Whenever Taras Shevchenko is described as a prophet, this epithet carries the implication of some general and abstract characteristics of prophesying. By the same token, Ukraine’s national bard has been called a mythmaker and even shaman (for example, “Shevchenko the shaman, Shevchenko the prophet (in the Old Testament sense), and Shevchenko the bard” in Andrei Okara’s, “Walking with Shevchenko,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 13, 1998). However, such a comparison is somewhat primitive and superficial. Of course, Shevchenko was a mouthpiece of divine revelation, but he didn’t practice shamanic meditation. Shevchenko in no uncertain terms created a myth, but mythmaking is typical of the work of great wordsmiths in general.
The word “prophet” is a rather specific notion. Unlike shamans, prophets have names and can be counted. If we call Shevchenko a prophet not for the sake of creating formal definitions or beautiful metaphors, but including him in the host of prophets of mankind and our nation, we must identify the specific components of this comparison, i.e., conduct a comparative analysis of Shevchenko’s life and work.
Let us suppose that Shevchenko was a prophet in the Old Testament sense. Which of the numerous Biblical prophets — literate or illiterate, great or small — should we select for our comparative analysis? In his pocket-sized study with the eloquent title “Shevchenko the Prophet,” Omeljan Pritsak points to Jeremiah, thereby agreeing with Vasyl Shchurat and challenging Ivan Franko’s rejection of Shchurat’s comparison. According to Pritsak, Chapter 5 of the Lamentations of Jeremiah “depicts the tragic plight of Jews who had been enthralled by scornful outlanders for the sins of their ancestors. Their princes had been hanged, the elders enjoyed no recognition, the young were coerced into service, and the select poet-prophets had gone silent. Obviously, the plight of the Jews who had been enslaved by the Assyrians befell the Ukrainian Cossacks with the abolition of the Hetmanate. Only the word of a poet- prophet could save his nation and inspire it to wage a liberation struggle.”
In effect, every Biblical prophet acted as an inspiring preacher, who carried a message that had to awaken the dormant people of Israel and inspire them to wage a struggle for their liberation. Consider, for example, the passionate and inspirational words of Isaiah: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city... Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.” (Isaiah 52:1-2). “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” (Isaiah 60:1). In my view, these words are more inspiring than Jeremiah’s lamentations.
We find truly prophetic signs, first of all, if we view prophecy as the inspired activity of a person whom God has chosen for a holy mission that is unprecedented in terms of its consequences, and not as a simple instrument or mediator, and, secondly, if we view it not in the Old Testament sense, but in a broader sense. Thus we come to the majestic creator of Islam and the Seal of Prophets — Prophet Mohammed (May Allah bless him and grant him peace).
I realize that the profound veneration the faithful have for their Prophet may not impress believers of other faiths and will not necessarily serve as proof of his exceptional grandeur. Let us then read the words of an impartial researcher, who is also a scientific atheist: “Islam, Mohammed’s prophetic activity, was a separate, natural manifestation of general processes (this statement is a sacrifice on the altar of science — Author). However, in ideological and political terms Mohammed was an exceptional personality, and this was the reason why a provincial Hejazz movement with an ideology similar to that of the Judeo-Christian sects acquired its original traits, its spiritual and political power, making the birth of Islam one of the most significant events in history” (M. Piotrovsky). We will thus compare our national prophet with the outstanding figure of Mohammed.
MOHAMMED
In 570 AD, a boy was born into the family of Abdullah, a member of the Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe, in a small town called Mecca, tucked in among the sands and hills of Arabia. There was no annunciation, no miracle or baptism. For forty years he lived a respectable life that was quite typical of his time and people. One day he experienced an inward and spiritual transformation without any eyewitnesses: he was a prophet and messenger of God. With this belief alone he managed to build Islam, the third, and so far last, world religion, which he did with unprecedented speed (according to V. Solovyov, dozens of times faster than it took to develop Christianity).
For fourteen centuries Mohammed has been the “seal” of the great prophets of a single God, and everything seems to indicate that God has decided to preserve this honorable title for Mohammed for eternity. Mohammed, the last monotheistic prophet to gain worldwide recognition, began preaching at a time when the teachings of his predecessor had already withstood the test of dozens of various heresies and become established as an organized religion of the Roman Empire. In the oases scattered across the Arabian Desert, other neighbors of the Arabs obeyed the laws of Moses, which had been carved on stone tablets by the great Yahweh. So what new things did Mohammed ibn Abdullah tell the people about the one, eternal, omnipresent, and all-powerful God?
Mohammed refers to his god as Rahman “the Merciful.” The Prophet begins each of the 114 surahs of the Quran, except for the ninth surah, which begins with a basmalah, “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.” No devout Muslim will begin any task without mentioning the mercy and benevolence of God. Unlike the old deity — the cruel, jealous, treacherous, and vengeful Yahweh with his nitpicking tasks and petty concern for his chosen people — Allah is truly great in his mercy. “We do not impose on any soul a duty except to the extent of its ability” (Quran 6:152). A person’s place in this world is determined by harmony and wisdom. Even in matters of worship, where one must apparently dissociate oneself from worldly things and become closer to the divine, Allah is tolerant and liberal. If you cannot spend the whole night in prayer, you may pray later; if you have no water for ablution, use dry sand; if you cannot keep the fast, feed a poor man; if you cannot undertake the Hajj, somebody else will perform it for you. “Allah desires that He should make light your burdens, and man is created weak.” (4:28) (moreover, “surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak” — 4:76). The Master of the Universes does not welcome the fanaticism of those who are willing to die, cleaving to the letter of religious law. Meaningless suffering for the faith (recall the horrible death of a Jewish family killed by Seleucidian butchers for their refusal to eat pork), which obviously satisfied Yahweh’s vanity, alarm the Merciful. It is no doubt repugnant to consume the meat of a dirty animal, “but whoever is driven to necessity, not desiring, nor exceeding the limit, no sin shall be upon him; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” (2:173).
God’s mercy is also manifest in the fact that in 610 AD “Allah conferred a benefit upon the believers when He raised among them an Apostle from among themselves, reciting to them His communications and purifying them, and teaching them the Book and the wisdom, although before that they were surely in manifest error” (3:164).
The Quraysh tribesmen received this stunning news with indifference. Mohammed’s references to the scriptures and prophecies, which have an invariably powerful effect in a religious environment, drew mockery in the healthy heathen atmosphere. “And they say: The stories of the ancients — he has got them written — so these are read out to him morning and evening” (25:5). “And when Our communications are recited to them, they say: We have heard indeed; if we pleased we could say the like of it; this is nothing but the stories of the ancients” (8:31). Mocking the dignity of the “seal of prophets,” the heathens asked, “Why is he not given the like of what was given to Musa?” (28:48), “so let him bring to us a sign as the former (prophets) were sent (with)” (21:5).
The imagination of the mocking Meccans knew no bounds. “And they say: We will by no means believe in you until you cause a fountain to gush forth from the earth for us, or you should have a garden of palms and grapes in the midst of which you should cause rivers to flow forth, gushing out, or you should cause the heaven to come down upon us in pieces as you think,... or you should have a house of gold, or you should ascend into heaven” (17:90-93). The most profane demanded that Mohammed bring God himself as a witness before a court of common sense: we won’t believe you, they said, until you “bring Allah and the angels face to face (with us)” (17:92).
The people demanded miracles, which is only natural. Jesus said, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe” (John 4:48), and therefore created so many wonders that “if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). Mohammed had no miracles, only the Word. But this Word came from God. “Only Allah has the signs,” the Prophet thus responded to atheists armed with knowledge: “O people! I am only a simple exhorter” (29:49). “Say,” God thus prompted his messenger, “Glory be to my Lord; am I aught but a mortal apostle?” (17:95).
Throughout his service to God — both when he was expelled from his homeland with threats and mockery and when on the throne of his glory and power he saw “men entering the religion of Allah in companies” (110:2) — Mohammed never ceased to repeat that he was only a human. To Allah he was the same as everyone else, and therefore had no more power to work miracles than anyone else. Moreover, Mohammed was certain that no miracles or signs that impress the imagination of a religious person can convince those who have strayed from the path of truth. “And the Apostle cried out: O my Lord! Surely my people have treated this Quran as a forsaken thing” (25:30). And Allah said, “Nay! You wonder while they mock, and when they are reminded, they mind not, and when they see a sign they incite one another to scoff, and they say: This is nothing but obvious magic” (37:12-15). Things went no further than this. Allah did not work miracles or fill the sky with thunder to help his messenger.
Was the deluge universal? Did the Red Sea part before Moses? Did Jesus Navin stop the sun over Gibeon? Did Lazarus really rise from his grave? Did Jesus Christ resurrect? These and other questions no longer seem relevant for the new generation of rationalists (although the search for causes to explain the origin of certain Biblical legends continues. For example, in a recent article entitled “Modeling the Hydrodynamic Situation of the Exodus,” the Russian mathematicians Woltzinger and Androsov offered quite a rational explanation for how the Israelites crossed the sea). Attempts to question the facts of sacred history are perceived as being in poor taste today. Thus, proceeding from this modern logic, the establishment of Judaic monotheism and Christianity should be recognized as a natural and necessary process, one that has quite a rational explanation, given the multitude of historical conditions, prophecies, and miracles.
In the case of Islam, everything is completely different. The founder of Islam came when no one was expecting him. He brought no great prophecies and no miracles. He came only with the truth, and the people grew to hate his truth.
But after his death, the clock of history was already counting off the second decade of a new civilization and new era of mankind, which soon became the faith practiced by hundreds of millions.
There is no rational explanation for this. This is a miracle, the only miracle created by Mohammed ibn Abdullah, the messenger of God and His Prophet.
SHEVCHENKO
The Russian philosopher Nikolai Ulyanov, author of a book entitled The Origins of Ukrainian Separatism, explains the prophetic calling of our national poet as follows: “Many before and after Shevchenko wrote in Ukrainian, and often did so better than him, but only he has been recognized as a ‘prophet.’ The reason for this is that he was the first to glorify the Cossack period as a national epoch. The captivating times of the Paliys, Hamaliyas, and Sahaidachnys captivated his soul and imagination. Shevchenko’s real poetry is in this fantastic world that never existed and has no historical truth. Yet he created artistic truth. Before us is a minstrel of the bygone Cossack epoch, who is enamored with it, as Don Quixote was with the days of chivalry. Until his very last day, the hero and object of his worship was the Cossack.” He couldn’t have found a better way to put it. On this point even George Grabowicz, Myroslav Popovych, and Oksana Zabuzhko would agree with this Russian chauvinist. After all, Shevchenko created a myth that consolidated the nation, with the Ukrainian Cossack as its chief protagonist. Notably, Shevchenko managed to “glorify” the Cossack period with such great vigor that the Cossack legend “ousted all the previous national mythology, and to date remains the national Ukrainian myth” (Myroslav Popovych).
I will put it categorically: myth is nonsense. If a consolidating myth is the utmost manifestation of divine revelation to a person, the flame of the soul that has been touched off by a divine spark with which the prophet kindles people’s hearts, then we must take off our hats to the creators of Soviet and Nazi mythology. Moreover, the consolidating potential of Shevchenko’s myth was on a much smaller scale. “Although the success of the first edition of the Kobzar was truly remarkable for those times, given the relationship with Russia, it was by no means an unprecedented success, except that in a short period of time several hundred copies were distributed, exclusively among the intelligentsia, while Shevchenko’s poetry almost never appeared in village houses during his lifetime,” wrote Ivan Franko, dispelling the myth about the unprecedented success of the Kobzar, which was perpetuated by J. W. Sherman in the preface to her German translations of Shevchenko. In her imagination Shevchenko’s “songs became the property of the entire Ukraine, reached the most outlying corners and the poorest of homes,” while Shevchenko’s trip to Ukraine in 1844 was nothing short of a triumphal march.
It was not only in the houses of the poorest peasants but also in urban centers of the Ukrainian intelligentsia that Shevchenko’s muse did not feel quite at home. Ivan Franko described his poem “The Dream” as “one of Shevchenko’s weakest works” primarily because of its artistic form. In terms of its content, however, Franko said that this poem displayed a new patriotism of brotherhood common to all mankind, unlike the narrow Ukrainian nationalism and Cossack patriotism discernible in “The Haydamaks.”
While rightfully noting that Shevchenko’s poetry raised Ukrainian literature “to the height of common European literature, brought into it the rich treasure of the best ideas common to all mankind, and indicated the only correct way to serve one’s own country,” Pavlo Hrabovsky criticized those Ukrainians “who assimilated the weak aspects of Father Taras’s muse, his idealization of the past, and [who] are still composing pseudo-historical and pseudo-nationalistic works.”
As we can see, demythologizing Shevchenko was not the exclusive prerogative of Russian chauvinists. Distinguished Ukrainian scholars, whose scholarly courtesy did not allow them to disregard their duty of speaking nothing but the truth, also contributed to this work. The national myth, much like any myth in general, is subject to unconditional demythologization by theorists who shape the national idea. This idea must permeate the masses, must be transformed into national practice, i.e., a national project. The successful outcome of such a project is an independent nation state.
In the case of Ukraine, we have the first (myth) and the last (state). There is nothing in the middle. Figuratively speaking, it is as though bread were growing on trees and needed neither baker’s hands nor the oven’s heat. We have yet to find our national idea. But ideas are ephemeral and intangible. As for more tangible things, national practices, scholars have said the following: “In the mid-nineteenth century, only a negligible minority of residents of what is now Ukraine called themselves Ukrainians in the sense in which this term was used by Ukrainophiles. Theodore Wicks, who studied the early twentieth century, wrote: ‘I have found little evidence to suggest that the peasant masses in the Southeast had a national identity before 1914,’ which was a more specific wording of an earlier thesis proposed by Bohdan Kravchenko: ‘On the eve of the First World War and revolution, Ukrainians were a people that had yet to develop a crystallized national identity.’ In his memoirs Yevhen Chykalenko noted ironically that had the train, which in 1903 was taking delegates from Kyiv to Poltava for the unveiling of the monument to Kotliarevsky, been derailed, this would have put an end to the Ukrainian movement for many years, if not decades, as almost all of its activists could have fit into two cars of this train” (A.I. Miller, The Ukrainian Question in the Politics of Government and Russian Public Opinion (second half of the nineteenth century) St. Petersburg, 2000). Thus, the national idea, if any, did not permeate the masses. Consequently, the historical project that has already been accomplished, an independent Ukraine, appears to be a miracle that was created ex nihilo — out of nothing.
However, logic does not require such miracles from history. Shevchenko and his “Kobzar” will quite suffice. The Ukrainian prophet and his revelation contained Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation, preserving its history and statehood that began in the seventeenth century, when the Cossack people emerged on the world arena. The people’s spirit was reincarnated in the national prophet and returned into the body of the Ukrainian people at the end of the twentieth century, once again to lead this nation to the frontlines of historical development.
This reincarnation occurred after Shevchenko’s journey across Ukraine in 1843-1844. Before that, Taras Shevchenko, then a student of the Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, had no hope for the future of Ukraine.
All that was left to scan
Was Dnieper’s rapids ‘mid the steppe
That roar, as on they dart:
“Our sons they’ve buried; now they seek
To break us all apart!”
On, on they roar — but men have failed
Their memories to keep;
And our Ukraine in slumber lies,
Forever fall’n asleep.
Since those far days in our Ukraine
The rye grows fresh and green;
No weeping’s heard; no cannon roar;
Only the wind so keen
Bends down the willows in the grove,
The grasses on the plain.
All has been silenced. So, he mute:
For so must God ordain!
(“The Haydamaks,” 1841,
Translated from Ukrainian by
Constantine Andrusyshen and
Watson Kirkconnell©)
Shevchenko continued in the Preface: “Thank God, all that is past! Especially if we recall that we are children of the same mother, that we are all Slavs...May the land of the Slavs, covered with wheat and rye, like gold, remain undivided from sea to sea forever!”
After his visit to Ukraine, it was not a Slavic poet who returned to the empire’s capital but a national Ukrainian prophet, who embodied the people’s spirit. Even if Ukraine was asleep, it was God’s will that Shevchenko would become Ukraine. It was Shevchenko in whom Ukraine would remain until the World Spirit called the Ukrainian nation to the historical arena to position itself on the dividing line between the Slavic and Asian lands of the last empire.
“For Shevchenko, the transformation of Ukraine, the culmination of its transition rite, is consigned to the future...The poet has been chosen by the transcendental forces and destiny, and charged with a cursed and at the same time holy mission. Shevchenko’s position is one of confidently yet passively awaiting the inevitable change...At the root of this situation is his complete identification with Ukraine...According to Shevchenko, historical truth can be learned only by referring to the collective soul of one’s own people. It should not be studied, but sensed or perceived as a revelation” (George Grabowicz).
The revelation can be perceived by means of the senses or rational thought (in various combinations). In this case, however, perception will not be pure. In its purest form, the revelation is perceived subconsciously. The national subconscious is the people’s very collective soul to which Grabowicz refers. Reading Shevchenko’s poems, ordinary Ukrainians perceived the myth with their folk senses; Ukrainian intellectuals and aesthetes enjoyed his “metropolitan,” “guiding,” and “intellectual” poetry (Belinsky’s definition); and national theorists transformed the myth into theory. At the same time, the collective soul of the Ukrainian people (peasants and intellectuals, theorists and aesthetes) perceived the revelation that God transmitted to Ukrainians through the Prophet Shevchenko.
***
“Now that our story has reached its end, it remains for us to examine the lives of these figures on the basis of a comparison.” With these words Plutarch, whose comparative approach we are consciously trying to emulate, ended his biographies of the brothers Tiberius and Caius Gracchus and the Spartan kings Agis and Cleomenes. Now that our story has come to an end, it remains for us to make a brief comparison of Shevchenko and Mohammed.
1. The call to prophesy was unexpected for both of them: Shevchenko was pursuing a successful career as an artist, while Mohammed was a respected and affluent member of the Hashim clan. By choosing the path of a prophet, both became irrevocably divorced from their former life, dooming themselves to a difficult quest, hardships, and suffering.
2. The people received their fiery words, divine words of truth, with mockery or indifference. “And the Apostle cried out: O my Lord! Surely my people have treated this Quran as a forsaken thing!” — “Ten years it has already been// since this Kobzar I gave to people// Yet their mouths are sewed shut// Nobody will even yap or bark// As if I had never been,” Shevchenko wrote in despair.
3. In these difficult times every new convert, especially from among the wealthy and powerful, was a major victory. “When Mohammed had the strongman Khamza on his right and Omar on his left, no one seemed eager to insult the God’s Apostle or mock him any more (V. Panova, Yury Vakhtin, “Mohammed’s Life”). The Ukrainian prophet drew support from the entourage of Prince Repin, people of old Little Russia, who had preserved the remnants of Cossack traditions and “once studied at foreign universities, crossed Europe as part of Napoleon’s campaigns...and now, tucked away in hamlets and homesteads along the Dnipro in eccentric and hermitlike existence, have preserved the sparks of the holy fire — love of everything honest and good” (Ivan Franko).
4. Mohammed lived to see “men entering the religion of Allah in companies.” Shevchenko was not destined to see how the faithful worship their prophet “wherever there are at least three or four Ukrainians — in Ukraine, Halychyna, America, Siberia, in the capitals of Russia or Paris. The festivities are always attended by children, young people, and their elders. In recent years these festivities have spread to villages. Thousands of worshipers flock for the requiem, and theaters cannot accommodate all the poet’s admirers” (I. Chernavin); “The Ukrainian clergy have proclaimed the days of his birth and death (February 25 and 26) as church holidays. Even overseas monuments are built to him under the auspices of parties and governments of Canada and the USA. Neither in Russia nor anywhere else has any other poet been commemorated on such a grand scale” (N. Ulyanov).
5. Most of the faithful “did not know a single line from the Quran, but believed there was a single God, that Mohammed was their Prophet, and the laws of Allah were the only just laws, while to perish in battle was the crown of a righteous life and a direct path to paradise” (“Mohammed’s Life”). The Ukrainian peasants did not understand anything about the intellectual, metropolitan, and guiding poetry of Shevchenko, and were indifferent to its aesthetic appeal. Yet these same coarsened peasants bowed to Shevchenko as if to a saint, awash in tears as if facing an icon in church, and chanted in chorus “Taras, Our Father!”
6. The divine revelation that Allah passed to the faithful through the Prophet Mohammed has remained undisclosed to the unfaithful, much like Shevchenko’s revelation was incomprehensible to the “unfaithful.” In a letter to King Friedrich II Voltaire thus described Mohammed: “[But] for a driver of camels to stir up a faction in his village; to associate himself with a set of wretched Quraysh...to boast that he was carried up to heaven, and there received part of that unintelligible book which contradicts common sense in every page.” Compare Voltaire’s description to Belinsky’s characterization: “But in Shevchenko common sense should see an ass, fool, lout, and, moreover, a bitter drunkard, and lover of vodka and khokhol patriotism.”
7. Until the modern era Islam was considered a dying religion. In the late nineteenth century Ernest Renan was convinced that the days of Islam were numbered. Meanwhile, “the biggest challenge that the European civilization is facing today comes from the Islamic world” (Yury Kagramanov). In the opinion of nineteenth-century Russian scholars, which some Ukrainian writers also shared, Ukraine had died once and for all, and mute nature, archaeological relics, folklore, and historical memory (see George Grabowicz) was all that was left. In the twentieth century Ukraine was considered forever buried in “the unbreakable union of free republics” or at least forever imprisoned in the Soviet camp, which was viewed as a successful Communist culmination of the Russian imperial project: in the late 1970s Westerners, such as Milan Kundera, believed “that the European nation of forty million was imperceptibly disappearing before the very eyes of his generation.” From the viewpoint of the Prophet Shevchenko, the Ukrainian people and its country have now reached the peak of their revival. We are fortunate to be witnesses of how his prophecy is becoming a reality.
8. “The revival of Islam came as a complete surprise to the West; one of the biggest surprises in the twentieth century” (Yury Kagramanov). Ukraine’s new statehood has proved to be a similar surprise to the Western world. For them we are an “unexpected nation” (see Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, Yale University Press: New Haven — London, 2000).
9. The Quran built the third world religion and the Arab civilization; the Kobzar built the Ukrainian nation and country. Both the former and the latter are miracles.
