Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - IV
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it became certain in many ways that the boy had talent,
he sent him to a painting master in St. Petersburg, in
hopes of getting the money he laid out on him richly
repaid in due time. Here Shevtchenko began to draw
with his own hand, awakened the interest of an artist,
who recommended him to Zhukovski. The latter, ready
and humane as he always was, took the young man’s
cause in hand. The first thing to be done was to buy his
freedom. Engelhard asked twenty-five hundred rubles
for this “soul.” Zhukovski had his portrait, which the
court-painter Brylof, who has been previously spoken of,
was going to paint, sold by lottery and obtained the sum
needed. In 1838 the emancipated serf began his studies
in the Academy, and, having served his time, left it in
1844 to go to Little Russia to find there subjects for
pictures and poems.
In the mean time, he had begun to write verse. In
1840 he had already published his first collection of
poems, Khobzar (The Singer), — lyrical tendency poems,
which with deep national feeling dwelt on the heroic
memories of the Little-Russian people, their sufferings
in the past and their hopes for the future. His
anxiety for everything which could operate for the
breaking-up of the monotony in the empire, manifested
in this collection of poems, made the government
withdraw all support from Shevtchenko, and place him under
the supervision of the police. The year after, he
published his largest work, the Little-Russian epic poem,
“The Haïdamáks," and still later several different smaller
poems in the almanacs. In a poem called “Caucasus,”
he commemorated an unfortunate friend of his, Count
Balmén, who on account of his liberal views had been
sent as a common soldier to the Caucasian army. For
this imprudence Shevtchenko, in spite of his reputation,
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