PoetsGardenArrowParkNY_dl

a large sum of money. This money had been raised by his friends in a very special way.
Professor Bryullov of St. Petersburg Academy of Arts had made a portrait of the
distinguished Russian poet Zhukovsky. The canvas had then been raffled off. The proceeds
- 2,500 rubles - had been handed over to the baron. As a free man, Shevchenko didn't break
contact with the toiling masses. Until his dying day he was a true son of the Ukrainian people
and, at the same time, a sincere friend of the working people of all nations and nationalities.
On his travels in the Ukraine, Shevchenko more than once witnessed the horrible scenes of
landlords' arbitrariness and hotly protested against this evil, both with his pen and word of
mouth.
Wherever and whenever he could, Shevehenko had an audience of people around him - at
the bazaar, in a tavern, near the church or, if the workday was over, at someone's home. Each
time, his impassioned words cleared and stirred the befogged minds of the masses, directed
them along the road of struggle for liberation. He took each such opportunity to read his
revolutionary poems, tell salty antiserfdom anecdotes and parables, recollect the country's
heroic past, the people's struggle against the Polish magnates.
"The forces of the people are uncountable," said the poet-revolutionary. "They must be
consolidated and then used at once to fight czarist autocracy and serfdom. Only thus can
we win freedom and build a new, happy life."
"Artist Shevchenko, for writing revolting and extremely insolent poems.... shall be sent as a
private to the Detached Orenburg Corps (Middle Asia - Ed.) .... authorities shall be notified to
exercise the strictest possible control over him, least he should find a way of sending forth
his revolting and pasquil writings," read the draft resolution of the chief, of the Gendarmerie
Corps, submitted for approval to the czar. Obviously not fully satisfied by the text, Nicholas
I added in his own hand, "To be placed under strictest surveillance; forbidden to write and
to paint."
And so Shevchenko was made a private of the Imperial Army. The term of service was not
specified, which actually made it a life sentence. The place of service was a desert in a wild
outlying province of the Russian Empire. But worst of all, a man born to create was forbidden
to do so!
Being a soldier at that period was much worse than prison. Nowhere else was an individual
oppressed and humiliated as hard as in the barracks; nowhere else human torture flourished
as much as in that army.
The poet's spirit, however, proved insuperable. Despite the royal forbiddance, Shevchenko
wrote inimitable verse in the harsh years of exile and army drilling. It was filled with great
revolutionary strength and undying courage. He wrote under inquest, locked in a damp
barracks, behind the fortified walls of Orsk, in the sun scorched Middle Asian steppe, on a
deserted shore of the Caspian Sea, in the remote fortress of Novopetrovsk. The Kobzar
wrote his moving verse in a small notebook which he had made himself and kept in the leg
of his boot.