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This webpage reproduces part of Taras Shevchenko Bard of Ukraine by Dmytro Doroshenko United Ukrainian Organizations of the United States, 1936 The text is in the public domain. This text has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Text

 p3  Preface

In every land and in every literature there is one author who is the outstanding incarnation of the national genius, one man who sums up all the past of his nation and stands out like a guide to the future. Such a man, when he appears, will elevate the language in which he writes and speaks from an archaistic survival of the past centuries into a method of speech which is to last in the future. He is to form the transition from the past glories of the nation to the future that is to come.

Such a man for Ukraine is Taras Shevchenko, one of the great masters of world poetry. It is typical of the movements of the early nineteenth century that the Slavonic world produced three great poets, Pushkin among the Russians, Mickiewicz among the Poles and Shevchenko among the Ukrainians. It is interesting also to realize that while the first two were born of noble and wealthy families, the third, Shevchenko, was a  p4 poor serf. Nevertheless he was welcomed during his periods of relative happiness by the most distinguished men of the day both in the capitals of Russia and in his own dearly beloved Ukraine.

It was almost necessary that a man who would express the aspirations of Ukraine should be a serf. The last vestiges of the independence of the Cossacks had been suppressed ruthlessly. The vast majority of the nobles who had survived the debacle had been drawn away from their country and their traditions to join the dominant powers of society. It was only the serfs who in their misery remained loyal to the old dreams of the Cossacks, who remembered the old and glorious Ukraine, and who preserved the village speech and the local traditions.

It is against this background that Shevchenko lived out his hard and unhappy life, for he typified in his own existence the sufferings of his native land and the hardships which all the sons of Ukraine had to undergo. But Shevchenko is not merely a martyr or a victim of the powers under whom he lived and suffered. He summarized and embodied the past of Ukraine but also he was living just at that very moment when the ideals of the future were being forged in the  p5 fire of adversity. He spoke for the future of his land as well as for the past, for the future liberty and freedom that were to come as well as of that glory which had faded. Yes, Shevchenko became the very embodiment of the ideals and the aspirations and the dreams of every Ukrainian patriot. He believed in his country, and although seventy five years have passed since his untimely death and his ideals have not been realized, there can be no doubt that the Ukrainian spirit which Shevchenko voiced, will continue to struggle for its aspirations until it finally meets with success and Ukraine will appear again among the recognized nations of the world.

Clarence A. Manning, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor of Eastern European Languages
Columbia University