Poetry · A way to begin
Kobzar
Кобзар
Taras Shevchenko · 1840
Synopsis
Eight poems in the first edition. The poet first addresses his own thoughts; an old blind kobzar sings for himself alone in the steppe; a young girl, seduced by a Russian soldier who has left for the war against the Turks, is rejected by her family and driven from the village with her child. Then come ballads drawn from folk song, an epistle to the prose writer of Kharkiv, Cossacks setting out on an expedition against the Turks, and a singer who recalls the Cossacks' struggle against Polish domination.
Context
The volume appeared in the spring of 1840 in Petersburg, from the printer Fischer, in a thousand copies; its author was then a pupil of Briullov at the Academy of Fine Arts. The censorship had passages cut, and only a few copies of the uncensored version escaped destruction. The frontispiece, an etching by Vasily Sternberg, shows a kobzar and the child who guides him. Several newspapers of the capital reviewed it, among them the Otechestvennye zapiski in an anonymous, rather favourable article. The collection was reissued in 1844 and in 1860, expanded, and banned after the arrest of 1847.
Who it is for
Eight poems, including a long ballad; the language follows popular song, and the historical poems call for some knowledge of the Cossacks.
Prizes and reception
The collection that earned its author the nickname Kobzar, and whose title now designates his entire poetic work, two hundred and forty-eight poems.
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