One Book Display

To commemorate Taras Shevchenko’s 200th Anniversary the WOA Dnipropetrovsk presented a bilingual edition (in Ukrainian and English): “Taras Shevchenko. Selected poems. Paintings. Graphic Works” by “Mystetstvo” Publishers (Kyiv, 2007) – 608 p.

Shevchenko’s poetry and paintings has long been the world culture heritage. His poems are translated into many languages, but most of all – into Russian, English, German, Hungarian, Belarusian, Spanish.

The displayed edition presents the English translations by Ms. Vera Rich.

Vera Rich (1936–2009) was a British poet, journalist, historian, and translator from Belarusian and Ukrainian. Her translations of Taras Shevchenko’s works were commissioned for the century of his death (1961) and received excellent reviews, both in the West and in the Soviet Ukraine. For this work, Vera Rich was awarded an Honorary Diploma in Shevchenko Studies by the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.

The poetry is illustrated with reproductions of the best paintings and graphic works. They successfully reveal the diversity of Taras Shevchenko’s talent – both poetic and artistic.
In the preface to the edition academician Ivan Dziuba (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ) describes the main stages of Shevchenko’s life and career .The preface allows the foreign readers to understand why the poet received from the Ukrainian nation the title “Kobzar” – a bard, a professional poet in Ukrainian. His original book of poems with the same title became a bestseller soon after publishing.