-I congratulate you with a purely Ukrainian holiday - the birthday of the Kobzar. I am not sure that there are nations that celebrate the birthday of the poet, - by these words Vitaly Ivashchenko started his speech.
On March, 14 was evening of poetry dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko. That evening Vitaly Ivashchenko read poetry - his and poet - and thinking aloud about his fate, creativity, value for our people.
-I was thinking a lot what should be the content of our evening. Just read his poems?... Everyone read today. And I wanted to understand Shevchenko as unique purely national phenomenon of spiritual life, as the sower poetic worldview...
… The poetry of Taras sound everywhere today. It took 200 years - and everything is appropriate, everything is actual!
The creators of art are the stars,
Their works warm the souls.
Though most of them gone long time ago,
Their light comes to us forever!
… He did not invent, he simply expressed Ukrainian soul with word, one of the most poetic people of the world, whose melody has more than three hundred thousand folk songs. You read his poems, and there is a perfect image of pure Ukrainian: emotional, honest, hard-working, wise, witty, which hurts grief, and he fearlessly fights evil and injustice.
Shevchenko’s portraits that as icons hang in many Ukrainian homes have a high sense of the sacred: it is a symbol of spirituality of our people.
Poetry - is the most democratic and coming to daily life kind of art that makes us human. Not everyone understands it. So we should go to the people, to involve them in poetry, and their souls must respond. Taras Shevchenko bequeathed it for us. And we do it.
… Do not forget: after the first edition of "Kobzar" (Taras Shevchenko was only 26 years old) - ten years of exile, the age of the best years of life! And it's time to love and be loved.
“ Bury me, be done with me, rise and break your chain!” – Shevchenko commanded. “Maidan” broke the shackles of gangster government, corruption, and total immorality. But this is only the beginning.
My people finally are waking up!
Everyone wanted to overlie them for three hundred years.
It was everything: and the famine, and arrests,
And the flower of culture was destroyed repeatedly.
We are reviving the language calmly.
We have in memory the testament of Taras.
The freedom and dignity in honor again.
The world understands and accepts us.
We will have a orderliness in culture and education.
We have force for the spiritual ascent.
Please search the people in the world
Where the leader of the nation is a poet.