Shevchenko, Artist of Ukraine

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Today is the birthday (at least on the Gregorian calendar) of Ukrainian artist Taras Shevchenko, 1814-1861. If you walk southward on 22nd Street toward P Street in Washington, DC, you will pass a monument to Shevchenko, across from the Church of the Pilgrims. Since the statue is erected on a concrete island in the middle of two-way traffic, to examine it further you can’t just stroll by idly but will need to make it your pedestrian destination.  

Taras Shevchenko was born in 1814 in the village of Moryntsi in what is now Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), into a family of serfs, his father a merchant whom Taras assisted. When he was 11 he was orphaned and spent the next several years working at a variety of jobs for the local cleric, herding sheep, driving a delivery wagon, supplying fire and water for the cleric’s school and simultaneously taking grammar classes and discovering Ukrainian literature. At a young age, Schevchenko displayed gifts not only for language and writing poetry but also for painting and drawing, sketching self-portraits and local figures and landscapes. At 14 he obtained work as a serving boy at the Engelgardt court in Vilshana. At first Shevchenko’s master had him punished for his artistic pursuits; later, he apparently relented, and when the court moved to St. Petersburg and, perhaps for the status implied in having a court artist, sent Shevchenko to study painting. His work increasingly received recognition and won awards. At 24 his freedom from serfdom was obtained by auctioning a portrait. 

It was Shevchenko’s poetry, however, that led eventually to his persecution. Having been divided and ruled by multiple empires (Polish-Lithuanian, Ottoman, Russian) for centuries, Ukraine was experiencing by the 19th century a burgeoning nationalist movement. Shevchenko’s own growing nationalism increasingly inspired his work. His art depicted Ukrainian cultural figures and monuments and historical and archeological sites. His writings expressed not only traditions and folklore of the Ukrainian people but also described the conditions under which Ukraine was suffering under foreign rule. Combining intimate lyricism with biting political sarcasm, he aimed to spark the desire for liberty in his fellow Ukrainians. He wrote in Ukrainian (as well as Russian), which since the 17th century had been periodically banned. Shevchenko also joined the clandestine Ukrainian-Slavic Society which promoted national autonomy and a Ukrainian language revival.

Shevchenko was arrested, convicted for “writing in the Ukrainian language, promoting the independence of Ukraine and ridiculing the members of the Russian Imperial House,” exiled to a Russian military garrison, and forbidden to write or paint. Curiously, he was first sent to accompany a naval expedition to document the coastline, after which he was confined for seven difficult years in a remote penal colony. When he was finally released, he was forbidden to return to Ukraine. He spent the next four years of his life writing and painting, but his harsh imprisonment had affected his health and he died in 1861, shortly before the emancipation of the serfs.

In his importance to Ukrainian culture, Shevchenko has been compared by historians at the Library of Congress to Walt Whitman in the USA and Rainer Maria Rilke in Germany; yet neither was also a painter, illustrator, and political revolutionary. As Ukraine struggles courageously to maintain its freedom as a sovereign nation in the face of an invasion led by a ruthless and possibly psychopathic neighbor, Shevchenko’s own history is inspirational. You can learn more about him, his poetry, and his paintings on the Shevchenko Museum website.

Hymn Of Exile

The sun goes down beyond the hill,
The shadows darken, birds are still;
From fields no more come toilers’ voices
In blissful rest the world rejoices.
With lifted heart I, gazing stand,
Seek shady grove in Ukraine’s land.
Uplifted thus, ‘mid memories fond
My heart finds rest, o’er the hills beyond.
On fields and woods the darkness falls
From heaven blue a bright star calls,
The tears fall down. Oh, evening star!
Hast thou appeared in Ukraine far?
In that fair land do sweet eyes seek thee
Dear eyes that once were wont to greet me?
Have eyes forgotten their tryst to keep?
Oh then, in slumber let them sleep
No longer o’er my fate to weep.

1847, Orsk Fortress, translated by A. J. Hunter

How Do I Love Thee?

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(A re-post, for Valentine’s Day.)

How is this for a romantic tale: Intellectual semi-invalid is still living at home in seclusion in her mid-thirties, quietly writing poetry and essays. Her published, widely read poems catch the attention of a handsome fellow-poet, six years her junior, who writes her a lengthy letter that says, among other things:

I love your verses with all my heart, Miss Barrett… so into me it has gone, and part of me it has become… and I love you too.

Thus began a correspondence—reluctant on her side, urgent on his, between Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) and Robert Browning—that culminated in their growing mutual attachment and eventual secret elopement. Like many (all?) romantic tales, it had its dark underside, this one of slavery, paternal tyranny, multiple sad deaths, and mysterious illness.

Barrett was the first-born in a large prosperous family in Coxhoe, England, whose income derived partly from slave-worked plantations in Jamaica; perhaps this was related to Barrett’s later abolitionist stance. She was educated at home and demonstrated in childhood a gift for language: writing poetry, reading Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante, and learning Greek, Latin, and Hebrew—incorporated later into her poetry—sufficiently well to take up translation and analysis. To these she later added Italian, German, and Spanish.

But by age twenty she was already declining physically from some unknown, untreatable cause. The deaths of her mother and grandmother took their toll on her, and the accidental drowning of a favorite brother made her a recluse in her misery. In the meantime the abolition of slavery in England brought an end to the Jamaica income and obliged the family to live simply. Throughout all this she continued to write and publish essays and poetry, passionate, deeply felt, finely crafted, expressive of political and social as well as personal themes. And despite her seclusion, she corresponded widely with other writers and scholars.

Thus Browning was smitten. When he finally whisked Barrett off secretly to tie the knot and honeymoon in Italy, her father disinherited her—as he did each of his children who chose to marry. Some family therapy would not have been amiss here.

After their marriage Barrett showed Browning the sonnets she had been writing, the most famous of which (not the one above, but number XLIII) has been widely reproduced (and parodied). The couple stayed in Italy and, despite their late start, Barrett/Browning gave birth to a little Robert when she was 43. So their tale concludes probably as happily as any—with the two of them madly in love, raising their babe, writing poetry together, respected, reasonably comfortable, and in ITALY besides.

Emma’s Postcard Album

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It seems fitting to celebrate the MLKing holiday with a new book by author and medical anthropologist Faith Mitchell, Emma’s Postcard Album. The book features a collection of postcards sent and received by a young African-American woman between 1906 and 1910, set within their larger context, along with newspaper clippings and other archival material—an unusual multiple-focus approach (visual/written; intimate/panoramic; memoir/history) that will interest all ages. I include a link to the University Press of Mississippi website; it is also available from many online booksellers as well as our beloved local DC bookstore Politics and Prose.

Nikole Hannah-Jones

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Nikole Hannah-Jones spoke to a full house at the Embassy of France on The 1619 Project. She was fascinating and eloquent despite an interviewer who had never heard of Ida B. Wells and who interrupted her repeatedly (which she handled imperturbably, with grace). I was sitting waaay in the back so my sketch is rather, well, sketchy.

St. Martin the Veteran

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Today is Veterans’ Day, instituted first as Armistice Day after WWI, then Veterans’ Day after WWII (although my mother occasionally still called it Armistice Day) as a tribute to veterans of both world wars. It’s also the Feast of Martinmas, which is less well known in this country, although having been raised Catholic I grew up familar with the story of Saint Martin of Tours. It seems somehow fitting that Veterans Day is celebrated on the festival of a former Roman soldier.

Martin was born in the 4th century in what later became Hungary but what was then Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire. His father, an important officer in the Roman army, naturally expected his son to follow in his footsteps. Martin had been named for Mars, the god of war, presumably to encourage that military spirit. But apparently young Martin was an easy-going, sociable fellow, more curious about strangers, and generous with handouts, than aggressive toward them, so to get him into the army his father arranged for his kidnapping and forcible enlistment by his soldiers, hoping that Martin would grow accustomed to military life through daily exposure. I bet Dad didn’t get many loving letters from the front. Today this method of recruitment is frowned upon.

However, there was Martin, a soldier at last, obliged to serve the Emperor for three years, outfitted with a Roman uniform and a sword. Even in the army, Martin was open-handed, and his military salary usually found its way into the hands of the unfortunate. His unit was sent to Gaul, as part of an ongoing attempt to civilize the native barbarians. Civilization in Gaul was eventually attained at a level far beyond their wildest dreams, but that’s another story.

One winter day, the story goes, Martin arrived at the gates of Amiens, where he encountered a poor ragged beggar shivering by the side of the road. Martin had already given away all his extra clothing, but, taking pity on the beggar, Martin unsheathed his sword and cut his warm woolen (army-issue, uh-oh) cloak in half and wrapped one half around him.

That night, Martin dreamed that Jesus appeared to him wrapped in Martin’s half-cloak saying, “Martin has covered me with this garment.” This made him determined to leave the army permanently, at the end of his term. When he attempted it, however (inconveniently during a barbarian invasion), he was accused of cowardice, in response to which he offered to advance alone against the enemy. Instead he was imprisoned. Eventually he was released at the conclusion of an armistice, and was finally able to pursue his vocation, settling in Gaul, founding an order, living very simply and developing a reputation for feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

Over the years our homeschooling group celebrated Martinmas (sometimes in combination with Diwali, Festival of Light, which can occur at around the same time—this year it falls on the 14th) with storytelling, a night-time walk in the park carrying lanterns and singing songs about light, and afterward gathering to share dessert. Happy Martinmas! Happy Diwali! Happy Veterans Day, everyone!

(A re-post from an earlier year.)

What Every Girl Should Know

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If there is a YA child, neighbor, or friend in your life, here is a book for their gift list. At Politics and Prose Bookstore, author J. Albert Mann spoke with author Mary Quattlebaum about What Every Girl Should Know, Mann’s new historical novel featuring the adolescent Margaret Sanger (reminder: Sanger was an early advocate of birth control and women’s rights). Young Margaret sounds as spunky, tenacious, and funny as the author did herself during the discussion.

Greg