What kind of Ukraine can one see from Chernecha Hill?
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.
