CHAPTER FOUR THE RELIGION OF SHEVCHENKO

What was Shevchenko’s attitude toward religion? The best critics of the poet, whether they are Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, or Protestant, have come to the conclusion that he was fundamentally a religious man but that at times he employed certain phrases which have allowed the advocates of militant atheism to claim him for their party. Yet to prove their point, this latter group is compelled to believe that he distinctly concealed his own thoughts to satisfy the dictates of the censorship in a way that he did on no other subject and their comments are so biassed that it is difficult to take them too seriously.

There can be little doubt that, especially after his visit to Ukraine in 1843, Shevchenko was carried away by his bitterness over the lot of the Ukrainian people. This is expressed again and again in his attack on the official representatives of the Orthodox religion, which had been definitely bureaucratized by Peter the Great, destroyer of Ukrainian freedom, and Shevchenko could not resist the temptation to attack the Church on all counts. Thus in both the Dream and the Caucasus there are lines that reflect his distaste for the established Church of Russia. In the Heretic he employs his choicest invectives against the condemnation of Hus. Later while he was in exile, he expressed himself very sharply about the role of the Jesuits in Poland. After his return he inserted certain phrases in Mary that vary from the traditional thought of the Church.

All this might be interpreted as an extreme form of that type of anti-clericalism that is not uncommon in nineteenth century authors, except for the fact that at times when his sense of social injustice gets the better of him and he is writing with a burning zeal against the social order, he seems at times to include God Himself in his condemnations. It must be admitted by the best friends of the poet that on occasion he indulged in decidedly intemperate language.

On the other hand there are remarkable examples of Shevchenko’s deep interest in the religion of the people. We must remember that the Russian occupation of Ukraine had led to a transfer of the clergy from the supervision of Constantinople (where it had been during the great days of Kiev) to Moscow and that the change bore as hardly upon the religious life of the villages as it did upon the political and cultural. The Russian tsars were trying to standardize and organize everything under their own supervision and upon their own system and while they did not change in any important degree the native rites and practices, they tried to fit them into a different framework.

Nowhere in the whole of the poet’s writings does he cast any shadow of contempt or brand as superstitious the peasant practices of making the sign of the cross or of lighting candles or praying. The normal religious life of the village where it concerns the peasants and God he treats with the greatest respect. He recognized very clearly that there was in it a something that answered the religious needs of the people, that brought them into contact with a superior Power that alone could make life tolerable, and he never deliberately cast any aspersions upon it. It was part of the poet’s endeavor to build his future Ukraine on all sound principles in the national life.

Similarly he makes absolutely no attacks upon the teachings of Christ, on His pleas for brotherly love, on the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The birth of Christ and the redemption of humanity form the central point in the entire history of mankind. He acknowledges and glorifies His teachings, even if at moments of vexation he complains that God is waiting too long, is allowing too much innocent blood to be shed, too many abuses to continue on this planet.

So too with the Blessed Virgin. In the introduction to the poem Mary he pays a glowing tribute to her, as sinless, the sacred power of all saints, and he implores Her to give to the suffering poor the power of Her martyr Son. In the introduction to the Neophytes, he again appeals to Her as “Blessed among women, the holy, righteous Mother of Her holy Son on earth.” All these references fit in strangely with the arguments that the poet was in any way hostile to religion.

Besides this, there is abundant evidence that Shevchenko knew the Bible thoroughly. In his letters from exile, he writes to Princess Repnina that he read the Gospel constantly and he asked her to send him also a copy of Saint Thomas à Kempis. He declares that only a Christian philosophy could encourage a person in his hopeless position. We certainly do not need to assume that in these passages he was writing only with an eye to the effect that it would produce upon the Princess, his friends in the capital and the censors.

More than that, Shevchenko drew heavily upon the Bible for themes for his poems, especially in his later years. A favorite device might almost be called a meditation upon the Old Testament, particularly upon passages where the ancient prophets condemned severely the abuses and the faults of their own day. Then in a direct manner he used the present situation in Ukraine to illustrate the great truths of the past. It is certainly interesting that it is not in these poems that he resorts to expressions which are really in bad taste, for the great majority of these occur in the poems written after his first return to Ukraine, when he was deeply shocked by the conditions which he saw there. Again on his last visit he apparently made remarks that irritated some of the Polish landowners and involved him in trouble with the police and the authorities.

The religious development of the poet thus seems to move along with the general development of his thought. In the poems of the early period through the Haydamaki and Hamaliya, when he was interested in picturing the romantic tales of the Kozaks, he accepts without a murmur the popular rites and devotions. There is a deep sincerity in the picture of the priests blessing the army before the uprising of the Haydamaki. It is a scene of deep piety and also one that a cynic could easily have turned into an attack on religion. The same is true of the prayers of the Kozaks in prison in Hamaliya. Even in Katerina, while he recognizes the harsh treatment of the poor mother, he goes little further than to ask God why such things are allowed to exist on earth.

It was after his visit to Ukraine in 1843 that the horrible position of his people burst upon him with all of its terror, cruelty, and injustice. To him the violation of the Christian law of love and charity was the overwhelming fact in life. He became openly rebellious against every institution—whether religious or civil—which seemed even remotely to imply toleration for a social order that could be so near a hell on earth. Yet even in his attacks on these institutions, we can always feel the underlying belief of the poet that religion and God are being deliberately misrepresented and that all would be well, if we could only break through the iron wall that seems to surround this world and penetrate the mystery beyond. There is much of the spirit of Job in these poems, although the author could not at all times hold fast to his vision of God’s justice and mercy. Here there is undoubtedly a limitation on the thought of Shevchenko but it is a limitation that is liable to confront any forthright thinker who bounds his horizon with this planet and with life on earth. He was not a mystic to indulge in the contemplation of the Divine but a man suffering for the sad fate of his fellowmen, who believed with all his heart in truth and justice and who was willing to sacrifice himself for the good and true.

His arrest and imprisonment undoubtedly had a definite effect upon him. We know from his letters to Princess Repnina and others that he attended church services during his stay in the fortress. Later he endeavored to secure permission to decorate both a Roman Catholic and an Orthodox chapel and it can hardly be supposed that he did this only to have an opportunity to draw and to paint. It was rather the feeling that he could dedicate some part of his work to God at the moment when it seemed impossible for him to carry on his work for his country.

On his return to St. Petersburg, he was of course thrown into company with the fashionable radicals of the day with their deliberate and unadulterated atheism and we might expect that he would give some definite sign of their influence. He does nothing of the kind. Rather he turned to the Old Testament for its harsh judgments on kings and rich men who robbed and oppressed the poor and the downtrodden. He had long dreamed of analyzing the character of the Blessed Virgin as a typical mother and it is this that he does in Mary. While he might have been influenced by some of the more irreligious of the popular authors, the work emerged on an entirely different plane with an ardent religious introduction and a reverent treatment of the entire theme. So too with all of his writings.

In his last days Shevchenko had to some degree softened in his ideas. Perhaps he had learned by experience. He certainly was not terrorized. The man who had spoken so boldly in the Neophytes that he had frightened the timid Kulish would hardly have added a religious introduction merely to silence opposition. Such an idea conflicts with all that we know of Shevchenko’s character but he came to differentiate more carefully between those elements of evil in the formal religion of the day and religion itself and sharp as are some of his criticisms, it is impossible for any honest scholar to claim that his works are deliberately irreligious.

An additional sign of this is his Primer, which he secured permission to publish only a few months before his death. It was definitely written for the Sunday Schools which were springing up in Ukraine under the new order. Shevchenko introduced a large amount of religious material into it and he shows again in this the same interest in seeing the social ideas of Christianity worked to the fullest possible extent. It would have been so easy for him to have created a purely secular book, had he been so inclined.

Thus at every stage of his life, we can find distinct traces of the religious interests of Shevchenko. He was no trained theologian, he was not a mystic, he was not a man who sought to evade the troubles of earth by taking refuge in heaven. He felt that here on earth there was a crying need for reform and human brotherhood and he never indicated for a second that there was any other possibility for achieving this than through the pure and applied teachings of the Gospel.

We know that he was familiar with the ideas of Skovoroda and of other writers of a similar character. We know too that in his own time there were various movements aiming for a new social order. He was influenced by the ideas of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and he was led to revolt against the more formal and ritualistic sides of a Christianity which neglected its task of teaching the people and was willing to follow the dictates of a tyrannical government.

Despite all criticisms, the overwhelming impression that the poems, the stories, and the letters of Shevchenko leave upon the careful reader is that he is a man who profoundly appreciates the Crucified and Risen Savior and who is only too ready to support his teachings and suffer for his fellowmen. Some of his outbursts may be extreme but it is very doubtful, if a single intelligent reader has ever found his faith shaken by any poem of Taras Shevchenko. When we subtract from his criticized remarks those that may be influenced by literary models and those that come from blazing indignation, we shall find an amazing residue of serious moral instruction, of deep respect for the worship and practices of his people, of his own deep and abiding belief in the traditional teachings and doctrines of Christianity in their true development and application. His prayers and invocations are no sham, no attempt to curry favor or to escape responsibility. They are a product of a believing mind and a great soul.