Russia as surreal space in literary works of Taras Shevchenko

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how the space of Russia in general and St.Petersburg in particular is depicted in Taras Shevchenko's worksThis paper discusses how the space of Russia is represented in Taras Shevchenko's poetry. It argues that although Russia's image is often vague and ambiguous to the extent of surrealistic it is a latently present at the background of many Shevchenko's poems and influences perception of other kinds of space as well the understanding of Shevchenko's literary universe in whole. After a short overview of previous research, the paper introduces different types of literary space that can be differentiated in Shevchenko's poetic works and provides a brief explanation on each of them. The urban space of St.Petersburg is analyzed as the 'anti-world' which is counterpositioned with that of the 'real world' of Ukraine. The paper examines symbolic connections of Shevchenko's St.Petersburg with Ukrainian folklore and emphasizes the infernality of the former. The last part of the paper analyzes the image of Russia in Shevchenko's works to find out that the larger space of Russia has similar surreal qualities to those of a smaller space which St. Petersburg is. At the same time, Russia is presented in Shevchenko's works as a profane space to which spiritual decline, evilness and amorality are intrinsic.