Crying and Resistance
Taras Shevchenko and Ukraine: A Rapprochement
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) is the Ukrainian national poet par excellence. He is both a romantic and a realist. With his poetry, he made a fundamental contribution to Ukrainian nation building, but also contributed a chapter to the social history of Tsarist Russia. Anyone who wants to read him in German will run up against obstacles. His prose and diaries are not available, much of his poetry exists only in old translations by communist cultural functionaries, such as Alfred Kurella and Erich Weinert. Yet Shevchenko has something to tell us: about the relationship between the imperial centre and the periphery, autocracy and justice, repression and freedom. A new translation of Shevchenko’s work should be the first step in rediscovering the classic. And then read, starting with the lesson on Curiosity, from the chapter Crossing Borders.
(Osteuropa 12/2023, pp. 169–184)