How Taras Ševčenko Was Initially Received in Italy and France

Abstract

The article analyzes when and how the figure and the poetry of Taras Ševčenko were presented in Italy and in France during the second half of the 19th century. The first serious contribution to the knowledge of Ševčenko’s œuvre was made in Italy by Mixail Drahomanov: under the pseudonym “Ukraino”, he wrote in 1873, on the pages of Angelo De Gubernatis’ “Rivista europea” (1869-1876). Drahomanov’s rich and long essay on the “Ruthenian” literary movement assessed the conception of Little-Russia/Ukraine in order to help the Italian public to understand the complexity of the Eastern Slavic world. In France, apparently, Ševčenko’s name was known as early as 1862, but an appreciable evaluation took place only at the end of the 1870s. A primary role was played by the liberal-conservative “Revue des deux mondes”, where Émile Durand published, notwithstanding some resistance from the editor, a very serious and inspired article on Ševčenko’s life and works, thanks to the general interest in the Slavic world and its cultural and political developments shown by the French journal. All the authors dealing with Ukrainian culture in general and with Ševčenko in particular expressed the hope that knowledge about them could grow in the future: unfortunately, this did not happen in any appreciable measure and even now Ukraine and its major poet are little known in Western countries.