Abstract
The article is dedicated to examining the reading experience of T. Shevchenko during one of the most vibrant stages of his creative history, the zenith of his poetic development and painterly self-expression – the “Three Years” period (1843–1847). This period unfolded mostly within the territory of a significant part of Ukraine, although also in Petersburg and occasionally in Moscow, in various social and educational environments. The article clarifies the reading interests of Shevchenko’s circle at that time and the extent to which they correlated with the poet’s own interests; what book collections and libraries he encountered during that period and the impression they left on him; and, finally, the nature of the artist’s encounters with texts and how he managed to even popularize his (literary) preferences, simultaneously developing his own view on the Ukrainian literary book and its exceptional historical and cultural mission. The sources of information naturally include memoir literature, the correspondence of Shevchenko and other individuals, observations of scholars, and other documentary literature on the subject. Access to the family libraries of the landed gentry, contacts with the intellectual elite of Kyiv, work in the Archaeographic Commission for the Study of Ancient Monuments, scholarly travels across Kyivshchyna, Volyn, and Podillia, as well as Shevchenko’s Moscow and Petersburg acquaintances, logically led to his discovery of books and periodical publications of various focuses – from fiction and belles-lettres to scholarly and documentary works on historical, theological, and ethnographic themes, and ethnology by Ukrainian, Russian, and Western European figures. A significant segment of such reading material, some of it rare, constitutes a new characteristic feature of Shevchenko’s reconstructed reading record, which, in turn, explains the uniqueness of the poet’s contribution to the development of the social sciences and humanities of the time. Moreover, the intertextuality of the prose written by the poet in exile, under conditions of severe restrictions on access to books, also stems from the “Three Years” period. Shevchenko’s preface to the unrealized 1847 edition of the “Kobzar” is also analyzed as the quintessence of the author’s reading and, simultaneously, civic convictions, and as a turning point in the intellectual history of Ukraine.