Taras Shevchenko: The Making of the National Poet
Given his iconic function as National Poet, the process of Shevchenko’s actual emergence into this role has not received adequate attention; for the most part it has been replaced by an implied teleology. In one sense this was true.With its unprecedented energy, openness to the collective experience...
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| Gepubliceerd in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/res, |
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| Hoofdauteur: | |
| Formaat: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Taal: | Anglais |
| Gepubliceerd in: |
Revue des études slaves
2018
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| Online toegang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Samenvatting: | Given his iconic function as National Poet, the process of Shevchenko’s actual emergence into this role has not received adequate attention; for the most part it has been replaced by an implied teleology. In one sense this was true.With its unprecedented energy, openness to the collective experience, to deeper archetypal symbolism and to a problematization of the poet’s psyche, his poetry was also a form of self-fashioning—which could not but be felt by his readership.This was reinforced by the major events of his life: the success of his early poetry and his enthusiastic reception in Ukraine, his arrest and exile (1847-1857), and then his triumphal return to St. Petersburg as spokesman and generally acknowledged representative of the nascent national movement and its literature. Arguably, the key moment in imprinting the paradigm of Shevchenko as national martyr and poet were the immediate responses to his death by his friends and fellow members in the Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Pantelejmon Kulish and Mykola Kostomarov, who couched their grief and their vision in a numinous mode, implicitly articulating an all but religious sense of the poet-as-prophet. |
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