Profundity of Folk Lore within Life Activity and Creative Work of Taras Shevchenko: An Author-Recipient Reciprocal Action

Author

Marchenko Nina

a Ph.D. in Philology, an associate professor at the Institute of Philology of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University

Profundity of Folk Lore within Life Activity and Creative Work of Taras Shevchenko: An Author-Recipient Reciprocal Action

Abstract

The article deals with the profundity of folk lore within Taras Shevshenko’s life and works that can be visible as concepts Folk, Language and Song in his poetries. These concepts being essential for the existence of Ukrainian people for a long time were formed, as I. Franko, O. Kozachkovskyi, M. Rylskyi, O. Lazarevskyi and others pointed out in their studies, already during the Kobzar’s childhood. The personality of that man and poet, which had absorbed the poetic world of the Ukrainians (I. Dziuba), could not sit loose to diverse conceptions of its existence and, with his entire vital activity and creative work, aspired to help the Ukrainians to arise from the ruins of the past (I. Krypyakevych), thereby establishing his people and furthering the latter’s progress to the future. M. Rylskyi wrote that Taras Shevchenko having chosen Ukrainian language as his weapon (the language considered at that time as a dead speech), proved able to demonstrate the beauteousness of linguistic devices and means created by people throughout millennia. It is the Ukrainian language in its historical development, as noticed the XIXth-century Ukrainian scholar M. Sumtsov, which appertains to the main motifs of the Kobzar’s creative work. The speech of people functioned and developed in folk songs, and therefore Taras Shevchenko not only exploited folk-song forms in his poetries but also inimitably subjected them to… his world-view, as well as to his system of images (M. Rylskyi), in this way displaying the figurativeness of thinking and the versatility of imagination of the Ukrainians (P. Chubynskyi) and using long ago formed folk-song metres of kolomyyka and koliadka types (M. Rylskyi). These metres once again underline the old tradition of existence of the Ukrainian language and the latter’s presence and spreading along the entire ethnic Ukrainian territory. Since ethic and aesthetic values of the Ukrainians’ existence were reflected in folk songs, correspondingly recipients of the Kobzar’s works perceived them as folk pieces in forms of folk songs and tales. By such a perception of Taras Shevchenko’s works, one can observe the author-recipient reciprocal action. In process of time, the Ukrainians have shown the apprehension of Shevcheko’s poetries in form of variousness of contents of songs and melodies (B. Hrinchenko, I. Ohiyenko, M. Rylskyi), with determining them by folk ones, as well as with the lapse of time creating songs-varations to his poetry (M. Hordiychuk, O. Pravdiuk), being the fact that corroborates the continuity of the Kobzar and people in the present and the future.

Keywords

Ukrainian language, Ukrainian folk, Ukrainian folk song, melodiousness, tradition, folklore.

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