TARÁS SHEVCHENKO [13.459]

Tarás Shevchenko

Tarás Grygórovych Shevchenko (Тара́с Григо́рович Шевче́нко) (Morinchi, Óblast de Cherkasy, 9 de marzo de 1814 - San Petersburgo, 26 de febrero de 1861) fue un poeta y pintor ucraniano, uno de fundadores de la literatura moderna ucraniana y visionario de la Ucrania moderna.

Nació en una familia de siervos. Quedó huérfano a los 11 años. Debido a que mostraba talento para la pintura, su amo, P. Engelhardt, lo llevó a Vilna y San Petersburgo, donde Shevchenko recibió clases de pintura. Algunos pintores rusos y el poeta Vasili Zhukovski, intentaron obtener su libertad, la cual consiguieron en 1838, tras pagar 2.500 rublos. Ese mismo año fue aceptado en la Academia de Artes, en el estudio de Karl Briullov y recibió la Medalla de Plata por un paisaje. Dos años después recibió su segunda Medalla de Plata por su óleo Joven Mendigo dando pan a un perro.

En 1840 publicó a su primera colección de poesía, Kobzar, que estaba escribiendo desde su época de servidumbre. En 1841 apareció su poema épico Haidamaky sobre el movimiento campesino ucraniano (Jaidamaka) contra la nobleza polaca, y ganó su tercera medalla de Plata por La Gitana leyendo la suerte (Tsiganka Borozhity. En 1842 publicó una parte de la tragedia Nykyta Hayday y en 1843 completó el drama Nazar Stodolya. Luego del éxito de esas obras, Shevchenko viajó por Ucrania y comprobó las duras condiciones en las que vivían sus compatriotas y dibujó el álbum Ucrania pintoresca.

El 22 de marzo de 1845 la Academia de Artes le otorgó el título de artista y viajó de nuevo a su país, donde entró en contacto con integrantes de la "Hermandad de los Santos Cirilo y Metodio", una sociedad secreta política que abogaba por amplias reformas en el seno del Imperio ruso. Shevchenko y otros miembros de la Hermandad fueron detenidos el 5 de abril de 1847, tras la prohibición de la sociedad; fue remitido a San Petersburgo y luego de encontrar la policía, en un allanamiento, su poema El Sueño (Hijo), en el cual criticaba al gobierno zarista, fue enviado al exilio cerca de Oremburgo, en los montes Urales, "bajo estricta vigilancia, con prohibición de escribir y pintar". Escribió sin embargo su famoso Testamento (Zapovit) en 1848 y poco a poco consiguió condiciones para realizar algunas pinturas, como Niña Kazaja (1856). Sólo pudo regresar en 1857, pero al no poder residir en San Petersburgo, se estableció en Nizhny Nóvgorod. En mayo de 1859 obtuvo permiso para ir a Ucrania, pero fue arrestado por blasfemia en julio y se le ordenó regresar a San Petersburgo.

Tarás Sevchenko pasó los últimos años de su vida escribiendo poesía y pintando, pero tras los años de exilio, su salud se deterioró y murió el 10 de marzo de 1861.

Su obra se convirtió en cántigas populares, que cantaba y canta el pueblo ucraniano e impulsó a más escritores a escribir en lengua ucraniana, hasta entonces considerada por muchos como un "dialecto" del ruso. Varios musicos se han basado en su obra: el compositor austriaco Eusebius Mandyczewski se inspiró en sus textos para componer canciones y el grupo de heavy metal Drudkh ha musicalizado varios de sus textos.

Testamento

Poema escrito el 25 de diciembre de 1845. El autor le dio la forma de su testamento. Este poema es el canto de la lucha liberadora del pueblo ucraniano, que tuvo (y sigue teniendo) una gran influencia en la cultura ucraniana. Fue traducido a 150 idiomas.

TESTAMENTO

Cuando muera, enterradme

en una tumba alta,

en medio de la estepa

de mi adorada Ucrania.

¡Así yo podré ver los campos anchurosos,

el Dnipró, sus represas agitadas,

y podré oír también

cómo braman sus aguas!

Y cuando el río arrastre atravesando Ucrania

hasta la mar azul

tanta sangre adversaria,

entonces dejaré los campos y los montes

y volaré hacia Dios

a alzarle mi plegaria,

pero hasta que ello llegue

de Dios no sabré nada ...

¡A mí, enterradme, mas de pie vosotros,

las cadenas que os atan quebrantad,

y con la impura sangre derramada

la Libertad sagrada salpicad!

¡Y ya en familia inmensa,

familia libre y nueva,

no olvidéis recordarme

con una palabra buena!

Traducción de Ángel J. Battistessa

La tumba del poeta está cerca del pueblecito de Kaniv, región de la ciudad ucraniana Cherkasy, donde en 1939 se le levantó un monumento que se ha descrito como «objeto de especial reverencia entre sus conterráneos y meca de todos los patriotas ucranianos».

Taras Shevchenko se considera el poeta ucraniano más reconocido del mundo. Durante los 47 años de su incansable vida, el creó numerosos poemas y obras de arte, que se valoran con profundo respeto y honor por países de todo el mundo. Su trabajo más destacado - Zapovit (Testament) se tradujo a más de 100 idiomas. Comparativamente, Pinocchio de Carlo Collódi se tradujo a 105 idiomas, mientras que el bestseller más reciente de Joanne Rowling Harry Potter se tradujo a 67 idiomas.  

Kozaral

¿Te asustarás, amor mío,

si nos volvemos a ver?

¿Qué palabras me dirías 

entonces, mi dulce bien?

No me reconocerías.

O, tal vez, exclamarías:

Fue un sueño que yo soñé.

¡Pero me alegraría,

mi dulce amada, mi dicha!

Entonces, al recordar

la juventud y el placer

del pasado tan amargo,

yo de gozo, lloraría

porque no fue verdadero

todo lo que yo creía.

¡Ilusión perdida en llanto,

perdida en la lejanía! 

Rusalka

La maternal noche del Dnipro

me engendró y me bañó en su torrente

y como a su propia hija me habló

Nada en las aguas del río

nada como una rusalka, alegre

en la noche de la mañana

Mis lágrimas jóvenes y tristeza

mezcladas con sangre son del color

azul oscuro del Dnipro. Recorro

cada noche con mis hermanas y nado.

Rusalka quedó en silencio y

se hundió el río y en voz baja

las ramas de mimbre se estremecieron.

Su madre vagó por el sueño

y en la orilla recordó

a su hija y murmuró

pero el agua del Dnipro

no reía. 

My Friendly Epistle

To the Dead, the Living, and to Those Yet Unborn, My Countrymen all Who Live in Ukraine and Outside Ukraine,

If a man say, I Love God, and

hate his brother, he is a liar,

1 John iv. 20

Day dawns, then comes the twilight grey,

The limit of the live-long day;

For weary people sleep seems best

And all God's creatures go to rest.

I, only, grieve like one accursed,

Through all the hours both last and first,

Sad at the crossroads, day and night,

With no one there to see my plight;

No one can see me, no one knows me;

All men are deaf, no ears disclose me;

Men stand and trade their mutual chains

And barter truth for filthy gains,

Committing shame against the Lord

By harnessing for black reward

People in yokes and sowing evil

In fields commissioned by the Devil...

And what will sprout? You soon will see

What kind of harvest there will be!

Come to your senses, ruthless ones,

O stupid children, Folly's sons!

And bring that peaceftil paradise,

Your own Ukraine, before your eyes;

Then let your heart, in love sincere,

Embrace her mighty ruin here!

Break then your chains, in love unite,

Nor seek in foreign lands the sight

Of things not even found above,

Still less in lands that strangers love...

Then in your own house you will see

True justice, strength, and liberty! 

Then in your own house you will see

True justice, strength, and liberty!

There is no other such Ukraine, 

 No other Dnieper on the plain; 

And yet you throng to foreign lands

To seek the Highest Good that stands.— 

True Liberty, that sacred Good

In fair fraternal Brotherhood! ...

And you have found it as you roam! 

From foreign fields you bring it home, 

A heap of words that sound most great 

And naught else ... You vociferate 

That God created you to be

His Justice's epitome,

Yet you still bend your backs today 

To aliens, and are prompt to flay 

The hide off lowly peasant brothers;

Then, seeking "Truth" beyond all others, 

You scurry off to German strands 

And to the lore of other lands.

If you could in your baggage bind 

The misery you leave behind,

Or carry off beyond appeal

Those gains our forbears had to steal, 

 There would be left, to mourn our ills, 

 Lone Dnieper with its holy hills.

For this great boon my spirits yearn.— 

That from abroad you'd not return, 

That there you'd die, where you did learn! 

 For children then in our Ukraine

No more would weep in futile pain, 

Nor would your motherland lament

Or God declare you insolent;

The sun would not a task perform 

Your stinking carcasses to warm 

Upon a land, pure, free, and vast 

And people would not know at last

What birds you are, how greedy, dread, 

And at you shake a hopeless head...

Come to your senses! Human be, 

Or you will rue it bitterly:

The time is near when on our plains 

A shackled folk will burst its chains. 

The Day of Judgment is at hand! 

 Dnieper will speak across the land;

Hundreds of streams will surge in flood 

To bear along your children's blood

To the blue sea,. . . Nor man nor whelp 

Will offer you the slightest help:

Brother will turn from brother wild, 

The mother will forsake her child; 

Thick clouds of smoke at noonday bright 

Will hide the sunshine from your sight; 

And your own sons, for all your crime, 

Will curse you to the end of time.

Make yourselves clean! God's image clear 

In man should not be sullied here!

Don't breed your children up in scorn 

To think that they were proudly born

To lord it over humble folk—

The peasant's untaught eye will poke 

And peer into their very souls

Unsnared by specious aureoles.

Soon will the wretched creatures find 

Your hides are of a kindred kind,— 

Then will the meek in judgment sit, 

All your fine wisdom to outwit.

II

If you would train yourselves alone,

You'd have some wisdom of your own; 

But you must prattle from the sky: 

"We are not we, and I not I!

All have I seen, I'm now all wise,

There is no hell, no paradise,

Not even God; but I exist

And this smart German atheist

And nothing else . ."—"Brother, go slow! 

Who are you then?"—"I do not know—

We'll let the Germans speak to that,

For they have all the answers pat!"

In such a fashion then you train 

Yourselves in foreigners' domain!

A German pundit says, "You're Mongols." 

And you reply: "Of course, we're Mongols, 

The naked seed upon this plain

Sowed by the golden Tamerlane!"

Or if some German says: "You're Slavs," 

You'll echo back: "Of course, we're Slavs, 

The ugly, graceless progeny

Of our great ancestors, you see!" 

Perhaps you even read old Kollar,

 Enthusiastic for that scholar,

And Hanka too, and Safatik

And strive with zeal most politic

To rank among the Slavophils

And demonstrate linguistic skills

In all Slav tongues except your own. 

"Some day we'll have the time," you groan, 

"To speak our native language well

If some smart foreigner will tell

Its principles; if he'll relate

Our history as well, then straight

We'll study at a furious rate!"

How you have sought with ardent suction 

To soak up foreigners' instruction!

You talk in such a mongrel speech 

That even Germans, wise to teach,

 Gape at it as a senseless joke —

Still more, of course, the common folk.

And such a noise! What row you raise: 

"What harmony beyond all praise! 

Our tongue is music from the skies! 

Our history? Behold it rise,

A freeborn people's lofty poem... 

Rome seems to this a paltry proem!

Horatius, Brutus, whom they will, 

Let Romans praise! We've greater still, 

More famous, ne'er forgotten too...

It was with us that Freedom grew,

Lay stretched in Dnieper's mighty bed 

And on our mountains couched her head 

And made our steppe her counterpane!" 

No, you are wrong! In this Ukraine

Our history was bathed in blood

And slept on corpses in the mud,

On Cossack corpses, no more free

But here despoiled of liberty! ...

Look well into our history's store 

And read it closely, o'er and o'er;

That glorious tale you may have heard,— 

But take it slowly, word by word;

No punctuation mark omit,

For even commas lend their bit;

Examine everything you see;

Then ask yourselves: Now, who are we? 

Whose children?  Of what fathers born? 

By whom enslaved in utter scorn?

Then only will you understand

The Brutuses of this your land 

Slaves, grovellers of Muscovy

And Warsaw's refuse, such will be 

The illustrious hetmans you applaud! 

And have you something then to laud, 

Sons of Ukraine, where misery chokes? 

Perhaps that you walk well in yokes,

 More nobly than your fathers walked?

Don't boast that you have bravely stalked: 

Your hides are being tanned, though callow, 

But they were often boiled for tallow!

Perhaps you base your boast on this: 

The Cossack Brotherhood with bliss 

Defended and preserved our faith? 

That in Sinope's flaming wraith

And Trebizond's, they cooked their cake?

They did, but you've the belly-ache;

 For in the Sitch the German sage 

Now plants potatoes; without rage,

You buy his produce with your wealth 

And eat  it gladly for your health, 

And glorify the Cossacks' fame.

But whose rich blood, O men of shame, 

Has saturated all the soil

That yields potatoes which you boil? 

You do not care; you merely know 

It's good to make the garden grow!

And yet you boast that with our frown 

We once sent Poland toppling down! 

You are quite right: for Poland fell; 

And in the wreck crushed us as well. 

And that is how our sires, now dead, 

For Muscovy and Warsaw bled,

And left their sons, as legacy,

Their shackles and their infamy!

III

Thus, in her struggle, our Ukraine 

Reached the last climax of pure pain: 

Worse than the Poles, or any other,

 The children crucify their mother; 

As it were beer, they tap with zest

The pure blood from her sacred breast,—

They would enlighten, they surmise, 

Their ancient mother's rheumy eyes

With clear, contemporary light,

And lead her, in her dumb despite, 

A blind wretch, out upon the stage

 Into the spirit of our age.

Good! Show her! Lead her in the way! 

Let the old mother learn today

How to take care, as Wisdom runs, 

Of you, her new enlightened sons!

Show her! But do not raise a ruction 

About the price of that instruction!

Well will your mother pay you back: 

The wall-eyed cataract will crack 

Upon your own dull, greedy eyes 

And you will see her glory rise,

The living glory of your sires,

To shame your fathers' black desires! ...

Gain knowledge, brothers! Think and read,

And to your neighbours' gifts pay heed, --

Yet do not thus neglect your own:

For he who is forgetful shown

Of his own mother, graceless elf,

Is punished by our God Himself.

Strangers will turn from such as he

And grudge him hospitality --

Nay, his own children grow estranged;

Though one so evil may have ranged

The whole wide earth, he shall not find

A home to give him peace of mind.

Sadly I weep when I recall

The unforgotten deeds of all

Our ancestors: their toilsome deeds!

Could I forget their pangs and needs,

I, as my price, would than suppress

Half of my own life's happiness...

Such is our glory, sad and plain,

The glory of our own Ukraine!

I would advise you so to read

That you may see, in very deed,

No dream but all the wrongs of old

That burial mounds might here unfold

Before your eyes in martyred hosts,

That you might ask those grisly ghosts:

Who were the tortured ones, in fact,

And why, and when, were they so racked?...

Then 0 my brothers, as a start,

Come, clasp your brothers to your heart, --

So let your mother smile with joy

And dry her tears without annoy.

Blest be your children in these lands

By touch of your toil-hardened hands,

And, duly washed, kissed let them be

With lips that speak of liberty!

Then all the shame of days of old,

Forgotten, shall no more be told;

Then shall our day of hope arrive,

Ukrainian glory shall revive,

No twilight but the dawn shall render

And break forth into novel splendour....

Brother, embrace! Your hopes possess,

I beg you in all eagerness!

Taras Shevchenko

Viunishcha, December 14, 1845 

Translated by C. H. Andrusyshen & W. Kirkconnell 

The Testament

Dig my grave and raise my barrow

By the Dnieper-side

In Ukraina, my own land,

A fair land and wide.

I will lie and watch the cornfields,

Listen through the years

To the river voices roaring,

Roaring in my ears.

When I hear the call

Of the racing flood,

Loud with hated blood,

I will leave them all,

Fields and hills; and force my way

Right up to the Throne

Where God sits alone;

Clasp His feet and pray...

But till that day

What is God to me?

Bury me, be done with me,

Rise and break your chain,

Water your new liberty

With blood for rain.

Then, in the mighty family

Of all men that are free,

May be sometimes, very softly

You will speak of me?

Taras Shevchenko

Translated by E. L. Voynich

London, 1911 

My Testament

When I am dead, bury me

In my beloved Ukraine,

My tomb upon a grave mound high

Amid the spreading plain,

So that the fields, the boundless steppes,

The Dnieper's plunging shore

My eyes could see, my ears could hear

The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears

Into the deep blue sea

The blood of foes ... then will I leave

These hills and fertile fields --

I'll leave them all and fly away

To the abode of God,

And then I'll pray .... But till that day

I nothing know of God.

Oh bury me, then rise ye up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants' blood

The freedom you have gained.

And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

Taras Shevchenko

Pereyaslav, December 25, 1845 

Translated by John Weir Toronto, 1961 

The Reaper

Through the fields the reaper goes

Piling sheaves on sheaves in rows;

Hills, not sheaves, are these.

Where he passes howls the earth,

Howl the echoing seas.

All the night the reaper reaps,

Never stays his hands nor sleeps,

Reaping endlessly;

Whets his blade and passes on...

Hush, and let him be.

Hush, he cares not how men writhe

With naked hands against the scythe.

Wouldst thou hide in field or town?

Where thou art, there he will come;

He will reap thee down.

Serf and landlord,

Great and small;

Friendless wandering singer, - all,

All shall swell the sheaves that grow to mountains;

Even the Tsar shall go.

And me too the scythe shall find

Cowering alone behind

Bars of iron; swift and blind,

Strike, and pass, and leave me, stark

And forgotten in the dark.

Taras Shevchenko

Translated by E. L. Voynich

London, 1911 

It Makes No Difference To Me

It makes no difference to me,

If I shall live or not in Ukraine

Or whether any one shall think

Of me 'mid foreign snow and rain.

It makes no difference to me.

In slavery I grew 'mid strangers,

Unwept by any kin of mine;

In slavery I now will die

And vanish without any sign.

I shall not leave the slightest trace

Upon our glorious Ukraine,

Our land, but not as ours known.

No father will remind his son

Or say to him, "Repeat one prayer,

One prayer for him; for our Ukraine

They tortured him in their foul lair."

It makes no difference to me,

If that son says a prayer or not.

It makes great difference to me

That evil folk and wicked men

Attack our Ukraine, once so free,

And rob and plunder it at will.

That makes great difference to me.

Taras Shevchenko

St. Petersburg Citadel Prison May, 1847 

Translated by Clarence A. Manning Columbia University New York, 1944

I Was Thirteen

I was thirteen. I herded lambs

Beyond the village on the lea.

The magic of the sun, perhaps,

Or what was it affected me?

I felt with joy all overcome,

As though with God....

The time for lunch had long passed by,

And still among the weeds I lay

And prayed to God.... I know not why

It was so pleasant then to pray

For me, an orphan peasant boy,

Or why such bliss so filled me there?

The sky seemed bright, the village fair,

The very lambs seemed to rejoice!

The sun's rays warmed but did not sear!

But not for long the sun stayed kind,

Not long in bliss I prayed....

It turned into a ball of fire

And set the world ablaze.

As though just wakened up, I gaze:

The hamlet's drab and poor,

And God's blue heavens -- even they

Are glorious no more.

I look upon the lambs I tend --

Those lambs are not my own!

I eye the hut wherein I dwell --

I do not have a home!

God gave me nothing, naught at all....

I bowed my head and wept

Such bitter tears.... And then a lass*

Who had been sorting hemp

Not far from there, down by the path,

Heard my lament and came

Across the field to comfort me;

She spoke a soothing phrase

And gently dried my weeping eyes

And kissed my tear-wet face....

It was as though the sun had smiled,

As though all things on earth were mine,

My own.... the orchards, fields and groves!...

And, laughing merrily the while,

The master's lambs to drink we drove.

Oh, how disgusting!... Yet, when I

Recall those days, my heart is sore

That there my brief life's span the Lord

Did not grant me to live and die.

There, plowing, I'd have passed away,

With ignorance my life-long lot,

I'd not an outcast be today,

I'd not be cursing Man and God! ...

Taras Shevchenko

Orsk Fortress, 1847 

Translated by John Weir Toronto, 1961

* Oksana Kovalenko to whom Shevchenko dedicated the Poem to

Oksana, May 1847 while in prison in the St. Petersburg Citadel. 

The Mighty Dnieper

The mighty Dnieper roars and bellows,

The wind in anger howls and raves,

Down to the ground it bends the willows,

And mountain-high lifts up the waves.

The pale-faced moon picked out this moment

To peek out from behind a cloud,

Like a canoe upon the ocean

It first tips up, and then dips down.

The cocks don't crow to wake the morning,

There's not as yet a sound of man,

The owls in glades call out their warnings,

And ash trees creak and creak again.

Taras Shevchenko

Translated by John Weir

Toronto 

Shevchenko's Last Poem

Should we not then cease, my friend,

My poor dear neighbour, make an end

Of versifying useless rhymes?

Prepare our wagons for the time

When we that longest road must wend?

Into the other world, my friend,

To God, we'll hasten to our rest...

We have grown weary, utter-tired,

A little wisdom we've acquired,

It should suffice! To sleep is best,

Let us now go home to rest...

A home of gladness, you may know!

No, let us not depart, nor go --

It is early still,

We shall yet take walks together,

Sit, and gaze our fill,

Gaze upon the world, my fortune,

See how wide it spreads,

Wide and joyful, it is both

Bright, and of great depth!

We shall yet take walks my star,

On a hill climb high,

And take our rest together..... And

Your sister-stars, meanwhile,

The ageless ones, will start to shine,

Through the heavens glide...

Let us linger then, my sister,

Thou, my holy bride,

And with lips unsullied we shall

Make our prayer to God,

And then set out quietly

On that longest road,

Over Lethe's plumbless depths,

Waters dark and swarthy,

Grant me then thy blessing, friend,

With thy holy glory.

While this and that and all such wear on,

Straight let us go, as the crow flies,

To Aesculapeus for advice,

If he can outwit old Charon

And spinning Fate... And then, as long as

The old sage would change his purpose,

We would create, reclining there,

An epic, soaring everywhere

Above the earth, hexameters

We'd twine, and up the attic stairs

Take them for mice to gnaw. Then we

Would sing prose, yet with harmony

And not haphazard.

Holy friend, Companion to my journey's end,

Before the fire has ceased to glow,

Let us to Charon, rather, go!

Over Lethe's plumbless depths,

Waters dark and swarthy,

Let us sail, let us bear

With us holy glory,

Ageless, young for evermore...

Or -- friend, let it be!

I will do without the glory,

If they grant it me,

There on the banks of Phlegethon,

Or beside the Styx, in heaven,

As if by the broad Dnipro, there

In a grove, a grove primaeval,

A little house I'll build, and make

An orchard all around it growing,

And you'll fly to me in the shades,

There, like a beauty, I'll enthrone you;

Dnipro and Ukraina we

Shall recollect, gay villages

In woodlands, gravehills in the steppes,

And we shall sing right merrily.

Taras Shevchenko

February 14-15, 1861 St. Petersburg 

Translated by Vera Rich London, 1961 

A Reflection

The river empties to the sea,

But out it never flows;

The Cossack lad his fortune seeks,

But never fortune knows.

The Cossack lad has left his home,

He's left his kith and kind;

The blue sea's waters splash and foam,

Sad thoughts disturb his mind:

"Why, heedless, did you go away?

For what did you forsake

Your father old, your mother grey,

Your sweetheart, to their fate?

In foreign lands live foreign folks,

Their ways are not your way:

There will be none to share your woes

Or pass the time of day."

Across the sea, the Cossack rests --

The choppy sea's distraught.

He thought with fortune to be blessed --

Misfortune is his lot.

In vee-formation, 'cross the waves

The cranes are off for home.

The Cossack weeps -- his beaten paths

With weeds are overgrown...

Taras Shevchenko

St. Petersburg, 1838.

Translated by John Weir Toronto 

My Thoughts

My thorny thoughts, my thorny thoughts,

You bring me only woe!

Why do you on the paper stand

So sadly row on row? ...

Why did the winds not scatter you

Like dust across the steppes?

Why did ill-luck not cradle you

To sleep upon its breast? ...

My thoughts, my melancholy thoughts,

My children, tender shoots!

I nursed you, brought you up -- and now

What shall I do with you? ...

Go to Ukraine, my homeless waifs!

Your way make to Ukraine

Along back roads like vagabonds,

But I'm doomed here to stay.

There you will find a heart that's true

And words of welcome kind,

There honesty, unvarnished truth

And, maybe, fame you'll find ...

So welcome them, my Motherland,

Ukraine, into your home!

Accept my guileless, simple brood

And take them for your own!

Taras Shevchenko

St. Petersburg, 1839. 

Translated by John Weir Toronto 

Don't Wed

Don't wed a wealthy woman, friend,

She'll drive you from the house.

Don't wed a poor one either, friend,

Dull care will be your spouse.

Get hitched to carefree Cossack life

And share a Cossack fate:

If it be rags, let it be rags --

What comes, that's what you take.

Then you'll have nobody to nag

Or try to cheer you up,

To fuss and fret and question you

What ails you and what's up.

When two misfortune share, they say,

It's easier to weep.

Not so: it's easier to cry

When no-one's there to see.

Taras Shevchenko

Mirhorod, October 4th, 1845. 

Translated by John Weir, Toronto 

Don't Envy

Don't envy, friend, a wealthy man:

A rich man's life is spent

Without a friend or faithful love --

Those things he has to rent.

Don't envy, friend, a man of rank,

His power's based on force.

Don't envy, too, a famous man:

The man of note well knows

The crowd's acclaim is not for him,

But for that thorny fame

He wrought with labour and with tears

So they'd be entertained.

But then, when young folk gather 'round,

So fine they are and fair

You'd think it's heaven, -- ah, but look:

See evil stirring there ...

Don't envy anyone my friend,

For if you look you'll find

That there's no heaven on the earth,

No more than in the sky.

Taras Shevchenko

Mirhorod, October 4th, 1845. 

Translated by John Weir, Toronto 

Calamity Again

Dear God, calamity again! ...

It was so peaceful, so serene;

We but began to break the chains

That bind our folk in slavery ...

When halt! ... Again the people's blood

Is streaming! Like rapacious dogs

About a bone, the royal thugs

Are at each other's throat again.

Taras Shevchenko

Novopetrovsk Fortress, 1854 (?)

Translated by John Weir, Toronto 

Fate

You did not play me false, 0 Fate,

You were a brother, closest friend

To this poor wretch. You took my hand

When I was still a little tot

And walked me to the deacon's school

To gather knowledge from the sot.

"My boy, just study hard," you said,

And you'll be somebody in time!"

I listened, studied, forged ahead,

Got educated. But you lied.

What am I now? But never mind!

We've walked the straight path, you and I,

We have not cheated, compromised

Or lived the very slightest lie.

So let's march on, dear fate of mine!

My humble, truthful, faithful friend!

Keep marching on: there glory lies;

March forward - that's my testament.

Taras Shevchenko

Nizhny Novgorod, February 9th, 1858. 

Translated by John Weir, Toronto