Part one
In the pantheon of idols of modern Ukraine, Shevchenko now occupies the same place as Lenin occupied in the pantheon of Soviet idols. Some in their zeal try to present Shevchenko as a genius of world culture and even compare him with Pushkin or Mitskevich, while others call Shevchenko a kobzar and a prophet, the Bible of the Ukrainian people, a national symbol and spiritual mentor.
According to the canonical version, Shevchenko is a genius poet and artist who since childhood languished in serf bondage, for participation in the struggle against tsarism, he was exiled to the soldiers, where the criminal tsarist regime did not allow the people's talent to develop.
One may wonder why this man, according to his contemporaries, who was an average poet, suddenly found himself in demand by his descendants? Why was it only half a century after his death that they remembered him, and he became the symbol of the nascent Ukrainians among the so-called "Mazepa" people? Why, after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks made him a fighter against serfdom? Why has he become a symbol of the "Ukrainian nation" in modern Ukraine?
What was so remarkable in the life and work of Shevchenko?
In fact, he was a talented man, but uneducated, who remained ignorant in many matters, which was reflected in his poetry and worldview. In such circumstances, a person becomes angry, extremely selfish, dissatisfied with nothing and striving for destruction. And it is not for nothing that he himself confessed, "I came out by nature some kind of unfinished."
And this despite the fact that, according to numerous testimonies of his contemporaries, Shevchenko's whole life was spent in drunkenness and debauchery, and that he did not leave behind a single stunning picture and did not surprise the world with literary masterpieces.
Here is what his contemporaries wrote about him. Gogol about Shevchenko's work: “There is a lot of tar, and I’ll even add more tar than poetry itself. And the language … ", Belinsky:" … the rusticity of the peasant language and the oakiness of the peasant mind … ", his friend Kulish:" … the half-drunk and loose muse … " pedestal of world genius”. As you can see, they didn't really appreciate him.
If you take his works, then you cannot find a single lofty thought in them, they are oversaturated with anger and hatred for the whole world, calls for destruction, streams of blood, praise of "free Poles" and hatred of "Muscovites". And this boundless hatred is directed against everyone who, in his opinion, is guilty of his life failures.
What circumstances gave rise to such an ugly phenomenon? To understand this phenomenon, let us plunge into his childhood and adolescence, the period of the formation of a person and personality.
Shevchenko was born into a family of serfs on the right-bank Polish half of Ukraine, which was annexed to Russia only twenty years ago. Everything here still breathes Poland, Polish priests in churches, the Polish education system in church schools and Polish teachers, Polish lords still rule in their former estates. From an early age, he absorbed the Polish environment.
His childhood was difficult, he did not finish the parish school, his mother died at the age of 9, his father brought his stepmother, who, along with his half-brothers and sisters, mocked him, two years later his father also died. From childhood, Taras also had terrible memories of the local robber haidamak, who demanded money from his father.
The stepmother's lover, a school clerk and a drunkard, got Taras drunk, put him in as a "consul" - to monitor the progress of his students and give a rod for poor progress. Taras had no sympathy for people since childhood. He demanded offerings from the disciples, and those who could not bring anything were mercilessly seized. He did not comprehend literacy here, they memorized only psalms at school.
Taras ran away from the clerk, went as an apprentice to the painter - they kicked out, as a shepherd, kicked out, as a farm laborer, kicked out again. At about 15 years old, his grandfather attached him to the estate manager, Pole Dymovsky.
On this, the suffering of Taras ended, he spent his further childhood and youth in lackeys, and this is not hard peasant labor in the field. The manager liked the quick-witted boy, he gives him to a local artist for drawing lessons and teaches him Polish literacy, so Taras was the first to master not his native, but Polish letters.
So he became a Cossack under the young wife of the master of the Polish lady Sofia. She was an enlightened woman, taught him to speak French, read and write in Russian. The rest of his education and knowledge of languages he received from her lackeys and until the end of his life he wrote terribly illiterate.
Then fate throws Taras into the Polish environment, in 1829 he, together with the master's family, travels to Vilna. As a page, he is at the feet of Mrs Sophia, she shows favor to him, gives him Polish books to read, he recognizes Mickiewicz and admires him.
She gets Taras to attend lectures of a famous European artist, he enters the Polish student environment and is imbued with their worldview. Polish lady, Polish poets and Polish friends. The formation of Shevchenko and his views were formed under the wing of Mrs. Sofia, he came to her as a 15-year-old teenager, and left her care as a 24-year-old man.
In Vilna, he falls in love with the Polish beauty Jadwiga, the dressmaker of Madame Sofia, through her brother he falls into the circle of students participating in the preparation of the Polish uprising of 1830. With the departure of the master, Taras finds an excuse and remains with Jadwiga, she invites him to participate in the uprising. Because of his cowardice, he refuses, and the frantic Pole surrenders him to the authorities, who escort Taras to Petersburg to his master. Shevchenko's first love ends with disappointment and betrayal, and a corresponding attitude towards a woman is formed in him.
This is how the Little Russian and Polish stage of Shevchenko's formation passed. From early childhood he was brought up in a Polish environment, and she shaped his worldview and instilled a fierce hatred of the "Muscovites".
He never denigrated the Polish period in the life of his people, for him this is the heyday of Ukraine, as Polish friends said and so drunken kobzars sang. The promised land for him is "prick":
And ty was written inject
In goodness and goodness! Vkraino!
In his work, he loves Polish Ukraine, hates its enslavement by tsarism and scolds the Polish gentleman for the fact that, because of their ambitions, they brought Poland to its fall and partition. He writes what he read at Mickiewicz's, what he heard from his Polish friends. He did not read Russian poets and Pushkin in his youth. A poet of the Polish outskirts, brought up by the Poles and in Polish literature, who accepted their hatred of everything Russian.
Only memories of his childhood, of the hard lot of the peasants, find a response in his soul, and he sees the Russian tsarism and the "Muscovites" as the culprits of this, considering them to be guilty of all his troubles.
Only at the age of 17 did Shevchenko find himself in the Russian environment, but for another seven years he was under the influence of his beloved Polish girl Sophia. At her request, Shevchenko was arranged as an apprentice to the artist Shiryaev. He falls into the environment of St. Petersburg artists. Little Russia at that time was something exotic for Petersburg society, and Shevchenko became for them a fashionable aborigine from a backward province. Petersburg bohemia became interested in a gifted young man, and such celebrities as Bryullov, Venetsianov and Zhukovsky took an ardent part in his fate.
He meets his fellow countryman Soshenko, a student of the artist Bryullov, and the Little Russian writer Grebinka. Through them, he enters the circle of the Little Russian community of St. Petersburg, attends their evenings, often ending with a feast, of which Shevchenko has always been. There he gets acquainted with the historical fake "History of the Rus" about the happy life of the Little Russians in Poland and about the "Cossack knights", from where he will get materials for his works in the future. Even modern Ukrainian historians recognize it as a fake.
With all this, he remained a serf, his duties included giving the master a pipe or a glass, standing as an inconspicuous idol next to him, carrying out his personal orders and being listed as a home artist. The road to free artists was closed for him.
Bryullov asks the owner of Shevchenko to release him, he refuses and then, at the request of Zhukovsky, the queen organizes a lottery for the portrait of Zhukovsky by Bryullov. The money was contributed by the queen herself, members of her family, royal entourage and artists. Thus, Shevchenko in 1838, thanks not to her talents, but to the Petersburg bohemia and the favor of the royal family, was released and entered the Academy of Arts.
Do you think he started to comprehend the secrets of art? Nothing of the sort, as usual, I got drunk. This is how he himself writes about his life: “When I was in the exam, when I went out for a walk, then I came back to it, I passed my gulny two months”.
Little Russian landowner Martos publishes "Kobzar" for his own money in 1840, Shevchenko gets money, and he spends almost all the time in unrestrained drunkenness. Together with his friends, he organizes the political-alcoholic society "mochemordia", where its members poured alcohol on their faces and heads and chose "his all-drunkenness."
He was a frequent visitor to taverns and brothels, and the poet Polonsky describes his dwelling like this: "… a casing on the bed, a mess on the table and … an empty bottle of vodka."
The real Shevchenko - rude, untidy, spreading around him the smell of onions and vodka, was not attractive to women and was doomed to use the services of corrupt women, attempts to establish a serious relationship invariably ran into refusal.
So, in drunkenness and revelry, his life passed, and for the sake of pleasure he was ready for any baseness. Princess Repnina in 1845 organized a fundraising for the ransom of Shevchenko's relatives from serfdom, and he, having received the money, simply drank it on drink, which ended the whole idea of ransom. The princess, offended in her feelings, wrote to him: “It is a pity that you so frivolously abandoned a good deed for your relatives; I feel sorry for them and ashamed of all whom I have lured into this business."
He also treated vilely with Soshenko, who was the first to raise the question of his release, who worked a lot for him, sometimes shared with him the last piece of bread and sheltered him in his room. In gratitude for everything, Shevchenko seduced his bride and then left her.
This is how he lived, showing a remarkable talent for adjusting and adjusting to people, arousing their sympathy and squeezing out a tear. They took care of him, they ransomed him from serf bondage, taught him and gave him money. He himself remained tough and heartless and never felt grateful to the people who were eager to do so much for him.
The end follows …
