A book for the third millennium

Writing about Shevchenko is a privilege that must be deserved, sometimes with one’s whole life. The words of our greatest poet, thinker, and creator of the spiritual cosmos of Ukrainians formed our nation as such. This claim would sound too exalted, exaggerated, and unfounded with regard to geniuses of other nations, but not where Shevchenko is concerned. Writing about Shevchenko requires profound, multiaspected knowledge of his life and creativity and flawless scholarly analysis. This kind of work requires not just love for the poet but also the ability to share Shevchenko’s vision of Ukraine and the world, to see him and our current realities, perceive his ideals, and wholeheartedly believe in what he believed — and to despise the Shevchenkophobes disguised as Shevchenko experts.

Therefore, it takes symmetry of scope of two separate individuals: the one being written about and the one who is writing about him. Even among generally acknowledged experts there are not many Ukrainian authors who are capable of producing such a comprehensive, all-embracing study in the field of Shevchenko studies — one that is scholarly as well as aesthetic — a work that makes a fundamentally new contribution to a field in which the number of Ukrainian and foreign works dedicated to Shevchenko exceeds what he wrote by a thousand times.

Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Press has just published the monograph Taras Shevchenko: His Life and Work by Academician Ivan Dziuba, the distinguished Ukrainian scholar-encyclopedist, philologist, cultural specialist, and public figure. His solid, thoroughly documented work examines the concept of Shevchenko in the dimensions of his earthly existence and in eternity. It is a powerful intellectual impetus for every Ukrainian, for everyone who understands that Shevchenko is “forever vital” (the heading of one of the book’s chapters). To put it more precisely, this must be an intellectual impetus. But considering the dangerous cultural crisis in our society and the outrageously small press run — 1,000 copies for the entire country — it is difficult to predict whether this will happen.

Dziuba’s book, the second revised and considerably expanded version of the first edition published in 2005 by Alternatyvy Publishers, which never reached the greater reading public, was launched at the Ukrainian Home on the eve of the 194th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth. Academician Mykola Zhulynsky of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences (NAN), who heads its Shevchenko Institute of Culture, presided over the ceremony. In his speech he stressed that the appearance of this monograph of over 700 pages, written by a man who has the absolute moral right to issue such publications, is an event that must excite public interest. The book focuses on “Shevchenko’s movement through time and space; all this is committed to paper for the first time in a remarkable historical, intellectual, and cultural context.” Dziuba analyzed hundreds of thousands of works, names, documents, statements, and ideas, and cites numerous distinguished individuals, many of whom have been forgotten. The poet Vasyl Herasymiuk, a Shevchenko Prize winner, spoke next, noting that writing about Shevchenko in a worthy and comprehensive manner is a cosmogenic task that Dziuba carried off brilliantly. This is a book that we should carry into the third millennium, Herasymiuk emphasized. The author convincingly and expressively demonstrates what kind of man wrote the Kobzar and how its poetry, in turn, created Shevchenko as a brilliant personality, and all of us. Herasymiuk singled out the following aspect from among the various questions so comprehensively elucidated in the monograph: “Shevchenko and the voice of national self-criticism” (or “Shevchenko’s critique of national historical myths,” where the main lesson is the need to find the causes of all troubles in ourselves); “Shevchenko and his calling” (an individual who is aware of his mission is capable of carrying out extremely difficult tasks, and Dziuba shows how Shevchenko did this).

Dziuba graphically demonstrates that Shevchenko resolved creative tasks to which European writers had devoted several decades. This monograph, like all of Dziuba’s Shevchenko studies, starting with a thin booklet entitled Zastukaly serdeshnu doliu, published in 1995 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the poem “Caucasus,” should be mandatory reading material for all Ukrainian writers and intellectuals, Herasymiuk commented.

Maksym Strikha, the eminent critic, journalist, and public figure, described the monograph as “a gripping intellectual novel about the coming of age of Shevchenko, Ukrainian literature, and the Ukrainian nation.” Among the greatest merits of Dziuba’s book Strikha mentioned its “remarkable honesty” and the “absence of any speculations on this exceptionally important theme.” The speaker expressed his conviction that only Dziuba was capable of writing such a book, and this work will undoubtedly become a gem of Shevchenko studies in Ukraine. Concluding his brief talk, Strikha paid homage to the author and his monumental work, declaring that it is now our duty to read it and share it with others.

Volodymyr Panchenko, a philologist who teaches at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, focused on the “key formula” that determined the author’s approach to Shevchenko and his era: “One must enter his times and breathe in the air of Shevchenko’s epoch.” According to this academic, reading this book has a “therapeutic effect and adds to the understanding and awareness that we are not the only ones experiencing hardships.” Another very important aspect is the author’s broad and profound understanding. To illustrate his point Panchenko quoted Lina Kostenko as saying that Ivan Dziuba expects something from people even when there is no hope of expecting anything, because he wants to understand everyone. Dziuba tries to approach complicated issues from every angle and in this he is unmatched, Prof. Panchenko emphasized.

Valeria Smilianska, the head of the Department of Shevchenko Studies at Shevchenko Institute of Literature at the Academy of Sciences, noted that Dziuba’s book is just the tip of the iceberg (the rest being invisible to the reader). The author shows Shevchenko’s life and creativity in a fantastically broad context, against the backdrop of crucial European and world events. This is what makes the monograph so remarkably topical: it shows how much of what Shevchenko foresaw in his time has since happened to us.

Next, Academician Vitalii Donchyk took the floor, declaring that our times are a period marked by a devaluation of values and judgments. This book is a genuine intellectual luxury, and one can only imagine the reverberations it would have caused, given normal public consciousness. Donchyk expressed the hope that Ukrainians will eventually reach that level of scholarship (and Dziuba’s book is its harbinger) where vitally important ideas will be presented in a natural and brilliant manner.

In his speech the noted critic and literary scholar Vadym Skurativsky called for sorting out the “apologetic confusion” that has formed around Shevchenko’s name. He explained why the monograph will be instrumental in refuting arrogant Shevchenkophobes and will become an “all-purpose guide to Shevchenko.” Skurativsky also called for a “return to standards in the best and most accurate sense of the word,” “where an extraordinarily complex dialectic of the interaction between history and a brilliant individual takes place.”

After the guest speakers concluded their tributes, the guests were eager to hear from the author of the latest Shevchenko monograph. Dziuba thanked everyone who worked on preparing the book for publication, especially Vira Soloviova, the head of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Press, and his editor Olena Paziuk. He also thanked his colleagues for their kind words. “This praise, clearly overstated, will be more than enough to last me for the rest of my life.” The guest of honor admitted that he conceived the idea for the book, which used only a small part of all the research data that he compiled, because he became aware of the need to create an all-embracing “synthetic” study of Shevchenko that would go beyond a certain number of problems and a specific period. In a spirit of self-criticism he admitted that his book has many imperfections. For example, he didn’t succeed in taking everything into account or doing everything on time. (In contrast, I am reminded of the touching self-confidence of certain “luminaries of scholarship.”)

Academician Dziuba said that his book engages in a polemic with those who seek to belittle Shevchenko and those who are unable to sense history and are deprived of the “nerve of social conscience” (note his use of such a vitally important and currently unfashionable idea as conscience). In many discussions of Shevchenko one is struck by the inadmissible abstraction from concrete historical, contemporary realities. This only serves to distort the poet’s image and distances us from him. In conclusion, Dziuba said that he will continue working hard to develop Shevchenko studies in Ukraine.

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The speech by our outstanding contemporary was brief. In order to encourage the reader’s interest in his book, I will briefly summarize some of its key ideas and quote from Dziuba’s analysis of Shevchenko and his era. He is convinced that “Shevchenko’s emergence was not unexpected but was a natural act of the people’s creative will.” This creative will of the Ukrainian nation was paving its own way in conditions of intolerable, refined, and cynical Russification. The author cites a striking document that is worth being quoted in full. It is a draft plan for the colonization of the “western gubernias” (contemporary Volyn and parts of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus), which was drawn up by Count Kiselev, Minister of State Property in Nicholas I’s cabinet:

“This measure, aimed at the free resettlement of Russian industrialists is proposed in order to form the social categories of merchants and petty bourgeoisie made up of native Russians, which will give a fresh impetus to trade, and in troubled circumstances, will serve as an important bulwark for the government.” The draft was quickly adopted, because the Russian imperial government was convinced that “this measure will strengthen industries and reduce the exclusive influence of the Jews on commercial transactions, and what is most important, it will sow Russian seeds on this territory and introduce a Russian population that most of all can serve, if not a merger then, at the very least, a closer rapprochement of the Western territory and native Russia.” As they say, no comment.

In addition to this brilliant anti- imperial component, Dziuba’s book offers many other equally important components, including sharp national self-criticism, which is perfectly in keeping with Shevchenko’s spirit. Here is a small example: Dziuba writes about “one of Ukraine’s long-standing traditions of unpublicized self-compensations for not altogether sincere loyalty to the powers that be.” He directs equally harsh criticism at the emergence of mendacious attitudes to Shevchenko’s life and work. As illustration, Dziuba notes that, because the main characters in many of Shevchenko’s works, including the Kobzar, are girls, women, and mothers, certain “bold” statements are being advanced about Shevchenko’s alleged “femininity.” “Theoretical” chatter is underway these days about the predominance of femininity in the Ukrainian character and our “martyr complex,” and so on. Instead of pandering to latter-day “liberal-modernist” trends, Dziuba honestly and objectively shows Shevchenko as the author of truly rebellious, revolutionary poems, a harsh critic (if not an enemy) of the official (Russian) Orthodox Church, and a man who never forgot his serf’s past (and who never disowned it). Every Ukrainian should read this book because it is meant for the third millennium.