06/18/2026
REMINISCENCES ABOUT TARAS SHEVCHENKO
(Excerpts)
O.LAZAREVSKY
Lazarevsky, Olexandr (1834–1902) —Ukrainian historian, first met Shevchenko in St. Petersburg in 1858. He cared for the poet during his illness and accompanied his remains to Ukraine. An early collector of material about the life of Shevchenko, he showed a special interest in the reminiscences of the poet's contemporaries.
Shevchenko's grandfather (on the paternal side) was a bootmaker by trade; hence the surname*. His parents were serfs of the land- owner Engelhardt; his father hailed from Kerelivka, and his mother from Morintsi...
When he had married, Taras' father moved, on his master's orders, from Kerelivka to Morintsi for a short time (about a year and a half). Our poet was born during that period of resettling.... After his wife's death, Shevchenko's father was left with five children: Mykyta, Kateryna, Taras, Yaryna and Yosyp.
The youngest was about eighteen months old. In a peasant household life was difficult for a widower with such a family; he needed a woman to do the chores and to look after the children. In a popular tradition the image of a stepmother is invariably associated with something evil and selfish; Shevchenko's stepmother, too, failed to bring any kindness into his home...
Soon afterward Taras was sent by his father to a townsman, Hubsky, for schooling. Learning came easily to him, and he quickly worked his way through the primer; but Hubsky was at pains trying to make his pupil mend his ways. Time and again Shevchenko ran away from his teacher — and usually got into mischief while on the loose. His father also tried in vain to make him behave... Incidentally, on his deathbed (1825) he made a remarkable prophecy concerning his son's future: "My son Taras does not need any of my property; he will not be an ordinary man: he will either become somebody really good or a terrible loafer; whatever I can leave him will either mean nothing to him or be of no help." These words are too significant to be dismissed as something purely accidental; it is only a pity that the memories of Taras' relatives have not retained any facts that might have led his father to such a conclusion.
After his father's death Shevchenko was given to Buhorsky, the village deacon, for education. There he learned the breviary and the Psalter. Then he moved on to Father Nesterovsky, who taught him to write, and after that he went back to Buhorsky for some reason...
..little Shevchenko did not accept much of what his environment consisted of and noticeably stood out among the other children his age; all this should be ascribed to the special sensitivity of his nature, which persisted for the rest of his life. As an adolescent Taras already displayed a remarkable inquisitiveness of mind; he would be particularly attentive when, on some holiday, his grandfather and father began talking about events of the past. Taras' father was literate and quite well-read for a man of his station in life; his conversation was characterized by religious themes: he liked to narrate the lives of saints and various devotees of piety. The conversation of his grandfather, an eyewitness of the Koliïvshchyna, was of a different nature; he was quite familiar with all the heroes of that bloody episode of Ukrainian history and it was about them that he liked to speak to his children and grandchildren on holiday evenings.
Shevchenko used to listen to those stories with such attention that even late in life his memory still retained them.
Drawing was Taras' strongest passion from early childhood: he constantly drew pictures with a piece of charcoal or chalk wherever he could — on walls, doors and gates.
..having this strong desire to draw, Shevchenko ran away from Buhorsky to the village of Khlibnyvka, which was famous for its painters. Taras went to one of them and lived in his home for about two weeks on probation. The Khlibnyvka painter found him able to learn his trade, but, fearing responsibility for keeping a serf boy without a permit, advised Shevchenko to obtain the necessary document before coming back to him for training. So Taras went to the town of Vilshana, where Engelhardt's manager Dmytrenko lived, and begged him for a permit. Dmytrenko had a talk with the boy, noticed his brightness and, instead of giving him the permit, kept him among his household servants.
Soon after that the landowner himself returned to his native parts, and that decided the poet's fate: he entered his master's service as a domestic servant.
