Manuscript version of Taras Shevchenko’s Three Years collection published in Kyiv

It is the second time, and the first time since independence, that Ukraine produces a facsimile reproduction of Shevchenko’s manuscript collection Three Years, the original of which is kept at the manuscript collection and textual studies department of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU)’s Shevchenko Institute of Literature. This publishing project was executed by state publishing house Lybid at the end of 2013, as part of the Ukrainian Book program, and timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the Great Bard of Ukraine.

Let us recall that the first facsimile edition of Three Years collection which is a national treasure, a unique monument of Ukrainian literature, was published back in 1966, with the famous Shevchenko scholar, then-director of the Shevchenko Institute of Literature in Kharkiv Yevhen Shabliovsky taking part in the effort. As if taking over from the reputable predecessor, the institution’s current director, Academician of the NASU Mykola Zhulynsky wrote an introduction to the facsimile edition of 2013, while his colleague, Cand. of Sc. in Philology Serhii Kalchenko compiled and annotated the book.

In his preface to the publication, Zhulynsky analyzes the artistic value of Shevchenko’s Three Years collection of poetry in the context of his poetry legacy in its totality, and explores the social motivation behind emergence of invaluable works under the poet’s pen. Three Years could be called a book of spiritual enlightenment, because it embodies a qualitatively new way of poetic experiencing by Shevchenko of national dramas and tragedies, desecration of shrines and broken fates of Ukrainians, as well as spiritual understanding of the necessity and inevitability of national self-criticism, demanding introspection and painful awareness of the loss of that “quiet world, beloved land” of Ukraine.

Let us add that to ease the task of reading Shevchenko’s poetry, Lybid Publishers supplemented facsimile of manuscripts from Three Years collection with their printed version in modern Ukrainian spelling, placed in the second part of the book.