Short poems by the Ukrainian poet - classic Taras Shevchenko. Taras Shevchenko - Sunday poems Forum Shevchenko's poetry in Ukrainian

Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko

As Wikipedia says: - Ukrainian poet, prose writer, artist, ethnographer.
Academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1860).

Shevchenko's literary heritage, in which poetry plays a central role, in particular the collection "Kobzar", is considered the basis of modern Ukrainian literature and, in many respects, the literary Ukrainian language.

Most of Shevchenko’s prose (stories, diary, many letters), as well as some poems, are written in Russian, and therefore some researchers classify Shevchenko’s work, in addition to Ukrainian, as Russian literature.

"Thought"

Days pass... nights pass;
Summer has passed; rustles
The leaf is yellowed; eyes go out;
Thoughts fell asleep; the heart is sleeping.
Everything fell asleep... I don’t know -
Do you live, my soul?
I look at the light dispassionately
And there are no tears, and there is no laughter!

And where is my share? by fate
I have no way of knowing...
But if I am not good,
Why didn't it fall out at least evil?
God forbid! - like in a dream
To wander... to cool my heart.
Rotten deck on the way
Don't let me lie down.

But let me live, Heavenly Creator -
Oh, let me live with my heart, with my heart!
So that I praise your wonderful world
So that I can love my neighbor!
Captivity is terrible! It's hard in her.
Living in freedom—and sleeping—is more terrible.
To live terribly without a trace,
And death and life are one then.

“Oh, my dear! How hard it is in the world"

Oh, my dear! How hard it is in the world
How miserable life is - but I want to live,
And I want to see the sun shine
And I want to listen to how the sea plays,
Like a bird chirping, like a grove rustling,
How a girl sings her song...
Oh, my dear, how fun it is to live!

"Don't marry a rich woman"

Don't marry a rich woman -
Will kick you out of the house,
Don't marry a wretched one either -
You won't live long
And marry freely -
On the Cossack's share:
How she was - like this
Will be with you forever.

"To the Poles"

The Cossacks squealed like they did,
And the union was almost there,
It was such a fun life!
Fraternized with free Poles,
They wrote in free steps,
They swung and bloomed in the gardens,
Otherwise, lilies, girls.
Written by my mother's sons,
Sinami free... Grew up,
The blue ones grew and had fun
Old sorrowful years...
Already in the name of Christ
The ksyondzi came and set fire
Our quiet paradise. I bottled
A wide sea of ​​tears and blood,
And the orphans in the name of Christ
They muzzled and spanked.
The Cossacks hung their heads,
Somehow the grass is worn down.
Ukraine is crying, crying!
Behind your head
I'm down to earth. Kat is fierce,
Let's say it in our own language
Shout: “Te Deum!” Hallelujah!..”

So, my dear, friend, brother!
Nesitii ksiondzi, magnates
We were insulted, separated,
And we would have lived like this before.
Give the Cossacks your hand
Give me a pure heart!
I call you in the name of Christ
We are renewing our quiet paradise.

“It’s hard in captivity... no matter the will”

It’s hard in captivity... even if you have the will
There was probably no need to find out;
But still, somehow life lived, -
Even on someone else’s, but still on the field...
Now this heavy fate,
Like God, I had to wait.
And I wait and wait for her,
I curse my stupid mind
That he allowed himself to be darkened
And drown the will in a puddle.
And my heart freezes if I remember
What will not be buried in Ukraine,
That I won’t live in Ukraine,
To love people and gentlemen.

“And the gray sky and sleepy waters...”

And the gray sky and sleepy waters...
In the distance above the shore it drooped
Without wind, bending reeds,
Like a drunk... God, years are disappearing!
Well, how long will it take me
In my unlocked prison
Over this useless sea
To languish in a hard life with grief?
The withered grass is silent
And it bends as if it were alive;
Doesn't want to tell the truth.
And there is no one else to ask.

“Didn’t return from the hike”

Didn't return from the trip
Young hussar to the village:
Why am I grieving for him?
Why am I so sorry for him?
Is it because the caftan is short?
Or is it a pity for the black mustache?
Or for the fact that - not Marusya -
Did Moskal call me Masha?
No, I'm sorry it's missing
My youth is a gift.
They don't want me to marry either
Take people for yourself.
And besides, there are girls
They won't let me pass:
They don't give way
Everyone's name is goose!

"Ukraine"

There was a time in Ukraine
The guns roared
There was a time, Cossacks
They lived and feasted.

They feasted and mined
Glory, free will,
It's all gone, all that remains is
Only mounds in the field.

Those high mounds
Where it lies, buried,
White Cossack body
With a broken head.

And those mounds darken,
Like stacks in a field,
And only with the passing wind
They whisper about freedom.

Glory to grandfather's wind
It spreads across the field.
The grandson will hear and compose a song
And he sings and squints.

There was a time in Ukraine
Grief was approaching;
And plenty of wine and honey,
Knee-deep sea!

Yes, life was once glorious,
And now you remember:
It will somehow become easier for my heart,
You'll look happier.

The most common, widespread, and generally fair definition of the founder of new Ukrainian literature, Taras Shevchenko, is a national poet; However, it is worth thinking about what is sometimes put into it.

There were people who considered Shevchenko only a competent composer of songs in the folk spirit, only a successor of nameless folk singers known by name. There were reasons for this view. Shevchenko grew up in the folk song element, although, we note, he was cut off from it very early. Not only from his poetic heritage, but also from his stories and diary written in Russian, and from numerous testimonies of his contemporaries, we see that the poet knew excellently and passionately loved his native folklore.

In his creative practice, Shevchenko often resorted to the folk song form, sometimes completely preserving it and even interspersing entire stanzas from songs into his poems. Shevchenko sometimes felt like a truly folk singer-improviser. His poem “Oh, don’t drink beer, honey” - about the death of a Chumak in the steppe - is all designed in the manner of Chumak songs, moreover, it can even be considered a variant of one of them.

We know the masterpieces of Shevchenko’s “female” lyrics, poems and songs written from a woman’s or maiden name, testifying to the extraordinary sensitivity and tenderness of a poet reincarnated. Such things as “Yakbi mesh chereviki”, “I am rich”, “I fell in love”, “I gave birth to my mother”, “I went to the peretik”, of course, are very similar to folk songs in their structure, style and language, and their epithetics etc., but they differ sharply from folklore in their rhythmic and strophic structure. The “Duma” in the poem “The Blind” is indeed written in the manner of folk thoughts, but differs from them in the swiftness of the plot movement.

Let us further recall such poems by Shevchenko as “Dream”, “Caucasus”, “Mary”, “Neophytes”, his lyrics, and we agree that the definition of Shevchenko as a folk poet only in the sense of style, poetic technique, etc. must be rejected. Shevchenko is a folk poet in the sense in which we say this about Pushkin, about Mickiewicz, about Beranger, about Petofi. Here the concept of “folk” comes close to the concepts of “national” and “great”.

The first poetic work of Shevchenko that has come down to us - the ballad “Porchenaya” (“Cause”) - begins completely in the spirit of the romantic ballads of the early 19th century - Russian, Ukrainian and Polish, in the spirit of Western European romanticism:

The wide Dnieper roars and groans,

The angry wind tears the leaves,

Everything tends to the ground below the willow

And carries menacing waves.

And that pale month

I wandered behind a dark cloud.

Like a boat overtaken by a wave,

It floated out and then disappeared.

Here - everything from traditional romanticism: an angry wind, and a pale moon peeking out from behind the clouds and like a boat in the middle of the sea, and waves as high as mountains, and willows bending to the very ground... The whole ballad is built on a fantastic folk motif, which is also typical for romantics and progressive and reactionary movements.

But after the lines just given there are these:

The village hasn't woken up yet,

The rooster has not yet sung,

The owls in the forest called to each other,

Yes, the ash tree bent and creaked.

“Owls in the forest” is also, of course, from tradition, from the romantic poetics of the “terrible”. But the ash tree, creaking from time to time under the pressure of the wind, is already a living observation of living nature. This is no longer folk songs or books, but our own.

Soon after “Porchena” (presumably 1837) was followed by the famous poem “Katerina”. In terms of its plot, this poem has a number of predecessors, with Karamzin’s “Poor Liza” at the head (not to mention Goethe’s “Faust”). But read the speech of her heroes and compare this speech with the speech of Karamzin’s Liza and her seducer, take a closer look at Shevchenko’s descriptions of nature, life, characters - and you will see how much closer Shevchenko is than Karamzin to the earth, and at the same time to his native land. The features of sentimentalism in this poem can only be seen by a person who does not want to notice the harsh truthfulness of its tone and the entire narrative.

The description of nature that opens up is quite realistic. fourth part of the poem:

And on the mountain and under the mountain,

Like elders with proud heads,

The oak trees are centuries old.

Below is a dam, willows in a row,

And the pond, covered in snowstorm,

And cut a hole in it to get water...

Through the clouds the sun turned red,

Like a bun, looking from heaven!

In Shevchenko's original, the sun turns red, like pokotolo,- according to Grinchenko’s dictionary, this is a circle, a children’s toy. This is what the young romantic compared the sun to! The word used by M. Isakovsky in his new edition of the translation bun seems like an excellent find to me.

Shevchenko’s lyrics began with such romance songs as “Why do I need black eyebrows...”, but it more and more acquired the features of a realistic, infinitely sincere conversation about the most cherished things - just remember “I really don’t care...” “The lights are burning”, the famous “When I die, bury ...” (the traditional name is “Testament”).

A very characteristic feature of Shevchenko’s poetics are contrasting phrases, which were once noticed by Franco: “the heat is hot,” “it’s hellish,” “laughing dashingly,” “the zhurba was circling the honey pot in the tavern,” etc.

His later poems - “The Neophytes” (allegedly from Roman history) and “Mary” (based on a Gospel story) - are replete with realistic everyday details. He has the Evangelical Mary “twirling a strand of hair” for the festive burnus for old man Joseph.

Grigory Shevchenko had a large family: besides Taras, there were four more children, two themselves, and a hundred-year-old grandfather. Shevchenko lived in the village of Kirilovka, Zvenigorod district, Kyiv province.

They lived poorly. Grigory Shevchenko was a serf and worked for the landowner from morning to night. Mother also worked tirelessly in the master's fields. The guys were left alone all day long, and little Taras went into the steppe and wandered there until dark: he sang songs, picked flowers, looked at the spacious Ukrainian sky and dreamed.

But even these small joys soon ended, because Taras’s mother died. He was then nine years old. My father married someone else. The stepmother disliked her stepson, and Taras’ life became even harder.

Father loved Taras and pitied him. He even sent him to study with a sexton. It was difficult to live with the sexton: Taras was beaten for no reason, for no reason, forced to do all sorts of heavy work, and the whole teaching consisted in the fact that he had to endlessly cram grammar and prayers.

Taras loved to draw. And although he was not allowed, he drew everywhere - on scraps of paper, on the walls, on the boards. Taras really wanted to learn to draw, and he ran away to another village to work with a sexton painter. The sexton undertook to teach Taras, but he did not have to live with him for long: the boy was fifteen years old, and he was no longer allowed to live in a foreign village without the permission of the landowner.

Taras was taken into the manor's house - he was made a cook, and then a Cossack. He had to sit all day, motionless, in the hallway and wait for the master to call him. Taras really wanted to draw. He managed to get a sheet of paper and a pencil, and one day, when the landowner left for a ball, Taras took out a hidden sheet of paper and began to draw. He got carried away and did not notice how the master returned. Taras was severely punished - he was flogged in the stable.

A few months later, the landowner went to St. Petersburg and took Taras with him. In St. Petersburg, Taras worked for a painter, a rude and ignorant person. Taras had a very bad time. He could not learn anything from the painter. He dreamed of entering the Academy of Arts, but the Academy did not accept serfs. At this time, Taras Shevchenko met with the Ukrainian artist Soshenko, who decided to help the talented young man gain freedom at all costs. He introduced Taras to the poet Zhukovsky and the artist Bryullov. These sympathetic and kind people helped Shevchenko in this way: the artist Bryullov painted a portrait of Zhukovsky; This portrait was played in a lottery, they got two thousand five hundred rubles for it and bought Taras out of captivity. Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko became a free man and entered the Academy of Arts.

Around this time, Shevchenko began writing poetry. His poems were sad. The poet did not forget his homeland, his tortured people, and with extraordinary strength and sincerity expressed the people's grief and suffering in his poems.

In 1847, Shevchenko was arrested. During a search, revolutionary poems were found on him. In these verses, Shevchenko attacks the tsar and the landowners with anger and hatred. Shevchenko was convicted for these poems. He was assigned as a soldier to the Orenburg separate corps and was forbidden to write and draw. This is what Tsar Nicholas I ordered.

Shevchenko spent ten years in exile. He lived in a stuffy barracks. All around was bare, scorched steppe. Shevchenko was forced to march for five hours a day. He was far from all his friends, and sometimes he had neither pencil nor paper. He rarely even received letters. Life was hard, unbearable, but Shevchenko did not lose heart. He was not allowed to write poetry, but he wrote them and hid them in his boot.

In 1857, Shevchenko was released.

Ten years of exile did not change the poet. His former hatred of the landowners and the Tsar flared up in him more and more. He went to Ukraine and visited his brothers and sisters. They were still serfs. The poet visited different villages; everywhere he saw the same thing: the people lived in captivity, worked for the landowner, suffered and were in poverty. And in his poems, Shevchenko attacks the tsar and the landowners with renewed vigor. He calls for an uprising and even a revolution.

At the end of 1860, Shevchenko fell ill and died in March 1861.

He was buried in St. Petersburg. Taras Grigorievich wanted to be buried in his homeland - in Ukraine. In his poem “Testament” he asked:

When I die, bury me

In Ukraine, dear,

In the middle of the wide steppe

Dig a grave

So that I can lie on the mound,

Over the mighty river,

To hear how it rages

Old Dnieper under the steep slope.

Friends fulfilled the poet's will. They transported Shevchenko’s body to Ukraine, to the banks of the Dnieper, near the city of Kanev. There, Taras Grigorievich, shortly before his death, wanted to build a house and spend the last years of his life in it.

March 9, 1939 marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of the great national poet Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko. His poems are translated into all the languages ​​of the peoples of our union. His anniversary is celebrated by the entire Soviet people.

Essay by E. Olgina

"Murzilka" No. 3 1939

Poems by Taras Shevchenko

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko, his work has become more relevant than ever. It seems that he really foresaw everything that is now happening in our country - both the struggle on the Maidan and the confrontation with the Tsar-Autocrat. Please take a few minutes and read. I chose the most important. Unless otherwise stated, my translation is by Alexandra Panchenko.

“Meni thirteenth passed”, approx. 1847, fragment
I was about thirteen years old
I was herding lambs outside the village
Or was the sun shining
Or was it just brought by the wind
And I love it so much, I love it
As if with God...
But the sun did not warm for long
I didn't pray for long
It baked, it lit my heart
And paradise was set on fire
And how I woke up. And I look:
The village turned black
God's sky is blue
His face turned pale
I looked, and here are the lambs
Not my lambs
I looked at the houses again
Yes, my house is not there
God didn’t give me anything!
And sobbed and cried
Heavy tears! Tekla
Drop by drop...

Fragment of the poem “Haydamaki”, 1838. "Homonila Ukraine"
Rokotala Ukraine
It rumbled for a long time
Long, long blood in the steppes
It flowed and gushed
It flowed and flowed and dried up
The steppes are turning green
Grandfathers lie, and above them
The graves turn blue
So what if the spire is tall?
Nobody knows them
No one will cry in feelings
And he won't mention
Only the wind in the sky
Blows over the grass
Only early dew
It will cover those slabs
Washes them. And only sunrise
Dries and warms
What about the grandchildren? Doesn't matter!
Panama is sown richly
Rokotala Ukraine
It rumbled for a long time
Long, long blood in the steppes
It flowed and gushed
Fight day and night, grenades
The earth groans and bends
It's sad, scary, but remember
The heart will smile.

Fragment of the poem "Haydamaky", trans. Yuriy Shelyazhenko
The sun has risen. Ukraine
Everything was burnt and smoldering.
Know quietly locked up
She sat at home.
There are gallows everywhere in the villages
And tortured bodies -
Corpses of strangers rich
Heap on a heap.
Along the roads, at crossroads
Angry dogs, crows
The bones gnaw, the eyes peck;
The nobility is not buried.
And no one! Remained
Children and dogs...
Even girls with horns
They went to the Haidamaks.

Such was the grief
Everywhere in Ukraine.
I baked it more bitterly... But why?
Why do people die?
We are children of the same land,
I wish I could live and fraternize...
They don't know how, they don't want to
Get along brothers!
They thirst for blood, the blood of their brother;
They are so sick of it,
What's in a rich house?
Life is fun.
“Let's finish brother! Let's burn the house down!" -
They clicked and it happened.
That's it, it's over... No, on the mountain
The orphans remained.
They grew and grew in tears.
Deprived hands
Untied - and blood for blood,
And torment for torment!

“The days are passing, the nights are passing”, 1845, fragment
Days pass... nights pass;
Summer has passed; rustles
The leaf is yellowed; eyes go out;
Thoughts fell asleep; the heart is sleeping.
And everything has passed, and I don’t know anymore
Am I living or am I surviving?
Or so, I’m dragging around the world
After all, I don’t cry, I don’t laugh
My destiny, where are you? Where are you?
Became nothing
If you are good, God did not give
Let it be evil!
It's scary to get caught in shackles,
Die in captivity
But the worst thing is to fall asleep and sleep
Sleep freely
And fall asleep forever, forever
Leave no trace
Nothing... And still
You were there or you weren't!
My destiny, where are you? Where are you?
Became nothing
If you are good, God did not give
Let it be evil!

“I was on a stranger”, 1848, fragment
And I grew up in a foreign land
In it the gray hair of whiskey is consumed
Even though I’m alone, I’m standing there,
What is better is not and does not happen
Under the gaze of God than Dnipro
Yes, our glorious land
But I see that there is good there
Only where we are not. And at the hour of ruin
I somehow happened to it again
come to Ukraine again,
Yes, to that wonderful village
Where was I born, where is my mother
Changing a baby in a cot
Where for a lamp and a candle
She gave away her last penny
I asked God so that fate
would love her child
It's so good that you left
Otherwise my mother would curse
You are God for the fate of the descendant,
For my talent.
It couldn't be worse. Trouble
in that wonderful village
People are blacker than in tar
Dragging, shriveled, exhausted
The greenery of those gardens has rotted
Whitewashed houses collapsed
In the quagmire there is a pond near the village.
There was a fire in the village
And our people have lost their minds
Silently they go into the panshchina
And they bring their children with them!
And I burst into tears...

But not only in that village
And here - all around Ukraine
All the people were yoked
The gentlemen are crafty... They are dying! In weights!
The Cossack sons are yoked
And those unkind gentlemen
I live like a brother on the cheap
They sell their souls for their pants

Oh, it’s hard, it’s bad, I’m in the desert
I'm doomed to fade away here.
But it’s even worse in Ukraine
Endure, and cry, and - BE SILENT!

“I Archimedes, and Galileo”, 1860, in full:
And Archimedes and Galileo
We didn't see any wine. oil
Fled into the monk's womb
And you, O servants of the Eternal Maiden
Wandered around the world
And the crumbs of bread were taken away
To the poor kings. Will be beaten
The grain sown by kings!
And people will grow. Will die
All the unborn reign
And on cleared land
There will be no enemy, adversary
And there will be a son, and a mother, and a house
And there will be people on earth!

CAUCASUS, poem, fragment, trans. from Ukrainian by Pavel Antokolsky.

Behind the mountains there are mountains covered in clouds,
Sown with grief, watered with blood.
Since the age of Prometheus
There the eagle punishes
Every day he hammers his ribs,
Heartbreaking.
He breaks it but doesn’t drink it
Life-giving blood -
The heart laughs again and again
And he lives hard.
And our soul does not perish,
The will does not weaken,
The insatiable will not plow
There are fields at the bottom of the sea.
Does not bind the immortal soul,
Can't handle the words
Doesn't groan for the glory of God,
Eternal, living.

It’s not for us to start a feud with you!
It’s not for us to judge your affairs!
All we can do is cry, cry, cry
And knead our daily bread
Bloody sweat and tears.
Kat is mocking us
But the truth is to sleep and be drunk.
So when will she wake up?
And when you lie down
Rest in peace, weary God,
When will you let us live?
We believe in the creative power
Lord lords.
Truth will rise, will will rise,
And you, great one,
All nations will praise
Forever and ever,
In the meantime, the rivers are flowing...
Bloody rivers!

CAUCASUS, fragment my translation:
Glory to you, blue mountains
That are covered with ice
And to you, proud knights
not forgotten by God
Fight and you will overcome
God bless you!
Truth is with you, glory is with you
And holy will!