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TA RAS SHEVCHENKO’SPO ETRY IN FOREIGN TRANSLATIO NSBY BOHDAN KRAWCIWAlthough the greatest poet of the Ukrainiannation and the founder of modem Ukrainian literatureTaras Shevchenko (1814-1861) was of peasantorigin and tins sen of a Ukrainian serf, he was byno means what certain popular articles, pamphletsand portraits make him out to he: a half-educatedvillage pud, a self-taught painter, a peasant of genious,and later “an unfortunate soldier banished intoexile.” Through long and determined studies andprodigious reading. Shevchenko attained a high degreeof intellectual self-development, both as a painterand in the field of literary scholarship. Not only washe intimately acquainted with classical literature,but he kept abreast with the newest developmentsin Western Kurcpe as well.Taras Shevchenko’s wide interests in the literatureand art of Western Europe have been extensivelydiscussed by many contemporary literary historians,such as Prof. Olrksander Bilee’kyj (1884-196!) inhis paper "Shevchenko i aaxicln’o-evropejs’ki literatury”(“Shevchenko and West European Literatures”),published in his collection Vid davnyny do suchasnosti(From Antiquity to the Present, Kyiv, I960),and Mykola TEohenko (1902-1957) in his essay “ZbyvyjShcvchenko” (“The Living Shevchenko”), includedin a posthumous collection of his writings, Z literaturnojispadfihchyny (From His Literaty Legacy,Paris, 1961). These scholars proved irrefutably theuncommonly wide sweep of Shevchenko’s knowledge9