Kobzar

Who better to tell the story of Ukraine than a kobzar, one of the country’s blind wandering minstrels that sang of its history and people? It is this iconic and entertaining figure, who walked the land and conveyed its traditions, that serves as the prism through which Taras Shevchenko composed his pioneering collection of poems, The Kobzar. The origin of the poems themselves is extraordinary. Written over a span of nearly 25 years, they mark many crossroads in Shevchenko’s life. They were composed in villages and cities, in prison and in exile; they are filled with Ukraine’s expansive steppes and verdant groves, peopled with decent individuals yearning for freedom and those who would deny it, and animated by trees, the moon and stars that converse. Shevchenko’s life from serfdom to exile and international artistic acclaim is the cloth from which each poem is cut. History and culture are intertwined with meditations on forgiveness and grace, religion and