The Kobzar of the Ukraine/Siberian Exile
Siberian Exile
They were too humane to put him to death, they merely sought to crush his spirit. But the Slav spirit is hard to crush. It may brood and smoulder long, but sometime or other it will burst out in flames.
In the case of Shevchenko another influence may be seen at work. In his ragged youth, when acting as assistant to a drunken church singer he gained at least one thing. That was a familiarity with the Psalter and the Hebrew prophets. The deep religious fire of the Hebrew seems fused with his own irrepressible native genius to form a spirit that could not be subdued.
They tided to make a soldier of him but he could not or would not learn the tricks of the soldier's trade.
They forbade him to write but he wrote verses secretly and concealed them.
Occasionally a humane commander would relax the severity of the rules. One governor allowed him as a hidden favor the reading of the Bible and Shakespeare.
At another time he was taken with a scientific expedition to the Sea of Aral, and employed in the congenial task of painting the wild scenery of that part.
At other times again the severity would be redoubled and pen, ink and paper would be forbidden. Through it all his love and sorrow for his native land increased. Only the remembrance of Ukraine kept him alive.
Ten years of Siberia changed the gay young artist of bright eyes and abundant locks to a gray-bearded, bald-headed old man on whom Death had set his seal.
But his spirit was still unconquered. At the end of his imprisonment he wrote the "Goddess of Fame" and the "Hymn of the Nuns" to show it.
