B1-35 · Taras Shevchenko: From Serf to National Poet

Taras Shevchenko: From Serf to National Poet

In almost every Ukrainian town, there is a street, a park or a monument with his name. There are Shevchenko monuments even in Washington, D.C., in Paris and in Prague. Who was the man with the big mustache that every Ukrainian child knows? A serf, an artist, a prisoner and a poet – all in one short life.

Early years. Taras Shevchenko was born in 1814 in the village of Moryntsi, south of Kyiv. His parents were serfs: they belonged to a rich landowner and were not free to leave the village. By the age of eleven, Taras was an orphan. Later, he became a servant in the landowner's house. He was not allowed to go to school, but he loved drawing and copied pictures whenever he could.

Freedom. His master took him to St. Petersburg, where a young Ukrainian painter noticed his talent. Famous artists decided to help. The painter Karl Briullov made a portrait of the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, and in 1838 it was sold in a lottery. The money bought Taras's freedom. He was twenty-four. He then studied at the Academy of Arts and became a respected painter.

The poet. In 1840, he published a small book of poems called Kobzar, after the blind singers who traveled from village to village with a kobza. The poems were written in the language of ordinary Ukrainian people, and they showed the hard life of serfs and the proud history of the Cossacks. Readers had never seen anything like it, and Shevchenko became famous.

Exile. In 1847, he was arrested for his poems against the tsar and serfdom. He was sent to serve as a soldier in the deserts of today's Kazakhstan, and the tsar himself added that he was forbidden to write or paint. But Shevchenko refused to stop. He wrote poems in tiny notebooks and hid them in his boots. He spent ten years in exile.

His legacy. Shevchenko died in St. Petersburg in 1861, one day after his 47th birthday. In his poem "The Testament", he had asked to be buried on a grave mound above the Dnipro, and his friends took him to Kaniv. His words "Keep fighting – you will prevail!" are still quoted today. Many people say that Shevchenko gave Ukrainians their modern language and the courage to believe in their nation.