Rybinska Y.
(Київ, Україна)
У статті запропоновано вивчення літератури на засадах компаративних зв 'язків, що являє собою велику можливість для обговорення національної ідентичності й шанобливого ставлення до світових культурних надбань. Т. Шевченко та В. Вітмен - два національних поета, яким вдалося передати досвід своїх націй, характер та ідеї людей, їх вважають центральними важливими постатями в сучасній Американській і Українській літературах. Компаративне вивчення двох авторів допоможе краще збагнути особливості двох культур, літератур та ін., одночасно зберегти відтінок національної ідентичності й виховувати мультикультуралізм.
Ключові слова: національна ідентичність, компаративне навчання, народний характер.
The article proposes exploring literature in its comparative relationship which provides a great opportunity to revive discussion of national identity and a respectful attitude to the world's cultural treasures of folk consciousness, T.Shevchenko and W.Whitman are two national poets who articulate the experience of their nation, its character, and ideas of people. They are considered to be two central figures in modern Ukrainian and American literatures. The comparative teaching of both poets will help better understand the specific of two cultures, literature etc, at the same time saving the tint of national identity and bringing up multicultural ism.
Key words: national identity, comparative teaching, folk character:
Walt Whitman at the beginning of his greatest poem «Song of Myself» can observe all of his greatest ideas: the individual self of which it is worthy to sing, the common and democratic self extending to all people the same song and privileges he gives himself, the natural self gazing at the humble yet complete beauty of the grass, the philosophical self inviting others to enjoy and understand the good earth and the sun and individually to take and understand all that heaven and earth have to give. As an individual, common, natural, philosophical man among all men and women, Walt Whitman is America's national poet.
No one agreed that Walt Whitman would be the national poet of the United States until after the 1950s, a full sixty years after his death in 1819, most people knowledgeable about poetry now believe he is the poet who speaks most clearly about it means to be an American. Not that this designation is not controversial Other candidates have might be mentioned: Robert Frost, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, even Emily Dickinson. But Whitman is the strongest. He is America's national poet both for why he is loved and why he is condemned-First, a definition of a national poet: this man or woman, by both tradition and popular understanding, articulates the experience of that nation, that nation's character, and its ideas about itself.
A III tough criticized in his time for his poetic form and private life, Walt Whitman is a national poet. If you want to know the United Stales as an idea, especially the United States that emerged as an empire in the mid to late 19th century, you can go to Walt Whitman to discover this idea.
As might be expected of America's national poet. Whitman spent his whole life in America, He was bom in Long Island znd rarely ventured far from Long Island, dying in 1892 in New Jersey, less that 100 miles from his birthplace. Like most American poets of (rue artistic merit, he was not embraced by a large readership and spent most of his life outside of the popular tastes of his time. Also like most American poets, he was forced to earn a living outside of his art: at various times in his life he was a carpenter, printer, journalist, teacher, and editor. Like most American poets with national ambitions (again, like Crane and Williams, for example), he wrote an epic. Unlike both Williams and Crane, Whitman's epic, «Song of Myself,» is widely read.
Also, as made possible by his country's «Declaration of Independence» and «Constitution,» he was an uncompromising individualist. He believed with Emerson that «whoso would be a man» must be a nonconformist He resisted all attempts for others to bring his writing and him into conformity with tastes imported largely from England and Italy. And yet even though a rebel, a nonconformist, a man shunned by «decent» people, Whitman has come closest to representing the ideals of that nation and society that pushed him away. He brought all of life into poetry and wrote so that any common man or woman could, understand him.
He articulates American paradoxes. First of all, he was an individualist and at the same time a democrat. He believed along with American romantics like Emerson and Thoreau that people must be individuals and pursue their own destinies. Yet these individuals are also part of a collective and neither the individual person nor the collective person diminished the other. Individualism in the American romantic context asserted that each person was greater than, and in control of, all of the forces (psychological, economic, and cultural) that surrounded him or her. He also believed that the democratic United States could be a nation of nonconformists. He believed that nonconfonnity did not subvert a society that demands high levels of conformity. And he was a romantic about nature, believing in Platonic ideas of harmonies, perfections in all of nature. The over soul lived in eveiythmg-eveii in an era of increasing industrialization.
N4ore than anything, Whitman was an innovator. He insisted that poetry be allowed to speak freely not only in the ordinary voice of an ordinary person, but also of that ordinary person's ordinary life, this person's whole human body and. all of its impulses.
Also, he was a tireless revisionist of poetic form. While he did not invent free verse, which has its sources in Hebrew and Asian forms, he set it loose in American literature. His long lines and loose and large rhythmical structures fit perfectly a poet wishing to devise a national poetry free from t)\t constraints of fixed European forms, a poet who wants the voice of poetry to be the voice of the streets, docks, foundries, immigrant fiats, farms, and villages. He set for himself the epic task of creating a body of poetry that would capture the spirit, values, and character of a still newly emerging nation.
Whitman's stanzas are open. His lines are long. His forms are too large for English and European forms. To do this, Whitman attempted to locate and employ the poetic qualities of ordinary American conversation, a goal in agreement with fellow romantic Henry David Thoreau's contention that «poetry is nothing but healthy speech.»
Whitman created an open stanza that expanded the possibilities of conventional metric organization, and he developed a long, flowing line that established rhythms beyond the limits of rhyme and standard meter. He used a particularly American vocabulary that led to the forma J ion of an American «voice.» eliminating the gulf between a poetic performance and an audience thnt had to be «educated» to appreciate the poet's song. He understood the power of poetry as sound, as a language spoken aloud and on the street.
But Whitman was more than just a strikingly original poet. Even before the publication of Leaves of Grass, he had begun to think of himself as an American writer, a democrat. some-one grasping the immense variety and vitality of American cultural and political experience. He wanted to shed the English and European models that unlike the political systems, still dominated American writing. He wanted an American poetry that was equal, yet completely unique and separate from the British and European. Because he was also a transcendental 1st, he believed that his poetry could set free all those powers of the mind and body that lay within the American. Common citizens were always Whitman's primary audience. He was of them (or so he imagined) and they were of him. They and he were people of possibility, courage, and generosity.
Whitman was committed to the role he envisioned for himself among Americans. He was a poet, a seen a spiritualist, and a lover-above all, straightforward and full of lite. Though he is often perceived to be too much of an egotist, Whitman means for his bold declarations of self love to be reflective of ideas that might be fit for all for all Americans,
By general consensus, Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) is the central figure in modern Ukrainian literature. He is the Ukrainian writer who has undoubtedly attracted the greatest and most varied attention. He is Bard, Prophet and Kobzar, the inspired voice of his people, and the Spiritual father of the reborn Ukrainian nation. He is a cultural hero, a spokesman, and nationalist.
The great national poet, the founder of critical realism in Ukrainian literature and the father of the Ukrainian literary language, ardent revolutionary democrat, thinker and humanist, was also one of the most outstanding masters of Ukrainian painting and graphic art. National Bard of Ukraine and noted artist Taras Shevchenko was born on March 9, 1814 in village of Morintsi, Kiev gubeniiya in the family of serfs. When Taras was seven he lost his mother. His father was-left with six children and thought to improve matters by marrying a widow with three. Thereafter the miseries increased for little Taras who was hated by his stepmother. He had a strange passion for drawing and painting and also for singing. Shevchenko4?, artistic talents were also revealed at an early age: he fashioned clay models of birds and other animals, and drew figures and scenes on fences, walls and wherever else he found available space. Folk singing was another of his favorite pastime, and in later years he entertained his friends singing songs he had remembered from his childhood.
He wrote poems in Ukrainian and In 1840 published his first book of verses «Kobzar». He-opened his sorrows of Ukrainian people and nation. His first collection of poems, «Kobzar» (literally «The Kobza player»; broadly: «The Bard»). Never before had any poet described the vicissitudes of the Ukrainian distant and more recent past in such glowing and exalted terms, or written about m such patriotic fervour. Kobzar was like a trumpet's clarion sound proclaiming the existence of the Ukrainian nation.
Shevchenko's poetry may indeed be classified into:
-the rhetorical, prophetic, ultimately «political» or ^ideological» poems «Poslaniye», «Epis-$e», (To the Dead the Living and Still Unborn...), «Kavkaz»;
- the intimate or «purely lyrical», confessional poems: • the narrative poems «Rusalka»(«The Mermaid»).
Like his counterpart W.Whitman in American literature Shevchenko presented his ideas in іЬс broadest sense, highly integrated, almost hermetic symbolic system which conveys profound persona! and «universal» truths. Their thinking is з form of intellectual bricolage that reveals the characteristic movement from structure to events, a development thought opposition and mediation, and a multi-tracked redundancy of narrative that reveals itself in an «obsessive» repetition of events and structural units («themes» and motifs»), historical, political social views and then overall world views.
Their poetic universe can be examined for a rational, «syntagrnatic» order- a «philosophy».
Shevchenko and Whitman communicate «universal truths» through a model which they construct out of the building blocks of culture specific elements, including very prominently their own biography. It's remarkably coherent and highly symbolic system. Symbolic meaning code in myth.
T. Shevchenko also addressed his verses to the nature's wanders, being devoted to the motherland, and confessed to the native land that he loved it. He fought for freedom and justice. He described perfectly Ukrainian landscape at daybreak followed and contrasted by the lamentations over the sufferings of people in his «Dream».
He never stopped writing poetry which revealed his realization that it was in political injustice that was the root of the social evils.
In 1845, 'while on an archaeological mission in Ukraine, Shevchenko contracted a serious illness. Fearing he might die, he wrote «Zapovit» («Testament» or «My Legacy»). The poem in which Shevchenko expressed himself with a great stirring power, became the very cornerstone of Shevchenko*fc bequest to his people. In «Testament» he expressed his life-long hope to see his beloved Ukraine free. Ukrainian people have a cult of T. Shevchenko. It was enough for him to write «Kobzar» that his poetry became a neopalyma kupyna, eternal, which helped us to survive in a big desert of mistrust and disappointment, on the way to free independent Ukraine. This flaming torch of freedom and trust, of self sacrifice and love is burning in TJSheychenko's ever living hands. He became a living statue of liberty for Ukrainian nation.
His role in the life of Ukraine was of paramount significance; its amis were to achieve independence for Ukraine, to have the autocracy overthrown and serfdom abolished.
Shevchenko is not only a poet of national stature, one of the most important cultural figures in the history of Ukraine - he was also a seer whose humanitarian spirit extends beyond the confines of his own country to embrace all humanity's righteous aspirations to freedom and self-determination. Shevchenko's is a volcanic spirit, high enough to be seen and heard by other nations as he proclaims to all hmnankind the universally applicable virtues by which the moral fibers of humanity thrive and are strengthened.
His all-embracing humanism, genuine folk characters arid patriotic ardour make him comprehensible and close to the hearts of Ukrainian people, he is the poet of the Ukrainians. The impact of Shevchenko's lyrical genius can't be overestimated. «The haunting music of his Ukrainian verse», as E.L. Voynich put it, ranks with greatest achievements of lyrical poetry ever created by man. Shevchenko's lyrics are miraculously melodious, deep in thought and feeling, simple-rich in vivid imagery, and throbbing with conflicting moods.
Appraising the comparatively brief but very fruitful creative path of Shevchenko, we should point that he is the reflection in the mirror of Ukrainian national identity.
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