Кохання у житті Шевченка

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (1814 - 1861)

Artist, poet, national bard of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko was born on 9 March, 1814 in Moryntsi, Kiev gubernia. He was born a serf. When he was a teenager he became an orphan, and grew up in poverty. When he was 14, his owner, Engelhardt took him to serve as a houseboy. And Taras travelled with him to Vilnus and to St Petersburg. In Vilnus Taras for the first time heard different languages, Lithuanian, Russian and Polish and there he saw people liberated by their masters.

Shevchenko entered the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, there he became a student of Bryullov. Shevchenko was awarded with three silver medals for his works and later he had become an Academician in engraving. When Engelhardt noticed the boy’s skills in painting he apprenticed him to the painter Shiriayev for four years.

In 1846 in Kiev he entered the secret Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. It was a secret political society, in 1847 it was smashed, and Shevchenko was arrested and sent to the Orenburg special corps, he was deprived the right to draw and write. 10 years of exile ruined his health, and Shevchenko became seriously ill. When he was liberated in 1857 it was forbidden to him to live in Ukraine. He moved to St Petersburg but on March 10, 1861 the great poet died of heart disease.

He was buried in St Petersburg, but his friends accomplished the poet’s will which he had expressed in his “Testament” and they transferred his body to the Chernecha Hill near Kanev, in Ukraine. Shevchenko’s works take an important place in Ukrainian literature and history. Shevchenko was an outstanding poet and a highly appreciated artist. There are 835 works written by him, although 270 are known to have been lost. His collection also contains over 150 portraits, 42 self-portraits.  

Love in Shevchenko’s life

The theme of love in the life of Taras are some attempts to open the door leading to the complex and original poet's soul. We are increasingly perceive his genius, approaching the philosophy of knowledge of its impact on the fate of Ukraine . Being emotional and sensitive nature, Shevchenko, like every poet, in love often. But bad luck haunted him all his life, leaving his happiness to live married, in love with his wife, which dreamed, especially in his later years . So who were they - the muses that inspired the poet, gave him joy and evoked sorrow, loved him and were loved by him?

In a poem, Maryana-chernytsya, Shevchenko wrote, “I’m looking at you, I’m praying before your image…” Shevchenko knew Maryana whose real name was Oksana Kovalenko since childhood. It was she who in later years became his first love. People who knew them were sure they were going to get married one day. For Shevchenko she must have been what Beatrice was for Dante — she inspired him to write poetry. Oksana was of a short stature, curly-haired, gentle and full of cheer; whenever they met, she shared this cheer with Shevchenko who preserved the memory of this girl for all his life. It is not known for sure why he called her Maryana in his poetry but this name features in many of his poetic works. Maryana

In Wilno, Shevchenko met a girl of a Polish descent, Jadwiga Gusikowska, whom he chose to address as Dunya. The love that flared up and could not last — Shevchenko was not free (literally) to choose what to do with his life. Many years later, he had a dream in which he saw his Dunya, kneeling in a church, deep in prayer. He noted down this dream, writing, “I saw Dunya, the black-browed Gusikowska, in the Church of St Anna in Wilno…” Jadwiga

Shevchenko got enrolled at the Art Academy and did a lot of drawings of models, in the then academic style. Among them, one finds a sketch of a model in bed, her brown hair long, her big eyes dark blue, but the face that of a young girl in contrast to her mature body. She was of German extraction, and it is known that she was more than just a model for him. The girl became a prototype for a character in his autobiographical novel, The Artist, under the name of Pasha. Shevchenko called her “the most wonderful creation of divine nature.” Pasha

Varvara Repnina was a woman of excellent education and of various talents, one of which was the gift of creative writing. When she met Shevchenko she was not slow to appreciate his talents. “I know he is great — and I want him to be always great. He is saintly, he is resplendent, I want him to spread truth through the power of his incomparable talent — and I wish he could do it with my help,” she wrote in a letter. Varvara She was 35 and he was 29. She fell in love deeply and she wanted to be his muse — but at the same time she wanted to “put him on a righteous way of living.” Shevchenko fancied another woman, Hanna, at that time.

Shevchenko was enchanted by the beauty of Hanna and he got himself invited to come on a visit to the Zakrevskys’ estate. He bitterly complained in a letter that his visit had been delayed for a week by a snowstorm and the absence of an overcoat warm enough to protect him from the freezing temperatures. The Zakrevskys’ house and its wing, where Shevchenko stayed, survive. Shevchenko not only painted a portrait, he wrote verses dedicated to Hanna: “You are like the glow. That rises from the mist. Above the sea. At dawn… Hanna

Shevchenko painted several portraits of Agata Uskova, the wife of the commandant of a fort — a beautiful woman of great civility and charm, mother of three children. Shevchenko portrayed her, her children and her husband. His love for her seems to have remained unrequited. Shevchenko insisted that he loved her “with all his heart…and there was absolutely nothing sinful in that love, my love was chaste and pure.” Agata

Kateryna, whom Shevchenko happened to be friend, is wearing a blue dress and a red flower in the luxuriant dark hair. Kateryna was an actress of a theater in the town of Nizhny Novgorod. Friendship on his part developed into a fully-fledged love. He proposed — but was turned down, the difference in age probably being the main reason for rejection. Kateryna The portrait of Kateryna Piunova was painted when Kateryna was seventeen and Shevchenko was forty four years of age.

“If I had a wife like that, I’d be ready to die in peace,” said Shevchenko of Mariya Maksymovych, the wife of Mykhailo Maksymovych, the first president of the newly opened University of St Volodymyr in Kyiv. Mariya was half the age of her husband. Her looks charmed both the poet and the artist in Shevchenko. Her portrait done by Shevchenko in pencil, seems to have been created at one sitting by a greatly inspired Shevchenko. Mariya One of Shevchenko’s poems is called “Mariya” but it is difficult to say whether it was Mariya Maksymovych who was the source of inspiration for it.

There was a woman in Shevchenko’s life though who accepted Shevchenko’s proposal to be his wife. Her name was Lykera Polusmak, and she was of the Ukrainian descent. Lykera, a former serf and housemaid at the household of a friend, was much younger than Shevchenko, and there is evidence that suggests that had they married, it would not have been a happy marriage. Lykera admitted to her friends that she did not love the poet Lykera who was “too old and not good looking, and too serious” for her liking. She was light-headed and frivolous but very good-looking.

The End