Tea with rum, raccoon coat, ballet. Instead of an “old man in a fur coat,” Shevchenko was, an intellectual and a thinker of European scale

The Prophet. Ukrainian genius. A fighter for the freedom of the Ukrainian people. The great Kobzar.

A serf's son from under a peasant's roof, redeemed from slavery, who for his love of Ukraine suffered the harsh drill of a soldier in exile, which destroyed his health but did not break his will or convictions.

Few people today know that during his lifetime Taras Shevchenko was better known and appreciated as an artist than a poet. After all, he was an academician of painting at the largest academy of fine arts in the empire.

He was also a connoisseur of theater, opera, ballet, European instrumental music and literature, led a social life, loved dancing, visited fashionable restaurants, dressed elegantly, and had an extremely interesting and sophisticated social circle.

What about the “grandfather in a fur coat”?

In a conversation with Hromada, Roksolana Havaliuk, a musicologist and lecturer at the Stanislav Liudkevych Lviv Music College, debunks the myth of Shevchenko as a gloomy “grandfather in a fur coat and a striped hat” and tells us about the Kobzar we don't know.

An intellectual, an intellectual, a person who was welcome in the luxurious estates of the most famous families in Ukraine at the time and in the artistic circles of the capital of the empire.

Read more in the Ukrainian edition...