Shevchenko Taras.Kobzar: selected poems.Vienna, [1942–1944]

“...the most important works of our Prometheus, who opened our eyes to Ukraine’s past and showed us the path to a better future for our Native Land.”

Taras Shevchenko. Kobzar: (selected poems) / [publisher’s preface “From the Publisher”]; cover art by O. Krasovsky.

Vienna: Published by the Boris Tyshchenko Bookstore, [between 1942 and 1944]. — 160 pp.

Publisher’s cardboard cover, decorated with a colorful folk ornament in red, brown, olive, light blue, and yellow tones; the front cover bears the author’s name and the title “Kobzar,” while the back cover features the bookstore’s “BT” publisher’s mark. The cover is worn and soiled, with a vertical crease in the center of both the front and back covers; the paper spine is rubbed, with tears and paper loss along the edges. The back cover has heavy foxing and pencil markings. The paper shows natural yellowing; brown spots and stains appear on individual sheets, notably a spot at the top of the first chapter’s title page and soiling along the edges of the table of contents sheets; a strip of paper reinforcement is visible in the fold near the title page. The endpaper bears the owner’s inscription in blue ink, “Balatzko Zinjko, September 12, 1944,” with the same name, “Balatzko Zinjko,” written in pencil below it. Condition: good.

The book is of historical and cultural value as a relic of the Ukrainian publishing movement in wartime Vienna, and its ornamental cover is of independent artistic interest.

INFORMATION

The wartime Viennese edition of “Kobzar” is arranged by theme rather than chronologically: six sections proceed from “Dumy Moi” and the poems dedicated to Kotlyarevsky and Osnovyanenko through domestic poems (“Kateryna,” “The Hired Girl”), historical poems (“Taras’s Night,” “Ivan Pidkova,” “Kholodnyi Yar,” “The Great Cellar”), and socio-political works (“The Dream,” “The Caucasus,” “And to the Dead, and to the Living…”) to the poems of exile, the psalms, and “The Testament.” According to the publisher, the text was adapted from the Union of Liberation of Ukraine’s 1914–1915 “Kobzar” and compared with the 1941 jubilee edition published in Prague; this arrangement was intended to highlight the national-educational significance of Shevchenko’s poetry.

Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) was a poet, prose writer, playwright, and artist, and the author of “Kobzar,” whose work became the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and national self-awareness.

The book was published by the Vienna bookstore of Boris Tyshchenko, son of publisher Yuriy Tyshchenko-Siryi (1880–1953). During World War II, Boris Tyshchenko ran a bookstore and music publishing house in Vienna, which published sheet music for Ukrainian folk songs arranged by Andriy Hnatyshyn and Bohdan Veselovsky, as well as the large “Spivnyk.” The edition lacks full publication details; the preface recommends D. Doroshenko’s book “Taras Shevchenko” (Vienna, 1942), and the owner’s inscription is dated September 1944. The cover was designed by the artist O. Krasovsky. The Museum of the Book and Printing in Ostroh has acquired a copy of this edition as a valuable addition to its collection of “Kobzar” editions.