Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko is a famous Ukrainian poet, writer, painter and a major figure of Ukrainian national revival.
He was born on March 9th, 1814 in Morintsi, Ukraine. A serf by birth, Shevchenko was freed in 1838 while a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. His first collection of poems, entitled "Kobzar", expressed the historicism and the folkloristic interests of the Ukrainian Romantics, but his poetry soon moved away from the nostalgia for the heroic Cossack life to a more sombre portrayal of Ukrainian history, particularly in the long poem "Haidamakas" . When the secret Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius was suppressed in 1847, Shevchenko was punished by exile and compulsory military service for writing the poems "Dream," "Caucasus" and "Epistle," which satirized Russia's oppression of Ukraine and prophesied a revolution. Though forbidden to write or paint, Shevchenko clandestinely wrote several lyric poems during the first years of his exile. He had a resurgence of creativity after his release in 1857. His later poetry treats historical and moral issues, both Ukrainian and universal.
The most famous Taras Shevchenko's works were collected in a book, named "Kobzar". Some of them are:
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