Symbol of Ukraine’s tempestuous energy
On May 22 public readings of Shevchenko’s poems were held in Kyiv
The Kobzar’s reburial on May 22, 1861 was a watershed event in the 19th century Ukraine that prompted Ukrainians to express their views in public.
Mykhailo Drahomanov’s funeral oration urged his countrymen to be faithful to the ideals of the deceased poet and proved to be a historic milestone itself.
Actually, it might have marked the beginning of the resistance movement. The torch of the struggle was passed on all the way to the 1960s and 1970s, when young patriots held annual gatherings at the Kobzar monument and recited his poems.
These were bold expressions of their Ukrainian awareness, and sometimes the participants ended up in jail. Now that the entire Ukrainian culture, and especially the language, is losing its domains, The Last Barricade art association together with Our Own Truth association, My Ukraine foundation, and the All-Ukrainian Festival Association have revived this tradition.
“The current situation in Ukraine calls for drawing strength, so to speak, from its sources,” The Last Barricade’s chairman, MP Oles Donii says.
“Shevchenko is exactly such an incredibly deep source. The understanding of this comes with age, because we first meet the poet during our school years, that is, quite early in our lives.
Even so, we knew in the middle school already that the Kobzar collection, for example, was incomplete due to censorship. Actually, Shevchenko managed to break through the rigidity that often comes with schooling.
Furthermore, the poet erupts with energy that both the Tsarist and the Soviet governments were afraid of, because he is a symbol of Ukraine’s tempestuous, unconquerable energy.”
Therefore, well-known musicians, authors, journalists, and public figures Taras Fediuk, Ivan Malkovych, Maria Burmaka, Mykola Kniazhytsky, Yurii Stets, Oleh “Fagot” Mykhailiuta, Serhii Pantiuk, Vasyl Shkliar, Yevhen Sverstiuk, and Nina Matviienko recited each their own poem of Shevchenko, their own Shevchenko.
