Jeffrey D. Stephaniuk for New Pathway – Ukrainian News.
For one accused of being uneducated and unenlightened, he managed to enlighten an entire nation, drawing its attention to its own history and proposing a way forward into the future. There must be something more to this ‘uneducated’ man, considering the psychological impact he had and continues to have on more than 40 million people… I have brought together quotes from some of his less known works, specifically his thoughts on art, poetry, religion, and morality as representative examples of his ideas. Shevchenko was a man of great intellectual depth and tireless ability to forge ahead, not content to take the usual voices of authority at face value. He had a way of formulating an authentic worldview of his own, insistent in his search for the good, the true, and the just. In other words, he was a very enlightened and educated man.
Lepky, second to Ivan Franko in literary publications, self-published this booklet in 1920. He writes that Shevchenko was fascinated by beauty. “It is a great experience when all that is noble and beautiful evokes a response from within a person. And further, when you share this experience with someone else, neither of you is left misfortunate.”
For a person to live one’s life exclusively at the material level, the physical and animal existence, reduces a person to living only half the potential of a human life. Shevchenko had developed a clear distinction between a life in the natural world and the natural life of the human person. In response to the materialism of Marx and Engels and Darwin emerging at the time of Shevchenko’s adulthood, he writes that “the materialist man, deprived by God of an understanding of His spiritual blessings and intangible beauty of creation, is really an incomplete man, half of what humanity is intended to be. For such a one every theory of beauty is dismissed as meaningless chatter.”
Father Ivan Stus, in his book, “The Religious Motifs in the Works of Taras Shevchenko”, refutes the Soviet interpretation that Shevchenko was “an atheist and revolutionary supporting an entire social-democratic movement.” He asks rhetorically, “How is it possible for an avowed atheist to turn so often to God, beseeching his protection?” As philosopher Jacques Maritain has written, “All our values depend on the nature of our God.” Shevchenko’s ideas about God, intellectually and through an act of worship, influenced what he valued about creation and creativity. He was convinced that he would only become a real artist so long as he treated his subject matter, from nature or humanity, as what it truly was, the inspired creation of the living God. “I thank you, almighty God, that you have blessed me with the sensibilities of a person who loves your creation and who sees the heights and depths of beauty in the boundless and inspired creation… the source of every means of human development.”
In a letter to Count Tolstoy beseeching financial patronage, Shevchenko speaks of his “unquenchable love for the beauty of art,” and writes of his desire “to popularize a love of the good and the beautiful among the general population.” He describes his inspiration to this work as on the one hand “a prayer pure in intention that will surely pleasure God, the lover of mankind,” and on the other hand, “my resolute and humble service to this same humanity.”
Maritain writes about this desire to respond to God and to share one’s art with others for a mutual benefit: “Christianity does not make art easy…it superelevates art from within, reveals to it a hidden beauty which is more delicious than light, and gives to it what the artist needs most – simplicity, the peace of awe and of love, the innocence which renders matter docile to men and fraternal.”
Beauty is found in nature, but similar to Canada’s William Kurelek, for whom nature was “beautiful but cruel,” for Shevchenko the beauty of nature pales in comparison to the beauty possessed by a human being. “In the vast expanse of inspired and enduring nature there are endless examples of great beauty. And yet, the summit and crown of that eternal grandeur is the face of a human being enraptured in blessed joy. I know of nothing else in all of nature that comes close in comparison.”
Shevchenko is referring here to his paintings, but also gives a glimpse into his intentions for his poetry, that is, to make it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, especially Ukrainians. One of his diary entries mentions the mass production of art for this purpose. He was given the idea by Panteleimeon Kulish. “He suggested that I develop a series of sketches on Ukrainian history, Ukrainian folk songs, and from the contemporary life of the nation… and produce them as inexpensively as possible.” Shevchenko liked the idea very much because it would set Ukrainian themes apart from competing culture influences. The only problem was that he had neither the minimum amount of money needed for such an investment nor the time to begin and finish such a project. “Now is not the time for me to undertake such work. First, I would need to be living in Ukraine and paint in a style that would be distinct from the…influences I have here. Second, I still have my hopes set on being in the academy and working on my favorite (etching) technique, aquatint.”
The impression created from the diary entries is one of innocence, such as Shevchenko’s amazement at the fruitful life of creativity, and how he cherishes solitude so that he can cultivate this healthy fantasy life of the mind. “Nothing can compare to the sweet experience of solitude. There is nothing more enchanted in life than experiencing the face of mother nature in all its vibrancy and blossoming beauty. Under the influence of such a pleasant delight, a person is able to experience one’s life and existence more profoundly, ‘to recognize God in the physical world’, as the poet says. I had never liked a life of hyper-activity, or more precisely, activity in which nothing ever gets accomplished. I am more convinced now after these past ten years that solitude is the very essence of paradise.” (Diary excerpt, 1857)
This secure environment of solitude facilitated a fruitful creative life of the mind. “From my childhood the Lord has given me an intuitive love for beautiful things. As an adult, I now possess the conscious ability to articulate this love clearly, like a radiant and indomitable diamond.” Others acknowledge this gift in him as well. Lepky has one quote of support to Shevchenko in which his mentor, Alexander Briullov, writes that “You have a love for art, the assurance and guarantee that you will be successful.”
In two separate quotes, Shevchenko describes the connection between beauty, memory, and a release of creativity. “I so much would like to look upon something magnificent,” he writes. “I need such an experience in order to be liberated from an immobilizing stupor from which my old soul suffers.” Shevchenko is writing a letter to Artemovsky, and clearly has the emotion of a writer and poet: “If I could only find something of beauty, perhaps in my old age it would evoke from within me a soft expression of tears.”
This theme continues with a memory from his early days as a student in the art academy in St. Petersburg. “We were very poor, but we were as innocent as children. My God, my God, how these youthful and golden days have vanished! Whatever happened to our cohort of vibrant and inspired young men?… I enjoyed immensely and with all my heart these incredible moments of immersion into the memory of cherished childhood; I would be brought to tears on more than one occasion. I felt like a child being presented with a new toy. These tears were a grace that renewed me, resurrected me. Immediately I felt refreshed and energized in my soul, without which no creativity is possible. I was able to enter that world of the imagination, an enchanted, fantastic world of the greatest and vivid images one could eve conceive. I experienced a divine resonance. In a word, I was immersed within the resurrected spirit of a living and holy poetry.”
Bohdan Lepky uses all the various quotes in “Shevchenko on Art and Creativity” in order to show how Taras Shevchenko develops into his own person as an artist, whether paintings, poetry, or prose. From Vilnius to Warsaw to St. Petersburg, he found art masters from whom he learned. “And yet Taras always retained his own originality. He learned from others the discipline of sketching, all the while searching for his own style. The result was a line that was soft, gentle and balanced. He similarly preserved his own artistic identity when studying with Briullov, larger than life that he was in his reputation as an artist… Shevchenko developed an artistic lyricism, not so much interpreting as conveying to an audience the impressions of what he himself sees, presented through the prism of his unique soul.”
Lepky continues about Shevchenko by stating that “whether the subject be presented in landscapes or portraits, he approached the work with an honesty of disposition; there is abundant evidence in his works of his authentic and creative ‘I’… Between himself as the artist and one’s subject he never erected a barrier of pallet and pencil, no arrogance in saying, ‘I have a mastery over technique and tool.’ On the contrary, he is ceaselessly engaged in a search for the beautiful and is mesmerized by it. In his search for truth he is positively transformed by art and creativity; and he seeks to convey the same blessing to others.” He concludes that art and creativity evoked from Shevchenko his love for “life, freedom, and joy,” echoing one of the quotes he includes from Shevchenko’s story, “The Artist”: “Love is the life creating fire within the heart of a human being. Anything and everything one creates under the influence of this divine experience reveals the character of vibrancy and poetry.”
The innocence of Taras Shevhcenko first and foremost might be applied in his defence against the legal charges against him that affected so many years of his life, complete with exile and being forbidden from certain fundamental artistic activities such as the very basic work of sketching. Bohdan Lepky describes in general terms these restraints as “that eternal tragedy of misunderstanding between an artist and one’s society.” He writes that Shevchenko’s innocence of creative character and disposition began in his childhood when “as a young child he first began to sketch ‘crosses and vignettes with flowers’ on pieces of paper, while writing the poetry of Skovoroda.”
Further, this childlike attitude can be tangibly identified in his later works of art. Unlike certain artists whose work has a flashy initial attraction that dims quickly, “his sketches and paintings grow in attraction the longer one considers them; they come alive and begin to speak to the viewer.”
Lepky extends Shevchenko’s reverence for the Creator in creation and the spiritual work of a becoming a complete human being to a final image about Shevchenko on art and creativity and an experience of the true, the good, and the beautiful: “He set about his work with a childlike trust and pious humility, like a priest reverently receiving the Holy Eucharist. He doesn’t chase the latest trends, but rather seeks to become an authentic human being-as-artist; to create for the good of humankind, because there is nothing more valuable in all of creation than the blessed face of a person enraptured with joy.
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