Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko

“ The music weeps and nestles round.
E'en as a diamond, precious, fair,
The eyes of youth are bright, how bright!
Gladness and hope have set their light
In joyous eyes. They know not care,
Those youthful eyes,—no sin is there. ”

“ Owing to my innate unruliness I transgressed my master's order by singing melancholy bandit songs in a barely audible voice, or on the sly copying the pictures in the old Russian style, with which my master's rooms were embellished.
My master was a restless man. He was continually travelling, now to Kiev, now to Vilna or St. Petersburg, and he always dragged me in his train, so that I might sit in the ante-chamber to hand him his pipe and other necessaries. I cannot say that I then felt my position in life as burdensome to me ”

“ When I'm dead, then let me slumber
Underneath a mound,
'Mid the rolling steppe, with precious
Ukraine earth around;
That the mighty girth of acres,
Dnieper's craggy shores,
I may gaze on, and may hearken
How the blusterer roars. ”

“ I was born on February 25, 1814, at Kerelovyetz, a village in the district of Zvenigorod, government of Kiev, upon the estate of a landed proprietor. In my eighth (?) year I lost father and mother, and found shelter with the parish sacristan as a servant-pupil. Such pupils bear the same relationship to the sacristans as the lads who have been apprenticed to craftsmen by their parents or some other authority do to their masters. The master's power over them has no definite limits—they are actually his slaves. ”

“ Is it decreed that longer yet
Within this lockless prison set,
Beside this sea that profits naught,
I am to languish? Answering not,
Like to a living thing, the grain
Sways mute and yellowing on the plain ”

“ Away by strangers to be kept,
Like tiny beasts. At school oppressed,
I drew the water for the rest;
My brothers toiled as serfs, till they
With hair close-shorn were marched away.
⁠But sisters! sisters! Hapless ye,
Young fledglings mine! What boots it you
Upon the earth your life to spend?
Hirelings in stranger's keep ye grew,—
Your hireling tresses shall grow white,
Hirelings, O sisters, ye will end. . . .
(1850.) ⁠
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content. ”

“ On the advice of Soshenko, I began to try my hand at water-colour studies from Nature. During my numerous early and smudgy attempts I had a model in the person of Ivan Netchyporenko, a Cossack, another fellow-countryman and friend of mine, and one of our estate-owner's farm-servants. One day the estate-owner noticed my work in Netchyporenko's possession, and it pleased him so much that he employed me to paint portraits of his mistresses, for which he now and then rewarded me with a whole silver rouble. ”

“ My childish heart was injured a thousand times by the products of such a despotical schooling, and I concluded, even as defenceless people are wont to conclude, when their patience is finally broken—with revenge and flight. ”

“ To train up a handy lackey from very childhood means as much in this whilom Cossack region as the subjugation to man's will of the swift-footed reindeer in Lapland. The Polish estate-owners of a former age kept these so-called "Kozatchki" not only as lackeys, but they made use of them also as musicians and dancers. ”

“ I fully appreciate your wish to acquaint the readers of the N.C. with the biographies of those men who through their capabilities and achievements have worked their way upwards from the obscure and inarticulate ranks of the common people. ”

“ That could be accomplished only by a man who is in possession of inner calm and, as is usual with such men, has become reconciled with the external conditions of his life. All, however, that I can do now to fulfil your wish is to give a concise account of the actual course of my life. ”