Glagoslav Publications Releases First Ever Complete English Translation of Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar
Few national poets command the reverence of their people as Taras Shevchenko does among Ukrainians. His grave on a mound above the Dnipro River is a pilgrimage site, and more than 1250 monuments have been erected in his honor in Ukraine and nearly 130 more around the world, including capitals such as Washington, DC, Ottawa, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Warsaw and Tashkent.
Shevchenko combined the vernacular with folk rhythms of Ukrainian songs to capture and embody the sufferings and deepest strivings of his people. His poems are alternately frightening, funny, despairing, hopeful, sacred and sacrilegious, but always illuminating and entertaining. His semi-autobiographic verse serves not only as a guide to long submerged, even prohibited elements of Ukrainian history, geography, personalities and folklore, but also to universal themes of love, envy, oppression and freedom. In addition, Shevchenko’s poems represent considerable courage, because he took on Russia’s imperial regime at a time when few dared to challenge it. He skewers autocrats, chauvinists, sell-outs, and fools. He muses about religion, fate, friendship and solitude; and charms the reader with tender tales of love and devotion. Shevchenko laments the loss of Ukrainian independence and garroting of its language and culture, but raises the promise of national revival and social justice. He also employs metaphors, word pictures, and history to expose the blunt force realities and pathologies of serfdom and national oppression – the invaders, drunks, bastards, unwed mothers, rapists, murderers, marauders, poseurs, thieves, and the injustice those characters represent.
2014 will mark the 200th anniversary celebrating Shevchenko’s life. Born as a serf in Central Ukraine and orphaned by the age of 11, Shevchenko was taken by his overlord to Saint Petersburg, where a group of intellectuals recognized his talent as an artist and raised funds to purchase his freedom. He would eventually be deprived of it once again because imperial authorities, considering his poetry subversive, exiled him to Russia’s desolate periphery where he'd spend a decade but would never stop creating.
Glagoslav Publications is a British-Dutch publishing company specializing in English and Dutch translations of contemporary fiction and non-fiction by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian authors. Glagoslav's Ukrainian collection includes translated into English works by popular contemporary authors Maria Matios, Larysa Denysenko and Serhiy Zhadan.
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