Pіdgotuvala: Schoolgirls 10-A KlasRozhenkova Nastia

Taras Shevchen

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Content1. Short

Biography2. Childhood

 3.Final Years

 4.My Destiny - an autobiographical essay by

Taras Shevchenko

Short Biography

Taras Hryhorovich Shevchenko, the great Ukrainian poet, artist and thinker, was born on March 9, 1814, in the village of Moryntsi in central Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire.

His parents, H. Shevchenko and K. Shevchenko, were serfs on the land of V. Engelhardt.

Short Biography

Shevchenko ArtT.ShevchenkoSelf-portrait with

candle, 1861 His grandfather I. Shevchenko, who was a witness of the Haidamak movement, had a significant influence on Taras.

Taras's father was literate, and he sent his son to be educated as an apprentice to a deacon.

In 1823, Taras's mother died, and his father married for a second time.

In 1825, his father also died. For some time little Taras, now an orphan, served as a houseboy and was in training as a servant.

A talent for drawing showed itself in the boy quite early. When he was 14 years old, he became a domestic servant to P. Engelhardt.

Short Biography

In the spring of 1829, Taras travelled with P. Engelhardt to Vilnius, Lithuania.

There he studied painting under an experienced craftsman. The Polish rebellion for national liberation from Russia began in November, 1830, and Engelhardt left for the Russian capital, St. Petersburg.

Shevchenko stayed with the lord's servants in Vilnius and was witness to the revolutionary events.

Shevchenko went to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1831. In 1832, the lord "contracted" him to the master painter V. Shyryayev, with whom the lad experienced a hard school of professional training.

Short Biography

Shevchenko ArtSelf-portrait, 1845Noted writers and artists

bought Shevchenko out of serfdom. The 2,500 rubles required

were raised through a lottery in which the prize was a portrait of the poet, Zhukovsky, painted by Karl Bryullov.

The release from serfdom was signed on April 22, 1838. A committee of the Association for the Encouragement of Artists had examined drawings by Shevchenko and approved them.

In 1838, Shevchenko was accepted into the Academy of Arts as an external student, practicing in the workshop of K. Bryullov.

Short Biography

In January, 1839, Shevchenko was accepted as a resident student at the Association for the Encouragement of Artists, and at the annual examinations at the Academy of Arts, Shevchenko was given the Silver Medal for a landscape.

In 1840 he was again given the Silver Medal, this time for his first oil painting, The Beggar Boy Giving Bread to a Dog.

Shevchenko began to write poetry even before he was freed from serfdom. In 1840, the world first saw the Kobzar, Shevchenko's first collection of poetry.

Later Ivan Franko wrote that this book, "immediately revealed, as it were, a new world of poetry.

It burst forth like a spring of clear, cold water, and sparkled with a clarity, breadth and elegance of artistic expression not previously known in Ukrainian writing."

In 1841, the epic poem Haidamaky appeared as a separate volume.

In September of that same year, Shevchenko got his third Silver Medal -- for his picture The Gypsy Fortune Teller.

A significant work is the painting Kateryna, based on his poem.

Short Biography

In 1843, the poet left St. Petersburg, and at the end of May he was in Ukraine. In Kiev, he met M. Maksymovich, P. Kulish and others, and did many paintings.

That summer, the poet visited the sites of the former Zaporozhian Cossack Sich, and in September he went to Kyrylivka where, after a fourteen-year separation, he saw his brothers and sisters. In Ukraine Shevchenko did many pencil studies for a projected book of engravings to be called Picturesque Ukraine. At the end of February Shevchenko returned to St. Petersburg.

Short Biography

Childhood

Taras Shevchenko, the son of serfs, was born on the estate of Baron Vasili Engelhardt on March 9, 1814. One of six children, at his birth he was little more than another possession of his lord and master. The place of his birth was the village of Moryntsi, some 120 miles or 200 kilometres to the south of Kiev, an area which in earlier generations had been the home of the Zaporizhian Cossacks. In 1816 the Shevchenko family moved to the village of Kirilivka (now Shevchenkove), where Taras spent his childhood years. Amongst the peasantry, burdened by the brutal and unjust system of serfdom, tales of these folk heroes and their struggles for freedom, were commonplace, a relief from the toils of the day, as well as a hope for a better future. It was in such an environment that the young Taras and his siblings were raised.

Childhood

Shevchenko's parents, Hryhori and Kateryna, worked the fields of Baron Engelhardt, as did his older brother Mykyta.

As was usual in those times, the serfs laboured five days for their master, and one for themselves.

His father also worked on occasion as a chumak, a teamster, hauling salt for Baron Engelhardt from southern Ukraine. It appears that his father, on occasion, took Taras with him on these trips, as young children were not obliged to work for their master.

During these trips, the young boy was able to see some of the world, even major centres such as Elizavetgrad and Uman.

FinaL

Years

When Shevchenko arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, he was informed that entrance to the capital was forbidden him.

In consequence, he was compelled to live about six months in Nizhny. "Now I am free... as free as a dog on a chain" he wrote from Nizhny Novgorod to his friend, the famous Russian actor, M. Shchepkin.

Shevchenko's release returned the pen to the poet. He began by rereading, correcting and rewriting his earlier works. Simultaniously he begun to work on a new poem, The Neophytes.

The scene of the poem was transferred to the ancient Roman Empire. It is easy to surmise why that was done.

FinaL

Years

The reader readily saw through the camouflage and understood that Nero was Nicholas I, the patricians were the landowners and upper classes generally, the plebs were the people, and the Neophytes were the revolutionaries, champions of the people's happiness.

In one of the poems written in Nizhny Novgorod, Shevchenko tells his muse:

With lips that know no lieTeach but the truth to preach...

To preach the truth - that, to Shevchenko was his lofty duty. And he remained true to that precept all his life. Shevchenko served the truth as a man, as a citizen, as an artist, and as a master of the pen, who profoundly understood the power of words and selected them as his weapons in the struggle for the happiness of the degraded and the oppressed.

"In Moscow I was particularly pleased to find among celebrated Moscovites the very warmest cordiality toward me personally, and

unfeigned appreciate of my poetry."

A wave of new impressions overwhelmed the poet.

He realized that an intense struggle was beginning to gain momentum.

It was waged by the new revolutionary-democratic camp in the Russian Empire, which was striving to emancipate the working people and destroy the autocracy.

So he hastened to St. Petersburg, although the freedom that awaited him there was but a phantom, since he would be under constant police surveillance.

FinaL

Years

The Ukrainian poet was not only a participant in the revolutuionary movement of the 1860s, but he exerted a fruitful influence on the development of progressive thought in Russia. No wonder Chernyshevsky considered Shevchenko an "incontestable authority" on the pesant question which was of special concern to the revolutionary democrats.

In 1859 Shevchenko sojourned in Ukraine for the last time. He visited places where he had spent his childhood, he saw his relatives, and observed the same life of poverty and slavery, the same drudgery for a crust of bread as before. There, too, he was under constant police surveillance. Gendarmes and spies evesdropped on his conversations with the peasants. Finally, he was arrested again.

The poet was barred from living in Ukraine and was forced to return to Ukraine. He lived in the attic of the Academy of Art in St. Petersburg, and enthusiastically busied himself with engraving, seeing it as a marvelous means for the propagation of art.

FinaL

Years

My Destiny - an autobiographical essay by Taras Shevchenko

My own destiny, truthfully presented, may lead to deeper reflection, not only on the part of the common man, but also those upon whom this common man is so completely dependent. Both sides should profit by this. Such is the reason why I cannot refuse to reveal in public a few sad facts about myself. All that I can do now to comply with your wish is to give a brief account of the actual course of my life. After having read these lines you will appreciate those feelings which grieve my heart and oppress my spirit.

My Destiny - an autobiographical essay by Taras Shevchenko

One day during our stat in Vilna, my master and his wife went to a ball of the local nobility to celebrate the name day of His Majesty Tsar Nikolai Pavlovich. The servants were asleep and the house was wrapped in complete darkness.

In my solitary room I Lit a candle, uncovered my stolen treasures and having selected from among them the picture "Cossack Platov," I began to copy.

My Destiny - an autobiographical essay by Taras Shevchenko

By profession Shevchenko was an artist. His essay clearly indicates his deep interest in art and his burning desire as a child to become an artist.

His fame as a poet has surpassed his fame as an artist but to understand his life both careers must be studied.

My Destiny - an autobiographical essay by Taras Shevchenko

KOBZAR

THE

END

March 10, 1861 and died the great writer of genius and painter Taras Shevchenko…