L’Eretico, ovvero di Jan Hus. Storia e idee nella poesia di Taras Ševčenko

The Heretic, or Jan Hus. History and ideas in Taras Shevchenko’s poem. The Author considers some ‘dramaturgical’ aspects of Taras Shevchenko’s poem Jeretyk (Jan Hus) and connects the work to two of the most important poems written by the Ukranian poet during the same period: the “comedy” Son (The Dream), and the “mystery” Velykyj l’ox (The Great Vault). Jeretyk may be seen as a “tragedy” completing a kind of “theatrical cycle”. Though different in formal construction and poetic expression, the three works unveil the deep roots of Shevchenko’s theatrical sensibility, which goes back to both the Ukrainian Baroque tradition of scholastic and popular theatre and to the Romantic European context, ranging from Byron to Mickiewicz. A confrontation with Pushkin reveals the juxtapposition the Ukrainian poet had with the Russian forerunner. The analysis of the poem demonstrates the poet’s acquaintance with historical facts and, at the same time, a closeness to the early Slavophile trends and the ideas of Slav “unity and reciprocity” nurturing East-Central European cultures under both the Austrian and Russian empires before 1848. However, such expressions as the biblical “На розпутті всесвітньому,” the faith in the prophetic word that will be resurrected from the ashes of the stake where Hus was burnt, and the image of the “old Žižka” menacing with the “bulava” project the Slavophile ideas in a context of both universal humanism and national specificity, where each people is brotherly bound to the others, but is endowed with the sacred right to live in freedom and justice.