic troubles, and also to satisfy his desire to study, T. G. entered school again, where it was no longer Gubsky who taught, but two sextons. There was no one to pay for T.G., and he fell into complete bondage to one of the sextons, for whom he had to work for the right to study. Shevchenko earned his own food by reading the psalter over the dead, but even this meager income went almost entirely to the benefit of the sexton. Taras Grigorievich had to be severely hungry and cold at this time, and boots and a hat were an unattainable luxury for him. Shevchenko also had to endure a lot from the sexton, who was an ardent admirer of the rod and three-piece and beat his students, and especially Taras, for whom there was no one to stand up, mercilessly. The sexton drove the boy to such embitterment that one day, finding his teacher dead drunk, Shevchenko tied him hand and foot and flogged him himself. After this, Taras could only flee, which he did, leaving at night for the town of Lysyanka. In Lysyanka and neighboring villages there were many icon painters, among whom were clergy. Shevchenko, who felt a passion for painting from an early age, entered Lysyanka as a student of 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 surrounding area; 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 became a shepherd of a 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 devote himself entirely to petty interests made him unsuitable for agricultural work. In the end, he turned out to be a “chaser” boy for the priest of the village. Kirillovka, Grigory Koshitsa. Here the boy also turned out to be incapable and lazy. Shevchenko left Koshitsa, with whom he did not stay long, and again tried to apprentice with a painter in the village of Khlipnovka. This painter recognized Shevchenko's abilities, but refused to accept him without the landowner's written permission. Having gone to the estate manager for this permission, Shevchenko, as a lively boy, attracted the attention of the manager; The latter appreciated the talented teenager, and Shevchenko was taken into the yard boys, and soon he was made an apprentice cook. He did not show talent in studying the art of cooking, and in the end the manager Dmitrenko sent him to the owner’s son, Pavel Engelhardt, whose “staff” he was intended to join, with certification that Shevchenko was capable of painting, and with a proposal to make him a “room painter ". Young Engelhardt made Shevchenko an indoor Cossack, and Taras Grigorievich had to spend whole days in the hallway, waiting for orders to bring 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 room. Once, carried away by sketching the portrait of Ataman Platov, he did not notice the appearance of the owner while doing this work, who, angry that Shevchenko did not hear his appearance, sent him to the stable. Shevchenko’s passion for painting did not weaken after this incident, and in the end, the landowner, convinced that he would not make an intelligent Cossack and lackey, decided to apprentice him to a painter in Warsaw. Six months later, the painter informed the landowner about the young man’s outstanding abilities and advised him to send him to the portrait artist Lampi. Engelhardt realized the benefits of having his own portrait painter and followed the painter’s advice. The Polish uprising being prepared forced the prudent Engelhardt, who did not want to become hostile to any of the parties (Engelhardt was Orthodox by religion, a colonel in the Russian service, but a Pole by language), to leave for St. Petersburg. Shevchenko was to follow him to St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg, Shevchenko again found himself in the difficult position of a Cossack under Engelhardt, which was, of course, much more difficult after working with Lampi. He began to ask to study painting again. Engelhardt again gave it 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 living situation was terrible. Shevchenko had to live with Shiryaev for several years in complete bondage. The passion for art, however, did not fade away even in this unfavorable environment. Chance brought him together with fellow artist Sotenko, who drew attention to the talented young man. Sotenko introduced Shevchenko to Bryullov, Venetsianov, Zhukovsky, and Grebenka. The fate of the serf painter interested them; Shevchenko took part, and a turn for the better began in his life. Shevchenko's friends took care of some of his education and began to prepare for 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. 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 drawn in a lottery. In April 1838, Shevchenko finally received 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 about his poems. His biographers, however, do not find out when he began writing poetry. The earliest mention of Shevchenko's poetry is the mention of Sotenok, who is angry with Shevchenko for his “verses” that distract him from the real matter. It is very likely that write Shevchenko began writing poetry late, after his acquaintance with Sotenko and writers, when he became aware of Kotlyarevsky’s “Aeneid”, Pushkin’s “Poltava” in Grebenka’s translation, etc. Before that, he composed only folk songs, which is very understandable, since the form of folk poetry was so “at home” for Shevchenko that it is difficult to doubt that his poetic creativity 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 Ukrainian strict muse for a long time shunned his taste, perverted by life in captivity, in the landowner’s vestibule, at inns courtyards, in city apartments"; this Muse “hug and caressed Shevchenko” in a foreign land, as the breath of freedom returned to his feelings the purity of his first years. Thus, it is likely that Shevchenko’s first works were not written 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 Bryullov’s workshop he pondered some of his early works). Shevchenko’s Little Russian works first appeared in print in 1840, when the first issue of “Kobzar” was printed at the expense of the Poltava landowner Martos. This issue included “My Thoughts, Thoughts”, “Perebendya”, “Katerina”, “Topolya”, “Ivan Pikdova”, “Tarasova’s Nothing” and some other works. A prominent role in the appearance of “Kobzar” was played by Grebenka, who, apparently, was responsible for the very idea of ​​publishing Shevchenko’s Little Russian works and for raising funds for the publication. Martos, apparently, was attracted to the case by Comb. Russian criticism greeted 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 that forced Shevchenko to start writing in Russian. But just as unsympathetically Shevchenko’s works were received by Russian critics, they aroused just as much warm sympathy among his fellow countrymen.

Shevchenko soon became a favorite 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 mid-50s. In the same 1843, Shevchenko decided to publish “Picturesque Ukraine” (this publication did not take place). In order to collect material for this publication, Shevchenko went to Little Russia in 1843, primarily to Tarnovsky, known as a Little Russian philanthropist, to his estate in the Chernigov province. At the same time, in the Chernigov province, he met the family of princes Repnin. Shevchenko established strong friendly relations with Princess Varvara Nikolaevna Repnina for many years. On the same trip, Shevchenko visited his homeland in Kirillovka, visited the site of the last battle, Khortitsa and the site of the Zaporozhye shrine - the Mezhigorsky Monastery. While devoting himself to literature, Shevchenko did not abandon 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 and dreamed of a business trip abroad. However, work on “Picturesque Ukraine” and other concerns 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 met with 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 his exile. In the summer of 1844, Shevchenko again made a trip to Little Russia. He was in his native Kirillovka, visiting, among other things, 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 to Zakrevsky and the “urine-faces,” which greatly upset his friend, Princess Repnina, who tried with all her might 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. On March 25, 1845, Shevchenko received a diploma as a free artist. Shevchenko’s work on portraits of 12 commanders dates back to the same time, for the publication of the same name, undertaken by Polev. In the spring of 1845, Shevchenko left St. Petersburg, this time for a long time. He went through Moscow, where he again saw Bodyansky and Shchepkin, to Little Russia. He lived with various friends in his native Kirillovka, and came to Kyiv in the fall. Here he met Kulish personally (he had corresponded with Kulish before, and, according to some indications, 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 submitted a petition in August 1845 and again left for the Poltava province and his homeland. Shevchenko's matchmaking dates back to this time. He fell in love with the daughter of the same priest Koshits, for whom he once served as a chaser; the girl also fell in love with him, but her parents did not consider it possible to have their recent “lad” as a son-in-law, and Shevchenko was refused. In October, Shevchenko was appointed as an employee of the Kyiv Commission for the Analysis of Ancient Acts and immediately went to the Poltava province to search 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 Chernigov provinces. At the end of April 1846, Shevchenko returned to Kyiv.

By this time, Shevchenko met Kostomarov, who in the fall of 1845 was transferred from the city of Rovna, Volyn province, as a teacher at the Kyiv First Gymnasium. Kulish at that time was no longer in Kyiv, 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 part of the so-called Cyril and Methodius Society. In May, Kostomarov was elected professor at the University of St. Vladimir, and in the fall 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 society's program included the liberation of the peasants and the education of the people. Members of the society were required to wear rings with the names of Cyril and Methodius. The society was organized during Shevchenko’s trip to the Poltava province, so upon his return to Kyiv, he was soon introduced into the society by Kostomarov. In the summer, Shevchenko, together with prof. Ivanishev carried out excavations in Vasilkovsky district, near the town of Fastov. In the fall, Shevchenko was sent to the southwestern region to record songs and fairy tales, sketch burial mounds and historical monuments. During this trip, Shevchenko visited Kamenets, Pochaev, the village of Verbki near the city of Kovel, Volyn province, where Prince Kurbsky is buried. In all these places Shevchenko made drawings, most of which, however, 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 harshly. Others 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, in whom he managed to gain confidence. This Petrov infiltrated the public’s trust in order to track him down, and after a while he reported all the conversations to his superiors. The results of the denunciation were not felt now. After Christmas, Shevchenko went to 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 drawing teacher at Kiev University. After Easter, Shevchenko went to Kyiv, where he was in a hurry to attend Kostomarov’s wedding. Upon entering Kyiv, Shevchenko was arrested. The cause 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 character of society was fairly correctly determined 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 between the Slavs, incline them to accept the Orthodox religion, establish schools and publish books for the common 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 engage 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 sentence in this case was unusually harsh. It was especially hard for Shevchenko, who, although he was recognized as not belonging to society, was, due to his outrageous spirit and insolence, one of the important criminals.

According to the assumption of gr. Orlov, the perpetrators were to suffer the following punishment: imprisonment in fortresses - Gulak in Shlisselburg for three years, Kostomarov in St. Petersburg for a year, Belozersky and Kulish for four months, Navrotsky to be kept in a guardhouse for six months, Andruzsky and Posyada to be sent to Kazan to complete a university course, Shevchenko, as gifted with a strong physique, should be assigned as a private in the Orenburg separate corps, with the rights of seniority, instructing his superiors to have strict supervision so that under no circumstances could he publish outrageous and libelous writings. The punishment was commuted for everyone except Gulak, Kostomarov and Shevchenko. June 9th Shevchenko was already delivered by courier to Orenburg and enlisted as a private in the fifth battalion, located in the Orsk fortress, where he was transported on the 20th of June. The Orsk fortress was an insignificant village in the deserted Kyrgyz steppe, with a population of military and convicts. The landscape surrounding the Orsk fortress was oppressive with its monotony and deadness. If we add to this the powerless 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,” ​​as 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 Orenburg officials in favor of Shevchenko; but nevertheless, Shevchenko had to live in the difficult environment of provincial barracks of the pre-reform era, study soldier’s “literature”, step training, etc. All this, after a brilliant period of life in Kiev, free work, a society of intelligent people he liked. It is not surprising that this was not easy for a person who had experienced misfortune; “All my previous sufferings,” Shevchenko wrote to one of his friends, “in comparison with the present ones, were only children’s tears.” One of Shevchenko’s major disasters was his complete inability to step, which he never mastered during his entire career. military service . Shevchenko was deprived of the opportunity to read, to receive his previous drawings; in a word, he was in the position of being buried alive. The terrible living conditions also affected Shevchenko’s physical health, although he had a strong physique. In the fall of 1847, he fell ill with rheumatism and then scurvy. In 1848, Shevchenko took part in an expedition to Kaim and the Aral Sea, under the command of General Schreiberg 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 across the Aral Sea lasted two months; Shevchenko at this time was busy sketching the shores of the Aral Sea. He lived in the officer's cabin and felt relatively tolerable. In the fall, the schooners dropped anchor at the mouth of the Syr Darya, and the expedition remained to winter in the Kos-Aral fortress. This winter was very difficult for Shevchenko, who had to spend all his time in the barracks, without the company of intelligent people (the leaders of the expedition went to Orenburg for the winter) and without any news from the world dear to the poet. Mail arrived in Kos-Aral once every six months. In 1849, Butakov's expedition continued its work, and Shevchenko again participated in it. At the end of the expedition, Butakov asked to be sent to his disposal in Orenburg to complete the work of non-commissioned officer Thomas Werner (apparently also from the exiles) and private Taras Shevchenko. The pretext was given impossibility of finishing their work at sea, but in all likelihood Butakov simply wanted to give Shevchenko the opportunity to at least spend some time in tolerable conditions. Permission followed, and Shevchenko was in Orenburg in early November. There he managed to live a human life for some time. He took part in it Captain of the General Staff Gern, who invited the poet to live in his house, allocating an entire wing to him; 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. Fellow Little Russians who served in Orenburg and exiled Poles vied with each other for the honor of receiving the poet of Ukraine. There were also hopes for liberation, 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 Zhukovsky’s intercession. However, these hopes were soon dashed. In December 1849, Orlov informed the commander of the Orenburg corps, Obruchev, that he came in with a most submissive report on permission for private Shevchenko to paint, but “the highest permission for this was not given.” Meanwhile, Shevchenko’s friends arranged things in such a way that, after finishing his work with Butakov, he was assigned to the battalion not to Kaim, where mail went once every six months, but to the Novopetrovskoe fortification, to study the coal discovered in the Kapa-Tau mountains. Thus, Shevchenko would have to be freed from the barracks environment 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 his husband, wrote a denunciation to the corps commander about this. that Shevchenko not only violates the Highest command not to draw or write, but also wears a private 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 of Shevchenko, reported what had happened to the third department and arrested Shevchenko. As a result, Shevchenko spent six months in different casemates and was sent to the Novo-Petrovskoe 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 he was not even allowed to have pencils, ink, pens and paper with him. Shevchenko's situation here was terrible. Novo-Petrovskoye itself was no less a remote corner than Kaim. Thrown onto the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, into the remote steppe, it was cut off from the world during 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. The supervision of Shevchenko was so strict that for about 2 years he could not write a single letter. He lived in general barracks, a special “uncle” was assigned to supervise him, and he was taken to work and training.

Drunk Potapov mocked Shevchenko in every possible way, bringing him, a well-worn elderly 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 were under great threat unpleasant consequences , proposed by 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 concessions to Shevchenko, and he was able to correspond with friends. However, he still 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 impulse, partly under the influence of Shevchenko’s Orenburg friends and some hints from Perovsky, decided to do what Mayevsky did not have the courage to do. He suggested that the officers not bother Shevchenko at the front and relieve him of hard work; when Uskov’s wife, an educated and humane woman, arrived, Shevchenko began to visit their house and soon became his own person there. He became especially attached to the Uskov children. Under Uskov, Shevchenko had the opportunity, albeit to a minimal extent, to satisfy his need for creativity - he began to sculpt figurines from local clay. This activity raised a question among Shevchenko’s superiors about whether Shevchenko was allowed to engage in sculpture? Uskov had the courage to admit that what is not prohibited is permitted. Shevchenko also lived under Uskov in the barracks, although one of the artillery officers offered him to live in his apartment. One of the facts that took place during this period of time is extremely characteristic. To give Shevchenko the opportunity 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’ style” and write, but not in the Little Russian language. Shevchenko could indulge in these activities in the gazebo of the garden planted on his initiative, in which, with the permission of Uskov, he lived in the summer. His stories were written here in Russian. The coming new reign, which brought liberation to many political exiles, revived hopes for freedom in T. G. Shevchenko. However, the manifesto of March 27 did not affect 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, Mr. F.P. Tolstoy, Shevchenko did not wait for his fate to be eased even for his coronation. Gr. Tolstoy and Shevchenko's St. Petersburg friends continued to lobby, however, and on April 17, 1857, the amnesty was signed. However, even after this joyful day for him, Shevchenko had to wait three months for his actual release, and during this time the authorities, who had not yet received official notification, continued to demand front-line service from him. It was especially hard for Shevchenko during the days of the arrival of the battalion commander Lvov, who did not like Shevchenko and mocked him after his pardon. At the same time, a very unpleasant incident happened to Shevchenko, which threatened to again deprive him of his newly gained freedom. Engineering officer Campioni invited Shevchenko to a party. Shevchenko flatly refused, and Campioni, offended, filed a report that Shevchenko had insulted him. Uskov tried to hush up the matter, but Shevchenko had to ask Campioni for an apology and, unwillingly, get drunk with his company, but at Shevchenko’s expense. Just before his liberation, in July (the official notice of liberation was received on July 21), Shevchenko was again diligently trained at the front in order to be assigned to the honor guard of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, who was waited in vain in Novopetrovsky. Finally, the paper on Shevchenko's release was received, and on August 2, 1857, Shevchenko left Novopetrovsk. In total, he spent 10 years and several months as a soldier.

From Novopetrovsk Shevchenko went by boat to Astrakhan. Shevchenko had to live in Astrakhan for about two weeks. Local Little Russians, having learned of his arrival, hastened to the closet he had hired to welcome the poet’s release. Following them, Shevchenko was honored by intelligent Great Russians and Poles. Millionaire Sapozhnikov organized an evening in honor of Shevchenko. On August 22, Shevchenko traveled by ship along the Volga to Nizhny. On the way, Shevchenko met in Saratov with the mother of Kostomarov, who was in Stockholm at that time. 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 permit issued to him by Uskov, who, not knowing that Shevchenko was prohibited from staying in the capitals, issued a permit to travel through Moscow to St. Petersburg. Having received an order to send him to Orenburg a few days after Shevchenko’s departure, Uskov sounded the alarm and notified the St. Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod police 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" final dismissal home." The Nizhny Novgorod administration treated Shevchenko very kindly. He was advised to get sick, the examination report was sent to Orenburg, and the Nizhny Novgorod governor issued permission to live in Nizhny "until recovery." 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 corresponding with Kulish about the Little Russian magazine and books in the Little Russian language for peasants. Here he read Shchedrin and the stories of Mark Vovchka. In Nizhny, Shevchenko wrote the poem "Neophytes", drew a lot, however, the main thing Thus, portraits in order to obtain funds that he really needed. He was surrounded by intelligent people who sympathized with him, nevertheless, he was strongly drawn to St. Petersburg. He was given a lot of joy by the arrival of the seventy-year-old old man Shchepkin, who came specially to see Shevchenko and spent 6 days in Nizhny. Shchepkin's arrival served as the beginning of Shevchenko's novel. Shchepkin performed on stage several times in Nizhny, among other things in "Moskal-Charivnik". He chose the young, pretty actress Piunova for the main female role of this play and instructed Shevchenko to teach her Little Russian pronunciation. Shevchenko became interested in Piunova and, despite the very significant age difference, decided to get married. This matchmaking brought Shevchenko nothing but grief: he was exploited for some time, but that’s all.

In March 1858, Shevchenko received permission to enter the capital and on March 8 left Nizhny. On March 10, Shevchenko arrived in Moscow. Here he stayed a little longer than expected due to illness. Shevchenko's stay in Moscow was marked by meeting many old friends and new interesting acquaintances. Here he again saw Princess Repnina, Maksimovich, Shchepkin, Aksakov, Bodyansky and many others. Maksimovich organized an evening for him, which was attended, by the way, by Pogodin and Shevyrev. Here Shevchenko met the old Decembrist Volkonsky, Chicherin, Babst, Korteli and other representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia. In total, T.G. stayed in Moscow for a little over two weeks and on March 26th he left for St. Petersburg by rail. In St. Petersburg, after a meeting with friends and acquaintances, dinners, evenings, etc., Shevchenko gets to work; he is preparing a publication of his works written in exile and is engaged in engraving. The first painting that Shevchenko undertook to engrave was “The Holy Family” by Murillo. Shevchenko lived in the Academy building, which was the reason for permission to enter, in the form of “observation”, which was entrusted to gr. Tolstoy. In addition to etchings, Shevchenko drew with 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 hardly recognized each other, but their relationship was restored. Kostomarov, speaking about the impression Shevchenko made on him at this time, notes that Shevchenko changed little in his views and moral character, but his talent weakened significantly. His health was also noticeably deteriorating, which was facilitated by an addiction to alcoholic beverages that arose during his exile. Although Shevchenko enjoyed general attention at this time; although the society itself was preparing a task 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 were before exile. Shevchenko was burdened by both the St. Petersburg climate and longing for his homeland. In June 1859, Shevchenko made a trip to his homeland, which he had not seen for more than ten years. In Little Russia, Shevchenko visited his surviving old friends. He visited Doctor 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 Grigorievich found little change. 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 visit his relative Bartholomew Shevchenko, who served as manager of 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 survived. 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 had already been found, but the matter was upset due to the arrest of Shevchenko. Shevchenko had the misfortune of somehow offending the nobleman 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,” which he allegedly committed during a dispute with Kozlovsky. The case was dropped 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 gendarme colonel. Shevchenko lived in Kyiv for several days and moved to Prevarka. Since Prevarka, Shevchenko went to the city to visit his old friend Sotenko.

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

There he continues, through Bartholomew Grigorievich Shevchenko, his efforts to purchase land, but these efforts ended in failure. The rather strange matchmaking of Shevchenko with Dovgopolenkova dates back to the same time. She was a serf girl of Prince Lopukhin and served with Bartholomew Shevchenko. The matchmaking did not succeed - Dovgopolenkova preferred the young clerk to the old poet, whom she married. However, this failure did not discourage Shevchenko from getting married.

In the summer of 1860, left alone in St. Petersburg, where all his friends had left for the summer, and feeling a particularly strong melancholy of loneliness, Shevchenko again decided to get married. The object was again the young serf girl Lukerya Polusmakova. This time things went further. Shevchenko met Lukerya and had the opportunity to really fall in love with her. On the other hand, Lukerya, competent, more developed and, perhaps, more cunning than Kharita Dovgopolenkova, managed to understand that Shevchenko was an eligible bachelor, and accepted his proposal. For quite a long time, Taras Grigorievich and Lukerya were in the position of bride and groom, but in the end there was a break between them, the reasons for which, like the very moral character of Lukerya Polusmakova, remained unclear.

Shevchenko's literary activity in recent years has not been particularly productive. Shevchenko published his "Kobzar", funds for the printing of which were given by one of the southern friends of the poet Simirenko. At this time, Shevchenko was greatly interested in 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 was trying to get permission to publish the magazine "Khata". This magazine was not permitted, but soon one of the circle members, Belozersky, managed to obtain 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 this time into a “community,” which met with one of the members, Chernenko, weekly. Needless to say, Shevchenko played an outstanding role in this community. This did not satisfy the poet, however. 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 plans a new matchmaking with the daughter of the official Vitovsky. This time, Shevchenko did not see not only his bride, but also her portrait. All matchmaking took place through a third party - one of Shevchenko’s friends - Tkachenko. Shevchenko’s biographer, Konissky, quite rightly considers this matchmaking to be the result of the despair into which Shevchenko’s loneliness led. Meanwhile, Shevchenko’s health has 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 developing dropsy. Shevchenko, however, paid little attention to the warning: he did not take care and did not give up drinking alcohol. Dreams about organizing his life did not leave him either: he continued to bother about buying land above the Dnieper and, having learned that his last bride, Vitovskaya, was a matchmaker, he instructed Tkachenko to find him a new bride. In February 1861, Shevchenko could no longer leave the stairs. At this time, he still dreamed of a trip to Ukraine, thinking that this trip would save him. IN last days Throughout his life, Shevchenko passionately waited for a manifesto on the liberation of the peasants. On February 19, when this manifesto was supposed to be signed, which, according to rumors, everyone already knew, Shevchenko was very worried, waiting for the manifesto. The manifesto, however, was not announced due to the fact that February 19 fell on Maslenitsa and there were fears of popular unrest. The announcement of the manifesto was postponed to March 4, but Shevchenko could no longer wait for it. February 25 was Shevchenko’s birthday and name day. He spent this day in terrible torment. The next day, Shevchenko still had the strength to go down to his workshop, but there he immediately fell and died. Shevchenko was buried in St. Petersburg, but in April his friends, fulfilling the poet’s last wishes, transferred his ashes to his 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 manual 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”, Kiev, 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 Tolstoy), "Bulletin of Europe", 1883, 8; Uskova (the wife of the commandant of the Novopetrovsky fortification), "Kiev Antiquity", 1889, II; A. Chuzhbinsky, " Russian word", 1861 and separately; Bartholomew Shevchenko, "Ancient and New Russia", 1876, 6; Turgeneva I. S. (with 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."; Sumtsova, "Brockhaus Encyclopedic Dictionary". Also in the "History of Ukrainian Literature" by Petrov, in the "History of Slavic Literatures" by Pypin and Spasovich. There are many materials about Shevchenko in the "Notes of the Shevchenko Scientific Partnership" and in "Kiev Antiquity" Mezhov's bibliography, in the work of Mézières (the latest of the indexes), is specially devoted to the bibliography of Shevchenko in the work of M. Komarov "Bibliographic index of materials for the study of the life and works of T. G. Shevchenko", "Kiev Antiquity", 1886, III, IV.

H. K-a.

(Polovtsov)

Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich

Famous Ukrainian poet. Genus. February 25, 1814 in the village of Morintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, in the family of a serf peasant, 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 married a second time to a widow who had three children. She treated Taras harshly. Until the age of 9, Sh. was in the care of nature, and partly of his older sister, Ekaterina, a kind and gentle girl. Soon she got married. In 1825, when Sh. was 12 years old, his father died. From this time on, the difficult nomadic life of a street child begins, first with a teacher-sexman, then with neighboring painters. At one time Sh. was a sheep shepherd, then served as a driver for the local priest. At the school of the sexton teacher, Sh. learned to read and write, and from the painters he became acquainted with elementary drawing techniques. In his 16th year, in 1829, he became one of the servants of the landowner Engelhardt, first as a cook, then as a Cossack. The passion for painting never left him. The landowner apprenticed him first to a Warsaw painter, then to St. Petersburg, to the painting master Shiryaev. On holidays, the young man visited the Hermitage, sketched 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, and the poet Zhukovsky . These acquaintances, especially the last one, were of great importance in Sh.’s life, especially in the matter of freeing 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 all he got from him was the conviction “that this is the biggest pig in Torzhkov’s shoes” and asked Soshenko to visit this “amphibian” and agree on the ransom price. Soshenko entrusted this sensitive matter to Professor Venetsianov, as a more authoritative person. Sh. was pleased and consoled by the care for him of highly enlightened and humane representatives of Russian art and literature; but at times he was overcome by despondency, even despair. Having learned that the matter of his liberation had encountered the stubbornness of the landowner, Sh. one day came to Soshenko in terrible excitement. Cursing his bitter fate, he threatened to repay Engelhardt and in this mood went home to his dirty attic. Soshenko was greatly worried about his fellow countryman and expected great trouble. According to Princess Repnina, Zhukovsky, having learned about the terrible state of mind of the young man, close to suicide, wrote a reassuring note to him on a piece of paper. Sh. kept this note in his pocket like a shrine, and showed it to the princess in 1848. “Having previously agreed with my landowner,” says Sh. in his autobiography, “Zhukovsky asked Bryullov to paint a portrait of him in order to play him in private lottery. The Great Bryullov immediately agreed, and his portrait was ready. Zhukovsky, with the help of Count Vielgorsky, organized a lottery of 2,500 rubles, and at this price my freedom was purchased, April 22, 1838." As a sign of special respect and deep gratitude to Zhukovsky, Sh. dedicated one of his largest works to him: “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 were the best in Sh’s life. During this period, his poetic talent flourished. In 1840, a small collection of his poems was published under the title “Kobzar”; in 1842, “Haydamaky” was published - his largest work. In 1843, Sh. received the degree of free artist; in the same year, Sh., traveling around 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”, “Topolya”, “Katerina”, “Naimichka”, “Khustochka” - large and artistic works - were published. St. Petersburg criticism 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 reflected in the warm welcome of Sh. during his travels in 1845-47. in the Chernigov and Kyiv provinces. “Let me be a peasant poet,” Sh. wrote regarding the critics’ reviews, “just a poet; then I don’t need anything more.” During Sh.’s stay in Kyiv in 1846, he became close to N.I. Kostomarov. In the same year, Sh. entered the Cyril and Methodius Society, which was then being formed in Kyiv, consisting of young people interested in the development of Slavic peoples, in particular the Ukrainian. The participants 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 in the Orenburg region, with a ban on writing and drawing.

The Orsk fortress, where Sh. first ended up, was a sad and deserted outback. “It’s rare,” wrote Sh., “one can come across such a characterless area. Flat and flat. The location is sad, monotonous, skinny rivers Ural and Or, naked gray mountains and the endless Kyrgyz steppe...” “All my previous sufferings,” says Sh. . in another letter from 1847, “in comparison with real ones there were children’s tears. Bitter, unbearably bitter.” For Sh., the prohibition to write and draw was very painful; He was especially depressed by the strict prohibition on drawing. Not knowing Gogol personally, Sh. decided to write to him “by right of Little Russian virsheplath,” in the hope of Gogol’s Ukrainian sympathies. “Now, like someone falling into an abyss, I am ready to grab hold of everything - hopelessness is terrible! So terrible that only Christian philosophy can fight it.” Sh. sent Zhukovsky a touching letter asking for only one favor - the right to draw. In this sense, Count Gudovich and Count A. Tolstoy worked for Sh.; but it turned out to be impossible to help Sh. Sh. also addressed the head of the III department, General Dubbelt, with a request, writing that his brush had never sinned and would never sin in a political sense, but nothing helped; the ban on drawing was not lifted until his release. Participation in the 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 especially Lieutenant Butakov, Sh. was allowed to copy views of the Aral coast and local folk types. But this leniency soon became known in St. Petersburg; Obruchev and Butakov were reprimanded, and Sh. was exiled to a new deserted slum, Novopetrovskoye, with a repeated ban on drawing. In exile, Sh. became close friends with some educated exiled Poles - Sierakowski, Zaleski, Zhelikhovsky (Antony Sowa), which helped to strengthen in him the idea of ​​​​"merging brothers of the same tribe." He stayed in Novopetrovsky Sh. from October 17, 1850 to August 2, 1857, i.e., until liberation. The first three years of my stay in the “stinking barracks” were very painful; then various reliefs came, thanks mainly to the kindness of Commandant Uskov and his wife, who loved Sh. very much for his gentle character and affection for their children. Unable to draw, Sh. took up modeling and tried 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 "Kyiv Antiquity").

Sh.'s release took place in 1857, thanks to the persistent petitions on his behalf 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, in freedom, he indulged in poetry and art. The difficult years of exile, due to ingrained alcoholism in Novopetrovsky, led to a rapid weakening of health and talent. Attempts to arrange a family home for him (actress Piunova, peasant women Kharita and Lukerya) were unsuccessful. While living in St. Petersburg (from March 27, 1858 to June 1859), Sh. was friendly received into the family of the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Count F. P. Tolstoy. Sh.’s life of this time is well known from his “Diary”, which was conveyed in detail by his biographers of modern times (mainly Konissky). In 1859 Sh. visited his homeland. Then he had the idea to buy himself an estate above the Dnieper. A beautiful place was chosen near Kanev. Sh. worked hard to acquire it, 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. Sh. devoted almost all his time, free from dinner parties and evenings, to engraving, which he was very interested in at that time. Shortly before his death, Sh. took up the task of compiling school textbooks for the people in the Little Russian language. Sh. died on February 26, 1861. Funeral speeches were published in Osnova, 1861 (March).

Sh. has a double meaning, as a writer and as an artist. His novels and short stories in Russian are rather weak artistically. Sh.’s entire literary power lies in his “Kobzar”. In terms of external volume, “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, the unfaded memories of Cossack freedom. There are amazing combinations of influences here: on the one hand, the Ukrainian philosopher Skovoroda and the folk kobzars, on the other, Mitskevich, Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Lermontov. “Kobzar” reflected Kyiv shrines, Zaporozhye steppe life, the idyll of Little Russian peasant life - in general, a historically developed folk mentality, with peculiar shades of beauty, thoughtfulness and sadness. Through its closest source and main tool - folk poetry, Sh. is closely related to 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 is that it is thoroughly imbued with nationality; It is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to determine where Little Russian folk poetry ends and where Sh.’s personal creativity begins. Closer study reveals literary sources that Sh. used either successfully or unsuccessfully. Such a source was the poetry of Mickiewicz (see the article by Mr. Kolessa in “Notes of the Shevchenko Partnership”), and partly by N. Markevich (see the article by Mr. Studinsky in No. 24 of “Dawns”, 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 beyond the Ukrainian layers. The influence of “The Robber Brothers” on “Varnak”, the influence of “Egyptian Nights”, “The Flying Ridge of Clouds is Thinning” are 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 analyze coldly and dryly. To determine Sh.’s views on the tasks and goals of poetic creativity, you need to pay attention not only to those confessions that are found in “My Orysa, Nivo”, “I don’t yell at God”, “Behind my thoughts”; It is also necessary to include those places where they talk about happiness, as the poet understands it, about glory. Particularly important in the sense of poetic confessions are all those places where they talk about the kobzar, the prophet and about thoughts as beloved children. In most cases, the poet means himself by kobzar; therefore, he introduced a lot of lyrical feeling into all the sketches of the kobzar. The historically established image of a folk singer was to the liking of the poet, in whose life and moral character there really was a lot of kobzarism. Sh. speaks about the kobzar very often; A prophet is found comparatively less frequently. Closely related to the poems about the prophet is a small but powerful poem about the apostle of truth. In the depiction of the prophet, especially in the poem “Nearly Righteous Children,” the influence of Lermontov is noticeable.

The nationality of Sh., like that of other outstanding poets, is composed of two related elements - external nationality, borrowings, imitations, and internal nationality, mentally hereditary. Defining external, borrowed elements is not difficult; To do this, it is enough to familiarize yourself with ethnography and find direct sources in folk tales, beliefs, songs, and rituals. Determining internal psychological folk elements is very difficult and completely impossible. Sh. has both those and other elements. Sh.'s soul is so saturated with nationality that any, even foreign, borrowed motif receives a Ukrainian national coloring in his poetry. External, borrowed and more or less reworked folk poetic motifs include: 1) Little Russian folk songs, sometimes cited in their entirety, sometimes in abbreviation or alteration, sometimes only mentioned. So, in “Perebend” Sh. mentions famous thoughts and songs - about Chaly, Gorlytsya, Grytsya, Serbyn, Shinkarka, about the poplar at the edge of the road, about the ruin of Sicha, “vesnyanka”, “at the guy”. The song "Pugach" is mentioned as a Chumatsky song in "Kateryn", "Petrus" and "Gryts" - in "Chernyts Maryana"; “Oh, no noise, puddle” is mentioned twice - in “Perebend” and “Before Osnovyanenka”. In "Haydamaky" and in "Slave" there is a thought about a storm on the Black Sea, in a slight alteration. Wedding songs were included in "Haydamaki". Throughout “Kobzar” there are echoes, imitations and adaptations of folk lyrical songs. 2) Legends, traditions, fairy tales and proverbs are less common compared to songs. The beginning of the poem “At God’s door lay a falcon” is taken from the legends about the walk of Christ. The story is taken from legends that “priests once did not walk, but rode on people.” The proverb “jump the enemy, yak pan is the same” - in “Perebend”. Several sayings nearby in "Katerina". Many folk proverbs and sayings are scattered in "Haydamaky". 3) Folk beliefs and customs are found in large numbers. These are the beliefs about dream grass, many wedding customs - exchanging 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 doli and non-dolya are often encountered. 5) Finally, in “Kobzar” there are many borrowed folk-poetic comparisons and symbols, for example, the declination of the sycamore tree is a sign of grief, the harvest is a battle (as in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and in the thoughts), the overgrowth of the roads is a symbol of the absence of a dear one, the viburnum is girl. The 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. The nationality of Sh. is determined, further, by his worldview, his favorite points of view on external nature and on 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, peeks out from behind the gloom, like a groom in the spring, looking at the earth. The moon is round, pale-faced, walking across the sky, looking at the “endless sea” or “the dawns appearing with my sister.” All these images breathe an artistic and mythical worldview, reminiscent of ancient poetic ideas about the marital relationships of heavenly bodies. Sh.'s wind appears in the form of a powerful creature taking part in the life of Ukraine: either he quietly talks with the sedge at night, or walks along the wide steppe and talks with mounds, or starts a violent speech with the sea itself. One of the most important and fundamental motifs of Sh.’s poetry is the Dnieper. Historical memories and love for the homeland were associated with the Dnieper in the poet’s mind. In "Kobzar" the Dnieper is a symbol and sign of everything characteristically Little Russian, like Vater Rhein in German poetry or the Volga in Great Russian songs and legends. “There is no other Dnieper,” says Sh. in a message to his dead, living and unborn fellow countrymen. The poet associated the ideal of a happy people's life, quiet and contented, with the Dnieper. The Dnieper is wide, stout, strong, like the sea; all rivers flow into it, and it carries all their waters to the sea; by the sea he learns about the Cossack mountain; he roars, groans, speaks quietly, gives answers; Thoughts, glory, and share come from across the Dnieper. There are rapids, mounds, a rural church on a steep bank; a whole series of historical memories are concentrated here, because the Dnieper is “old”. Another very common motif in Sh.’s poetry is Ukraine, which is mentioned sometimes in passing, but always affectionately, sometimes with an outline either natural-physical or historical. The description of the nature of Ukraine includes alternating fields and forests, forests, small gardens, and wide steppes. From the fundamental psychological love for the homeland came all the sympathetic descriptions of the Little Russian flora and fauna - poplar, tumbleweed, lily, queen flower, rostrum, periwinkle and especially viburnum and nightingale. The rapprochement of the nightingale with the viburnum in the poem “On the Victory Day in Memory of Kotlyarevsky” is built on their rapprochement in folk songs. Historical motifs are very diverse: hetmanate, Cossacks, Zaporozhye weapons, captives, pictures of sad desolation, historical roads, Cossack graves, oppression by the Uniates, historical areas - Chigirin, Trakhtemirov, historical figures - Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Doroshenko, Semyon Paliy, Pidkova, Gamalia, Gonta , Zaliznyak, Golovaty, Dmitry Rostovsky. At the border between history and modernity there is a motif about the Chumaks. During Sh., plagues were 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, plagues are 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. Soldatchina in Sh. is closely intertwined with panshchina and now, in his depiction, largely appears to be an archaic phenomenon : lords still enlist as soldiers, the service is long; comparatively, the most complete and sympathetic image of a soldier is in “Empt” and in “Well, I thought, words.”

Sh.'s poetry is very rich in religious and moral motives. A warm religious feeling and fear of God permeate the entire “Kobzar”. In a message to his living and unborn fellow countrymen, the pious poet arms himself against atheism and explains unbelief by the one-sided influence of German science. As a very religious person, Sh. speaks in warm terms about the power of prayer and about Kyiv shrines; about the miraculous image of the Most Holy Theotokos, about the praying mantis, 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 from time to time, under the influence of the difficult conditions of his personal life and the life of his homeland, making their way into the poetry of Sh. Closely connected with the basic religious and moral mood of the poet are motifs about wealth and poverty, about the meaning of work . The poet is embarrassed by the property inequality of people, their need, and is also embarrassed by the fact that wealth does not ensure happiness. His principle is “learn from others and don’t mess with your own.” The poet, however, was completely alien to the idea of ​​seeking truth and serving it regardless of any traditions. Sh. displays in some places a narrow national-applied understanding of science, in others an identification of science with morality and unsuccessful irony at people who are “literate and spiritual.”

The political motives of Sh.'s poetry, now mostly outdated, are known from foreign editions of "Kobzar" (the best edition by Ogonovsky). Many pages are devoted to his Slavophilism in Kobzar. Adjacent here is the poem “To the Slavs,” published in the October book of “Kyiv Antiquity” for 1897. Ethnographic motifs are scattered here and there - about Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Kirghiz. Special groups can be divided into both autobiographical motives, for example, a valuable message in this regard to Kozachkovsky, and motives about individual writers, for example about Skovoroda, Kotlyarevsky, Safarik, Marko Vovchka.

All of the above motives of Sh.’s poetry, with the exception of two or three (Dnieper, Ukraine, Cossacks), recede before the main motives of family and kinship. 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 comes down mainly to family morality, based on a sense of kinship; in folk poetry, truth is called the mother of truth, and the mother is called truth of the truth, and in the image of the mother a great moral force is created, like the power of love. All these judgments are quite applicable to Sh.’s poetry, which, in terms of the development of family and kinship ideals, is directly adjacent to folk poetry. The arena for the development of family and kinship principles - the village - is depicted very sympathetically. As in folk poetry, Sh. usually rhymes village with the word cheerfully. The poet’s ideal was that “the desert would be filled with the joy of the village.” There are “poor villages” and “the village somehow burned down” - all from the lordship. The hut, Sh’s favorite motif, is even more often mentioned and in some places more fully described. For the most part, the hut is only mentioned, usually with the addition of the epithet “white”: “Bilenki huts - mov dits in beaten shirts,” “khatyna, otherwise a maiden, stand on the prygori.” In unhappy families, the hut is “wastely rotting,” the chambers are unoiled, and the scum is unwashed. The best descriptions of the hut are in the poems "Khatyna" and "Vechir". The comparisons and images are unique: a burnt hut is a weary heart, a hut is Slavic, a hut is a grave. Youth and young summers are depicted in the spirit of folk literature, in places as imitation and repetition. The maiden appears in many poems; most often a description of girlish beauty, love, wonder. The poet's attitude towards the girl is deeply humane. One of Sh.’s best poems in this regard, “And We Will Become a Little Dog,” was written under the influence of Lermontov’s famous “Prayer.” With a feeling of sincere grief, the poet depicts the girl’s fall. “Chernitsya Maryana” and “Nazar Stodolya” describe evening parties, collusion, korovai, fun, marriage unequal in years, marriage unequal in social status. The need for family life is noted in many places in Kobzar. Children play a particularly prominent role 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 poet’s strong personal impressions from his difficult childhood and his love for children, confirmed, in addition to “Kobzar”, by many biographical data, especially the characteristic memories of Mrs. Krapivina. Illegitimate children or baistruks are found on many pages of Kobzar, as a dark spot of serf life. Family relationships are expressed in the depiction of the mother in general, the relationship between mother and son, and 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 the same woman.

One of Sh.’s most favorite motifs is the cover. Sh. had a predecessor who dealt with this motif - G.F. Kvitka. In folk poetry, cover is rarely found, only here and there in songs, and then mostly in passing and descriptively. Sh. has the merit of a thorough study of the social conditions that gave rise to coverings under serfdom, and the merit of depicting them not only artistic, but also humanely. The poet did not spare dark colors when describing the miserable share of the covering, in some places not without major exaggerations. In fact, “veiling” was easier for girls, with significant leniency in public opinion (about coverings as an everyday phenomenon, see Fon-Nos’s note in “Kyiv Starina” for 1882, III, 427-429). Sh.'s mercenaries also enjoyed great sympathy. An entire poem, Sh.’s best work, is dedicated to the hired woman and received this 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 most prominent Slavic humanitarian poets. While folk poetry ignores old age, Sh. treats old men and women - poor widows - with love. This is a nice image of a grandfather reminiscing about his youth, a grandfather in a family setting, with his grandchildren, the old kobzar Perebendi. The image of death in the poem “Over the Field” and in “The Slave” in the form of a mower is a traditional image, standing in close connection with works of poetry and art, both South Russian and Western European. This poem, for all that, is distinguished by its highly original, purely Ukrainian character, as an exemplary national adaptation of a broad international cultural motif.

Studying Sh. as a painter seems difficult due to the scattered nature and low availability of his works, which were only accidentally and in very small numbers included in exhibitions. Most of Sh.'s drawings are kept in Chernigov in the Tarnovsky Museum. Very little has been published and in fragmentary form. There are few studies and descriptions (Shugurova, Rusova, Gorlenko, Kuzmina, Grinchenko); the research is brief and deals with specific issues; Even recently, 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 attributed the glory of perhaps the first Russian etcher in the modern meaning of the word.” Even earlier, Soshenko saw in Sh. a painter of no last quality. Mr. Rusov looks differently (in "Kyiv Antiquity", 1894). In his opinion, Sh. in painting was only “a photographer of the surrounding nature, to which his heart was not in, and in creating the genre he did not go beyond student tests, jokes, sketches, in which, with all the desire to find some artistic idea , we are not able to catch it, the composition of the drawings is so uncertain.” Both Kuzmin and Rusov recognize in Sh.’s painting the inconsistency of its poetic subjects, but while Mr. Rusov sees a drawback in this, Mr. Kuzmin, on the contrary, sees an advantage.

To determine the significance of Sh. as a painter and engraver, it is necessary to evaluate his works in their entirety and from different historical points of view, without adjusting them to one or another favorite requirement. Sh. deserves study as a force that reflected the mood of the era, as a student of certain artistic movements. Anyone who wishes to become thoroughly acquainted with Bryullov’s school and find out his influence will find some of the answer in Sh’s drawings and paintings. Anyone who wishes to study Rembrandt’s influence in Russia will also not be able to bypass Sh. He treated art with deep sincerity; it gave him comfort in the bitter moments of his life. Sh.'s drawings are of considerable importance for his biography. There are drawings taken directly from the everyday life surrounding the poet, with chronological dates. Distributed by year (which has already been done in part by Mr. Grinchenko in the 2 volume catalog of the Tarnovsky Museum), 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 ancient monuments in Pereyaslavl, Subbotov, Gustyn, Pochaev, Verbki, Poltava. Here are drawings of Kotlyarevsky's house, the ruins of the Gustynsky monastery before correction, the burial place of Kurbsky, etc. Currently, many genre drawings have historical value. Such, for example, is the drawing “In the Old Time” (in the collection of S. S. Botkin in St. Petersburg). The picture depicts punishment by spitzrutens, a sad “green street”. The sentenced man threw off his shirt; Heavy iron shackles, which had been removed, lie at his feet. In front of him stretches a long row of his unwitting executioners. There is a bucket nearby that must be filled with water. In the distance on the mountain is the outline of a fortress. This is a true page from the history of Russian life. One day, at the end of his life, remembering his time as a soldier, Sh. took this drawing out of the album and gave his student Sukhanov such an explanation of it that he was moved to tears, and Sh. hastened to console him, saying that this brutal torture had come to an end. The drawing “Comrades”, which was common in its time at the time, has historical significance, depicting a prison cell with two shackled prisoners, and an iron chain goes from the hand of one prisoner to the leg of the other - an excellent illustration for the book by A.F. Koni about Dr. Haase. The entire prison environment is depicted characteristically.

There is another side to Sh.’s drawings, a very interesting one - ethnographic. If you analyze Sh.’s numerous drawings for folklore purposes, you will end up with a valuable ethnographic collection. Thus, to get acquainted with the buildings, an ancient building in a Ukrainian village, a komor in Potok, or a father’s hut may be useful; to get acquainted with the costumes - a fair, a girl examining a towel, a woman in a namitka leaving a hut, a “kolo of porridge” (four peasants eating porridge from a cauldron under a willow tree), a “witch doctor” in a costume typical of the peasants of the Kiev province, “elder” at an interesting moment when the bride presents towels, and much more. For the Little Russian genre of the old time, interesting are the drawings of Chumaks on the road among the mounds, a bandura player, the Tsarina’s grandfather, a beekeeper, a volost court (“court of the council”) with the caption: “Otaman gathering a mass of cola for the village that they were drinking unexpectedly, for the sake of joy and court. The community, having rejoiced and dished out good things, disperses, drinking according to the charci, calling "and others. 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, sparse bushes, groups of soldiers and Tatars with camels, Mohammedan cemeteries. Drawings of this kind, preserved in significant quantities and mostly beautifully executed, can serve as a good illustration of some of Sh.’s sorrowful poems from the first painful years of his exile.

There are very few paintings by Sh. in oil paints; Sh. only occasionally resorted to a brush. Judging by the detailed catalog of Mr. Grinchenko, in the rich Tarnovsky collection in Chernigov (over 300 issues) there are only four oil paintings by Sh. - “Katerina”, “Head of a Young Man”, “Portrait of Princess Repnina” and “Kochubey” . Mr. Gorlenko in “Kyiv Antiquity” for 1888 points to three more oil paintings by Sh. - “The 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 and perfectly preserved, but the style is purely academic. Christ is depicted from the waist up, in profile, with his gaze turned to heaven. In the Museum of Arts and Antiquities of the Kharkov University there is a small painting by Sh., painted on canvas with oil paints, with the inscription in white paint: “Ta mute girshe so no one, like a young burlatsi.” The painting shows a half-length depiction of an elderly Little Russian, with a small mustache, no beard and no sideburns. The smile on the face does not correspond to the inscription. The background of the picture is almost completely black. The influence of Rembrandt, whom Sh. fell in love with early on, is noticeable. According to V.V. Tarnovsky, Sh. at the academy was called the Russian Rembrandt, according to the then existing custom of giving the most gifted students the names of their favorite artist-models, with whose style the works of these students were most similar. In Sh.'s etchings characteristic features of the works of the great Dutchman are revealed: 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, every smallest curl, are organically necessary, either as a characteristic detail of the depicted object, or to enhance the 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. Two engravings by Sh. from 1844 were exhibited in Kharkov - “The Court of the Rada” and “Gifts in Chigirin”, both from the collections of Professor M. M. Kovalevsky in Dvurechny Kut, Kharkov district. The wish was repeatedly expressed in the press (for example, by Mr. Gorlenko in “Kyiv Antiquities” for 1888) that all of Sh.’s drawings and paintings be reproduced and published in the form of a collection, which would be very useful both for the history of Russian art and for the biography of Sh.

The literature about Sh. is very large and very scattered. Everything published before 1884 is indicated in Komarov’s “Exhibition 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. have been published (Kostomarov, Chuzhbinsky, Chaly, Yung, Turgenev etc.), many biographies (the best are M.K. Chaly, 1882, and A. Ya. Konissky, 1898), many popular brochures (the best are Maslov and Vetrinsky), many critical analyzes of individual works (for example , Franco about “Perebend”, Kokorudzy about “Message”). Every year, the February book of “Kyiv Antiquities” brings research and materials about Sh., sometimes new and interesting. A scientific society named after Sh. has been working in Lvov for many years, in whose publications there are valuable studies about Sh., for example, Mr. Kolessa’s study on the influence of Mickiewicz on Sh. And in other Galician-Russian periodicals there is a lot scattered articles about Sh., sometimes original in point of view, for example art. Studinsky about Sh.’s attitude towards N. Markevich in “Zora” for 1896. Both historical and journalistic publications give space to articles about Sh.; Thus, Junge’s memoirs were published in the “Bulletin of Europe”, in “Russian Antiquity” - Zhukovsky’s letters to Countess Baranova regarding the ransom of Sh. from captivity, in “The Week” for 1874 (No. 37) - an article about Sh., in addition 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. Various provincial newspapers and literary collections contain articles about Sh., sometimes not without 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, omitting harsh political poems. The history of publications of "Kobzar" indicates its extremely rapid spread in modern times, depending on the development of education. The first edition (Martos) was published in 1840. Four years later, the 2nd edition of “Kobzar” appeared, which already included “Haydamaky”. The third edition was published in 1860, after the poet returned from exile. It appeared thanks to financial support from the famous sugar factory of the Kyiv province Platon Simirenko. This publication encountered very strong obstacles from censorship in St. Petersburg and only thanks to the intercession of the Minister of Public Education Kovalevsky, it saw the light of day. In 1867, “Chigirinsky torbanist-singer” appears (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. was published. Since then, for 14 years (1869-83), Sh.’s poems were not published in Russia, but in a very short time (1876-81) they went through four editions in Prague and Lvov. The 7th edition (1884) of Sh.'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 Sh.'s individual works, Naimichka was published in large quantities (50 thousand copies) (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 decorated the walls of his house, for which he was brutally “flogged” by the master; but then he was apprenticed to a workshop foreman in St. Petersburg. Here K.P. took part in it. Bryullov, Zhukovsky and V.I. Grigorovich. Bryullov painted a portrait of Zhukovsky, which was raffled off for 2,400 rubles, and with this money Shevchenko was ransomed on April 22. 1838 In 1830 he received the 2nd silver medal for life drawing, and in 1844 the title of free artist. He died in St. Petersburg on February 26, 1861 and was buried in Kanev.

Shevchenko studied engraving and etching at the academy in 1844 and in 1859-1860; in 1859 he was elected to the appointed position for two engravings. Almost full meeting his etching (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 draws by candlelight. On the paper there is an inscription: "T. Shevchenko."

2. He’s completely bald: “T. Shevchenko 1860.” In 1st imprint. a large letter Ш is sewn on the chest; the entire background is drawn with a tape measure; 2nd, the rosin blackness was removed from the coat and background; the background is shaded with features only on the left; the letter Ш is destroyed; a lock of hair is engraved on the right temple.

3. He is completely bald; the head is slightly tilted down, to the left: “T. Shevchenko 1860”; in 1st circle of the head dark background; on the left it looks like it has been splattered with ink; in 2 the shadow on the left is destroyed; the head and face are 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 there is also a letter in the circle: “T”.

6. "Fedor Antonovich Bruni. - Taras Shevchenko 1860"; the last signature is backwards.

7. Portrait of Gornostaev; to the chest, 3/4 to the right; in a frock coat buttoned 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 written backwards.

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

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

1. The views are remarkable in beauty, or in historical memories: 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. Historical most important events from Gediminas to the destruction of the hetmanate and a brief description of the paintings in the South Russian and French languages.

The following paintings will be released in 1845: 1st. Views: Chigirin, Subotove, Baturin, Intercession Sich Church.

2nd. Funeral of the young (bride) oh hodyv chumak sim rik along the Don (song); perezva (wedding ceremony) and zhnyva - 3rd. Ivan Pidkova in Lvov, Sava Chaly, Pavlo Polubotok in St. Petersburg, Semyon Palia in Siberia. - Price for 12 paintings is 5 rubles in silver.]:

1) "Ship of the Rada - 1844 Taras Shevchenko - Otoman gathering;... reconciliation"; 2) “Gifts in Chigryn 1649 to fate. - T. Shevchenko 1841. - From Tsaryagrad... du tzar de Moscovie”; 3) “The elders - les starostis Shevchenko 1844 - shaking.... de ses propres mains"; 4) "Vydubetsky Monastery in Kiev - Vue du Monastère de Widoubetck à Kiev - Shevchenko 1844"; 5) "Kazka... Shevchenko 1844 - A vidkilya... truly Lubensky"; 6) "At Kiev - 1844 Shevchenko"; landscape, bank of the Dnieper. There are copies printed on Chinese paper.

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

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

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

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

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

21. Bathing Bathsheba: "Karl Bryulov 1831 - Engraving T. Shevchenko 1860". Original painting, not quite finished, is in the K.T. Gallery. Soldatenkova. There are prints made from the translation onto stone, with the caption: “Lithograph by A.P. Chervyakov, subject to censorship.”

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

23. Sleeping odalisque, almost completely naked: “T. Shevchenko 1860”; in the oval.

24. In the tavern there are three figures: “I. Sokolov. - Engraving T. Shevchenko 1859.” In the 2nd state of the board, the inscription was added: “Oh, stand up Hardka, oh, stand up dad - the people are asking you.”

25. Holy family, from a sketch by Murillo, engraving. T. Shevchenko 1858.

26. Parable of the Grape Garden, 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 Bazanov’s copies of Rembrandt): a) Rembrandt au sabre (Ba. No. 23); b) Lazarus Klap (Ba. 171); and c) Polonais portant sabre et bâton (Ba. 141). Bad copies. Gifted 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 Shevchenka, 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 exponent of the revolutionary aspirations of the poorest and most oppressed layers of the peasantry during 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 its literature.” “Sh. is great,” Herzen wrote about him, “because he is a completely people’s writer, like our Koltsov; but he has much higher value"than Koltsov, because Sh. is also a politician and freedom fighter."

The era to which Sh. belonged and which is so wonderfully reflected in his brilliant works of art is the era of the 30-50s. 19th century, when economic development increasingly drew Russia onto the path of capitalism, when the old forms of serfdom collapsed irrevocably, when the rottenness and impotence of serf Russia became more and more obvious, and peasant "revolts", growing with each decade, forced the tsarist landowner government to take up reforms. Sh. acted as a great revolutionary artist in the darkest time in the history of the serf-slave system - 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 and Ukrainian culture were absolutely prohibited. Tens of millions of poor people were doomed to darkness, oppression, poverty and hard labor. Acting here as colonialists were the Russian landowners, capitalists, the vast state apparatus and bureaucracy, the army, the police, the gendarmerie, the Orthodox Church, tens of thousands of holdouts and executioners stationed throughout all cities and villages, who, together with the Ukrainian, Polish landowners and industrialists, brought social and national oppression of the working masses of Ukraine to unprecedented proportions. “And if,” says Lenin, “centuries of slavery so downtrodden and dulled the peasant masses that during the reform they were incapable of anything other than fragmented individual uprisings, or rather even “revolts,” not illuminated by any political consciousness, then there were At that time there were already revolutionaries in Russia who stood on the side of the peasantry and understood all the narrowness, all the wretchedness of the notorious “peasant reform”, all its serfdom character.” Sh. belongs to the number of these very 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 brave fighter for the overthrow of the monarchy and the power of the landowners, for the destruction of all serfdom and enslaving methods of exploitation. Sh.'s fiery works inspired the peasant movement, which was constantly growing on the eve of the reform of 1861. At a time when the old noble elements from the surviving Decembrists and right up to Herzen find themselves almost completely carried away by the flow of "renewal" coming from above, Sh., along with other few revolutionaries 40 -50s, fought to rouse the oppressed peasant masses to a social revolution, to create a society of free and equal small peasants, a society “without serfs and without masters.” Sh.'s historical role cannot be separated from his personal fate: among the entire galaxy of great fighters of the revolutionary front, Sh. stands out for his firmness of will, unshakable loyalty to his convictions, carried through the greatest trials. “I am in flesh and spirit,” Sh. wrote in one of his letters, “the son and brother of our miserable people; then how can I unite myself with the master’s dog blood?”

Sh. was born in the village. 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 were shed there, the first tears. I don’t know if there is a fierce evil in the world that has not lived would be in that hut. My mother swaddled me there and, swaddled, sang, poured her melancholy into her child; in that grove, in that hut, in “paradise”, I saw hell... There is bondage, hard work. There is my good the mother, still young, was put into the grave by need and labor; there the father, crying with the children (and we were small and naked), could not bear the evil fate, died in the panshchina... and we crawled among people like little mice." In early childhood, life for hire is already hard: he “carries water”, “hires” from more wealthy fellow villagers, grazes community sheep, later - a farm laborer for a priest, a “puffer”, and all this time the boy is looking for someone who could teach him art drawing, for which he feels increasingly attracted and capable. Sh. is whipped with rods for drawing at night, they mock him in every possible way, and mercilessly exploit him. Even then, the young man-Sh worries. thought: “Why shouldn’t we, slaves, be free people?” At the beginning of 1831, Sh., together with Engelhardt, as the latter’s lackey, ends up in St. Petersburg, where the master gives him a “rent” for 4 years to study with the master kulak Shiryaev. Hiding from his master, Sh. While sketching one of the statues in the Summer Garden, he met the artist Soshenko, who introduced the talented young man to the circle of the artist K. Bryullov. Through the efforts of Bryullov and the poet V.A. Zhukovsky, Sh. is redeemed from the landowner (1838). He receives a higher artistic education, becoming a person of a high cultural level for his time. The first of his works that have come down to us date back to the time of his stay at the Academy of Arts. poetic works(1838 - “Cause”, “Violent Vitre”, “Water Flows in the Blue Sea”, “Kotlyarevsky”, etc.). In May 1840, the first book of his poems “Kobzar” (first edition) was published, containing: “My Thoughts”, “Perebendya”, “Polars”, “Before Osnovyanenka”, “Dumka”, “Ivan Pidkova”, “Tarasova Nich”, "Katerina"). The sworn critics of the monarchist, reactionary St. Petersburg magazines greeted the first literary attempts of the “peasant poet” with ridicule. But Sh. stubbornly continues the literary activity he began precisely in the “peasant spirit”: “They call me an enthusiast,” wrote Sh., “that is, a fool. Even if I am a peasant poet, if only I am a poet, I don’t need anything else!” . The poet resolves the problem of his poetic creativity in this way: on the one hand, the poetry of the noble salons, “sultan”, “parquet”, “spurs”, on the other - the “hulk in homespuns” with its “dead (i.e. peasant) word.” At the end of December 1841, Sh.’s historical poem “Haydamaky” was published. The nobles already assessed these early works of his with extreme hostility: “Shevchenko’s works - “Haydamaky”, “Taras’ Night,” wrote the leader of the nobility of Kanevsky district, “although allowed by censorship, they contain stories breathing inexorable hatred of our nobility and, moreover, sharply depict pictures of the Haidamak massacre, which is precisely in our areas, where the people themselves still preserve the traditions of these bloody events, is extremely dangerous for the nobility and all other classes of society, for the people, seeing in them exclusively only images of revenge, massacre, bloodshed , - is encouraged to repeat these deeds, so glorified." In 1842, Sh. wrote the drama “Nikita Gaidai” and the poem “Blind” in Russian, and the poem “Gamalia” in Ukrainian; paints a large painting “Katerina” with oil paints, and also acts for the first time as an illustrator. In the spring of 1843, after an absence of almost 15 years, Sh. comes again to Ukraine, visits his native places, again sees terrible pictures of the laborer-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 political system, the sharpest political satire on the bureaucratic monarchy - "Dream" (July, 1844). In St. Petersburg, Sh. becomes close to the underground circle of Polish revolutionaries, with the most radical Petrashevites (Mombelli), reads revolutionary illegal literature and studies French, dreaming of “escaping” abroad. In March 1845, Sh. again came to Ukraine and wrote a number of his outstanding works(“Heretic”, “Great Lokh”, “Subottov”, “Caucasus”, “Message”, “Cold Yar”, “David Psalms”, “Commandment”, etc.). Sh. himself, as contemporaries talk about it, often acts as a direct agitator among the oppressed peasantry, trying to raise the “chained slaves” to a revolutionary uprising. In Kiev on Podol, on Kurenevka, in the village of Maryinskoye, in Pereyaslav, in Vyunyshchi, speaking before the peasants and the city “navety,” he mercilessly castigates the tsar’s guardsmen, exposes the cowardice and meanness of the Ukrainian lords - “patriots”, groveling before tsarism, mercilessly exploiting their "fellow countrymen" 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 serf hell that surrounded him, idealized the peasant movements of past centuries, often turned to pictures of the past, glorifying, under the influence of bourgeois-landowner historiography, the Cossack-elderly way of life and even the hetmans - in the future he is increasingly freed from these nationalist ideas, and comes more and more deeply to an understanding of the class essence of the hetmanate and the Cossacks. Branding his fellow countrymen as “crafty gentlemen,” exposing and ridiculing their passion for 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 Kiev” (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. Petersburg to the famous III Department of the secret royal chancellery. Andrusky, brought in in the case of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, testified during interrogation: “In Kiev, the Slavic society has two heads: Kostomarov and Shevchenko, of which the first belongs to the moderate party, and the second to the immoderate, that Shevchenko’s main rule is: “who is loyal to the sovereign “He is a scoundrel, but whoever fights for freedom is a noble man.” The chief of gendarmes, in a memo 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 misfortune of Ukraine, or with incredible insolence shed slander and bile on the persons of the imperial house... ". During his stay in the casemate of the III Division, Sh. in April - May 1847 wrote a number of new poems ("Behind the bayrak bayrak", "Meni however", "It's hard in captivity", "I didn't sleep, but nothing like the sea", etc.) , in which he exposes the treacherous role of the Ukrainian elders and hetmans, pours out his anger on the stranglers of the people - the landowners, especially his “countrymen”, and is sad that he did not finish the work he began - the liberation of the “slave working hands”. On 30/V 1847, the “highest” verdict was announced: “The artist Sh. for composing outrageous and extremely daring poems, as gifted with a strong physique, is to be assigned as a private in the Orenburg separate corps, instructing the authorities to have the strictest supervision, so that under no circumstances will he no outrageous or libelous works could be published." Nicholas I personally adds to this sentence: “under the strictest supervision with a ban on writing and drawing.” Ten years (1847-57) of fortress, hard labor of the Nikolaev soldiery and distant Transcaspian exile for seven years of hard work - this is the payment that Sh. received for raising the banner of the struggle for social and national liberation. Despite the ban and the regime of cane discipline, Sh., constantly hiding from the “vigilant supervision”, still continues to write and draw. In continuation of 1848-50, he wrote works outstanding in their strength and revolutionary scope: “Princess”, “Irzhavets”, “To Kozachkovsky”, “Moskaleva Krinitsya”, “Varnak”, “Tsars”, “Titarivna”, “Marina”, “ Between the rocks there is an unknown villain”, “And I am strange”, “Chumak”, “Sotnik”, “Petrus”, “As if you knew, panic”, “If in captivity sometimes I will 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: “The Musician”, “The Unfortunate”, “The Captain”, “The Artist”, “A 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 the rampant serfdom, "noble" officers and bureaucracy. In exile, Sh. was subjected to a new arrest in 1850 for “violating the ban on writing and drawing.” Gene. Obruchev ordered to send Sh. to Orsk “in stages under the strictest guard, appointing from village to village one non-commissioned officer and at least 3 privates.” 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 notified of 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 to the Novopetrovskoe 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 a prisoner “political criminal” to the Sevastopol War, but how much anger and revolutionary indignation can be heard in these lines: “Again, peasant blood flowed... Crowned executioners, like The dogs, hungry for a bone, are biting again." In 1857, Sh. was finally released from exile under an amnesty, remaining 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 exacerbated 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”, “The Holy Fool”, “Share”, “Muse”, “Glory”, “They will shackle the insatiable kings in iron chains and their “glorious” will wrap them in hand shackles and condemn the unrighteous by your own right!” - this is the main idea of ​​these poems of his.

Finally returning to St. Petersburg (1858), Sh. became close to the circle of Russian revolutionary democracy, headed by Chernyshevsky, with Polish revolutionaries preparing the ground for a new uprising (Serakovsky). During his last trip to Ukraine (1859), he was again arrested for convincing the peasants that “there is no need for a tsar, priests, or gentlemen” and was exiled to St. Petersburg with a ban on further entry into Ukraine as “a person compromised itself in a political sense." Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Shevchenko gives a number of new poetic works: “Mary”, “Hosea Chapter XIV”, “Prayers”, “Hymn. Black”, “Clear World”, “Saul”, “About the Neboraki People”, “ There were wars and military quarrels" and many others. etc. The preaching of uprising and revenge against the oppressors now takes on the character of the slogans of a revolutionary tribune. Faithful to the end to his revolutionary convictions, unbending and unyielding, surrounded by furious hatred, wild anger, a reckless stream of lies and slander, constant persecution, Sh. went to his grave. Initially, Sh.’s body was buried in St. Petersburg, later (May 1861) it was transported, according to his poetic will, to Ukraine, where it was buried in Kanev on a mountain overlooking the Dnieper. Soon, the leader of the nobility Gorvat was forced to inform the Kyiv governor-general: “Many visitors flocked to the grave of Sh., whom, at the suggestion of his friends, the common people began to reverence as a prophet, and his every word as a testament for the people, and rumors spread about the hopes of the peasants in the future to take possession for free. landowner's land; about the sacred knives buried in the grave over Sh.'s ashes; about the fact that the hour will soon come when the lords, officials and clergy who hide the rights of the people will continue to be slaughtered." So after his death, the name of Sh. - a fiery fighter for the liberation of the oppressed masses - instilled terrible anxiety in the hearts of the noble landowners and called for “extreme vigilance” to the entire apparatus of tsarist, autocratic Russia.

Sh. came to literature as a fighter: he puts into each of his works the fighting “peasant temperament”, his deep hatred of the noble-landowner system. He came to public life and literature in order to tell the bitter truth about life and to declare his fiery protest against its slavish conditions, which bursts 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 recognized by the young Sh. as a class contradiction and class struggle. But soon the poet of the oppressed poor peasant masses frees himself from bourgeois-nationalist influences hostile to the poet himself, tears off the web of nationalist romance, debunks the “national heroes” he himself recently praised, and from chanting the “past glory of the Cossacks” moves on to main topic their works of art- exposing the noble-landowner system, tearing off all and every mask from the “kingdom of unfed executioners.” “Sh.’s poetry is a condensed, concentrated, crystallized reality,” says the outstanding Ukrainian poet and critic I. Franko about Sh.’s work. But Shevchenko does not just record the life of the autocratic-serf system: showing without embellishment, in all its nakedness, the difficult life of serfdom, the blood and dirt of the lord's deeds, unfolding stunning pieces of life - he calls for a fight. Shevchenko's work is a remarkable example of revolutionary, realistic art. Sh’s best works are imbued with the idea of ​​the peasant revolution, the idea of ​​the struggle of the masses. The poetry of the poor peasants’ truth and struggle, expressed in forms of energetic conciseness, was entirely consistent with the social position on which the poet stood. The wealth of revolutionary content corresponds to the extraordinary wealth of artistic forms. The realism of Sh.'s poetic style is reflected both in his 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 words, in his images, rhymes, and intonations. Shevchenko's artistic innovation was reflected in his creation of a new poetic language, new images that expressed the ideology, experiences and thoughts of the rising exploited social lower classes. Sh.'s creativity 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 what kind of violence, oppression and bullying his “heartfelt”, “homespun” Ukraine was subjected to by the tsarist satraps, executioners, priests and landowners. Sh. is proud that these violence repeatedly provoked resistance from the working people, that the Ukrainian masses were participants in the great revolutionary movement. Shevchenko strives for a free, independent, independent, poor peasant-farmer Ukraine, strives for the ruins of the “prison of nations” Tsarist Russia create new Ukraine- Ukraine of the liberated poor peasantry, “a free, new family.” And these aspirations of his coincided with the liberation interests 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 without reason that he tirelessly castigated the suppressors, executioners, hangers and slaves of the Russian autocracy, calling for the joint forces of the oppressed peoples to defeat their common oppressors. “Freedom and brotherhood of peoples,” says Sh. Kulish, “were his dream.”

Sh. hated the Russia of nobles and priests, but at the same time he revered the memory of the first Russian revolutionaries, the Decembrists, and was very close to the Russian revolutionary circles of the 40s, especially to the left wing of the Petrashevtsy. “In every nation there are two nations,” Lenin wrote, 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, in its content in its main works is the poetry of a peasant uprising: the tense atmosphere of the revolutionary situation of the 50s. breathes on us from every page and it is she who makes Sh. especially close to the next one

revolutionary generation. His best revolutionary works were strictly forbidden for many years. "Kobzar" was published mutilated by the tsarist censorship; the hands of gendarmes and priests carried out the direct extermination of Sh.’s literary heritage. But these frontal attacks did not give the results desired for tsarism: “The ban on honoring Sh.,” wrote Lenin, “was such an excellent, magnificent, extremely happy and successful measure from the point of view of agitation against government, that better agitation cannot be imagined. I think all our best Social-Democratic agitators against the government would never have achieved in such a short time such dizzying successes as this measure achieved in the anti-government sense. After this measure, millions and millions of “ordinary people “They began to turn into conscious citizens and become convinced of the correctness of the saying that Russia is a “prison of nations.”

The enormous importance of Shevchenko as a poet overshadowed his works as an artist. His paintings and drawings were not collected for many years and were not as widely known as his poetic work. Meanwhile, in this area, Shevchenko also left a large legacy, exceeding 1000 paintings, drawings and sketches, proving that Shevchenko was great and very original master. During his years studying at the Academy of Arts (1838-45), Sh. was to some extent carried away by the works of academic classicism with its far-fetched pathos and high mastery of composition and drawing. Bryullov, who opposed the deadness and coldness of the old school, brought a lot of life and movement into art, was one of the first to begin to accustom his students to the demands of life and nature, had an enormous influence on Sh. the artist, but soon Sh. moved away from the dazzling brilliance and romanticism Bryullov towards in-depth psychologism and realism, thereby revealing a protest against dazzlingly elegant, lordly academic art. Sh.'s painting is in many ways in touch with his poetry. “Katerina” (1842), created using the painting techniques of the Bryullov school, but already realistic in all its content, challenged the entire system of oppression and violence. In 1844, Sh. released a series of etchings “Picturesque Ukraine” (6 sheets in total), in which the artist, despite his academic upbringing and 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, festive characters of the Venetian type, sweetened with false sentimentalism, but real folk types, real folk scenes, depicting ordinary people oppressed by heavy serfdom in their real surroundings. During his stay in Ukraine, Sh. worked a lot in various branches of art: he painted landscapes, portraits, etchings, even icons made “for bread.” At the same time, for the purposes of revolutionary agitation, Sh. gives a number of political cartoons, which is confirmed by the fact that “when examining the papers (during the arrest in 1847), poorly drawn, most immoral pictures were found in Sh.’s briefcase, most of which they made caricatures of the members of the imperial family, especially the Empress" (from the testimony of General Dubelt). During his exile, Sh. manages only to secretly make sketches of the Kyrgyz, dull steppe landscapes, and in the Novopetrovsky fort he prepares a series of drawings for etching on the theme "The Prodigal Son", conceived as a satire on the merchant class, which, however, sounds like such a formidable social protest that no artist of his time rose to the level. The subjects that Sh. introduces into painting have never been touched upon in Russian and Ukrainian art before him. Pictures of soldiers, punishments" Prodigal Son"("In the barracks before punishment", "Spitzrutens", "In a convict prison") are a merciless, harsh illustration of life and everyday 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 etchings by Rembrandt. Rembrandt had been fascinated by Sh. before, and these influences are noticeable in his early self-portraits and in Kyrgyz landscapes. Now he began to study him. The truth of life, simplicity, direct feeling, completely hostile to formal beauty and ceremonial conventions - that's what attracted Sh. in the works of Rembrandt - this brilliant Dutch artist. Engravings from paintings by Rembrandt, Murillo and Bryullov create Sh. the glory of the “Russian Rembrandt”, and on 2/IX 1860 the Council of the Academy awarded him the title of academician “for art and knowledge in engraving art." Sh. did not recognize art for a few. The artist for him is "the bearer of the light of truth," which should be " useful people". This is where Sh.'s desire to engage in engraving comes from. "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 of the most elegant works, accessible only to the rich, would be smoking in gloomy galleries without your miraculous chisel! broad layers of working people. Along with direct attacks on Sh., at the same time there was a falsification of his work, the transformation of the poet-fighter into a harmless icon, the canonization of his name, the emasculation of the revolutionary social essence of his work, the dulling of his revolutionary edge. The leaders of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, the leaders of all its nationalist groups - The Grushevskys, Efremovs, Vinnichenkos - created the cult of “Father Taras” or lit lamps in front of the emasculated “Kobzar”, and turned Sh.’s “chobots” and “shirts” into fetishes for “popular worship.” When the thunder of the October Revolution of 1917 struck, when the red banner of the proletarian dictatorship rose, all these Ukrainian Esefs, Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, all these “independents” and “independents” - the “dobrodys” Efremovs, Grushevskys, Shapovals, Petlyurs, Vinnichenkos - tried to dress the powerful figure of the popular, beloved among the masses. . 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 “father Taras” as a banner for a bloody reprisal against revolutionary workers and peasants, as a shield to cover up his treacherous deals with the international counter-revolution. The leaders of the Ukrainian and Russian counter-revolution, Polish and German fascists in the struggle against socialist Ukraine tried and are trying to poison the consciousness of the working people with the poison of nationalism and, using various means of ideological preparation for war and intervention, falsify in every possible way literary heritage Sh., clinging to elements of nationalism, the glorification of the Cossack people, to elements of religiosity (characteristic of the early Sh.), inflating them in every possible way, while carefully avoiding the deeply revolutionary social essence of the singer of the oppressed serf peasantry. In the system of proletarian dictatorship, the work of Sh., critically assessed in the light of Marxism-Leninism, was and will be an instrument of revolutionary education, the comprehensive strengthening of the fraternal unity of the working people of all nations.

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

Works: Academic edition of VUAN: “Outside the collected works of Taras Shevchenko”, vol. III - Listuvannya, Kharkiv, 1929, vol. IV - Schodenny notes, Kharkiv, 1927 (so far only these two volumes have been published, edited by former academician. S. Efremov, convicted as the organizer of an IED. Work on the publication of the complete collected works of T. G. Shevchenko continues under a new edition); Kobzar (edited and with notes by I. Aizenstock and M. Plevakr), Kharkiv, 1930; Kobzar (introductory article by V. Koryak), Kharkiv, 1928 (pop. ed.); A new collection of works by T. G. Shevchenko, edited by D. Doroshenko, Katerinoslav, 1914 (edition with censor passes, including a Ukrainian translation of Sh.’s stories written in Russian); in Russian language: Diary, Kharkov, 1925; Kobzar, per. I. A. Belousova, M., 1919 (translation is very bad).

Lit.: Koryak V., Fight for Shevchenko, Kharkiv, 1925; Shablyovsky E. S., Proletarian Revolution and Shevchenko, Kharkov - Kiev, 1932; Bagriy O. V., T. G. Shevchenko, vol. I - II, Kharkiv, 1930-31; Plevako M., Shevchenko and criticism (Evolution of views on Shevchenko), “Chervoniy Shlyakh”, Kharkiv, 1924, No. 3; Filippovich P., Shevchenko and the Decembrists, [Kharkiv], 1926; Navrotsky B., Shevchenko’s creativity (Collection of statistics), Kharkiv, 1931; Ukrainian painting. Taras Shevchenko, [Kharkiv], 1930 (collection of Sh.’s most important paintings and drawings. The description of Sh. as an artist by Academician Novitsky that was given to him is nationalistic and extremely primitive); in Russian language: Skvortsov A. M., Life of the artist Taras Shevchenko, M., 1929.

E. Shabliovsky.

Shevch e NKO, Faina Vasilievna

Genus. 1893, d. 1971. Actress. Played on the stage of the Moscow art theater(since 1914). Twice laureate of the USSR State Prize (1943, 1946). People's Artist of the USSR (1948).

Large biographical encyclopedia. - Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko. SHEVCHENKO Taras Grigorievich (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 and Methodius Society he was sent to... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (1814 61), Ukrainian. poet, artist, thinker, revolutionary. democrat. L.'s name appears repeatedly in letters sent from exile (1847 57) and in Sh's diaries. In letters to M. Lazarevsky (Dec. 20, 1847), A. Lizogub (Feb. 1, 1848), F. Lazarevsky (April 22 ... Lermontov Encyclopedia

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

- (1814 61) Ukrainian poet, artist. Born into the family of a serf peasant. In 1838, after he was bought out 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 Sorintsy, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province, in the family of a serf peasant, 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 “an assistant in the painting workshop” of 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....

National hero of Ukraine. Not knowing his biography is a shame for any self-respecting Ukrainian.
The poet was born on March 9 (February 25), 1814. The place of his birth was the village of Morintsy (Kiev province at that time). Unfortunately for Taras, he was born into a serf family, whose landowner was Engelhardt. After 2 years of living in Morintsy, Taras Grigorievich’s family moved to the village. Kirilovka, where he spent his entire difficult childhood. “Heavy” because his mother died in 1823, when Taras Shevchenko was only 9 years old. After her death, her father married a second time, and his chosen one was a widow who had three children. It is not surprising that she did not like Taras Shevchenko and treated him harshly and sometimes cruelly. The only person who treated Taras with understanding and sympathy was his sister, Ekaterina. But after she got married, her support ended. In 1825, his father died, and Shevchenko had just turned 12 years old. Adult life has begun, unfair and cruel...

Taras Shevchenko loved to write and draw from birth. As a child, he often hid in the weeds and wrote poems or drew on a small piece of paper. Despite the fact that he was left an orphan, Taras Grigorievich tried to find teachers for himself. And I found it. His first teacher was a sexton who loved to drink and whipped Taras more than once because he was in a bad mood. Despite such studies, Shevchenko was still able to learn to read and write. His second teachers were neighboring painters, but they were only able to teach Taras Shevchenko basic drawing techniques. After them, Shevchenko became a sheep shepherd, but he didn’t stay there for long, because when he turned 16 (in 1829) he was taken into Engelhardt’s servant (initially as a cook, then as a Cossack).
The passion for painting did not go away, but on the contrary increased every minute. For this passion, Shevchenko received “on the neck” more than once from his owner. Tired of beating Taras and noticing his talent for drawing, Engelhardt sent him to study with the master of painting, Shiryaev. It was there that Shevchenko managed (when luck smiled) to copy statues in the Summer Garden and visit the Hermitage. One day, while sketching another statue, Taras Shevchenko met I.M. Soshenko. This acquaintance played a huge role in the biography of Taras Shevchenko. After all, it was thanks to Soshenko that he met the Venetsianovs, Bryullovs, and Zhukovskys. These people bought Shevchenko from the landowner Engelhardt. At that time it was a fortune. And in order to get it, Bryullov painted a portrait of Zhukovsky. With the help of Count Vielgorsky, a private auction was organized, at which this portrait was sold for 2,500 rubles. It was for this price that Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko was released on April 22, 1838.

I think it goes without saying that Shevchenko’s feelings of gratitude were endless. He even dedicated one of his most famous works, “Katerina,” to Zhukovsky. 1840 - 1847 - the heyday of Taras Shevchenko’s work. Just at this time, such great works as “Haydamaky” (the largest work), “Perebednya”, “Topolya”, “Katerina”, “Naymichka”, “Khustochka” were published. Naturally, all of them were condemned by criticism, because they were written in Ukrainian.
In 1846 the poet comes to Ukraine in Kyiv, where he becomes close to N.I. Kostomarov, who pushed him to join the Cyril and Methodius Society. Unfortunately for Shevchenko, members of this society were arrested and accused of political treason, for which they were punished different types punishments. Taras Grigorievich suffered the most because of his poems - he was sent into exile to the Orsk fortress. The worst thing about this was not that he was deprived of his freedom, but that he was deprived of the opportunity to write and draw, and no petitions from his friends could help him. An expedition to the Aral Sea in 1848-1849 became a small salvation for him. Thanks to the normal attitude of Lieutenant Butakov, Taras Shevchenko was allowed to sketch coastal landscapes.
But the happiness did not last long, soon the government learned about the favorable attitude towards Taras Shevchenko, as a result - Shevchenko was sent to a new exile in Novopetrovskoye, the lieutenant was reprimanded. Taras Grigorievich was in Novopetrovsky from October 17, 1850. to August 2, 1857 Staying in this exile was very painful (especially at first). Due to the inability to draw, Shevchenko began to try his hand at sculpting and taking photographs, but at that time this was an expensive occupation. Therefore, he gave up this occupation and again took up the pen and wrote several Russian stories - “Princess”, “Artist”, “Twins”. In these works, Taras Shevchenko wrote a lot of autobiographical information.

IN 1857 Shevchenko, with poor health, was released. Since 1858 until 1859 Taras Shevchenko lived with F.P. Tolstoy. In 1859, Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko went to his homeland. He immediately had the idea of ​​purchasing a house above the Dnieper River, but, unfortunately, it was not possible, on March 10 (February 26), 1861. he died. He was buried according to his “Command,” over the Dnieper. After his death, he left behind a treasure for the Ukrainian nation - “Kobzar”.

Little Taras was born in 1814, in the village of Morintsi, in Cherkasy region. Father - Grigory Ivanovich Shevchenko was a peasant peasant. Taras has six more children, two daughters and two daughters.

The rocks of Shevchenko’s childhood passed through in a local village, and in the village of Kyrylivka, like Volodiv, Lieutenant General Vasyl Engelhardt.

Having already shown interest and richness before painting and poetry. In the eight-fold army, he entered the service of the local clerk - the teacher Pavel Ruban, and then learned to read and write.

In adolescence, he is taken into the squire's servant, first as a cook, and later as a Cossack. Luckily for Taras, Engelhardt discovered a passion for painting. Also, through the noble mother of the court artist, the landowner sent young Shevchenko to his apprenticeship. Vikladach Shevchenko, on the protyaz 1.5 years later, portrait painter Jan Rustem, vikladach Vilnius University.

Yunist

Years ago, in 1831, Lieutenant General Engelhardt moved to St. Petersburg, and Shevchenko’s journey continued. In St. Petersburg, Taras became the guild master of the fraying department - V. Shiryaev. Zavdyaki Shiryaev, a young artist, painted the Hermitage and painted statues in the Summer Garden. In the summer garden, Shevchenko got to know Ivan Soshenko, painting one of the sculptures.

They introduced Taras to their new acquaintance Bryulov and Zhukovsky, who had played a significant role in Shevchenko’s exile. That, really, the very giftedness of this serf boy was the reason for this.

This became clear for Shevchenko when he was 24 years old. The owners of Zhukovsky and Bryulov, who held a beneficial auction, collected an amount of 2.5 thousand rubles. For this little money there was a great poet to come.

Immediately after his release from captivity, Taras Shevchenko went to the Academy of Mystery. There, having continued to paint, he began to create various types of writing. Just before the hour began, the first collection of vertices - “Kobzar” - was seen.

In 1844, having completed its beginnings, the Mayday letter turned to Ukraine. In Ukraine, those who arrived in Kiev were assigned to work in a timely commission to review old assets, to install an artist.

Around that very hour, Shevchenko became acquainted with Kostomarov, which influenced the formation of his political views.

Zaslannya

In 1846, after joining the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, Shevchenko wrote a revolutionary collection “3 years”. For the top collection price itself, . Years later, he was sent to exile to serve in the Orska Fortress, where he served as a soldier. Let's confine the decree of Mikoli Pershoy, Taras Shevchenko was blocked from writing and painting. She, following the decree, sings all the same, stealthily writing virshiv, and painting.

So, in 1848, Shevchenko was included in an expedition to explore the Aral Sea as an artist. Watercolor landscapes and portraits were created there.

Also on one expedition - in the Karatau Mountains, Tarsus wrote a dozen Russian stories (Peru Shevchenko is the Russian Princess, Varnak and others) and created a dozen paintings.

Further life

In 1957, Taras Shevchenko's life turned away from exile. There’s a lot to it, and there’s a lot of calls for Count Tolstoy, and his squad. While those who were constantly in Ukraine were abandoned, Taras Shevchenko arrived in Ukraine in 1859. Then, through the constant surveillance of the police, it turns around to St. Petersburg.

At that moment, the wishes of the singer’s health failed, and on its 47th day, the nation was already becoming seriously ill.

Death

On the 10th of February 1861, Ukraine lost one of its most talented blues. The death of Taras Shevchenko occurred in St. Petersburg, far from the native land. Pohokhanovy bu on the Smolensk warehouse. That year, as was instructed to us in the commandment, the ashes of the Shevchenko were transported to Ukraine, to Tarasova Mountain. There, as he asked, he sings “It was visible, it was almost as if it were roaring.”

During his short life, Taras Shevchenko deprived us of a great decline in literature, an artistic mystique in the world, and simply an invaluable contribution to the development of Ukrainian culture.

Peru Taras Grigorovich Shevchenko lay down:

• eat,
• baladi,
• tell,
• collection of vertices,
• and more than 1000 paintings.

Shavchenko’s work has been translated into a great number of people all over the world, so don’t miss out on it. “Study, read, learn from others, and don’t fight your own.”