Part two
One of the mythical pages of Shevchenko's biography is his stormy "revolutionary" activity and participation in the Cyril and Methodius brotherhood. In fact, he entertained the members of the fraternity with his anti-government rhymes. And he was arrested not for revolutionary activities, but for poetry that they found among members of society.
The members of the brotherhood were sentenced to rather light sentences, for example, Kostomarov received eight years of exile in Saratov, Kulish three years of exile in Tula, and only Shevchenko was assigned a soldier in Orenburg ("For writing outrageous and extremely daring poems").
Such harshness was explained by the fact that he composed a vile libel against the queen, where he ridiculed her mutilation - her head involuntarily twitched after a nervous shock during the Decembrist uprising. According to the sentence, he was forbidden to write, and to draw - for his irresistible craving for the image of pornographic pictures, which he handed out everywhere during drunkenness.
For this abomination, everyone with whom he was treated kindly turned away from him, Bryullov and Zhukovsky rejected him with contempt. Martos commented: "It is not for nothing that the proverb says: there will be no lord from the boor," and Belinsky said: "… common sense in Shevchenko should see a donkey, a fool and a vulgar, and moreover, a bitter drunkard."
But that's not all, in 1860, in connection with the death of the queen, he wrote such a masterpiece:
You, oh Suko!
I myself, and our grandchildren, І the world proklennat people!
And this is addressed to the woman who organized and contributed money for his ransom from slavery! Truly, for this ungrateful "genius" there was nothing sacred! Only a person with base instincts could thank his benefactors in this way.
However, the retribution was not so dire. Existing legends about Shevchenko's heavy soldier's share in the Nikolaev army with its drill and punishments have nothing to do with it. There were no sticks and fuchtels at all, and there was also no prohibition for him not to write or draw.
In exile, he met with a cordial and respectful attitude towards himself, he was accepted as an equal in his society and they tried to procure forgiveness. I attended the governor's receptions and painted a portrait of his wife. He had a lot of acquaintances in the middle and higher spheres of Orenburg society. He painted portraits for money and generally opened a wide trade in his works of painting.
He was only listed as a soldier, without carrying any service. In the fortress, he was generally the soul of society, a rare picnic did without his participation. The unrestrained drunkenness with the officers continued, he dined with the commandant and often slept drunk under his favorite willow.
Shevchenko was assigned a soldier with the right to serve as an officer. But laziness, drunkenness and licentiousness did not allow him to end his service in three or four years. Instead, he preferred to seek the protection of high-profile persons.
After his release in 1857, he rushed not to Ukraine, but to the capital, where patrons promised him a comfortable existence. Here is how his journey along the Volga is described: "I got drunk with either four or five glasses of cherry vodka - with this there is a great many tsibul and pickles." He died from excessive drinking at the age of forty-seven, having achieved little in his work.
Where are his famous paintings and genius poems? There is none of this. Undoubtedly, he was gifted with talent, and it is very possible, had he received a decent education, would have earned himself not the last place in Russian literature. But he remained a secondary poet and artist, just as any province remains secondary, no matter what royal titles it awards itself.
The creativity of provincial writers always bears the stamp of handicraft. They cannot imagine anything significant while they are in the horizons of their province, genius is something sovereign, characteristic only of a great culture.
Belarusian Mickiewicz became a Polish poet, and Little Russian Gogol became a Russian writer. Their enormous talents were developed in the bosom of a great culture, and they became generally recognized geniuses. Gogol, having exchanged the Poltava MOV for the all-Russian speech, stood next to Pushkin, and under the Poltava Mov, Panko would have remained unknown to anyone.
Having talent does not exclude ignorance. Shevchenko, due to his ignorance, did not understand this. Once in the midst of Russian bohemia, he remained a handicraftsman, writing in the Little Russian dialect and with a farmer's outlook. Little Russia could not give anything higher than a shepherd or a painter to her poet, so he would have died in obscurity.
Literary critics believe that most of the works of the "great Kobzar" are just imitations of other poets - the Russian Zhukovsky and Pushkin, the Polish Mickiewicz. Probably, this is so, while he is not a talentless imitator, but a gifted person, but far from being a genius.
He tried to take a place in Russian literature, but the role of a third-rate writer did not suit him, and he could not count on more. Realizing his own inferiority, he hated Russian culture and Russian writers. The reason for his Russophobic sentiments, among other things, lies in the elementary envy of those more gifted than he is.
It is difficult to find hidden meanings and deep morality in Shevchenko's works, they are not. Often this is just delirium of a not quite normal person who is obsessed with scenes of cruelty. The leitmotif of his work is incitement to hatred: "having knocked out bi" and if only Muscovites are "hated".
Who is his enemy? Search not long, he is always at hand - Muscovite. This word in some cases means a Russian soldier, in others - just a Russian. In Shevchenko's dictionary you will not find not only the expression "friend, brother to the Muscovite", but also good words about Russians. But there are many other words with which he expresses his hatred of Russia.
In his diary, he wrote: "The Zhidov principle in the Russian man. He cannot even fall in love without a dowry." And about the officers: “If sober, then certainly an ignoramus and a braggart. If, however, with even a small spark of reason and light, then also a braggart and, in addition, a drunkard, a bastard and a libertine."
There is probably not a single repulsive feature that would not be in Russian:
… Moskovshchina, Around alien people.
… Moscow strangers, It's hard to live with them.
And who are your friends? Clearly, the "free Poles" and the Cossacks, who dreamed of getting into the register in order to be part of the "clandestine pantry" and thus live off the labor of the Little Russian slaves. This was the "quiet paradise" for which he yearns. It was the Cossacks with their bloody customs that were for him a symbol of will and freedom.
Fraternized with vilnyi lyakhi …
… Otak something, Lyasha, friend, brother!
He especially hates the Russian Tsar and Muscovites. Like Mitskevich, he is blinded by hatred of Russian statehood and nationality. His enemy is the Muscovites, and when it sounds "I will sprinkle the will of someone else's evil blood", it is clear who he has in mind. For Shevchenko, the annexation of the Hetmanate to Russia is an eternal pretext for tragedy, and only Khmelnitsky is cursed in his work:
… Oh, Bogdana, Bogdanochka!
Yakbi Bula knew
I used to strangle the colisse.
He wrote his creations not in the Ukrainian language, which at that time did not yet exist, but in the Little Russian dialect, according to the first "Grammar of the Little Russian Dialect", compiled by the Great Russian Pavlovsky and published in 1818 in St. Petersburg. The grammar of the Ukrainian language that has survived to this day was introduced only in 1893 by the Austrian parliament.
Having spent his childhood and adolescence in serf bondage and seeing landowners living at ease, he is full of anger towards everyone in whose hands the power and who is happy. And this hatred is directed against everyone in whom he saw the culprit of his difficult situation.
At the same time, he combined angry anti-serf tirades in his works with a very pleasant pastime in the landlord society, entertaining the serf owners with singing, poetry and anecdotes. Complexity Shevchenko, who suffered all his life because of his low birth, helplessness and erotic failures, resulted in a pathological hatred of the authorities and the higher strata, despite the fact that it was they who brought him to the people.
Destruction was the goal of his life. Being the personification of hatred, envy, debauchery and unbelief, in his poems he relishes rivers of blood and calls for a bloody battle. His creativity can only motivate to meanness, but not to heroic deeds.
So, a close friend of Shevchenko Maksimovich considered it even unnecessary to compile his biography. He pointed out that in Shevchenko's life there was "so much dirty and immoral that the depiction of this side will overshadow all the good", adding that "he wrote mostly in a drunken state."
Disguising himself as a peasant, he never once stood at the plow, never once tasted the sweat of peasant work. Being in childhood and youth a deceitful and lazy lackey, he remained so until the end of his days, having spent his life in drunkenness and debauchery and little work.
Despite this, after his death, Shevchenko climbed the banner three times and became a symbol. First among the “Mazepians”, at the beginning of the 20th century, it was a symbol of the emerging “Ukrainian nation”, then, in 1918, it was a symbol of the struggle against tsarism among the Bolsheviks, and in 1991, it was a symbol of the struggle for the statehood of Ukraine.
Why was this man absolutely alien to Little Russians with a blood-stained face, Polish sympathies and Russophobic inclinations so popular with the Bolsheviks and became a national symbol of Ukraine?
Everything is clear with the Bolsheviks, they "mobilized" Shevchenko and already in 1918 erected a monument to him in Moscow. They needed an idol from the "people" and a myth about their struggle against tsarism and serfdom in ancient times. Shevchenko, like no one, approached this role with his fierce hatred of the ruling classes and the destruction of everything and everyone.
For more than a hundred years, the ideologists of Ukrainians need Shevchenko as an idol of a non-existent nation and a myth about the centuries-old struggle of this nation with Russia and the Russian people. And here Shevchenko has no equal with his malice and pathological hatred of the Muscovites. Therefore, titanic efforts are being made to form the image of the national "Ukrainian genius" who fought for "independence" with their creativity and "revolutionary" activities. Shevchenko's hatred is at a great price for them.
