[The following is an excerpt of a speech given by Walter Kish in Sudbury on March 3 on the occasion of a Taras Shevchenko concert at the UNF Hall.]
Probably the earliest memories I have of organized Ukrainian life are of attending events such as this one today, commemorating the life and impact that Taras Shevchenko had on Ukrainian history and culture. As a young boy forced to memorize long poems and recite them in front of an audience such as this one, I must admit that I did not exactly look upon it as a positive experience. I must confess that I was also not exactly thrilled to sit through long “promovy” on the finer points of Shevchenko’s genius and his contributions to Ukraine’s literary and political legacy. As much as I may have gained such an appreciation as an adult, to a ten year old boy, Ukrainian poetry is not exactly a relevant or motivating force.
Keeping all that in mind, I hope to spare you the fate of having to endure another long and pedantic treatise on Shevchenko in my talk today. In any case, I am not a Shevchenko scholar, nor am I an academic well versed in the intricacies of Ukrainian literature and its role in the country’s cultural and political evolution. However I have dedicated some time into trying to figure out just why Taras Shevchenko plays such a huge role in our collective Ukrainian consciousness, particularly to us here in the Diaspora. I have had the opportunity to spend several years in Ukraine, and though Taras is much admired and loved over there as well, I must say that it was somewhat surprising to find out that nowhere in the world is he as revered as he is here amongst the immigrant community.
I have always been amazed by how deeply and universally respected and loved Taras Shevchenko is by all the original Ukrainian immigrants that came to Canada starting in the 1890’s and through to the last large wave that followed World War II. Of all the vivid characters and heroes in Ukrainian history, none can even come close to the awe and reverence that Taras inspires. Not Volodymyr Velykiy, not Yaroslav Mudriy, not Skovoroda, or Bohdan Khmelnitsky, or Mazeppa, or Hrushevsky, or Petliura, or Melnyk or Bandera or Krawchuk. As a child, I always wondered why he was such a heroic figure to the Ukrainian community? He was not a ruler or a king or a hetman. He was not a Cossack warrior. He fought no battles, conquered no armies, and built no castles or empires. He was not tall or dashing or handsome. He was a short, balding quiet man who spent most of his life as a serf or a prisoner, was a talented painter, and wrote poetry on the side.
Yet ask any Ukrainian over fifty who is the most important figure in Ukrainian history, and the answer you will get almost every time is Taras Shevchenko. Those of you, like I, who were born and raised here in Canada, undoubtedly have at one time or another asked the big question, WHY? Why is Taras Shevchenko, practically speaking, the secular patron saint of Ukrainian history and culture? Why does he hold such an esteemed and honoured place in our hearts and souls? It is a question that I have pondered over many times over the years. Let me share with you my own personal thoughts and conclusion on why I think this is so.
First let us start with the basic facts of his short yet incredibly productive life. He was born on March 9th, 1814 in the little village of Moryntsi, some 200 km south of Kyiv. He was the son of serfs owned by a wealthy Russianized German landowner by the name of Engelhardt. Both his parents died before he reached his teens. Though poor, they did manage to provide for at least a basic education by arranging for him to serve as a servant and apprentice to the local deacon. Though mistreated and abused by a master that was often drunk, Taras did manage to become literate and discovered an early interest and talent for drawing. At the age of 15, the son and heir of the original Englehardt took him to be his personal servant and left Ukraine in 1829 for Vilnius and eventually St. Petersburg, where he was to spend the next 15 years of his life. When he wasn’t catering to the menial whims of his master, Taras spent as much time as possible drawing and sketching everything he could. Despite initial opposition to his servant’s artistic ambitions, his master eventually acknowledged his artistic precociousness and contracted him out to a professional painter where his talents blossomed. His talent impressed his teachers so much that they raised the necessary funds and in 1838 bought his freedom from servitude.
In the years that followed, Shevchenko divided his time between painting, for which he won several medals from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and writing. His first collection of poems titled Kobzar came out in 1840, and it was immediately evident that here was an exceptional poetic talent. In 1843 he was finally allowed to visit Ukraine. He took advantage of the opportunity to visit many of its historic sites including those of the Zaporozhian Kozak Sich and Poltava. He also met with the leading Ukrainian literary and intellectual figures of the day, including Kulish, Maksymovich and members of the secret Brotherhood of St. Cyril and Methodius. His involvement intensified in subsequent visits in the ensuing years, instilling in him a deep passion for the plight of the oppressed Ukrainian people. This was reflected in his poetry and writings, which correspondingly greatly inspired the dedication and work of the Brotherhood.
His growing importance and influence as a symbol of Ukrainian aspirations did not escape the notice of the Tsarist authorities, and in 1847 he was arrested and exiled to increasingly more remote outposts in Siberia, first to Orenburg, then Orsk, and finally to Novopetrovsk. He spent the next ten years in harsh conditions that greatly weakened his physical state. Nonetheless, he continued to write in secret, hiding his poems in a small book hidden in his boots. He continued to paint, an activity that fortunately was not restricted as his writing, and he produced a large body of sketches and paintings that provide us with an interesting and vivid picture of his Siberian surroundings and the colourful characters that populated it. In 1958, thanks to the efforts of his many friends and admirers, he was allowed to return to St. Petersburg, though by this time his health was seriously impaired. He visited Ukraine briefly for the last time in 1859, but was forbidden to resettle there permanently as was his fervent wish. Finally, on March 10, 1861, Shevchenko died in St. Petersburg, far from the land he so loved. Upon his death, the authorities relented and allowed his body to return back to his homeland, and in May, he was buried on a hill overlooking the Dnipro in Kaniv, south of Kyiv.
The key factor that we should remember about his life is that more than two thirds of it was spent in forced exile away from his beloved homeland. Except for several brief visits, all of his adult life was spent in forcible separation from the land of his spiritual and cultural roots There is a clich? about how absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I think in Taras’ case, his physical separation from his spiritual roots made his feelings more acute and fueled the imagination and emotion of his creative efforts. Some of the greatest works in world literature were the end products of authors displaced by choice or by circumstance from their home environments. James Joyce spent most of his life in self-imposed exile on the European continent. Voltaire wrote his greatest works while forced to live on the French border far away from the French capital he so loved. Solzhenitsen produced his monumental trilogy on the Gulag while exiled in the frozen Siberian wastes. Physical separation has a tendency to concentrate and focus the emotions, while forcing the creative spirit to rely mostly on the imagination. In Taras’ case, it resulted in poetry of uncommon power and beauty.
This aspect of separation and displacement is also precisely the reason for his deep hold on the psyches and loyalties of the all those countless Ukrainians that were forced by fate and circumstance, like Taras, to be exiled far away from their native land. To all those immigrants of the past century that found themselves in in Canada in the distant prairies or the remote mining country of northern Ontario and Quebec, Taras was a metaphor of their own experience. They too had been unwillingly separated from their roots. They too had become orphans far from home. Their fate too was in the hands of foreign powers that at best cared little, and at worst were antagonistic to their cultural and national aspirations. Like Taras, they too harboured a strong desire to see Ukraine freed from Russian domination.
Taras’ life was a reflection of their own experience, and so he became a powerful icon around which they could organize their cultural lives and their national aspirations. Their suffering, their challenges, their struggles and their hopes and dreams were a recapitulation of Taras’ own life, and this created a strong spiritual and psychological bond. For the farmer struggling to clear the the virgin lands in the prairies, the miner in the wilderness of northern Quebec, the lumberjack in the forest camps of BC, or the labourer on the assembly lines of the auto plant in Oshawa, Taras was more than just a symbol. His life reflected their own. He too was exiled from home. He too was forced to toil in harsh and demanding environments. He too had to suffer the put-downs of foreigners who looked down upon and often insulted his culture and his language. Above all, he too had to endure the denial from all levels of officialdom that his nationality even existed.
Let us not forget that for a good part of the last century, the Canadian government would not recognize that there was such a thing as Ukraine or a Ukrainian. Professor Luciuk, in his recent book, In Search of the Barbed Wire Fence, recounts in vivid detail how during the First World War, Ukrainian immigrants in Canada were branded as Austrian “enemy aliens” and interned in remote labour camps that formed Canada’s own Gulag.
Beset politically, culturally and psychologically, Ukrainians in the Diaspora turned to Taras for spiritual comfort and inspiration. Taras gave voice to their sufferings and frustrations. Taras demonstrated to them the beauty of the Ukrainian language. Taras showed that Ukrainian poetry, literature and culture was of a high order, and not just peasant folklore. Above all, Taras inspired them with pride in their roots and their history. Most important was the fact that Taras was one of them, the common people.
Ukrainian history is not short of larger than life heroic figures. The lives and deeds of such as Volodymyr Velykiy, Bohdan Khmelnitsky, and Ivan Mazeppa have attained fame to the point where they are almost mythical figures. Much though they may have been admired by the average Ukrainian immigrant, there was no personal bond with them as there was with Taras. They were more legend than real, but Taras was one of them. He had been a serf. He had toiled in servitude and suffered the oppression that they had all suffered. He had been exiled like they had. He had been reviled for being Ukrainian and proud of it. Yet despite it all, he had risen above all the challenges, he had endured privation and repression and created something permanent and beautiful and inspiring. His life was a statement that regardless of circumstance, if you believe strongly in something, you can change the world.
From a broader perspective, Taras is also a metaphor for Ukraine itself. Ukraine too has been orphaned, oppressed, and exiled or separated from the European family of nations. It has been forced to toil for the benefit of others. Its freedoms have been curtailed, its opportunities severely restricted and its artistic and cultural aspirations suppressed. Yet it too, despite all the efforts of its masters, has managed to produce art, literature and culture of uncommon scope and beauty. It has persevered, fueled like Taras, with a passionate desire for freedom and a deep love for its history and culture. Taras Shevchenko and Ukraine are one, both symbolically and spiritually.
I must admit, that in writing this speech I have found a newer and deeper understanding of Taras Shevchenko as a cultural, political and historical figure. Yet, we should never overlook the fact that he was above all, an extremely talented poet. In researching this speech, I read quite a few of his poems, something I hadn’t done in decades, and I was struck by their lyrical quality, the remarkably easy flow of words, and something that I found difficult to put in words, a certain familiarity of rhythm that to me was distinctly Ukrainian. It finally struck me as I was listening to a tape of Ukrainian music featuring probably the most recognizable and well liked of traditional folk song and dance styles, namely the “Kolomeyka”, that many of Shevchenko’s poems embody that same basic rhythm, that 4-3-4-3 series of beats that give it a distinctive Ukrainian character. Taras was well steeped in Ukrainian folklore and folk music, and to me it was a pleasant discovery to realize that a lot of his poetry reflected the distinctive structure of Ukrainian song and music. His poems not only tell a story, but they echo the rhythms of Ukrainian music, rhythms that have resonated through a thousand years of Ukrainian history, rhythms that reverberate even here today in Canada, in Sudbury in 2002.