SOURCE: "A Study of the Deep Structures in Ševčenko's Works," in Ševčenko and the Critics: 1861-1980, edited by George S. N. Luckyj, translated by Dolly Ferguson and Sophia Yurkevich, University of Toronto Press, 1980, pp. 481-94.

In the following essay, Grabowicz claims that the duality in Ševčenko's poetry, which has led to contrary interpretations, stems from his attempts to mediate between the Ukrainian past and future.

Beginning with the first ambivalent reactions in the Russian press to the first edition of the Kobzar of 1840, and shortly thereafter with the more analytical studies of Kulish and Kostomarov, the critical genre now known as Ševčenkoznavstvo came to occupy an ever more prominent role in Ukrainian life. The critical, scholarly, panegyrical, ideological, and polemical attention devoted to Ševčenko and his writings has been immense—and immensely diverse. Some considerable results have been achieved, particularly in textual studies...