THE BARD'S 188TH ANNIVERSARY: Rediscovering Shevchenko and his lasting relevance (03/10/02)

THE BARD'S 188TH ANNIVERSARY

Rediscovering Shevchenko and his lasting relevance

by Eugene Melnitchenko and Helena Lysyj Melnitchenko

In March we again celebrate the birth of Taras Shevchenko. Although this is the 188th anniversary of his birth, his message and ideas continue to retain their perpetual freshness and relevancy. They still have the power to remind us of who we are and where we came from, and offer us a moral compass for the future.

Our introduction to Shevchenko came through our parents, who read this "Kobzar" every day - as one would read the Bible. It was their way of holding on to their identity. In their exile, they understood his. We memorized his poems before we could read and write.

And then, later in the makeshift schools of displaced persons' camps, dressed in shirts and blouses embroidered by our mothers, we recited them on Shevchenko's day. Still later, in our new country, we recited and sang them on stage. And we shared the familiar lines with each other and with friends and family.

Shevchenko's lyrical poetry was always a part of our life, yet our understanding of it was incomplete. Our parents and teachers withheld the unbearable sadness and rage of his poetry.

We memorized "The Cherry Orchard," but did not know the rest of the story, the contrast of the nightingale's song in faraway Ukraine with the conversation of Shevchenko's keepers as they guarded him in prison.

We learned a few lines of "The Princess," the idyllic "village, like a pysanka," but did not know of the unspeakable crime of the princess's father.

We sang the first few stanzas of "Prychynna," so familiar to every Ukrainian, without understanding even the title, which we were to learn later meant the "madwoman." We read it now, comparing it to "Romeo and Juliet," and it touches our hearts more than Shakespeare ever could.

As children, we knew Shevchenko had a short and hard life and that he was a serf and an orphan, but we could not begin to understand his incarceration, what it meant to a poet and a painter who was forbidden to write and paint.

He barely reached his 47th year, dying the day after his birthday, on March 10. Of his short life he spent 24 years as a serf, 10 in hard labor in Siberia, four under police supervision and only nine as a free man. Despite the severe pressure on him to write in Russian, he wrote in Ukrainian, unlike Mykola Hohol (1809-1852), who is better known in world's literature.

Nonetheless, the "Kobzar" can be found in almost every Ukrainian home throughout the world.

Rediscovering Shevchenko in our mature years, after our study of Western literature and philosophy is a gift. His poetic genius, his profound effect on all Ukrainians, his contribution to the making of a nation is immeasurable. He was Ukraine's Dante, Lincoln and Gandhi combined. All of his life, he sought truth and justice, and, despite moments of despair, he believed they would prevail.

He was also a man of his time. The 19th century was a time of great upheaval and great repression. While it was the Romantic century in literature and art, it also revered the Renaissance. Shevchenko fused Renaissance thinking with Romantic sensibilities. He was more than a poet; his first talent - the one that got him noticed and opened up educational opportunities to him - was as a painter.

As a bard, he has been compared to Homer, and as a dramatist, to Shakespeare. He read the Scottish writers, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, and felt a kinship with their lyrical retelling of Scotland's tragic history. He admired Ivan Kotliarevsky (1769-1838) for his inspired use of the Ukrainian language, but chided him for using foreign subjects in "Eneida."

Ukrainians continue to make a pilgrimage to Shevchenko's final resting place near Kaniv, and we made that pilgrimage on our first trip to Ukraine. It was somewhat adventurous, as we did not go with a group and made our own arrangements to travel from the capital by the Dnipro River. It seemed appropriate, knowing how much the great river had inspired the poet. Its strength and beauty, its sheer size, made us understand and appreciate even more those first stanzas of "Prychynna."

Ukraine's best kept travel secret, the gleaming hydrofoil that glides smoothly over the Dnipro's waves, would have been foreign to Shevchenko, yet he would have felt at home among its passengers, babtsi with their bags, and young men and women who eyed us warily, not knowing what to make of us. As this was in August, in the first year of independence, the honeyed smell of apples and pears mingled with the earthy smell of fresh bread. A pair of geese in a large straw basket protested loudly.

From the river, Shevchenko's "mohyla" (burial mound) can be reached by a long staircase built into the hill. Halfway up the stairs we had to pause to catch our breath at the incomparable view of the river. His statue looms large on a tall obelisk. Even on weekdays, the granite Mohyla itself is full of freshlycut flowers. We added our own and wrote in the visitors' book: "It finally happened!"

A lone bandurist in an intricately embroidered shirt and wide sharavary played and sang the poet's songs. He told us he was from Poltava and came to pay his respects to the bard. Two buses of German tourists surrounded him and listened as their guide tried to translate and explain the songs. Descending the steep steps to catch the hydrofoil back to Kyiv, we heard "Dumy moi, dumy moi, lykho meni z vamy..." echoing in the distance.

Shevchenko's poetry continues to echo in our hearts. He taught us the power of the word, and his immortal words remain as relevant as when he first wrote them, his message as clear.

The words of the poet who never gave up his vision of a free Ukraine, who was instrumental in its independence, should give all Ukrainians pause at a time when the country seems to stand at a crossroads.

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