Mystagogue of national identification. From the notes about ethnology by Taras Shevchenko

Abstract

The author presents the basic sum of Ukrainian semantics of T.Shevchenko, his attempts to reproduce the guiding contents of the previous, poet’s contemporary and hypothetic future national experience. The national history – from Cossack-peasant revolutions to topical events, class disposition in Ukraine, its language, rites, folklore get the intense lyric expression in Shevchenko’s works, are reproduced in his epos and partially in his Russian prose. The author focuses attention on the esthetic side of this reflexion, intensive semiotic transformation of the oral and musical element of Ukrainian song folklore to literary-written basis as to the major peculiarity of Shevchenko’s poetry. The author also analyzes one of the leading motifs of his poetry – the fatal non-encounter of the two: he and she – a catastrophic result both in the personal and national dimension of existence. Attention is also given to unique (for the world-wide readers’ turnover) resonance of Shevchenko’s poetry in the national audience.