«ОСПІВУВАЧІ СЕЛЯНСТВА»: ІСТОРИЧНІ ПАРАЛЕЛІ ЛІТЕРАТУРНОЇ ТВОРЧОСТІ Ю. Л. РУНЕБЕРҐА І Т. Г. ШЕВЧЕНКА

Abstract

The article details the issue of the main poetic works of the Swedish-speaking Finnish writer J. Ru­neberg and his Ukrainian colleague T. Shevchenko, in which the simple, working people, mainly the illiterate peasantry, are glorified. The subject of careful study by both writers is the historical fate and national character of plowmen: Finns and Ukrainians. There has been proven that the ideas of the Romantic era, brought by the revolutionary whirlwind from Western and Central Europe also had a special influence on their work, which is noticeable in the terms imbued with a keen sense of humanism towards people and frank free-thinking. It was emphasized that the cited poems of the figures of the national Finnish and Ukrainian movements – J. Runeberg and T. Shevchenko – reflect the daily life of the masses, a critical attitude to reality and primary attention to the psychology of the individual and his inner world, as well as a significant expansion of genre boundaries. It has been convinced and determined that the hard, productive work of J. Runeberg contributed to the expansion of the Fennomans’ social base with a focus exclusively on the Finnish-speaking poor population of rural areas and suburbs. Quite naturally that the situation in Naddnipryanshchyna was qualitatively different: for a long time, Ukrainian national activists, except for T. Shevchenko, consciously focused almost exclusively on science, literature, and journalism, without paying much attention to the education of their compatriots and the subjectivization of society, which directly influenced the misunderstanding by the masses of the principles of the proclaimed national idea. It is emphasized, that the main goal of both studied «pen masters» of the middle of the 19th century shows examples worthy of imitation; to awaken in the people a feeling of love for the homeland: Finland and Ukraine, which were under the rule of the Romanov monarchy. There is also mentioned the influence of the ideas of Romanticism, which contributed to the formation of a new system of values and worldview among J. Runeberg and T. Shevchenko.