26 August 2010, 12:42
Mykola Tomenko: The Wish of the President´s Team to ‘take a Cap off´ Taras Shevchenko is Positive
Asked about the attitude of the President´s team to Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Tomenko, Deputy Chairman of The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, stated that during the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine and his spokespeople decided to ‘take a cap and a sheepskin coat off´ the prominent Ukrainian poet. "In principle, this wish is welcome, however, its realization is defective", he stated.
According to Mykola Tomenko, he and People´s Deputy Oleksandr Abdullin, have in due time distributed several thousands of portraits of young Taras Shevchenko among the Ukrainian schools for free. However, the willingness of the President´s team ‘to take years off´ the Kobzar is positive only in one aspect. "As far as ideology is concerned, the President and his team are quoting our proposals suggested five years ago", M.Tomenko stated. Thus, reconstruction of a renovated memorial estate of Taras Shevchenko in Shevchenko National Reserve is said to justify the talks that "Taras Shevchenko has in due time dreamed of building a real Ukrainian house in his Motherland, while they constructed more like his business office in Kaniv."
Mykola Tomenko singled out even a more precarious concept mentioned in the latest President´s speeches: transformation of Taras Shevchenko into ‘a favourite of famous art salons of the then Russia.´ "If it happens, then in the nearest time the President will declare that T.Shevchenko was not only ‘an iconic figure in the Russian Empire´, but also a main Russian ‘socialite´ and a close friend of Russian tsars", M.Tomenko stated. "Suffice it to read the works of this poet to conclude that transformation of Shevchenko´s image may lead to a dismal end for Shevchenko himself", he added.
A quotation from a prominent verse of T. Shevchenko "Son (U vsiakoho svoia dolia)" ("Dream (Each person´s destiny´s his own)" of 1844 which is on the school reading list:
By those laconic
words:
The First was he who crucified
Unfortunate Ukraine,
The Second - she who finished off
Whatever yet remained.
Oh wicked tsar,
accurst!
Oh crafty, evil, grasping tsar,
Oh viper poison-fanged!
What did you with the Cossacks do?
Their noble bones you sank
In the morass and on them built
Your capital-to-be,
On tortured Cossack corpses built!
And me, a hetman free,
You threw into a dungeon dark
And left in chains to die
Of hunger . . . Tsar! We'll never part.
We are forever tied
Together by those heavy chains.
E'en God cannot untie
Those bonds between us. Oh, it's hard
Eternally to bide
Beside the Neva! Far Ukraine
Exists, perhaps, no more.
I'd fly to see if she's still there,
But God won't let me go.
It may be Moscow's razed the land,
And emptied to the sea
Our Dnieper, and our lofty mounds
Dug up - so none may see
The relics of our former fame.
Oh God, please pity me.
(Translated by John Weir)