PAVLO ZAITSEV Translated and edited by GEORGE S.N. LUCKYJ Taras Shevchenko A LI FE PAVLO ZAITSEV Translated and edited by George S.N. Luckyj Taras Shevchenko is undoubtedly Ukraine's greatest literary genius and national hero. His extraordinary life-story is recounted in this classic work by Pavlo Zaitsev. Born in 1814, the son of a poor serf, Shevchenko succeeded in winning his freedom and became an art student in St Petersburg. In 1847 he was arrested for writing revolutionary poetry, forced into the army, and exiled to deserted outposts of the Russian empire to undergo an incredible odys­ sey of misery for ten years. Zaitsev's re­ counting of Shevchenko's ordeal is a moving portrait of a man able not only to survive extreme suffering but to transform it into poetry that articulated the aspirations of his enslaved nation. To this day Ukrainians observe a national day of mourning each year on the anniversary of Shevchenko's death. Zaitsev's biography has long been recog­ nized by scholars as defmitive. Originally written and typeset in the 1930s, the manuscript was confiscated fro m Zaitsev by Soviet authori- ties when they annexed Galicia in 1939. The author still had proofs, however, which he revised and published in Munich in 1955. George luckyj's translation, the first in English, now offers this indispensable biography to a new audience. CEORCE S . N. LUCKYJ is Professor Emeritus of Slavic Studies, University of Toronto. He is the author of Literary Politics in tire Soviet Ukraine and Between Gogol and Shevclre11ko, and editor of Shm:henko and the Critics. TARAS SHEVCHENKO: A LIFE l\ . "' ~ 1 ' • , •J .. ... \ \ • - Self-portrait, 1840 . PAVLO ZAITSEV aras eve en o A LIFE Edited, abridged, and translated with an introduction by GEORGE S.N. LUCKY} Published for the Shevchenko Scientific Society by UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 1988 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN o-8o20-3450-o Printed on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Zali§ev, Pavlo, 1886-1965. Taras Shevchenko, a life Translation of: Zhyttia Tarasa Shevchenka. Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-3450-0 1. Shevchenko, T.H. (Taras Hryhorovych), 1814-1861- Biography. 2. Poets, Ukrainian - 19th century - Biography. 1. Luckyj, George, 1919- 11. Naukove tovarystvo imeny Shevchenka. 111. Title. •c3948.s51z3413 1988 c88-093324-o Contents Illustrations I vi Introduction I vii PART ONE Childhood and Youth 1814- 38 I t PART TWO The Maturing Artist t838- 43 I 39 PAR T THREE The Ukrainian Journeys 1843- 47 / 77 PA R T FOUR Arrest and Exile 1847- 57 / 137 PAR T F I VE Back to Freedom t858- 61 I 221 Glossary I 269 Selected Bibliography I 271 Index I 273 Illustrations Frontispiece Self-portrait, 1840 FOLLOWING PAGE xi A drawing by Shevchenko of his childhood home Briullov's portrait of Zhukovsky, which bought Shevchenko's freedom A portrait of Briullov by Shevchenko A drawing of a blind minstrel by Shevchenko Princess Barbara Repnina, by Shevchenko Vasyl Tarnovsky Panteleimon Kulish Facsimile of the manuscript of Shevchenko's poem 'Testament' The Third Section's file on Shevchenko The gaol in St Petersburg where members of the Cyrilo- Methodian Brotherhood were interrogated in 1847 The 'bootleg' notebooks The house in Orenburg where Shevchenko lived in 1849- 50 Yakiv Kukharenko A drawing of Count Fiodor Tolstoy by Shevchenko Marko Vovchok A portrait of Ira Aldridge by Shevchenko Shevchenko's portrait of Lykera Polusmakivna Self-portrait, 1860 Monument to Shevchenko at Kaniv COLOUR PLATES Portrait of Keikuatova, 1847; oil facing page 28 Catherine, 1842; illustration to a poem; oil facing page 60 Fire in the steppes, 1848; watercolour facing page 288 Moonlit night at Kos Aral, 1848; watercolour facing page 288 Introduction The history of my life is a part of the history of my homeland. TARAS SHEVCHENKO Taras Shevchenko, the greatest poet of Ukraine, occupies a very special place in the hearts and minds of his fellow-countrymen. He is not only a great literary genius whose poetry possesses unsurpassed beauty but a national prophet who definitively expressed the quintessence of Ukraine's existence as a nation. In fact it may be said that he created modem Ukraine, for without Shevchenko it might still be what it had been earlier - Little Russia. The real meaning of this statement, which is a truism for Ukrainians, is revealed not only through the study of his poetry (most of it known by heart in his native country) but in the story of his life. The bare bones of his biography are also well known to the public. His deprived childhood and youth as a serf, his liberation from serfdom and his success as an art student in St Petersburg, the two extended journeys to Ukraine and the writing of revolutionary poetry, the arrest in 1847, the hardships of exile until 1857, and finally, the return to St Petersburg, the final trip to Ukraine, and his untimely death in Russia - all are familiar events in the life of a man who is regarded as a national martyr. Yet the full, detailed story of his life is little known. The exact unfolding of his life-story was not accomplished until Pavlo Zaitsev published his Life of Taras Shevchenko (Zhyttia Tarasa Shevchenka) in 1955. It might be appropriate to cast a quick look at the attempts to produce a biography of Shevchenko both before and after that date. No mention will be made of biographical fragments but only of complete biographies. The first attempt was made by Mykhailo Chaly, a man who knew Shevchenko personally. In 1882 he published The Life and Works of Taras Shevchenko (Zhizn i proizvedeniia Tarasa Shevchenko). Chaly, who spent twenty years writing his book, regarded it as merely a compilation of facts for the use of future biographers. Many important facts of the poet's life and many more of his poems, unpublished during the tsarist regime, were unknown to Chaly. The next important attempt to produce a comprehensive story of Shevchenko's life was made by the well-known writer Oleksander vm Introduction Konysky, who published Taras Shevchenko-Hrushiusky: The Chronicle of His Life (Taras Sheuchenko-Hrushiusky: Khroniko yoho zhyttia) in two parts in Lviv in 1898 and 1901. This extensive study goes well beyond being a simple collection of documents and attempts to interpret the development of the poet's outlook, based on his life-story. The revolution of 1917 gave fresh impetus to Shevchenko studies, primarily because a great deal of material relating to his life and work was published for the first time. Yet curiously enough, for decades no new biography of the poet was forthcoming. This was because the Soviet regime had great difficulty interpreting Shevchenko's life and work according to a new ideology. The so-called struggle for Shevchenko began, and lasted well into the late 1930s. Finally, Shevchenko's heritage was accepted as that of a 'revolutionary democrat' (following the 'Theses' issued by the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1934), but there was still no new biography of him. The gains made by Shevchenko scholarship in the relatively liberal 1920s were wiped out, and yet no comprehensive new study of his life was produced. According to a Soviet source, 'The problem of a political biography and the outlook of Shevchenko became the centre of biographical studies:• It was outside the Soviet Ukraine, in western Ukraine and in Poland, that an attempt was made. The Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw began, in the mid-193os, to publish the collected works of Shevchenko in thirteen volumes under the editorship of Pavlo Zaitsev. The first volume of this edition was to be a new biography of the poet, written by Zaitsev. The volume was indeed finished and was in print when the Soviet Union annexed western Ukraine in 1939. The book never appeared, but the proofs were saved and the author was able to revise and publish it in Munich in 1955. This is the volume that has been edited and translated here. Its chief merit is that it was produced outside the sphere of Soviet political control by one of the most reputable Shevchenko scholars. Pavlo Zaitsev (1886-1965) was born in the district of Sumy in eastern Ukraine. During the brief period of Ukrainian independence in 1917- 18 he was an official in the m.inistry of education. He emigrated in 1921 and became a lecturer at Warsaw University and a member of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in that city. He began his work as a scholar in the field of Shevchenko studies before the revolution, publishing valuable materials, until then unknown. From 1934 to 1939 he edited the thirteen-volume edition of Shevchenko's works and wrote a monograph on Shevchenko and the Poles. His major work was this biography of Schevchenko. • Shrn:htnkoznaustvo; pidsumky i problemy (Kiev 1975), 254 1x Introduction After the end of the Second World War it took a long time for Soviet Ukrainian scholarship to produce a comprehensive biography of Shev­ chenko. Some short biographical sketches appeared, and a great deal of valuable biographical research was published. Finally, Yevhen Kyryliuk published T.H. Shevchenko: Life and Work (T.H. Shevchenko: zhyttia i tvorchist) in 1959· The book was republished in 1964 and received a Lenin prize. In the same year a new, most comprehensive (633 pages) biography of the poet was published by a 'collective' of three scholars, Yevhen Kyryliuk, Yevhen Shabliovsky, and Vasyl Shubravsky - T.H. Shevchenko: A Biography (T.H. Shevchenko: Biohrafiia). It is the most up-to-date account ofShevchenko's life, with, needless to say, the required official emphasis.