"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR"
An International Newsletter
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary

"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"

TARAS SHEVCHENKO
1814-1861
THE MOST FAMOUS OF THEM ALL

Taras Shevchenko was brought home and buried on Ukrainian soil May
22, 1861, one-hundred forty-four years ago today. He was buried on
Chernecha Hill, near Kaniv.

Shevchenko died in St. Petersburg, Russia on March 10, 1861 and was
buried on March 12, in the St. Petersburg Smolensk Cemetary. His body
was disinterred on May 6, 1861 and then moved to Kaniv, Ukraine.

"Shevchenko's work is the acme of the universal human and Ukrainian spirit.
This is our national ideal of a person, which was realized within the limits
of one tragically brief life. Figures of this magnitude prove that there is
and always will be a certain moral, ethical, and social standard - the
standard of a free and unrestrained conscience without which the existence
of any nation becomes totally meaningless and reduced to brutish sensations.

The tokens of sincere respect that Ukrainians show to Taras Shevchenko
every May 22, the day that his body was finally laid to eternal rest on the
Dnipro's steep banks, according to the poet's Testament, are as crucial to
us as air or food. As Academicians Ivan Dziuba and Mykola Zhulynsky
noted recently, the road to Shevchenko is an eternal road, the road to
oneself." [article five]

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR" - Number 489
E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C. and Kyiv, Ukraine, SUNDAY, May 22, 2005

------INDEX OF ARTICLES------
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"

1. YUSHCHENKO TO TAKE PART IN SHEVCHENKO DAY MAY 22 IN KANIV
Taras Shevchenko: Artist, Poet, National Bard of Ukraine
UNIAN, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, 19 May, 2005

2. GRAVESIDE ORATION
EULOGY: By Panteleimon Kulish
Given at Taras Shevchenko's (1814-1861) Original Place of Burial
St. Petersburg, Russia, March 12, 1861

3. WHAT WERE SHEVCHENKO'S NATIONAL IDEALS?
Written By Borys Hrinchenko in 1892
Excerpts from Chapter Six of B. Hrinchenko,
'Lysty z Ukrainy naddniprianskoi,' in "Bukovyna"
Chernivtsi, 1892-1893

4. THE TESTAMENT AND MY TESTAMENT
Two Poems By Taras Shevchenko

5. TARAS SHEVCHENKO: "REACHING TARAS'S HEIGHTS"
What kind of Ukraine can one see from Chernecha Hill?
By Ihor Siundiukov, The Day Weekly Digest in English
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 8, 2004

6. YUSHCHENKO, WITH FAMILY AND COLLEAGUES, HONORED
TARAS SHEVCHENKO'S MEMORY AT CHERNECHA HORA
"Our Ukraine" Press, www.razom.org.ua, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 22, 2004

7. LUDMYLA SHEVCHENKO: THERE IS AN ENERGY LINK BETWEEN
TARAS SHEVCHENKO AND HIS SMALL HOMELAND
"We're all working to understand this genius and I am not
sure I know everything about Taras Shevchenko"
Round Table hosted by Larysa Ivshyna, Klara Gudzyk, Diana
Bazyliak, Ihor Siundiukov, and Ihor Ostrovsky of The Day
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #2
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, January 21, 2003

8. SHEVCHENKO -- A POET, A LEGEND, A PROPHET AND A SYMBOL
Shevchenko has become a household name in Ukraine
By Yevhen Sverstyuk, Welcome to Ukraine magazine
Kyiv, Ukraine, Number 1 (28), 2004

9. MY FRIENDLY EPISTLE
To the Dead, the Living, and to Those Yet Unborn,
My Countrymen all Who Live in Ukraine and Outside Ukraine,
Poem by Taras Shevchenko
Viunishcha, December 14, 1845
===============================================================
1. YUSHCHENKO TO TAKE PART IN SHEVCHENKO DAY MAY 22 IN KANIV
Taras Shevchenko: Artist, Poet, National Bard of Ukraine

UNIAN, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, 19 May, 2005

KYIV - On 22 May President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko will take part in
the traditional measures on occasion of the re-burial of Taras Shevchenko
(the most famous Ukrainian poet [and national figure]) at Chernecha mountain
in the city of Kaniv in the Cherkassy Oblast.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, Yushchenko’s spokes person
Iryna Herashchenko has disclosed this to journalists. Verkhovna Rada
chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn will take part in the Shevchenko Days together
with the President.

According to I.Herashchenko, V.Lytvyn and V.Yushchenko will take part in a
traditional march to the Tarasova mountain, will visit the museum of Taras
Shevchenko, and will lay flowers to the Monument of Glory. -30-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.unian.net/eng
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TARAS SHEVCHENKO, ARTIST, POET, NATIONAL BARD OF UKRAINE

The Kaniv Museum-Preserve contains the grave of Taras Shevchenko
(1814-1861) and a museum dedicated to his memory. A monument by
K. Tereshchenko was created in 1925. In 1939 a new bronze monument
by sculptor M. Manizer was erected and a museum designed by Vasyl
Krychevsky and P. Kostyrko was opened. Destroyed during the Second
World War by the German army, the museum and the monument were
rebuilt.

The Kaniv settlement is the site of an ancient Slavic settlement dating
back to the 7th-9th centuries A.D. situated along the right side of the
Dnieper River. The city of Kaniv was one of the most important cities in
Kievan Rus', it was mentioned in the Kievan Cave Patericon as existing
in the last half of the 11th century.

Taras Shevchenko was imprisoned by the Russian Czar in 1847 and
not released until 1857, two years after the death of Czar Nicholas.
Shevchenko was not allowed to live in Ukraine. He waited for half a
year in Nizhnii-Novgorod and then moved to St. Petersburg.

He was permitted to visit Ukraine in 1859 but was once again arrested
and sent back to St. Petersburg, where he remained until his under
police surveillance until his death in 1861.

Shevchenko was buried in St. Petersburg, but two months later his
remains were transferred to the Chernecha Hill, near Kaniv, in Ukraine,
a place loved by Shevchenko.

Shevchenko has a uniquely important place in Ukrainian history. He
created the conditions that allowed the transformation of Ukrainian
literature into a fully functional modern literature. His influence on
Ukrainian political thought and his role as an inspirer of a modern
democratic ideal of renewed Ukrainian statehood are without
parallel.

Shevchenko's poetry contributed greatly to the evolution of national
consciousness among the Ukrainian intelligentsia and people, and
his influence on various facets of cultural and national life is felt to
this day. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, University of Toronto Press).
===============================================================
2. "GRAVESIDE ORATION"

EULOGY: By Panteleimon Kulish in 1861
At Taras Shevchenko's (1814-1861) Original Place of Burial
St. Petersburg, Russia, March 12, 1861

No one among us is worth of speaking in our native Ukrainian at
Shevchenko's graveside: all the power and beauty of our language was
revealed to him alone. Yet, through him we have been granted a great
and cherished right - the right to proclaim the native Ukrainian word over
this vast land.

A poet such as Shevchenko is beloved not only by Ukrainians. Where-
ever he would have died in the immense Slavic world, whether in Serbia,
in Bulgaria, or among the Czechs, he would have been at home.

You were afraid, Taras, that you would die in a foreign place, among
foreigners. This could not be! In the midst of your large family you went
to your eternal resting place. No Ukrainian has had such a large family
as you; no one ever received a farewell like yours.

There have been great warriors in our native Ukraine; there have been
great rulers. But you rise above them all and your family is the largest.
For you, Taras, thought us that people were not made to be driven
to their deaths, cities and villages were not made to be mere
possessions; you taught us the sacred, life-giving truth.

....And because of your instruction, people of all tongues have gathered
around you, like children around a father; because of your teaching you
are kinsman to them all and they conduct you to the next world with tears
and immense sorrow.

We think our Holy Father that we do not live in an age when, for the sake
of truth, men were crucified upon the cross or burned at the stake. In
neither catacombs nor caves have we gathered to praise a great man
for his teaching; we have gathered in the light of day in a great capital
and together our sincere gratitude for his life-giving word.

Rejoice, Taras, that you have not been laid to rest in a foreign place,
for no foreign place exists for you in the Slavic world, and foreigners
to not consign you to the grave, for each good and wise soul is your
kinsman.

It was your wish to be buried on the bank overlooking the Dnipro-
Slavuta, for you loved it and painted it and glorified it in resounding
words. We have faith that with the help of the Lord we will be able to
fulfil this wish.

You will lie in your native Ukrainian soil, on the bank of the famous
Dnipro, for you have wedded its name to your own for all eternity.
.....And yet you left one other testament for us, Taras. You said in your
perfect muse:

My ne lukavyly z tobiou,
My prosto ishly, - u nas nema
Zerna nepravdy za sobiuo......

We were not cunning, you and I;
We walked a true path, --there is not
a grain of untruth behind us........

A great and sacred testament! Be confident, Taras, that we will
observe it and will never turn from the path you indicated. Should
we ever lack the strength to follow in your path, should it ever become
impossible for us to proclaim the sacred truth without trepidation as
you have done, then it would be far better for us to remain silent and
allow your great words along to speak the pure, unadulterated truth
for all eternity. -30-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The translation is based on the text included in P. Kulish, "Tvory"
(Lviv 1919) vi.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Graveside Oration" is article number two in the book "Shevchenko and
the Critics 1861-1980" edited by George S. N. Luckyj, published in
association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies by the
University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1980. The
article is found on pages 55-56.
===============================================================
3. WHAT WERE SHEVCHENKO'S NATIONAL IDEALS?

Written By Borys Hrinchenko in 1892
Excerpts from Chapter Six of B. Hrinchenko,
'Lysty z Ukrainy naddniprianskoi,' in "Bukovyna"
Chernivtsi, 1892-1893

...........Shevchenko never renounced his past; he correctly perceived
the standpoint from which our past should be regarded. He branded
as infamous those who were 'the scum of Moscow' and 'the refuse of
Warsaw.'

He censured individuals, but strongly supported the popular national
movement, whose aims were freedom for all peoples and national
freedom for Ukraine.

He did not barter these sacred things for the 'scrap of rotten meat'
that some regarded as 'a higher culture.' He voiced the will of the
people and their national self-awareness (manifested even in such
imperfect forms as the Hetmanate and the Sich).

He did not give up in the face of ruinous despotism of Peter I and
Catherine II, of whom we wrote in 'The Dream.' It is shameful to
relate that some ten years ago [1882] crudely adulatory odes were
addressed to them in Ukrainian, reminding one of the old panegyrics
to Ukrainian land-owners or the 'Ode to Prince Kurakin.'

Shevchenko did not cut himself off from our historical background
for he knew that this must not be done; he clearly saw the flag of his
nation when no one else did.

Shevchenko was the focus on which popular wisdom, feeling, and hope
converged. In his soul he encompassed all that could be found in the
souls of millions of Ukrainians wearied by slavery, and this is why we
call him a genius.

I repeat that, regardless of minor faults in his work (and whose work is
faultless?), Shevchenko's national awareness made him a genius, and
his immeasurable importance and significance in the national rebirth of
his country made him a phenomenon unique, perhaps, in the entire
world.

At a time when his predecessors hardly dared mention Ukrainian
independence in their work, and if they did, understood the notion not
as national independence but as the very limited independence of a
part of the 'united and indivisible Russian people,' an independence
contingent upon the good grace of that 'united' nation, that 'elder
brother,' Shevchenko in his work clearly presented our independence
as a nation.

He regarded all Slavic peoples as a single family. He considered them
brothers and wept bitterly to see how disunited they had become, how
'the children of the ancient Slavs are drunk with blood' (Haidamaky).
He hoped

That all Slavs will become
Good brothers
And sons of the sun of truth
And heretics
Like the one from Constance -
A great heretic!
They will bring peace to the world
And eternal fame!
('Poslanie do Shafaryka'/'Letter to Safarik')

He thanked Safarik for guiding 'the Slavic rivers into one sea.' Safarik
showed the Slavs the way to unity and united action; he showed them a
common goal. No proof is needed that Shevchenko recognized each
Slavic people's right to complete national independence, and above all
the right of the Ukrainian people to it. He fiercely defended this inde-
pendence against interference from either the Russian or the Polish side
and the spectre of the 'one and indivisible' people did not hold him back
in any way.

He began as a supporter of Pan-Slavic unity and brotherhood but soon
perceived that unity with one brother, the Muscovite, would not be
brotherhood but slavery. The he immediately opposed this 'unity and
indivisibility' and did not hesitate to accuse Bohdan Khmelnytsky of
capitulation to Moscow.

Oh Bohdan, little Bohdan, (says Ukraine)
If I had known
I would have smothered you in the cradle,
At my bosom lulled you to sleep!

The poet fiercely opposed all despotism (see for example, 'Tsari' [The
Kings] and specifically the despotism of the contemporary Russian
regime. In 'The Dream' (Son), he described the dreadful wrongs done
to Ukraine and expressed the hope that her natural rights to nationhood
would be restored.

He perceived that Ukraine has been brought to this state by her own
indolent leaders and he did not hesitate to seem unpatriotic in saying
to his countrymen:

Consider everything and ask
Yourselves then: who are we?
Whose sons? of what fathers?
By whom, for what enslaved?

Thus they would see that

Your renowned Brutuses --
Slaves, toadies, the scum of Moscow,
Warsaw's refuse are your masters
The illustrious hetmans!
('Poslanie'/'Epistle')

But this did not prevent him from defending those hetmans he thought
had fought for Ukraine's independence. He praised Petro Doroshenko
for this (in "A black cloud has arisen'/'Zastupyla chorna khmara'). Still,
he perceived few like Doroshenko and the fact that some hetmans
could 'trounce Poland' did not gladden him as it did other writers.

Unlike Kvitka or Hulak-Artemovsky, he advised his countrymen not to
rejoice in their supposed victory over Poland:

You boast: We once
Ruined Poland!......
You are right: Poland fell
And crushed you! (ibid.)

Such a victory should not be celebrated but regretted, for neither the
Poles nor the Ukrainians derived any benefit from it; it resulted in
bondage for both nations:

Of what do you boast, you,
Son of poor Ukraine?
That you wear you yoke
Even better than your fathers?

The poet fearlessly called his countrymen slaves and blamed them
directly for the misfortune of their native land.

More cruelly than the Pole her our children
Crucify her!

Shevchenko could not be taken in by superficial patriotism. He often
argued vehemently against provincial patriots whom he hated and
eventually he painted the following picture of a so-called 'patriot':

Descendent of a stupid hetman
An overeager patriot
And a Christian to boot --
He travels to Kiev each year!
He wears a homespun cloak among the land-owners
And drinks whisky with the peasants
And is a tavern philosopher.
There he is, complete -- ready to be printed.
And in his village he has his pick
Of young girls, and openly christens
Ten of his bastards a year.
If that were all!...He is a thorough villain! (P.S.')

Shevchenko had no use for the simple-minded patriotism found so
frequently among our early writers. He demanded something different
from Ukrainians. 'Rozkuitesia! Brataitesia! (Cast off your chains! Be
brothers!) he exclaims.

To 'cast off chains' is to cease being the 'scum of Moscow' and the
'refuse of Warsaw' and to realize that we are the sons of a great,
independent nation, to cease bowing down before Moscow and
Warsaw and to turn our attention to achieving national independence.

But what is national independence? Shevchenko had a completely
original conception of it and, significantly, his conception was correct.
As he understood it, a nation was a family of brothers endowed with
equal rights and only when all (and not only a few) are truly free can their
nation also be free:

Unmarked,
But broad and free
The sacred roads throughout
Will lie, and the rulers
Will not find them,
But down the roads the serfs
Without cries or alarms
Will come together
Full of gladness and cheer,
And joyful villages
Will conquer the desert. ("Rejoice, o Field')

That is why the poet urging us 'not to forget our Mother' and, calling
down heavenly vengeance on the turncoats who sell their children
to the Muscovite butchers (Za dumoiu duma'/'Thought after thought')
also protested against all the barriers invented between people and
exhorted the land-owners thus:

My brothers, embrace
Your youngest brother, --
So that our mother will smile,
Our tearful mother! ('Epistle')

Only when there are no more masters or peasants but a unified,
educated Ukrainian family will Ukrainian national independence be
possible and only then

Her good name will be reborn,
The honour of Ukraine ('Epistle')

This was the road to freedom that the poet pointed out to his country-
men, and a wide-ranging reform of social reforms was the only means
of achieving freedom.

It would be wrong to think that Shevchenko would have been satisfied
with, for instance, merely the abolition of serfdom or that his words,
quote above, have no wider significance.

He boldly rejected even the seemingly most sacred forms of social
organization as soon as he was convinced that they were not in
harmony with truth and that they were harmful to people. He saw no
truth in the existing forms of social organization.

Pray to God alone,
Pray to truth on this earth,
And on earth never again
Bow before anyone: it is all lies! ('The Neophytes')

The poet perceived another social order and a truth other than that
upheld by priests and police. As he said in his 'Testament':

Bury me and arise,
Rend asunder your chains
And baptize freedom
With the blood of the foe.
And in the great household,
In the new, free household
Do not neglect to speak of me
With a kind and quiet word.

The new household will come into being only when

The people will grow up.
The now yet conceived princes will die
And on the renewed earth
There will be no foe or adversary
But there will be a son, and there will be a mother
And there will be people on the earth.

Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of a reform of interpersonal
relations in Ukraine; even the Church, which strikes its roots deepest into
the soul of the people, must be reorganized.

Shevchenko refused to believe in the God venerated by the priests and
he wanted no part of the church they had established.

Paradise is before our eyes
But we creep to church
Our eyes tightly closed

The existing 'tomb of a church' must be destroyed to that a new, free
church can be established in its place.

This tomb of a church
Will fall into ruin....And from beneath it
Ukraine will arise
And disperse the gloom of slavery,
A world of truth will shine forth,
And the children of slaves
Will worship in freedom.

Only when men become free brothers and when lies no longer prevail
in our land, when master and peasant are no more, will national freedom
be possible for Ukraine.

It follows from this that if we want freedom from national enslavement
we must work for the good of the common, uneducated people, who are
oppressed by their evil fate, and if we neglect to do this nothing will
result from our work except an empty provincial patriotism.

These, in short, are Shevchenko's thoughts on nationalism. They reveal
no chauvinism or provincial patriotism, nor are they tinged with the slavish
mentality of his predecessors.

Throughout, Shevchenko saw the Ukrainian people as an independent
nation and he demanded for them the rights that belong to every nation
as a matter of course.

His independence and hatred of slavery made him despise it everywhere
he saw it, even when his enemies were enslaved. Shevchenko harboured
no hostility towards the Muscovites as a nation, nor to the Poles as such.

He rebelled against Muscovite oppression but not against the Muscovite
nation. He rebelled against Polish oppression in the past but not against
the Polish nation. And in his poem 'To the Poles,' he said:

Give your hand to the Cossack
And your pure heart
And again, in the name of Christ
We shall renew our peaceful paradise!

How far removed this is from Kvitka's or Hulak-Artemovsky's wild notions
about the Polish situation!

Shevchenko was the first to express clearly the idea of Ukraine's complete
independence as a nation, and along with this he maintained a consistent
tolerance of other nations; he expressed something completely new and
previously unheard-of in Ukrainian writers who preceded him.

The poet dispersed the tissue of lies which until then had obscured the
issue of national independence. He was the first Ukrainian with a real
national awareness and no one assisted as he did in the creation of a
healthy Ukrainian national outlook.

The greatness of his deed can be appreciated only when we understand
what darkness prevailed in our land before Shevchenko. His description
of Safarik can be far more justly applied to himself, for it was he who lit
'Svitlo pravdy, voli, / 'The light of truth and freedom,' and he became

Ezekiel.
And wonder to behold, the corpses arose
And opened their eyes.

Shevchenko transformed the dead into living beings, for what were the
members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia as Ukrainians if not corpses?

That is why we call him our national prophet and see him as phenomenon
perhaps unique in history.

Ukrainian literature will surely produce many more writers as talented as
Shevchenko but never again will there be one as significant for the
national renaissance; there will be other great writers but never again
a prophet. (1892) -30-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What were Shevchenko's National Ideas? is article number seven in
the book "Shevchenko and the Critics 1861-1980" edited by George
S. N. Luckyj, published in association with the Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies by the University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo,
London, 1980. The article is found on pages 115-127.
==============================================================
4. THE TESTAMENT AND MY TESTAMENT
Two Poems By Taras Shevchenko

THE TESTAMENT by Taras Shevchenko ---------

Dig my grave and raise my barrow
By the Dnieper-side
In Ukraina, my own land,
A fair land and wide.
I will lie and watch the cornfields,
Listen through the years
To the river voices roaring,
Roaring in my ears.

When I hear the call
Of the racing flood,
Loud with hated blood,
I will leave them all,
Fields and hills; and force my way
Right up to the Throne
Where God sits alone;
Clasp His feet and pray...
But till that day
What is God to me?

Bury me, be done with me,
Rise and break your chain,
Water your new liberty
With blood for rain.
Then, in the mighty family
Of all men that are free,
May be sometimes, very softly
You will speak of me?

(Translated by E. L. Voynich, London, 1911)

MY TESTAMENT by Taras Shevchenko -----------

When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes ... then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields --
I'll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I'll pray .... But till that day
I nothing know of God.

Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.

Pereyaslav, December 25, 1845
{Translated by John Weir, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,1961}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LINK: http://www.infoukes.com/shevchenkomuseum/poetry.htm
Taras H. Shevchenko Museum and Memorial Park Foundation
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
===============================================================
4. TARAS SHEVCHENKO: "REACHING TARAS'S HEIGHTS"
What kind of Ukraine can one see from Chernecha Hill?

By Ihor Siundiukov, The Day Weekly Digest in English
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 8, 2004

Shevchenko's work is the acme of the universal human and Ukrainian spirit.
This is our national ideal of a person, which was realized within the limits
of one tragically brief life. Figures of this magnitude prove that there is
and always will be a certain moral, ethical, and social standard - the
standard of a free and unrestrained conscience without which the existence
of any nation becomes totally meaningless and reduced to brutish sensations.

The tokens of sincere respect that Ukrainians show to Taras Shevchenko
every May 22, the day that his body was finally laid to eternal rest on the
Dnipro's steep banks, according to the poet's Testament, are as crucial to
us as air or food. As Academicians Ivan Dziuba and Mykola Zhulynsky noted
recently, the road to Shevchenko is an eternal road, the road to oneself.

What can help us penetrate the soul of our genius and understand why he
wished to be buried in this precise spot? One reason was the dazzling beauty
of the landscapes in the Bard's native Cherkasy region, where one can feel
the vastness of an enormous "divine world," so vividly described by
Shevchenko - the boundless steppe and the mysterious, ancient forests that
have stood resolutely for centuries on end.

The Day's "task force" (editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna; our respected
longtime contributors and friends, Professors Volodymyr Panchenko, Viktor
Horobets and his son Ostap, and this writer) set out to attend the
Shevchenko celebrations primarily to take a look at the people who feel the
need "to reach Taras's heights," to climb sacred Chernecha (Monk's) Hill
(all sorts of people - whether or not they are successful in life - are
bound to do the same thing: make a strenuous effort to climb hundreds of
steep steps) not only to make the physical ascent but also to rise above
themselves and the humdrum daily routine that too often blinds us and makes
us slaves of our own egotism, narrow-mindedness, and malice.

We were all inclined to believe that thousands or even tens of thousands of
people from various nooks and corners of Ukraine had come here not because
"it is a must," not because of somebody's coercion, but because they have an
urgent need to be purified. As Volodymyr Panchenko rightly observed, the
past few decades have created such excessively fine filters, both political
and ideological, for those who are not indifferent to Shevchenko's name and
heritage that only those who have made a really well considered choice have
survived.

Chernecha Hill and the foot of the Bard's monument is the very spot from
where you can "see Ukraine and the entire hetman's state all around." It is
here that Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol) could and, by all accounts did, write
the famous phrase "a rare bird will ever fly as far as the middle of the
Dnipro." There are very few places as beautiful as this in all of Ukraine.
Shevchenko may have been thinking of these Kaniv landscapes, when ten
days before his death he wrote,

"Let's look at this world...
Let's look, my destiny...
See how wide,
High and cheerful,
Clear and deep this world is..."

This strip of land above the Dnipro's steep cliffs attracted the poet, who
dreamed of buying a house and settling here. In June 1860 Shevchenko wrote
to Varfolomei, his cousin twice removed, "There is a small woodland on the
outskirts of Monastyryshche, upstream along the Dnipro from the place you
chose yourself, on the right bank between Kaniv and Pekari, on a high hill;
well away from the town, in the middle of that woodland, there is a glade
and a few fishermen's huts down below...A garden can be put in. And my old
friend the Dnipro will seem to be flowing right beneath my feet." It was
here that Shevchenko dreamed of setting up a "quiet paradise." But this
dream was destined to remain unfulfilled.

The Russian satirist and political journalist Vasiliy Kurochkin brilliantly
summed up Shevchenko's destiny during the poet's funeral: "He was not
destined to enjoy domestic bliss. A different, posthumous, bliss - glory -
awaits him." The finest representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia
(among them Mykhailo Maksymovych, Hryhoriy Chestakhivsky, Panteleimon
Kulish, Mykola Kostomarov, Viktor Zabila, Fedir Chernenko, Ivan Soshenko,
young Mykhailo Drahomanov, and Volodymyr Antonovych) considered it their
sacred duty and a matter of honor to help fulfill Taras's will - to bury him
"in the midst of a wide steppe," in his "beloved Ukraine," in a place from
where he could see "the boundless wheat fields, the Dnipro, and the cliffs."

That the prophet of Ukraine found eternal rest precisely here, in Kaniv, is
an act of ultimate, divine justice, for he passionately loved these places,
this sun-drenched and tender-blue Cherkasy region, his homeland.

What was the attitude of the "common" people to Shevchenko back in 1861?
This is what artist Hryhory Chestakhivsky wrote to the Bard's friend Fedir
Chernenko, "All the serfs of Ukraine know Taras. They know that he, their
father and defender, was laid to rest near Kaniv. Country people keep coming
over to bow down at his grave. I often see ordinary peasants by his grave:
they stand bareheaded with their little bundles on their backs, leaning on
their walking sticks, and looking at the grave. I have never seen such
heartfelt, quiet, and tender human glances in my entire life, as though
their last hope for a better lot in life were lying in this grave" (June 20,
1861).

There is no better way to express this. And what does the figure of
Shevchenko and the cause that he served mean to an "ordinary" Ukrainian
today, in the uncommonly cold days of May 2004? (But while we were there
a delicate sun finally broke through the clouds and warmed the air a bit).
Are many of our compatriots able to instantly perceive, as the Bard did,
"the sudden light of truth?"

What attracted our attention most of all were the transcendent expressions
on the faces of the people climbing the steps to Taras's peak. Such a great
variety of people, all united by Shevchenko. Our divided and disoriented
society badly needs (and is going to need for many more years) a powerful
factor for national and human consolidation, and it is only Shevchenko who
can perform this unique role. But this raises the fundamental question:
consolidation on what basis? To answer it, one must perhaps recall the
quintessence of Shevchenko's oeuvre - his disgust with all forms of slavery,
and acute feeling of national and human dignity.

This is no theory but a God-given feeling of many generations of Ukrainians,
as unfettered and subliminal as a thirst for spring water or fresh air (not
to be "slaves with a badge on their cap" who are "naked in their heart"). It
is this that may serve as a powerful unifying force for Ukrainian citizens,
no matter whether they are Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Jews, Tatars,
easterners or westerners. For this human feeling is the most worthy of a
human being. Yet it requires an effort because it is an act of upward
progression.

It is highly significant that a mere hundred or so meters away from
Shevchenko's grave, on the very summit of Chernecha Hill, stands a modest
and unremarkable cross with the inscription, "Here in January 1978 Ukrainian
patriot Oleksa Hirnyk burned himself to death in protest against the
Russification of Ukraine." This fact alone convincingly refutes speculations
that Ukraine gained its independence without a struggle, "for free," almost
like getting manna from heaven.

Yes, Shevchenko's flame burned in the hearts of Oleksa Hirnyk, Vasyl Stus,
Valery Marchenko, Petro Hryhorenko, and in James Mace's heart too. But let
us ask ourselves: how many Ukrainians have heard anything about Oleksa
Hirnyk? The Czech youth Jan Palach, who did the same thing in 1968, when
Soviet tanks were rumbling down the streets of Prague, was declared a hero
in his native country. This is what they call pride and Europeanness.

Shevchenko's own biography shows what a truly free individual is capable of.
The people that we spoke with that day on Chernecha Hill (among them a
well-respected historian and public figure, Academician and Hero of Ukraine
Petro Tronko; the Bard's great-grandson once removed, Mykola Lysenko;
longtime political prisoner Heorhy Fastovets; and the well-known diplomat
and deputy of the first Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Stepan Volkovetsky)
shared this opinion: Shevchenko is as inexhaustible as life itself. He
accompanies an individual throughout his/her lifetime, from cradle to death.

One of our most indelible impressions was when we visited Shevchenko's
memorial svitlytsia, the house that contains a collection of such treasured
items as books published during Shevchenko's lifetime and exhibits
illustrating the public's attitude to the poet. Among other artifacts, the
museum has a towel embroidered by Lesia Ukrayinka. The museum's curator
Ms. Zinayida Tarkhan-Bereza, who is a talented researcher and a magnificent
example of a true, self-denying Ukrainian intellectual, literally
enthralled us with her modesty and boundless love for Shevchenko's legacy.

The sky alone is the limit for this extraordinary woman, who recited from
memory lengthy fragments from Haidamaky to us. Ms. Tarkhan-Bereza's book
Sacred Place, which this true devotee wrote about the history of Kaniv's
Shevchenko Memorial, deserves to be in every Ukrainian's home library.

Naturally, we would like to separate the undying soul of Shevchenko - the
soul of Ukraine - from the political vicissitudes of today. So we will only
note here that a large number of our compatriots who came that day to visit
our foremost poet and prophet are likely to belong to what is known as the
"protest-minded" (or oppositional) electorate. In any case, as this writer
observed, most of the placards brought by political parties, movements, and
civic organizations to Chernecha Hill bore the symbols of Our Ukraine whose
leader was, incidentally, very warmly received. Nor did the government (the
legislative branch, to be more precise) shun the celebrations: representing
it was Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who laid a wreath at the
Bard's monument.

Inscribed on this monument are straightforward and eternal words that were
so typical of Shevchenko:

"Love your Ukraine,
Love it...
Pray to God for it
In a time of trouble,
In the last painful minute."

Some people may think that these words have nothing to do with them. Still,
democracy, reforms, and all our sweeping plans will only come to fruition if
there are as many people of this kind as possible. (END)
===============================================================
5. YUSHCHENKO, WITH FAMILY AND COLLEAGUES, HONORED
TARAS SHEVCHENKO'S MEMORY AT CHERNECHA HORA

"Our Ukraine" Press, www.razom.org.ua, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 22, 2004

KANEV - On May 22, the 143rd anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's reburial,
Victor Yushchenko with wife Kateryna, son Taras, and two daughters Sophia
and Christina visited Taras's Mountain in Kaniv.

Kobzar's burial place was also visited by people's deputies members of the
"Our Ukraine" coalition: Pavlo Movchan, Yuri Kostenko, Ivan Zayets, Yuri
Pavlenko, Oksana Bilozir, Yevhen Girnyk, and Mykola Chechel.

The leader of "Our Ukraine" along with his family and his colleagues laid
flowers on Taras Shevchenko's grave and participated in the civil funeral
rites.

Speaking at the memorial rally dedicated to Shevchenko, Yushchenko noted:
"Kobzar chose the word to be his profession and his weapon in hard times
since that was the only way of fighting for Ukraine."

"Every state begins with language. When the language is lost, the people
lose culture. As a result, territorial integrity is lost; the nation is
lost. Taras's choice was a wise one, therefore," noted Yushchenko. "Being
today close to Taras Shevchenko at Chernecha Hora means knowing what the
future of Ukraine will be like," stressed Victor Yushchenko. (END)
===============================================================
6. LUDMYLA SHEVCHENKO: THERE IS AN ENERGY LINK BETWEEN
TARAS SHEVCHENKO AND HIS SMALL HOMELAND
"We're all working to understand this genius and I am
not sure I know everything about Taras Shevchenko"

Round Table hosted by Larysa Ivshyna, Klara Gudzyk, Diana
Bazyliak, Ihor Siundiukov, and Ihor Ostrovsky of The Day
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #2
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Luminaries, prophets that gave their lives for the rebirth of national
freedom and culture, are the calling card of any given country. Thus,
English culture is symbolized by Sir William Shakespeare, German culture
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Russian culture by Aleksandr Pushkin,
Polish culture by Adam Mickiewic.

We, Ukrainians, also have a cultural figure we feel so very proud of and
wholeheartedly revere: Taras Shevchenko.

His physical presence (a copy of his Kobzar collection of verse was in
practically every Ukrainian home during the hardest of ordeals) and, even
more importantly, his spiritual presence in the people's hearts has helped
preserve the nation. Shevchenko's unswerving drive for freedom inspired
dissidents to stage rallies every year on May 22, the date when his remains
were transferred from St. Petersburg to Kaniv, thus bringing closer
Ukraine's cherished independence.

His presence in our life (if we are aware of it) imposes a tremendous
responsibility. Of course, placing flowers at his grave looks nice and
impressive, as are all those words of praise we hear on the Shevchenko
anniversaries. But what is the status of that small part of Ukraine where he
was born and which we are supposed to hold sacred?

What about the villages of Moryntsi, Kerelivka, and Budyshchy? How are
people faring there, especially those tending the Shevchenko memorials,
doing so out of sincere dedication?

Where do they find the spiritual strength and energy without which modern
Ukrainians simply cannot exist? Where is the line drawn between sincere love
of the Kobzar and subtle hypocrisy?

This and other topics were broached at The Day's round table with Ludmyla
SHEVCHENKO, director of the state historical-cultural preserve "Shevchenko's
Homeland," a very dedicated, patriotic, modest, and remarkably charming
lady.

ALL ABSTRACT NOTIONS HAVE SPECIFIC MANIFESTATIONS

Our meeting is quite informal and our exchange of ideas is sincere, of
course. We are honored to host such a distinguished guest. Ms. Ludmyla,
would you please describe the status of the preserve?

Currently, Shevchenko's Homeland (described by some as a place where
"the land clings to the sky") is made up of three villages that were part of
Taras Shevchenko's birth and childhood: Moryntsi, Kerelivka (also known as
Kyrylivka), and Budyshchy. The preserve has existed for a decade, based on
the literary-memorial museum at the home of Shevchenko's parents in
Kerelivka. It was there that Taras learned to walk and met people other than
his dad and mom. Most importantly, it was there he learned about himself and
the surrounding world.

In Moryntsi, we have a replica of his home where he was born and the home of
his grandfather, Yakym Boiko, on his mother's side. Both homes stand close
to each other, symbolizing the start of Taras's life. He was born in
Moryntsi, but the family had moved to Kerelivka before the boy was two years
old. They constantly traveled from one village to the next. Finally, they
bought Hryhory Kyryliuk's home for 200 paper rubles and settled in
Kerelivka. Taras lived there for 14 years.

Budyshchy was part of the estate of the landlord, Paul Engelhardt, who owned
the villages of Taras's childhood. He was an army officer and would visit
his estate in Naddniprianshchyna to rest. He would go on hunting sprees to
replenish positive energy. And the place was so beautiful, especially in the
vicinity of Budyshchy. Taras was 14 when the landlord made him a domestic
servant from among his serfs. His life path would then traverse Warsaw,
Wilno [currently Vilnius, capital of Lithuania], and St. Petersburg. He
would visit Kerelivka three times in all.

We know that a year prior to his death, Taras Shevchenko wrote in his
autobiography: "I was born in Kyrylivka." Meaning that a kind of competition
has been underway between Moryntsi and Kerelivka for many years. An old
register of births in Moryntsi has it that a boy by the name of Taras was
born to the family of Hryhory and Kateryna Shevchenko-Hrushivska. But there
is also an entry dating from 1860. Taras Shevchenko visited his native land
three times, in 1843, 1845, and in 1859, after exile.

Here I have a book for children titled "The Cherry Orchard by My Home."
There are poems about his homeland: "I was Thirteen," "My Village and My
Heart Will Rest..." All abstract notions have specific manifestations. I
remember Shevchenko's letter to his brother, Mykyta. He wrote that, while in
that gray St. Petersburg, his heart and thoughts remained in Kyrylivka. He
ached to hear a nightingale, to see his brother and Kyrylivka. There is an
invisible but quite tangible energy link between Shevchenko and his small
homeland.

TEARDROP-LENGTH PERCEPTION

How did you get to look after the Shevchenko memorial places?

Nothing out of the ordinary. I was born in Shevchenkove (the village
received the name in 1929). After finishing school, I was enrolled in Kyiv
University, department of philology. At the time the university was the only
one in Ukraine to bear the poet's name. After graduation, I returned home
and started working for the local museum. Then, a state preserve was
founded. I have been in charge since 1995. Round table hosted by

We even have the precentor's home where Taras learned to read and write.
It dates from the second half of the 18th century. It was restored and it
marks the village's historical center. There is a mid-19th c. chumak's home
in Moryntsi [chumaks were Ukrainian waggoners delivering salt from the
Crimea].

And the museum exposition includes a table and a bench from his parents'
home, his father's gravestone, also articles that belonged to Taras's elder
brother Mykyta. Their father bequeathed the home and the plot to Mykyta,
currently the site of the museum.

Taras's grandnephew, Kharytyn Prokopovych, was blind and worked as a
caretaker. The place was made a memorial in 1929; the first visitors' book
dates from that year. An entry was made in 1932, reading, "A preserve should
be made here." A museum was opened in 1939. Taras Shevchenko's brothers
and sisters received letters of enfranchisement but no plots.

Was it in 1861 or earlier?

Varfolomiy Shevchenko, one of Taras's relatives, spent quite some time
trying to help the Shevchenkos (Taras would write about this in his
letters). They could become free but without plots. They didn't want it, but
then the serfs were emancipated in 1861.

Is anything left of Engelhardt's estate?

Yes, a summer cottage, servants' premises (the estate manager's home),
and the wine cellar. Also, two oaks approximately 600 and 800 years old.

Did you notice people change somehow after visiting Moryntsi, Kerelivka,
and Budyshchy?

Yes, I noticed that they became more genuine, if you know what I mean.
Apart from these villages, there are two other places Taras Shevchenko held
sacred. His mother's and father's graves. Actually, we all have such places
where perception is at a teardrop's length.

"DISCOVERING" SHEVCHENKO

Yes, but there are also very many people that have read something about
Taras Shevchenko. However, after setting foot on that soil they have a
different kind of perspective. Meaning that one ought to read about
Shevchenko and visit his homeland.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko said that teaching one to love one's neighbor is like
teaching a fair- haired man to feel dark-haired from birth. Indeed, if you
visit the poet's places to discover something new, you will make this
discovery. If you visit, knowing Shevchenko's verse, you will discover that
ravine, field, poplar, and that willow mournfully bent over a drinking well.
Or take our orchards. They are the embodiment of manual work and philosophy.

After all, the apple is the philosopher's fruit. And it is the embodiment of
beauty. Taras Shevchenko wrote about his father's orchard: "I have seen good
orchards in my time, yet those in Uman and St. Petersburg are not even worth
being compared to my father's. It is rich, dark, and quiet..." As a boy, he
felt so comfortable there. His mother died when he was 9 and his father
followed her when he was 11.

Of course, his life was hard, yet the boy was capable of perceiving the
grandeur of nature, perhaps owing this to his granddad Ivan, always by his
side, reliable and strong like that oak in Budyshchy. He was also very good
at telling stories and Taras absorbed everything like a sponge, eagerly
soaking up positive energy.

You say that everybody must discover Taras Shevchenko for himself. What
about you?

He cuts a remarkably many-sided figure. We are all working to sure I know
everything about Taras Shevchenko. There is a very interesting researcher,
Vasyl Kukharenko of Cherkasy. He wrote a paper titled "The Inscrutable
Apostle." Meaning that the more you study him and his creative heritage, the
more new things you discover. Verily, what sustains a man in this world
relies on tender feelings, love of one's neighbor, nature, and true
affection.

It is also believed, however, that love is just a chemical reaction taking
place in either of the cerebral hemispheres. Sad. It can't be true. One
thing is clear: talent can't be explained using this schematic approach. I
was born in Kyrylivka and I can feel this with special clarity. Leafing
through the Kobzar, I can glimpse native environs in almost every rhymed
line.

To me, Taras Shevchenko is a people's philosopher, an extremely valiant,
outspoken, and straightforward personality, something one doesn't find in
most Ukrainians, for we are given to overstatements and crafty approaches.

He always saw the crux of the matter and got to the gist. I believe that his
focal work is "To the Dead, the Living, and Still Unborn." It reflects
Ukrainian history, has a number of psychological aspects, forecasts, and
prophetic admonitions. Too bad we haven't learned anything from it. We
should have, for everything is there in black and white.

WE JUST CAN'T SEE OURSELVES AS UKRAINIANS

Suppose we broach a more prosaic yet nonetheless topical subject. What's
the status of your museum and visitors' influx?

Taras Shevchenko's Homeland is a spending unit - in other words, it is
budget-sustained. We have 38 persons on payroll and 27 hectares on our
balance sheet. Not much for a cultural preserve, yet it requires a lot of
time and energy. The museum staff is made up of truly dedicated people.
We are financed by the Cherkasy regional budget.

Is that what you call a national relic? We hear countless eulogies come
every Shevchenko day, yet none of the humanitarian premiers have raised the
matter of making it a national preserve, to be financed by the state budget.

Yes, but we don't have the national status.

Precisely. Meaning that you must have it.

It's a matter that has been considered upstairs for a year and we have been
faced with all kinds of bureaucratic obstacles at the ministries of economy
and culture.

Indeed. Do you know the biggest obstacle you're faced with? We just can't
see ourselves as Ukrainians.

They also ask what genuine Shevchenko items do you have on display, do you
have such and such certificates, and so on. We reply that what we have can't
fit into any museum: the sky, the land, the graves of our ancestors. We have
that aura none of us can see. Regrettably, we are all very much on the
materialistic side - well, we live in a material world and we have what
enthusiasm we have. Also, we must have some kind of tangible incentive. In
fact, we are paid the smallest wages you can find in Ukraine, yet we are
thankful we are still paid.

By the way, how much is the manager of the preserve paid a month? And the
rest of the staff?

The manager is paid 280 hryvnias [$53] and the staff 180 hryvnias [$34].

Graphic evidence of the official attitude to the national relic, isn't it?

At present, we provide so-called paid services, meaning that we have a
special bank account. We have earned UAH 12,000 this year and we spend
this money only on what's required for the museum.

Yes, and then some bureaucrats will come from the capital and start telling
you that you did this and that wrong.

What budget appropriations we have are spent on payroll and energy
supplies - coal in our case. It's UAH 6,000 a year.

How much do you actually receive from the regional budget?

About 40%, the rest is covered by our own bank account. Now the main problem
is water supply, to keep the whole museum complex ticking, for we have a
number of outbuildings. People work there and they must have running water.

Also, the roof on the Shevchenko parents' home (the replica in Kerelivka)
must be replaced. And the situation in Moryntsi is disastrous. Museum staff
there practically work under the open sky for want of premises. And we need
financial support, of course.

It takes reconsidering the approaches to the problems.

"SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK"

Also, one must adopt a comprehensive approach to a problem. For example,
when handling a construction project, it is necessary to provide adequate
working conditions for the staff. Imagine a museum worker walking around in
valenki felt boots and a kozhukh sheepskin coat! Visitors won't like this.

In this sense, things material and spiritual must be balanced. In Ukraine,
the notion of culture has become synonymous with that of a problem. In a
word, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Needless to say, culture
ranges from personal manners to civilization as a whole.

People visiting Ukraine want to know our cultural standard and history in
the first place. And we have made culture a minor issue. I am convinced that
culture must rank first as a strategic guideline in a recently established
national polity. The emphasis must be shifted.

Come to think of it, so many generations have dreamed of a free and
independent Ukraine. Taras Shevchenko fought for that freedom; he couldn't
live otherwise. Now, miraculously, Ukraine has that freedom, but what are we
doing to it?

We don't know how to use it. There are statesmen and individuals capable of
thinking strategically. I wish they all would hear me. We must pay attention
to our culture in the first place.

We are fond of marking March 9, Shevchenko's birthday, by placing flowers at
the monument and saying words of praise. The way your preserve is financed
leaves one speechless with outrage. Have you tried to change the situation
in high offices?

You see, we are subordinated to the Ministry of Culture. They work out costs
and tariff scales, so when a certain Ludmyla Shevchenko comes and tries to
reason with ranking bureaucrats -

I think that Ludmyla has an absolute understanding of how the government
machine should operate. Every decent and modest Ukrainian believes that
people upstairs should understand - what? That's the big question. We
journalists realize that an answer to that question should be found
downstairs. Journalists must pressure every such ranking bureaucrat, asking
what have you personally done, what could you have accomplished, what are
your priorities, driving him to the wall.

Very well said. If only they could respond the right way.

They aren't likely to respond immediately, so one must put the heat on them
and keep it that way, for they are post-Soviet people. We promise to publish
your assessments. Also, we have a lot of funds and foundations, rather
strong ethnic Ukrainian organizations. They have a different attitude, but
they don't know how exactly they can help us.

They must respond by making their stand clear in the first place. We are
open for cooperation.

Are you in a position to receive donations?

Yes, we are.

Meaning you are not prohibited to earn money. Vasyl Poltavets said to the
contrary.

Let me give you an example. My institution is a nonprofit, budget-sustained
one. In other words, we draw up an estimate, submit a progress report and
the state gives us what we have earned. And so we ask publishing companies
to help us sell the Kobzar. Can you imagine the Taras Shevchenko Museum
without this book? We cannot give copies as presents. We can have them
published.

Now try to picture someone publishing the Kobzar free. We have no right to
sell copies because we are a nonprofit organization. We open a bookstore
and pay 340 hryvnias so our visitors can leave the museum with a copy of
the aKobzar. At the same time, all our funds are taxable. Is it profitable
for me? We'll keep that bookstore for a while and then we'll have to close
it.

In other words, you are not financed but are levied taxes.

Yes, and this automatically calls for a number of inspections.

"WE TOUCH ETERNITY"

The Day has repeatedly pointed out that our society needs a head shrinker.
We must rid ourselves of the unhealthy desire to probe everything,
everywhere, to check out every living being.

In this sense, the national policy is not just vague, it is hard to
perceive. I hold staff meetings every Monday. We discuss our plans and
prospects for the week. I keep telling them that we must be proud of what
we're doing, that it's very important, that we are all lucky to work at a
place which people perhaps dream of visiting at least once in lifetime. That
we touch eternity here. All things are in a flux. Eventually we will be
gone.

Others will be in our place. But now we are honored to represent what was
chosen by time. Yet every time we run into financial problems.

Larysa IVSHYNA: You have been in charge of the museum for almost seven
years. A heavy burden for your delicate shoulders. I saw how it all started,
how much energy and dedication you put in it. And I was deeply moved to see
the sculptural composition "I Herded Lambs beyond the Village," when I saw
that boy that had left his parents' home. Everything kept in such style,
with such jealous care. And the things from the precentor's home! I think
that people like of this nation. By the way, have you been awarded a medal,
diploma, maybe a prize?

I wouldn't have mentioned it, but I hold the title "Merited Worker of
Culture." It was conferred in recognition of what I had accomplished of
late. We have made considerable repairs and restoration, including the
precentor's home. The structure had sunk into the ground up to the windows
and then ten Ukrainian commercial banks joined the National Bank in a large
benevolent project. We have been able to restore everything thanks to
Ukrrestavratsiya experts.

There were 32 teams working in 1998-99, arriving from many Ukrainian
regions, primarily from the Cherkasy oblast. Work started in October and the
exposition opened in March. The house had been completely restored by
May 22. I practically stayed out of home at the time, traveling from Kyiv to
Cherkasy to Kerelivka to Moryntsi. Yet I had never lived a better life.
Great, a Merited Worker of Culture paid 280 hryvnias a month!

Right, I'm a girl without dowry and I can't help it.

How many people visit your museum? How do they get there, I mean
transport? Do you have any such statistics? What about the museum
infrastructure?

If we tried to do everything after the European standard it would take a lot
of money. We are visited by an average of 20-22 thousand persons a year.
Not less and it can be more. More people visit in jubilee years, but we
don't
have a hotel and there are no road signs. I was a deputy in the district
council and I addressed a session, saying people visiting for the first time
shouldn't have any problems finding the way, we must have road signs.

Later, on my way from Kyiv, I saw road signs reading Shevchenkove and
Moryntsi, but in the wrong places. Of course, visitors must have a place to
rest and be served meals - and I think they should be served traditional
tasty Ukrainian dishes, and service must be good. And, of course, a filling
station and a motel. All this must be done as a single comprehensive
project; although we serve a lofty cultural cause, we must remember about
earthly needs.

A hotel must be reasonably priced but with adequate amenities: running
water, heating, electricity, television, radio, and a newsstand with fresh
issues. Like I said, there are road signs but they are misleading.
Shevchenkove and Moryntsi each have a population of 4,000; 1,600
homesteads.

I saw a road sign reading "Museum" the other day, an arrow pointing to a
solid fence. Imagine? Yet formally the assignment has been carried out.
Sometimes they tell me that all I care for is my preserve whereas they have
so many problems to solve. But I want the Homeland Museum to be worthy
of Taras Shevchenko, so everyone visiting it can tell it is the central
cultural venue of Ukraine.

There is a modern resort in the vicinity of the Mickiewicz memorial in
Poland, meant for writers. Does our Writers' Union help you in any way?
I think that our writers and artists would visit if we had adequate
conditions. At present, we have little by way of contact with our creative
intelligentsia. They prefer to visit Kaniv, for it is much easier and
convenient to access, so they can go place flowers at the grave and return
to Kyiv quickly. Another problem is that we used to have a lending library
and some copies of every print run were sent there. We don't have it now,
but a museum library is a very important component.

BEING UKRAINIAN: STILL RISKY?

We don't use the best creations of other nations - I mean books and
television programs and movies. At the same time, we are afraid to trace our
own ethnic roots because we are still scared. Being Ukrainian is still
risky. Our bureaucrats have learned to be cautious since Petro Shelest.

Remember his book, Our Soviet Ukraine, and what happened afterward? He,
a member of the Soviet Communist Party Politburo, was accused of
nationalism because of the title alone. Unless we exert an active influence
on the younger generation, we'll eventually find ourselves in a Russian-
speaking Ukraine, with vague memories about things Ukrainian.

I happened to read a translation of a science fiction short story recently.
The plot is very much in the spirit of our times. A little girl is restless,
she runs around and her mother keeps asking what's up. The girl replies that
aliens are going to invade the planet shortly. Her mother doesn't take her
seriously, of course. Finally, the girl comes running and tells her
breathlessly that the attack is starting. Mom, I'll see that you feel no
pain, she says, because the aliens will kill all adults; they don't need
them. They aren't even interested in children aged 14.

They need younger ones and they are invading this world through their souls.
Indeed, our children are growing up quite aggressive. A junior class teacher
said at parliamentary hearings that she asked her pupils to draw things they
considered most interesting. Almost everybody sketched vampires.

Something must be done about this. Why not hold children's poetland and
award prizes, considering that it was there he started discovering the
surrounding world and his own creative self?

Shevchenko's life cycle ended in what is now the Cherkasy oblast. He set
off for the big world from that place, leaving his parents' home. He wasn't
destined to live for long, yet he had accomplished a great deal in those 47
years. Kaniv and the hill of Chernecha Hora. Two places I think every
Ukrainian should visit unless they hold Shevchenko as an abstract notion.

Incidentally, a lot of people were outraged by Oles Buzyna's booklet, Taras
Shevchenko the Werewolf, although some said why sacralize Shevchenko;
don't let's play pious games and look ridiculously old-fashioned. What do
you think?

The author wanted publicity and he got it. As for his booklet, it isn't
worth being considered. It holds no water, period.

Larysa IVSHYNA: That author wanted publicity at all costs, so Taras
Shevchenko or Lesia Ukrayinka would be the price he was prepared to pay. It
is true that he wanted to be in the limelight. If we give him room on our
pages we'll play into his hands, whether we like it or not. We have to set
the right tone, a bit condescending, and characterize his phenomenon briefly
and to the point, and never return to the subject. Our society often reminds
me of a hedgehog lying topsy-turvy. Likewise, all the other peoples walk
with their quills up and we walk around belly up. We can't be that na?ve.

SEEDS CAST IN DRY SOIL WON'T TAKE ROOT

Ms. Ludmyla, relying on your seven years of professional experience, do you
think that we now have more people truly enlightened about Taras Shevchenko?

A new generation has grown in Ukraine over the past eleven years. These
people are free from previous ideological dogmas and they show a fresh
approach to Shevchenko's creative legacy. I am aware of this intuitively.

Even those dropping in at the museum on their way elsewhere listen to the
guide attentively, they take a look around and realize that they really have
something to feel proud about, that what they see is really the cornerstone
of our national identity.

To me, every visitor wishing to make a discovery for himself is a guest of
honor. We do not focus on Shevchenko's creativeness. The museum concept
is to show that very cornerstone, that base from which emerged the Poet.
After all, seeds cast in dry soil won't take root. There must always be a
basis.

For Taras Shevchenko, it was his native land. And books. And the historic
figures of Prince Sviatoslav, Bohdan Khmelnytsky (and all those other
hetmans who studied at leading European universities, for they were people
of keen intellect and broad world outlooks).

Also, events in which Taras's grandfather had taken part. Naturally, this
foundation is a topic of our research. Along with folklore, ethnography,
things that formed people's lives at the time. We further illustrate Taras
Shevchenko's epoch, that atmosphere, and the Engelhardts. He was not a
mere domestic servant; he looked at the pictures on the walls, listened to
music. His taste was polished among the common folk, that powerful creative
source.

Can people living in the three villages forming the cultural preserve read
good literature?

Using an old clich?, we are kindling the flame of culture there. There is a
village club and a village library. People keep donating books to the
museum. Actually, every family has a good private library.

FREEZING CLASSROOMS IN SHEVCHENKO'S VILLAGES

Are the residents aware of some kind of special aura or maybe they have
long grown accustomed to the environment?

I don't want to sound idealistic or resort to exaggerations. I can't say
that the surroundings keep everyone inspired, for life is hard and people
have to solve lots of problems on a daily basis. Employment is one such
hardship. Agricultural production is actually at a standstill. It's a very
painful subject and Moryntsi is no exception.

There are two schools, a grade school and a school of the arts. September
1 is traditionally the open house day at the museum and the children regard
this as a very special occasion. I think that this is another way to cast
those spiritual seeds in fertile soil. And whether they'll take root depends
on the individual.

There is a Shevchenko portrait in every village home (nothing
window-dressing about it!), decorated with a rushnyk hand-embroidered towel
or without it, and of course a copy of the Kobzar. I also think that this is
important. And we have quite a few intellectuals among the populace. And
some construction work still has to be done at the grade school. Every year
it produces future specialists for Ukraine, with about a dozen cum laude
graduates that are automatically enrolled in Kyiv higher schools. At the
same time the school hasn't had adequate heating for some ten years and
the students sit in cold dark classrooms.

We must launch another campaign, like we did in Chornukhy, Skovoroda's
native village where a we'll pass the hat round for the school. To think
that children can't study in normal conditions in Shevchenko's land!

The children sit in the classrooms in their coats and write without taking
off their gloves. How can children be treated like that? Also, we constantly
lack gasoline, so we have to knock on doors and ask for help.

Do you have a list of Taras Shevchenko's inheritors at the museum?

We have the family trees of his brothers Mykyta and Yosyp, and sisters
Yaryna and Kateryna. And we have a relative of the Shevchenkos, Mykola
Lysenko, researching these family trees, building branches. Currently he has
20 pages ready, but he can't publish them.

We'll send our staff photographer, who will take pictures and interview the
man. Let me tell you, Ludmyla, that we are proud of your performance under
such adverse conditions. We understand that it's all easier said than done.

Yet if the people can endure, it means that they have a future. You plant a
sapling and if you trim it the wrong way it will grow into a dwarfish
monstrosity rather than a huge beautiful tree like a thousand-year-old oak.

We, in turn, must launch public campaigns. We know that there aren't many
people capable of thinking things over and making the right decisions, but
they must see each other so they can realize that they form a powerful
force. There are millions of gifted and clever Ukrainians, yet what they see
on their home screens testifies to the contrary. It makes them feel like
foreigners in their own country. Which is wrong, of course.

I reread Yevhen Marchuk's book Sociopolis, pencil in hand. He writes - and I
agree one hundred percent - that Ukraine has passed certain evolutionary
stages and things are not as bad as they seem; that building is easier than
rebuilding now. What I mean, we'd be better off building things anew and
entering Europe and the rest of the world, following a new normal road. At
the same time, we must remain optimistic, aware of ourselves as Ukrainians
living in Ukraine. Therefore, let's be positively oriented.

We are modern individuals, meaning that we must keep pace with the times
and discover the world for ourselves not from frayed geography textbooks
and faded illustrations. This may not sound topical for people living in the
capital and having better opportunities. I'd love to take the whole museum
staff on a trip to Poland, Bulgaria, or elsewhere, so we all could see and
learn things.

Larysa Ivshyna: We will certainly support you as best we can. Is Ms. Ludmyla
Shevchenko invited to various functions like the Shevchenko prize awarding
ceremony? I don't think so. Where is that line drawn between sincerity and
hypocrisy? Personally I'm convinced that there is enough sincerity and that
it will emerge triumphant in the end whereas hypocrisy will be shed like a
snakeskin.

WE LACK CONCEIT IN THE BEST SENSE OF THE WORD

Do any MPs put in an appearance at Kerelivka?

Not yet, they must be too busy making themselves at home in the Verkhovna
Rada, ditto the people's deputy representing our constituency.
What's your cherished dream? What would you like more than anything else?

I wish people finally realized that investing in a cultural project doesn't
mean wasting money. Bohdan Hubsky is one of those that do - I mean his
project with Khmelnytsky's attributes of power.

Yes, and here is another eloquent example. Lina Kostenko visited the
editorial office not so long ago to donate her books to the library in
Chornukhy.

I am convinced that we live in the Kostenko epoch. She is Ukraine's number
one figure. Look how popular she and her books are! People often quote her
and wholeheartedly respect her. If only she could visit us. It would be a
genius visiting a genius. In fact, everything I've said is not crying on
one's shoulder.

Our situation is not hopeless, we are not downtrodden ignorant peasants. I
would be the last person to imply any such thing. Of course, we have lots of
problems with our culture and medicine. Such problems shouldn't exist
anywhere in Ukraine, least of all in Shevchenko's land. Take Poland. Why is
it in a better way? That country also has a tragic history, it has survived
three partitions, yet the nation has remained solid.

A Pole in the street never forgets to say please or excuse me, addressing
you. Meaning that we must have pride in the best sense of the word, that's a
quicker way to becoming a European country. -30-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note: Those wishing to help the cultural preserve Shevchenko's
Homeland are welcome to send money orders to Account #255343000335, VOB
#2970, t. Zvenihorodka, MFO354552. Registration Account #110203000132382.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.day.kyiv,ua/260075
===============================================================
7. SHEVCHENKO -- A POET, A LEGEND, A PROPHET AND A SYMBOL
Shevchenko has become a household name in Ukraine

By Yevhen Sverstyuk, Welcome to Ukraine magazine
Kyiv, Ukraine, Number 1 (28), 2004

A great poet lives on, after his death, in the hearts of the people. In case
of Shevchenko, it would not be enough to say that. Even in his lifetime, he
became a legend and was looked upon as a national prophet. His poems,
suppressed or banned, acquired the enigmatically vatic character. His name
was associated with the persecuted and exiled for speaking out the truth.

Shevchenko lived a life incredibly fantastic in its turns, ups and downs. An
orphan at an early age; a surf, a shepherd; a servant of the man who
literally owns him; the master Enhelhard by name, takes the young Shevchenko
to St Petersburg; Shevchenko studies at the Art Academy; returns to Ukraine
for research of Ukrainian antiquities; writes idealistic poetry; arrested
and exiled for rebellious writings and membership in a nationalist
organization; spends years in exile in arid Central Asia; returns to St
Petersburg, his health ruined, to die there; buried with thousands of people
attending the funeral; later exhumed and taken to Ukraine; the new grave is
watched over by the admirers and police; his books banned but his poetry is
widely known - Shevchenko becomes a symbol of Ukraine.

Some literary critics group together Pushkin (1799- 1837), the Russian poet,
Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the Polish poet, and Shevchenko (1814-1861), the
Ukrainian poet. This association has come to be widely accepted. But let's
not forget that Pushkin enjoyed a great fame as a bard of an imperial
nation; Mickiewicz was a bard of a nation widely known in Europe for its
political emigres, and Shevchenko was a bard of nation whose very name
was banned (Ukraine was referred to as "Little Russia" - tr).

In the revolution of 1917, Shevchenko's name was put on the banner of the
struggle for national liberation. After the defeat of the Ukrainian
revolution, the Bolsheviks put Shevchenko's name on their own banner - and
the letters were even of a bigger size. Shevchenko was "converted" to their
faith and decorated with their slogans - "Class Struggle," "Socialism,"
"Materialism," "Internationalism," "Atheism" and a little later
"Anti-fascism."

Strangers who come to Ukraine for the first time are amazed at the ubiquity
of Shevchenko's name - Shevchenko University; Shevchenko Museum;
Shevchenko Boulevard; Shevchenko Park; Shevchenko District; and a great
number of factories, museums, theatres, schools also named after
Shevchenko.

It is a legacy of the era of totalitarianism which in its use of the
ideological symbols went to extremes, imposing them on society wherever
and whenever it could. Monuments to the founders of the regime, to
communist leaders and communist ideologues were erected, and streets
were named after them all over the Soviet empire. Cultural figures were also
honoured with monuments, and "the people's initiatives to honour the great
poet Shevchenko" were always welcome as such "initiatives" helped the
anti-Ukrainian regime to disguise itself as "pro-Ukrainian."

But it is only part of the story about Shevchenko's monuments. Almost in all
the countries of the world where Ukrainians settled down in their diaspora
communities, monuments to Shevchenko were erected in these countries'
capitals. And these monuments are evidence of the fact that Ukrainians,
leaving their native land, took along with them their most treasured
cultural possession. And there is also something else in these monuments -
they reflect the striving of the Ukrainians, as a people suppressed, for
self-affirmation.

But let us not overlook the other side of popularity. The ubiquitous
presence can cause indifference and disinterest, or even lead to negative
reactions. In the post-Soviet world, poisoned by violence and untruth,
reaction takes the forms of nihilism and aggression. Objectivity and
impartiality are the qualities that are increasingly difficult to come
across in people, and the general level of culture is going down.

We discover that Shevchenko is not "working" for us the way he used to. His
words do not penetrate into the hearts which are not warmed up by love. The
great idealist Shevchenko becomes an anachronism in an age of consumerism
and materialism. Older generations of Ukrainians know hundreds of songs with
Shevchenko's lyrics, but younger generations care for different songs, alien
and incompatible with the harmoniously lofty spirit of the Poet.

The post-Soviet school followed the general trends of our times and
went after the lures of liberalism, with the national traditions and
spiritual authorities regarded with scepticism if not ridiculed. In the
Ukraine of today, liberalism is a borrowed phenomenon, it does not grow
naturally from the native soil, and because of that it denies this soil.
Anti-Ukrainian forces which have a lot of political and financial freedom,
channel the negative emotions in society against Shevchenko, the people's
poet.

Shevchenko is once again in the centre of confrontation. His voice of true
love and fullness of emotions is too serious in the "virtual" world of
today. His voice was much too demanding in the world in which the poet
lived - the world in which the spiritual and moral values were formalized,
adjusted and then utilized by Russian tsarism for its own ends. Rejection
of the tsarist values and repressions created dramatic tensions.

These days we observe a crisis of drama and tragedy, a crisis of love and
faith. The national prophet is addressing himself to a narrow circle of
people, but the magical power of his words, his enchanting poetry
preserve their ability to alert, to give light, to widen the circle of the
enlightened.

SYMBOL AND PROFANATION

In the human consciousness, the symbol is as ancient as the sign and the
word. Culture and religion developed around symbols. Reading, recognition,
perception, differentiation, sacralization - on these things the hierarchy
of values and the hierarchy of society was built. In order to go to a higher
level, an effort of crossing the threshold should be made.

Characteristically, the Ukrainian word "profan" (ignoramus) is derived from
Latin profanus - "before the temple," that is the one who cannot go into the
temple because he is not initiated, and as such must not "profane" the
temple by his interference and lack of understanding.

Symbols cannot be rationally explained, symbols should be gradually
accepted, they should become an integral part of our conscious, we should
"feel" them. It is dangerous and ruinous when "profan" tries to judge, make
comments and reduce the three-dimensional, deeply significant symbols to
flat rationality.

"Fear of God" may mean exaltation and awe before the majesty of the eternal.
Fear of the authorities means humiliation and pretended obedience and
submissiveness. The flat rationality concentrates only on "fear" and reduces
the sublime to the lowly - to the dread and fright.

The Ukrainian word "kham" (there is no adequate correspondence to this
word in English - it can be rendered as boor, churl, lout - tr.) is derived
from the Bible. In fact, it is Ham, one of the sons of Noah, "the father of
Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers. [Noah]
said, Cursed be Canaan." [Genesis, 21-26]. In the Ukrainian language and
culture, "kham" is a universal symbol of "khamstvo" which embraces
aggressive lack of manners, unculturedness, and incivility. And khamstvo
has become the order of the day.

Respect for, and preservation of the symbols is an essential feature of a
culture. Totalitarianism brutally teaches how to disrespect or destroy the
symbols. During the Second World War, the German soldiers, in contrast to
the Bolsheviks, did their best to avoid shooting at the churches which were
symbols with which they were raised (three K's of their mothers: Kinder,
Kirche, Kuche).

Respect for the traditional symbols engenders the spirit of
self-preservation of man and society. The Bolshevik revolution brought the
wave of destruction; the old symbols were swept away like so many other
things.

"What's burning over there?
Archives? Museum? Fair?
Add fuel for more flare!"
wrote the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna.

Characteristically, the Bolsheviks, during their first siege of Kyiv, aimed
their artillery shelling at the Pechersk Lavra Monastery. Incidentally, the
Russian monarchy had been carefully preserving its own symbols.
Inviolability of private property was one of the best guarded principles and
often interfered with the regime's self-preservation. Police, for example,
could not enter private premises without a proper warrant.

At the time of the Revolution of 1905, the Russian premier Count Sergey
Witte did not deal with the rebellion as harshly as Pyotr Stolypin did
(Stolypin was governor of Provinces, then minister of the interior and later
prime minister). Stolypin violated some of the old symbols and taboos in
order to put down the revolution as fast as possible. The revolution was
crushed, but later Stolypin was assassinated by Bagrov, a secret agent who
also doubled as a leftist provocateur. Bagrov was poisoned by the nihilism
of the then political system, and the toppled symbols took their revenge.

If only there had been more respect and self-respect in the Russian empire,
if the Russian Orthodox Church had been more supportive of the Christian
values rather than serving the political interests, if the symbols had been
held in greater respect, then the revolution of 1917 would not have been so
disastrous and those who came to power would have had more respect for law.

The murky waves of nihilism would not have swept away the symbols, had the
state symbols been replaced by democratic and national ones. When the
sculptor Mikeshin included the figure of Shevchenko in his model for the
monument of The Thousand Years of Russia, it should have been left there
rather ordered to be removed.

Shevchenko as a symbol stands for the Christian harmony of the soul, defends
it. But the Russian monarchy was very much different from, say, the British
Empire and could not allow things the British Empire would have allowed.

The Bolsheviks demagogically used the calls for rebellion and protest to be
found in some of the works of Shevchenko and adjusted them to their
purposes but Shevchenko called for something entirely different:

"Only to God pray,
Only the Truth obey,
No other values cherish
- or perish!"
Shevchenko's was a message of faith, hope and love.

SHEVCHENKO TALKING TO GOD

All the forerunners and contemporaries of Shevchenko in Ukrainian culture
were deeply religious - Skovoroda, Gogol, Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, Kulish and
others.

But it was Shevchenko's addressing himself to God that was most dramatic
and vocal. It is popularly believed that Shevchenko addresses himself to
Ukraine in his poetry most often but it is not so. The word "God" appears in
his writings 1281 times, whereas the word Ukraine - 269 times.

Professor Yury Shevelyov, an eminent Ukrainian scholar who died in
emigration, who mentions these figures, goes on to say: "If somebody's
speech is studded with words related to the notion of God, it may be the
reflection of this person's piety, or habit, or frequent prayers, or
religious songs often sung.

But with Shevchenko it is different. Shevchenko's references to God are
also occasionally linked to prayer, but more often they are connected with
philosophical analysis; [God for Shevchenko is] the original cause of the
world, of the world order (and thus of the world's disorder), the essence
and manifestation of the universal nature, both the cosmic and human; it
[God] is the synonym of the laws of existence.

In other words, it is He or That which has created the universe and
humankind, has set the laws of existence; It is the supreme power and law
that determines the course of events, that stays above them and at the same
time that puts into them the seed which makes existence realizable. Such a
god is clearly different from the canonical church God."

"I saw that Shevchenko's muse has split apart the curtain hiding the
people's life. It is so frightening, and sweet, and painful and exciting to
peer into it." This metaphoric expression of the historian Kostomarov
suggests an image of Shevchenko's motifs and archetypes which live in
every person's subconscious and disturb every person with its mystery of
"a deep pit," examination of which does not seem to bring any results.

It took only a poet with a penetrating spiritual vision to peer into the
depth of subconscious and express what he saw there in adequate words.

The founders of Ukrainian literature were religious people, but from the
point of view of the conservative Synod of the Orthodox Church their
religiosity was a bit of a faulty kind. Skovoroda showed leanings towards
Protestantism. Gogol was suspected of courting Catholicism. Kulish
translated the Bible in spite of the Synod's ban on the translation, and he
worked jointly with a Greco-Catholic, Ivan Pulyuj, incidentally a physicist
by occupation, responsible for revolutionary discoveries.

Why then the religiosity of others was never questioned, but Shevchenko's
religiosity is questioned? Is it only because in some of his poems we find
sarcastic remarks addressed to the official Church? It can hardly be the
main reason since a critical attitude towards the official Orthodoxy was
shared by many people, if not by most. But very few dared to express their
attitude in such an unequivocal way and publicly as Shevchenko did.
The main reason must lie in the religious attitude which is expressed in the
form of Christian "maximalism."

The spiritual legacy which is passed from generation to generation belongs,
like the sun and the air, to everyone. But a maximalist believes in his
calling to bring his people face to face with the God of the ancestors, back
to the lost historical memory, to provoke the drama of eternal struggle.
In his poem Ivan Hus Shevchenko portrays in lofty terms a heretic who was
burnt at the stake for his faith. In his poem Caucasus, Shevchenko gives his
blessing to the struggle for liberation of the Caucasian highlanders (who,
incidentally, killed his friend).

In Poslannya do mertvykh, zhyvykh I nenarodzhenykh ("Message to the Dead,
Living and Those Who Are Unborn Yet"), Shevchenko calls upon his fellow
countrymen to truly love their land, no matter that they proclaim themselves
patriots. These poems were written in 1845, the year of the upsurge of his
creativity, the time when he created his paraphrases of Psalms of David.
Literary critics are unsure how to explain this creative and prophetic
upsurge but ordinary people, for some reason, began putting Shevchenko's
portrait alongside the icons in their homes.

It never entered their minds that Shevchenko could be suspected of
harbouring atheistic thoughts - the other way round, it was Shevchenko
rather than "official" sermons, from whom they learnt the Christian values
of love, truth, faith and courage.

Shevchenko is often called "the founder of Ukrainian literature," with his
"national character, national roots and realism" being cited as his most
important features. But "national character" and "national roots" and
"realism" can be found in the writings of some of his contemporaries.

However, Shevchenko did indeed become "the founder of Ukrainian
literature" - because he raised this literature to a new level, he set it on
the courses of dealing with the eternal spiritual issues. Going against the
trends of his time, he reinterpreted the Ukrainian Christian tradition in
his own way, and put the spiritual and moral issues into the foundation of
the future Ukraine as its cornerstone.

Many circumstances combined to get the poet's name transformed into a
symbol - his life and destiny; his works and struggle around them. But the
most important thing is that he ripped apart the curtain that hid the
longings and aspirations of the people, revealed secrets of the
subconscious, and expressed his love of, and penned his prophetic
address to the Dead, Living and Those Who Are Unborn Yet.

The diamond does not change with time and no attempts to use it for
political ends or to split it will succeed. -30-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20041/36
===============================================================
9. MY FRIENDLY EPISTLE
To the Dead, the Living, and to Those Yet Unborn,
My Countrymen all Who Live in Ukraine and Outside Ukraine,

Poem by Taras Shevchenko
Viunishcha, December 14, 1845

If a man say, I Love God, and
hate his brother, he is a liar,
1 John iv. 20

Day dawns, then comes the twilight grey,
The limit of the live-long day;
For weary people sleep seems best
And all God's creatures go to rest.
I, only, grieve like one accursed,
Through all the hours both last and first,
Sad at the crossroads, day and night,
With no one there to see my plight;
No one can see me, no one knows me;
All men are deaf, no ears disclose me;
Men stand and trade their mutual chains
And barter truth for filthy gains,
Committing shame against the Lord
By harnessing for black reward
People in yokes and sowing evil
In fields commissioned by the Devil...
And what will sprout? You soon will see
What kind of harvest there will be!
Come to your senses, ruthless ones,
O stupid children, Folly's sons!
And bring that peaceftil paradise,
Your own Ukraine, before your eyes;
Then let your heart, in love sincere,
Embrace her mighty ruin here!
Break then your chains, in love unite,
Nor seek in foreign lands the sight
Of things not even found above,
Still less in lands that strangers love...
Then in your own house you will see
True justice, strength, and liberty!

Gain knowledge, brothers! Think and read,
And to your neighbours' gifts pay heed, --
Yet do not thus neglect your own:
For he who is forgetful shown
Of his own mother, graceless elf,
Is punished by our God Himself.
Strangers will turn from such as he
And grudge him hospitality --
Nay, his own children grow estranged;
Though one so evil may have ranged
The whole wide earth, he shall not find
A home to give him peace of mind.

Sadly I weep when I recall
The unforgotten deeds of all
Our ancestors: their toilsome deeds!
Could I forget their pangs and needs,
I, as my price, would than suppress
Half of my own life's happiness...

Such is our glory, sad and plain,
The glory of our own Ukraine!
I would advise you so to read
That you may see, in very deed,
No dream but all the wrongs of old
That burial mounds might here unfold
Before your eyes in martyred hosts,
That you might ask those grisly ghosts:
Who were the tortured ones, in fact,
And why, and when, were they so racked?...

Then 0 my brothers, as a start,
Come, clasp your brothers to your heart, --
So let your mother smile with joy
And dry her tears without annoy.
Blest be your children in these lands
By touch of your toil-hardened hands,
And, duly washed, kissed let them be
With lips that speak of liberty!
Then all the shame of days of old,
Forgotten, shall no more be told;
Then shall our day of hope arrive,
Ukrainian glory shall revive,
No twilight but the dawn shall render
And break forth into novel splendour....
Brother, embrace! Your hopes possess,
I beg you in all eagerness!

Viunishcha, December 14, 1845
(Translated by C. H. Andrusyshen & W. Kirkconnell)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.infoukes.com/shevchenkomuseum/poetry.htm
Taras H. Shevchenko Museum and Memorial Park Foundation
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Ukrainian, published two times a year, please send an e-mail to:
ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net.
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"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR" is an in-depth, private, non-
profit news and analysis international newsletter, produced as a free
public service by the non-profit www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service
(ARTUIS) and The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service The
report is distributed in the public's interesting around the world FREE
of charge using the e-mail address: ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net.
Additional readers are always welcome.

If you would like to read "THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT- AUR"
please send your name, country of residence, and e-mail contact
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EXCITING ORANGE REVOLUTION CD AVAILABLE
The CD is available for $18.95 US. For more information or to order
the CD contact Tamara Koszarny at tkoszarny@hotmail.com.
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"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT- AUR" - SPONSORS
"Working to Secure & Enhance Ukraine's Democratic Future"

1. THE BLEYZER FOUNDATION, Dr. Edilberto Segura, Chairman;
Victor Gekker, Executive Director, Kyiv, Ukraine; Washington, D.C.,
http://www.bleyzerfoundation.com.
2. BAHRIANY FOUNDATION, INC., Dr. Anatol Lysyj, Chairman,
Minneapolis, Minnesota
3. KIEV-ATLANTIC GROUP, David and Tamara Sweere, Daniel
Sweere, Kyiv and Myronivka, Ukraine, 380 44 298 7275 in Kyiv,
kau@ukrnet.net
4. ODUM- Association of American Youth of Ukrainian Descent,
Minnesota Chapter, Natalia Yarr, Chairperson
5. ESTRON CORPORATION, Grain Export Terminal Facility &
Oilseed Crushing Plant, Ilvichevsk, Ukraine
6. UKRAINIAN FEDERATION OF AMERICA (UFA),
Zenia Chernyk, Chairperson; Vera M. Andryczyk, President;
Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania
7. UKRAINE-U.S. BUSINESS COUNCIL, Washington, D.C., Van
Yeutter, Cargill Inc., Interim President; Jack Reed, ADM, Interim
Vice President; Morgan Williams, SigmaBleyzer, Interim Secretary-
Treasurer
8. UKRAINIAN AMERICAN COORDINATING COUNCIL,
(UACC), Ihor Gawdiak, President, Washington, D.C., New York, NY
9. U.S.-UKRAINE FOUNDATION (USUF), Nadia Komarnyckyj
McConnell, President; John Kun, Vice President/COO, Washington,
D.C.; Markian Bilynskyj, VP/Director of Field Operations; Kyiv,
Ukraine. Web: http://www.USUkraine.org
10. VOLIA SOFTWARE, Software to Fit Your Business, Source your
IT work in Ukraine. Contact: Yuriy Sivitsky, Vice President, Marketing,
Kyiv, Ukraine, yuriy.sivitsky@softline.kiev.ua; Volia Software website:
http://www.volia-software.com/ or Bill Hunter, CEO Volia Software,
Houston, TX 77024; bill.hunter@volia-software.com.
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PUBLISHER AND EDITOR
Mr. E. Morgan Williams, Director, Government Affairs
Washington Office, SigmaBleyzer Private Equity Investment Group
P.O. Box 2607, Washington, D.C. 20013, Tel: 202 437 4707
mwilliams@SigmaBleyzer.com; www.SigmaBleyzer.com
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Director, Ukrainian Federation of America (UFA)
Coordinator, Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC)
Senior Advisor, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF)
Interim Secretary-Treasurer, Ukraine-U.S. Business Council
Publisher, Ukraine Information Website, www.ArtUkraine.com
& www.ArtUkraine Information Service (ARTUIS)
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