Biography of Taras Shevchenko. What language did Taras Shevchenko write in? Shevchenko's language is not Ukrainian

Today Taras Shevchenko as a poet and writermost of the world is devoted to monuments. Throughout the globe 1100 Shevchenko monuments were erected.

What did the "classic of Ukrainian literature" think about katsaps and Ukrainians

"They believe that this poem is a fake andalteration of Derzhavin's poem "The Nobleman":

"A donkey will remain an ass,
Though shower him with stars;
Where should the mind act,
He just flaps his ears.
O! vain happiness hand,
Against natural order
The madman is dressed as a master,
Or the hype of a fool."

: There is an opinion that Khokhols were always divided into two. Some licked Europe's ass. Others gravitated toward Muscovy. Some betrayed the faith of their fathers and became Uniates, Baptists and Catholics. Others remained Orthodox i.e. Russians. So Shevchenko could well write this about Ukrainians - Westerners (zapadentsy) - traitors to the Russian idea.

And here is the opinion of the true "Ukr":

It is hard to believe that our genius Shevchenko wrote this simple rhyme: after all, he never doubted the planetary greatness of the Ukrainian nation. After all, it was the Ukrainians who invented the wheel, taught mankind how to make pots and wear vyshyvankas, along the way discovered America and sank Atlantis, which tried helplessly to challenge the global priority of our nation. The military prowess of Ukrainians knows no limits at all: Gatilo conquered the entire ancient world, Ukrainians led Crusades, a Corsican (he was born in Korsun-Shevchenkovsky) burned Moscow, and Oles Makeevsky (Muscovites remade him into Alexander the Great) annexed Crimea and Kamchatka to Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine, as well as to all the heroes (from Bandera to Pan Yarosh)!

Here is the revelation of the People's Artist of Ukraine, deputy from the VO "Svoboda", nationalist B.M. Benyuk dated 03/24/2014: “Ukrainians are a nation of traitors, those who are constantly looking for a warm place.” This phrase Benyuk explained that in the character of the Ukrainians there is a craving for betrayal and they know how to adapt and fawn. But the Ukrainians themselves, according to Benyuk, do not understand this. He regarded his words not as an insult, but as a statement of fact.

In 1840, Taras Grigorievich asked his brother not to write to him in Russian: "so that at least I read your letter on a foreign side in human language."

Muscovites are strangers
It's hard to live with them.
No one to cry with
Neither talk.

One more thought Shevchenko T.G. about katsaps:

"The Jewish beginning in a Russian person. Without a dowry, he cannot even fall in love."

Here is such a well-known Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko, who is known to everyone and not quite known to everyone, handed it out to everyone, to all the sisters for earrings.

Reviews

"The fact is that Ukraine, like any country, can grow, develop, progress only in a favorable, friendly and congenial Russian society."

Vladimir, you are not accurate, moreover ... Where did "any country" come from? And Australia and New Zealand too? Biggest mistake!

God is the Word, for when there was no word, people had no God. The word is with God, because only God is in perfect command of the word and can separate logical tautologies from true expressions.

God is the son, God is the father, and so on, a stereotype imposed on humanity, since this flawed family cannot be a full-fledged example for society.

In the name of the Father, Mother and Holy Spirit of Love and nothing else.

As for Taras, I do not have a high opinion of this gentleman and I have nothing more to say about him.

You talk all the time about some kind of gifts, you are firmly stuck in Tatar-Mongolian essence, you don’t do anything kindly, you wait for gifts and stuff them yourself. Corruption is in your blood. In addition, I see your undisguised narcissism, but there is nothing to admire, bones and blood are everywhere.

Ecumenical info flows))) through whom, through Putin))) or through Aksyonov)) Yes, Ecumenical info flows will run away to another Universe)))

I warned you))) Bomb, bomb, bomb, but in your case, I just throw out leaflets. I can't take seriously texts that begin with the words "Ukraine, like any country .."

It’s already better, since there are questions, then there will be answers, which means the dialogue will continue) The only thing I ask you, and I myself will support this proposal, is to be directly in line with philosophy without jumping off to personalities and without touching political features our relationship with you. Moreover, I set out in the New Year to become more tolerant.

"Can a Dictator, forcibly imposing his Laws in a rude form on everyone, including Nature, understand it correctly and become an objective scientist?"

If you name me at least one dictator who has become a scientist or at least one scientist who has become a dictator, then your question will make sense. (Without taking into account the ancient Greek experience, although there is hardly anyone there either.)

If we talk about the relationship between Man and Nature, then the dictatorship of science, as well as the dictatorship of the church, are present and they lack objectivity, some more, others less.

Due to the fact that a person who has stopped in the development of spirituality is the lowest stage of evolution and no hypocrisy can hide this, I conclude that a developing individual, as a person who does business, makes mistakes, but his supremacy over a lower level is undoubted and equality in this case, arises as a more highly spiritual concept than the power of a thoughtless force. (it is necessary to spell out the concept of "equality" and its characteristics)
"But without a doubt, from Nature itself, he can receive his Maidan with all the ensuing circumstances"

Any system consisting of contradictions will inevitably get its Maidan. For example, the ideas of Aristotle, the preacher of dictatorship, on which, in particular, some other ideas are based. Just like your article, I received my Maidan in view of my inconsistency with it. Whoever finds contradictions finds the Truth, because contradictions exclude one another and on this basis a conflict of contradictions arises, I want to NOTE contradiction and opposition - this is completely different states. Therefore, the "unity and struggle of opposites" is a state of opposition of the same names (opposition is not enmity, but only mirroring) and the struggle of contradictions (matter - antimatter).

Pluralism and liberalism, plus a planned capitalist structure based on an environmental charter and the Code of Life, can be a dictating state - a liber.

A dictator who imposes his opinion in isolation from the experience of generations, spiritual experience, using malicious propaganda, professing feudal-serf capitalism based on corruption and secret services while incapable of spiritual development, is just a violent leader.

AT recent times in our cultural institutions you can see such posters. From the canvas, Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko looks sternly and searchingly. Below is the inscription: “Will you learn to speak in my language?”. One involuntarily recalls the famous poster of the times civil war: "Have you signed up as a volunteer in the Red Army?". It probably means that the person who enters, no matter what language he has spoken before, should simply burn with shame if he does not immediately switch to Ukrainian language.

Meanwhile, the answer to the question of what language T. Shevchenko considered his own is by no means as unambiguous as it might seem at first glance. Taras Grigoryevich wrote equally much both in Ukrainian and in Russian. Let's say "Kobzar" is written in Ukrainian. But all artistic prose is in Russian. Even the famous play from the history of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks "Nazar Stodolia" was originally written in Russian and only then translated into Ukrainian. He also wrote letters in both languages, depending on the addressee. How to determine what language the Kobzar considered his own?

Compiler explanatory dictionary alive Great Russian language V. Dahl, a Dane by birth, once said: “Neither vocation, nor religion, nor the very blood of ancestors makes a person belong to one or another nationality. The spirit, the soul of a person - that's where you need to look for his belonging to one or another people. How can you determine the belonging of the spirit? Of course, a manifestation of the spirit - a thought. Whoever thinks in what language belongs to that people. I think in Russian. In what language did Taras Shevchenko think? To answer this question is not the slightest difficulty. Let's look at those of his notes that were not intended for prying eyes, which he kept for himself - in his diaries. And it will become clear that Shevchenko thought in Russian.

The fact is that in those days the Ukrainian language was not so much the language of the people, but the language of the class. This language was spoken by the common people. And language formed layers society was the Russian language. Here, for example, is what Ukrainian historian and first president of independent Ukraine M. Grushevsky writes about this, who can be suspected of anything, but not of sympathy for the Russian language: half of XVIII century, the desire of the newly-baked gentry to give itself a noble gloss began to take shape, to emphasize its difference from the gray Cossack masses ... And since of foreign cultures, the Ukrainian intelligentsia had the most different connections with Great Russian culture, then in the end it falls very strong influence this latter and gradually turns brown ... "Now "the people's language is not taken seriously, it seems to the enlightened Ukrainians provincialism, which has no future."

Kyiv Metropolitan Gavriil Kremenetsky characterizes the Ukrainian language as "common, ancient, local, with Polish and Slavic mixed dialect." The author of the first grammar of the Ukrainian language, Pavlovsky, already in 1918, “motivated his work with purely antiquarian motives, calling the Ukrainian language “neither living nor dead, a disappearing dialect.”

So it turns out that “composing outrageous poems in the Little Russian language,” as written in the circular to send Shevchenko to the Orsk fortress, was not so much an artistic fact as a political one. The emergence of literature in the Ukrainian language on the territory of Galicia, which at that time was under the rule of Austria-Hungary, can also be considered a political fact. Valuev's 1863 restriction on the publication of books in the Ukrainian language provoked an opposite reaction. Here arose the so-called people's movement, with which many Kyiv writers (Ivan Nechuy-Levitsky, Panas Mirny, Mikhail Staritsky and others) began to cooperate. Therefore, we can say with confidence that "Kobzar" is primarily a class protest against the policy of the authorities.

Another thing is clean works of art. Here one should use the language that gave more possibilities to solve artistic problems. And such a language for most Ukrainian writers was Russian. Gogol, Grebenka, Pogorelsky, Shevchenko's colleague in the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood N. Kostomarov wrote in Russian. D. Yavornytsky's "History of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks" was written in Russian. And even the irreconcilable M. Grushevsky wrote in Russian when he found it expedient. Why? Yes, because, as Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol once said, “there is no word that would be so bold, smart, so torn out from under the very heart, would seethe and tremble so vividly, as aptly said Russian word».

However, no one claims that the language of the class cannot become a literary language. There are plenty of such examples in history. This and Italian language, which remained vernacular until Dante's creation" Divine Comedy”, this is the Russian pre-Pushkin language. But in order to become literary, the language must mature itself. This is a natural process and cannot be controlled. Now, finally, the most favorable conditions are being created for the development of the Ukrainian language. But does this mean that necessary condition for the development of the Ukrainian language is the rejection of the Russian language, and with it - the Russian culture? Will it elevate the Ukrainian people, will it lift them out of poverty and squalor, will it add education and wisdom? It seems to be just the opposite.

History shows that the development of national cultures can occur only if they are close cooperation with other cultures from which they draw as from a source. Recall the Renaissance, fully matured on the foundation ancient culture. Let us recall the same Russian literature, the flourishing of which would hardly have been possible without the enthusiasm of the Russian society of the 18th century for the French language and French culture.

There are many examples of the creation of entire literatures in non-state languages. No one would think of calling the Irishman Joyce an English writer just because he wrote his Ulysses in English and not in Irish. national language. A resident of Vienna Stefan Zweig and a Prague Jew Franz Kafka wrote in German. And in Belgium, where the vast majority of the population speaks Flemish, Charles de Coster, Verhaarn and Maeterlinck created French works that have made the glory of Belgian literature. In a word, it is typical for sane people to treat a foreign culture as a treasure that can only enrich the person who owns it. Read Shevchenko's diaries and you will see with what love Kobzar treated Russian culture, with what reverence he spoke of Russian geniuses.

For the sane part of Ukrainian society, everything is very clear here. Who, then, excites people, distracting them from real problems today- Unemployment, lawlessness, poverty? The answer is known. It's manipulative national idea politicians and part of our fellow citizens who fell under their influence. The simplest and most understandable truths, which have never been doubted by anyone, are suddenly distorted beyond recognition in their interpretation and, as in a distorting mirror, take on a shape that is completely uncharacteristic of them. So the language - a purely cultural phenomenon - turns into a tool for settling political scores, and society splits into "us" and "them".

About a century ago, anticipating the appearance of such politicians, F. Dostaevsky wrote: “Russia will not have and never had such haters, envious people, slanderers and even obvious enemies as all these Slavic tribes, as soon as Russia liberates them, and Europe agrees to accept them liberated. They will certainly begin with the fact that inside themselves, if not directly aloud, they will declare themselves and convince themselves that they do not owe Russia the slightest gratitude, on the contrary, that they have barely escaped Russia's lust for power. They will curry favor European states, they will say that they are educated tribes, capable of the highest European culture, while Russia is a barbarian country, a gloomy northern colossus, a persecutor and a hater European civilization"(" Writer's Diary ").

Let's think about it though. Should we look to politicians? Is it necessary to give up the Russian language, the great Russian culture? After all, politicians come and go, but culture is eternal. Maybe we should learn to choose our own politicians?

Ukrainian poet, prose writer and artist Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko was born on March 9 (February 25 according to the old style), 1814 in the village of Morintsy, Kyiv province (now Cherkasy region, Ukraine) in the family of a serf.

latest prose works Taras Shevchenko had stories "A walk with pleasure and not without morality" (1856-1858) and diary entries "Journal". In 1858, a number of high examples of intimate and landscape lyrics were written.

AT last years Shevchenko's life was actively involved educational activities. He prepared for printing "Primer" for evening schools, which was published in a circulation of 10 thousand copies at the expense of the author, together with other members of the St. Petersburg Ukrainian society "Gromada" prepared the first issue of the magazine "Osnova" for release.

In addition, Shevchenko worked in the fields of easel painting, graphics, monumental and decorative painting and sculpture. In 1859-1860 he made etchings from the works of foreign and Russian artists. For success in this art, the Academy of Arts awarded Shevchenko the title of Academician of Engraving.

Taras Shevchenko died on March 10 (February 26, old style), 1861. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg, and two months later the coffin with his body, in accordance with the will of the poet, was transported to Ukraine and buried on Chernecheya Mountain near Kanev.

Shevchenko's works have been translated into almost all languages of the world, many works have been set to music by Nikolai Lysenko and other composers.

The poems "My thoughts, my thoughts", "Testament", the beginning of the ballad "Spoiled" ("Roar and Stogne Dnipr wide") became folk songs.

Named after Shevchenko in Ukraine educational establishments, theaters, squares, streets. National Opera of Ukraine, Kyiv National University, the central boulevard of the city of Kyiv is named after Taras Shevchenko. To date, there are 1384 monuments to Taras Shevchenko in the world: 1256 in Ukraine and 128 abroad - in 35 states.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Preamble
"Kobzar" was translated into Ukrainian in Austria-Hungary after Shevchenko's death

During the life of T. G. Shevchenko, there were several editions of the Kobzar:

the first, in 1840 in St. Petersburg, the book had only 20 pages;
the second edition was in 1844, together with the poem "Gaidamaki", under common name“Chigirinsky kobzar”, and appeared solely because the poem “Gaidamaki” itself, published in 1841-1842, was almost not sold, and since 1844 it was included in the “load” for the second edition of “Kobzar”;
the third edition was already in 1860, after the return of Shevchenko from the Muscovites (from the soldiers), back to St. Petersburg.

Unfortunately, not a single lifetime edition of "Kobzar" common man look unrealistic. There is not even a normal photocopy, so that you can see in what language, after all, the current “classic of Ukrainian literature” wrote his verses. Moreover, even the posthumous editions of Kobzar are practically non-existent until the Soviet era, and those that do exist were compiled, edited and translated in Lvov. Note - at that time Lviv is not Russia, not Ukraine, but Austria-Hungary.

Pre-Soviet editions of the Kobzar compiled and edited in Austria-Hungary

It is not written directly about the translation of Shevchenko’s works, but it is written “verified” according to “Shevchenko’s original manuscripts”, which can be seen on the page scans.

Kobzar 1908 3 pp

Kobzar 1908, part 4

The question naturally arises: where did absolutely all of Shevchenko's manuscripts in Lvov occupied by Austria-Hungary come from, if Shevchenko himself never visited Galicia? Why exactly in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, all of a sudden, for no reason at all, did such a zealous attitude towards a foreign and foreign author appear? Why did the Austro-Hungarians and Galicians suddenly need Shevchenko? Moreover, it was needed so much that the financing of the Shevchenko Society was carried out by the Sejm of Austria-Hungary on a regular basis from the state budget.

In the family of my friends for many generations, Shevchenko's Kobzar was kept, published in 1908 by Schmidt's printing press in the city St. Petersburg, st. Zvenigorodskaya, 20.

Picking up this book and just flipping through it, I was struck by a few things.

T. Shivchenko (through "i")
"Kobzar" (with soft sign at the end)
And under this is the inscription:
OTHER VISION
"Societies named after T. G. Shevchenko for helping needy natives of Southern Russia, students in higher educational institutions of St. Petersburg"
Ta
Charitable Society for Publication of Commonly Useful and Cheap Books.

(stylistics and spelling are completely preserved). What language do you think title page?... We can safely say only one thing - definitely not in Ukrainian. See the image for proof of this.

Kobzar 1908 title page

Please note that:

this turns out to be only the second edition, although during the life of Shevchenko himself there were at least three of them, and not the edition of 1840, but the edition of 1907 is called the first edition ...
this edition was not reprinted from earlier, lifetime editions that Shevchenko himself could see, but under the editorship of a certain "Society named after T. G. Shevchenko."

What kind of society it is, where it is located and how exactly it carried out the “editing” of the “Kobzar” can be read on the very first page after the title page. From the first lines of the article, entitled "Od vidavtsiv", we learn that until now, the editions of "Kobzar" have been incomplete.

It turns out strange - Shevchenko himself, during his lifetime, for some reason did not publish the Kobzar in full, and after his death, the publications came out incomplete. At the same time, in the Austro-Hungarian Galicia, in Lvov, in 1902, where Shevchenko never looked, absolutely all of Shevchenko's works came from somewhere. And in the manuscripts of the author himself. Where did absolutely all Shevchenko's manuscripts come from in Lvov, according to which, it turns out, they verified the text?

The Taras Shevchenko Society still exists today with main offices in the USA and Canada

Further, it is even more interesting: it turns out, according to the authors - editors of the book, that until 1907 there were no publications of the Kobzar in Russia. And here is the 1907 edition, which is a reprint of the Lvov edition of 1902, the editors of which were not approved by Shevchenko himself, not by his friends to whom he could entrust this, but only by a few people from the Shevchenko Society itself in Lvov, plus a few representatives of the publisher - and is the first complete edition of "Kobzar" in Russia. It turns out that it was the members of the Shevchenko Society, and not the author himself, who decided what the true Kobzar was, its text, language and content.

It is this edition of the Kobzar edited by V. Domanitsky, who, as stated, “vivirized the text from Shevchenko’s handwritten manuscripts” (where did he get them?) should be inserted into the Kobzar, which has already been published many times before, and what kind of “literature” on the history of the text in general can be?, this is a collection of poems, and not criticism of it!) It turns out that there were no earlier lifetime editions of Taras Shevchenko?

But even this seemed not enough. Apparently, in this “first in Russia” edition, the authors did not finalize something, since it took a year to publish a new one, and this “new”, you will now laugh, but it is written like this: materials".

The edition that I held in my hands was 1908, edited by the same V. Domanitsky, and according to the editors, this was precisely the second complete edition in Russia.

It turns out that from 1907 to 1908 Shevchenko personally added something? How could it be, he died a long time ago. This means that the point is not in the texts and not in their content, since the first edition was verified according to handwritten manuscripts, then there is actually nothing further to verify. But something has changed. The question is what?

The answer comes by itself when you start reading Kobzar himself - it's just a translation from the language in which the "great Russian peasant poet Shevchenko" really wrote, as he was called in St. Petersburg, and as he called himself, into some other language.

I would like to see at least one lifetime edition of the Kobzar and compare its text in full, with the Galician translation, which is now presented as the only true original, not even made on the territory of the Russian Empire.

The modern "Kobzar" is a Galician translation

What to believe a person who wants to unbiasedly understand?

Can one believe that the Galician edition of the Kobzar by the Shevchenko Society is really the only correct, the only complete one and published in the same language in which Shevchenko wrote? Or believe common sense that Shevchenko could not write in a language that did not exist at the time?

It will not be possible to find out from the analysis of the available “Kobzar” of 1908, but on the other hand, some points that, due to large distances and general ignorance, were problematic to verify at the beginning and even the end of the 20th century, nevertheless, can be easily verified in the 21st century . It's about about the biography of Taras Shevchenko, which is in the edition of "Kobzar" in 1908.

Wherever possible, in the biography, in order to exalt and give weight to the personality of the author of "Kobzar", the authors of the book resort to obvious falsification. For example, they call Taras Shevchenko a professor at Kyiv University, but this is not true. This is easy to check on the website of the university itself and on Wikipedia - there is nothing like it there. Shevchenko worked for several months as a staff artist in the archeographic commission at Kiev University, no more.

It turns out that in the Galician edition of "Kobzar" everything is very subtly changed in favor of the publishers, or rather, everything is turned upside down. Let's show this clearly.

All modern supporters of Ukrainianism consider Shevchenko Ukrainian poet. Is it so? In what language, after all, did Shevchenko himself write: in Russian or in Ukrainian? The answer to this question is both simple and complex.

Taras Shevchenko had his own own language- South Russian. He invented it himself.

The easiest way is to understand in what language the “Kobzar” of the 1860 model was written. Shevchenko himself answered this question in his last book published during his lifetime. It is called "Primer South Russian", 1861, published in St. Petersburg.

This is not just a set of letters of the alphabet, but a book of a couple of dozen pages, where there are letters, numbers, and even examples for reading by syllables for children and adults.

And unlike many previous books published during Shevchenko's lifetime, it was this one - "Southern Russian Primer" (note that the author directly writes South RUSSIAN, not Ukrainian) Shevchenko edited himself, and published at his own expense, and independently engaged in distribution. That is, no outsider, except Shevchenko himself, took part in the compilation and publication of this book.

Now let's read modern commentary to this edition, for example, in the edition of "Nova Godina":

150 years ago (in sichni 1861) from St. Petersburg Viishov "Primer of South Russian", a handbook for teaching Ukrainian literacy, codes by Taras Shevchenko ...

Have you read? See the difference? Shevchenko himself writes right in the title that his primer is South RUSSIAN, and a modern commentator stubbornly assures us that this is a primer for reading Ukrainian language. Before your eyes, there is a historical substitution of the opinion of the writer himself for someone else's political benefit. Let's make sure that this is not a primer of the Ukrainian language.

Here is how the ABC compiled by Taras Shevchenko looks like in this Primer:

By the way, note - AZBUKA, not ABETKA (as modern connoisseurs of Ukrainian like to say).

Shevchenko called his book in Russian ABC, not Abetka in Ukrainian

What does it say? Yes, that by a simple comparison of languages: Ukrainian, Russian - Shevchenko's life model, and the language invented by Shevchenko himself, which he himself called South Russian, in which he actually wrote, you understand that "modern Ukrainian is even more distant from real language, which was spoken on Southern Russia than modern Russian".

Modern Ukrainian is completely different from the language of Taras Shevchenko

This conclusion was voiced by one of the classics of literature, which is now considered Ukrainian - Nechuy Levitsky. Having become acquainted with the texts in the new language, brought to Kyiv from Galicia by Grushevsky, who had not really lived in Little Russia before, but only studied at Kiev University for 4 years, but for some reason decided that in all of Southern Russia they speak and write incorrectly! And he alone knows, being an ethnic Pole and living in Georgia for up to 20 years, how to write and speak the peoples of Southern Russia correctly and what kind of history they really have.

Why did the Society named after T.G. Shevchenko" from Lvov, in fact - to brazenly deceive the inhabitants of another state - Russia, having read only one edition of "Kobzar"? But after all, for some reason and someone needed to spend both time and money on translating, editing, printing and distributing in a foreign country, and even on the basis of charity, the works of a poet foreign to Galicia, who had never been to Galicia even once.

After all, who, after all, needed to convince the inhabitants of Russia that Shevchenko wrote exactly in the language that came from Galicia - in modern Ukrainian, and not in the one that Shevchenko himself, at his own expense, tried to popularize, that is, South Russian.

The exact answer to this question can be done by conducting a simple and logical analysis of the causal relationship from 1840 to 1917. But this is the topic of another, generalizing article, building a logical chain from such petty absurdities to big lies on a global scale in relation to Slavic peoples from the Austrian-Hungarian side.

But I digress a little from the topic - in what language did Taras Shevchenko write.

And so, logically speaking, if a person himself invented his own “Southern Russian Primer” intended for teaching and reading by the inhabitants of Southern Russia, and at the same time publishes a collection of his poems for these same inhabitants of Southern Russia, then it is quite logical to assume that with the help of his own " South Russian primer "he" Kobzar "of the sample of 1960 and wrote. After all, after visiting South Russia in 1859, unlike the first edition, which was edited by Grebenka, he was personally involved in the 1860 edition. Many historians directly point out that Shevchenko's Primer was actually published in 1860, although the year 1861 is on the cover. But these are trifles. The main thing is that the publication of the "Primer of the South Russian" and the editing of the "Kobzar" of 1860 were carried out simultaneously.

"Southern Russian Primer" was conceived by Shevchenko for teaching and reading by the inhabitants of South Russia

But in what language was the first Kobzar written in 1840? This question is very difficult to answer. Supporters of the Ukrainization of everything and everything directly state that Shevchenko wrote in Ukrainian. And at the same time they show "Kobzar" under the Lviv edition of the "T. Shevchenko Society" of the sample of 1902 or later editions.

We can safely say that Shevchenko could not write in Ukrainian even theoretically, since he was born and spent his childhood years in the Kiev region, in which modern Ukrainian appeared only in the 20th century, and then starting from 1918. In St. Petersburg, where Shevchenko actually wrote and published, all the more, there could not be any Ukrainian.

There were attempts to somehow allocate a more convenient alphabet for the peoples of Southern Russia, which differs from Russian in a couple of letters. There were many such systems, almost every author had his own. For example:

Yaryzhka- a writing system with the addition of the letters YAT and Y - presumably Shevchenko wrote his first "Kobzar" on this writing system.
Kulishovka- Kulish's recording system, which appeared after the first edition of Kobzar.

In addition to all these objective reasons that influenced the language of the first Kobzar, there was also a subjective, but very significant reason. It consists in the fact that Shevchenko himself had nothing to do with compiling, editing, or publishing the first Kobzar.

The first "Kobzar" was published under the editorship of Grebenka, who took the manuscripts from Shevchenko and edited them (what the editorial consisted of is still not known and you can invent anything about this). The only thing that can be said for sure is that the first "Kobzar" was clearly printed not to popularize it in Southern Russia, but for commercial purposes and for the purpose of promoting Shevchenko himself, his sponsor Martos.

Why did Martos himself need this - this is already a topic for separate chapter, but everything is very precisely and tightly linked to the geopolitics of the mid-19th century, as well as to the struggle of the Slavophiles and supporters of the Norman theory.

So, for the purposes of popularization, it is necessary at least that the text of the new collection of poems be sold out, read, understood and appreciated. Moreover, they understood and appreciated it in Russian St. Petersburg, and not anywhere on the outskirts of the Russian Empire.

If Shevchenko wrote in Ukrainian, then no one would buy his books

Therefore, the collection of poems published in the capital of the Empire was at least printed in the Russian script that was in force at that time in Russia and in Russian. Otherwise, there was no point in doing it - no one would have read and understood the collection. And since the first Kobzar, published in a circulation of 1000 copies, sold out very quickly, according to reviews, the language of the publication is beyond doubt - it is Russian.

On the Internet you can find different variants editions of the first "Kobzar" in 1840, as well as a bunch of articles in which different authors compare these options and recognize the majority as a banal fake, even those that are stored in respected libraries.

Whatever different authors write about this, one thing can be clearly distinguished in all these publications - a lot of words in the Kobzar are clearly different from the generally accepted Russian words in St. Petersburg and even now in Russia, but at the same time they are logically understandable to anyone Russian person. What does it say?

The fact that in any language there are a lot of subcultures that appeared as a result of the unification of languages different peoples into one, and vice versa, separated from the previously single language into a separate subculture, but understandable to the bulk of the population. For example, we all know thieves Fenya and banter.

It turns out, using the logic of the Ukrainianizers, it can be argued that people who are more fond of the hair dryer are representatives of a completely different people, a different race. It can also be argued that the children of the same Ukrainizers, who use the ubiquitous youth banter, use somewhat modified, as well as newfangled words, as well as deliberately distorting words from the classic dictionary of any language, are they representatives of another people, another nation?!

Everyone probably remembers from childhood that new buzzwords that periodically appeared began to be applied everywhere without hitting. Well, which of you used the word glamor and its derivatives 20 years ago: glamorous, glamorous, etc.? Yes, no one! But now, at the beginning of the 21st century, it is very buzzword, widely used.

In the same way, for example, the word kravatka appeared in the Ukrainian language in 1991 (in Russian - a tie, not a small bed and not blood serum).

And quite from school childhood, the appearance of new words is remembered: bikers, rockers. And the representatives of these areas have their own slang, which is clearly different from the generally accepted one. Well, it would never occur to anyone to call a person sitting behind a motorcycle or listening to rock a representative of another nation!

And so, no one calls the carriers of give a damn or banter, or any other slang - representatives of another nationality.

There is an even simpler explanation for the appearance of slang, which Shevchenko himself called the South Russian dialect. Note not separate language individual people, but only a dialect of the Russian language, characteristic of the inhabitants of Southern Russia.

Shevchenko, who certainly was the bearer and spokesman of the South Russian dialect, had the brains to understand the fact that in the vastness of the world's largest Empire, occupying vast territories, the same object or action can have different or, in most cases, very slightly different names. .

To my regret, most modern Ukrainianizers of the Russian people cannot understand this simple fact Or, more likely, they don't want to.

Shevchenko, unlike past and modern Ukrainianizers, understood that the inhabitants of Southern Russia themselves consist of different tribes. This is in his poems, where he, as well as in his chronicles, Nestor, points to the existence of Slavic tribes: the Polans, the Drevlyans, the Pechenegs, the Polovtsy, the Khazars, etc. Well, the languages of these and other tribes must have been different from each other! Everyone had something of their own, inherent in their tribe, and the tribes also did not live in one place, who wandered, who scattered around the world, settled new lands, returned back with a baggage of new, hitherto unheard words. Some words stuck, some were forgotten. The language does not stand still, it improves, adapts, assimilates, is filled with new words, in short, it lives its own life.

Shevchenko himself considered himself a Cossack and in his poems he often recalled with nostalgia the Cossack freemen and the Cossack state. So essentially two almost identical dialects of the same language appeared: one - simple, peasant, Cossack. The second is literary, more refined.

It is clear that everyone understood a simple language, from the king to the peasant. But the literary owned by those who knew how to write, was literate. Literary language averagely assimilated with the languages of all nationalities living in the vast territories of Russia. That's why Shevchenko always called his language - Russian, and a simple dialect - peasant, or in the place of settlement of the Cossacks - South Russian.

Taking into account the fact that at the time of the first edition of the Kobzar in 1840, Shevchenko was still very young, he had not yet compiled his own South Russian Primer, and the Kobzar itself was published under the editorship not of Shevchenko himself, but of Grebenka, to popularize the author in St. Petersburg, and taking into account what our eyes see on the scanned copies available on the Internet various options edition of 1840, we argue that the first "Kobzar" was published in Russian, in which there were many words inherent in the Cossack and peasant slang, later called the South Russian dialect by Shevchenko himself.

“Kobzars” published in Galicia, as well as in St. Petersburg since 1907, were already printed in Ukrainian, invented in Austria-Hungary, where by that time he had been teaching at Lviv University for 20 years.

Do you think this is the end of the mysteries of Kobzar and Shevchenko himself? By no means!

I pick up a weighty book, dimensions no less than the "KOBZAR" edition of 1908. The book is called Taras Shevchenko "Create Poetry" of the 1963 edition, Volume One... I look at how much there is in this collection - it turns out there are already three.

It's strange - the more time passes since Shevchenko's death, the more of his works are suddenly found. This is not about one or two forgotten verses, but about an increase in everything that Shevchenko wrote, compared even with the edition called the complete edition of the 1908 model three times.

One gets the impression that in Lviv at the beginning of the 20th century, far from all Shevchenko's works were translated into the Ukrainian language invented there.

Now it becomes clear where suddenly, during the year, from 1907 to 1908, in Lvov some additional, suddenly found works of Taras Shevchenko were able to come from. Yes, they were simply translated in a year, from the language of Shevchenko himself, into the new Ukrainian language, and what was translated was squeezed into the 1908 edition of the Kobzar, which I happened to hold in my hands.

But in the Kiev edition of Shevchenko's works of 1963, in three volumes, did not begin to translate anything, and supplemented the 1908 edition with those works that apparently did not have time to translate into Ukrainian in Lviv. And they, it turns out, are written in the purest Russian.

Don't think I'm making this up - see for yourself:

Shevchenko edition 1963

And there are half of such texts in pure Russian in this volume. I haven't seen the other 2 volumes. But, comparing selectively the table of contents of the 1908 and 1963 editions, I can say with confidence that not a single work of Shevchenko, which is in the 1963 edition in Russian, is in the 1908 edition, neither in Russian, nor in Ukrainian, nor in any other !

This only confirmed my idea that when publishing the Kobzar in Lviv at the beginning of the 20th century, the translators of the Shevchenko Society managed to translate some of the works into Ukrainian, and most they simply did not have time, and all the works that did not have time were “forgotten” about them.

By the way, now used everywhere in western Ukraine the term "moskal" meant in Shevchenko's time not a resident of Moscow or the Muscovite kingdom, but a soldier. To shave into Muscovites meant to shave into soldiers, and not to receive Moscow citizenship. Moskaleva krynytsya is in modern understanding a well dug by a soldier, and not a well dug in the courtyard of a resident of the Moscow province.

And yet, the names of the months MARCH and APRIL in literary Ukrainian at the beginning of the 20th century sounded like march and April, and not berezen and kviten (in Russian transcription). And note this, it is written in the Lvov edition of Kobzar.