Shevchenko and Italy

Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University for a presentation by Giovanna Brogi (Associazione Italiana di Studi Ucraini).

Taras Shevchenko never was in Italy, but many echoes of Italian literature and art are to be found in his works. The most strinking echoes come from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In other cases we may speak rather of intertextual analogies and participation in European zeitgeist. This is the case of Sadok vyshnevyj and the lyrics of the greatest poet of Italian Romanticism Giacomo Leopardi.  However, Shevchenko’s mental landscape of Italy is connected mainly with his conception of religion and his elaboration of evangelical values. Italy, which Shevchenko knew only through descriptions and engravings, through books and poems of European Romanticism, is represented by the Ukrainian poet through a few extremly realistic (even hyper-realistic) scenery and dramatis personae, but develops into a set of mythical images of universal and perennial value.

From the Harriman Institute.