Always Contamporary. Shevchenko Is 207

Only the foe laughs...

Laugh, mortal enemy!

But not too much,

because everything dies -

Glory will not fall;

It will not die, but will tell

What was happening in the world,

Who is right, who is wrong,

And whose children we are.

We remember how in the time of confusion and uncertainty, Shevchenko became an ideological monument to the struggle against adversity. His immortal “Fight- you'll win!” became a unifying call for us to stand up for our rights and freedoms on the Maidan. Later, when Russian subversive groups began to seize Ukrainian cities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Shevchenko also “went to war”: volunteers wrote lines from his poems on their weapons and bulletproof vests.

In 1847, Shevchenko was arrested as a member of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood and accused of writing poems in “the Little- Russian language” that “could sow and root the idea of ​​the supposed bliss of the Hetmanate, happiness of returning to those times and Ukraine's ability to exist as a separate state”.

In general, Shevchenko's “relations” with Russia were difficult. The poet himself was completely against and did not accept Moscow's appropriation of the name of Rus. In his works, he categorically called Russia Muscovy, and Russians, respectively, Muscovites. At the same time, Soviet translations of Shevchenko's works were full of fakes. Therefore, instead of Shevchenko's “Moscow-like scolding” we read: “he scolds with a strong curse”; “Maybe Moscow has burned down and drained the Dnieper into the blue sea” - “Maybe Ukraine is burnt down, maybe the Dnieper has been drained into the blue sea”; “Your young children... silenced by Moscow's black henbane” - “Dear sons... under the tsar's black henbane... silenced”.

Instead, during the poet's career, one of the Moscow newspapers wrote that the publication of Shevchenko's Kobzar caused general admiration, and some Muscovites learned to read Ukrainian solely in order to read his poems.

So strongly and at the same time easily one of the greatest geniuses was destined to become a symbol of his nation and his country, because Taras Shevchenko is Ukraine. It was Shevchenko's poetry that became one of the auxiliary factors in the formation of Ukrainians as a political nation. We do not idealize Shevchenko, but we pay tribute to him by continuing the struggle and reading his works.

Happy birthday, Kobzar!