Verbalization of religious concepts in Taras Shevchenko’s diary

Abstract

The article is devoted to the chosen aspects of the verbalization of the concept sphere ‘religion’ in Taras Shevchenko’s diary. Such concepts as ‘Christianity’, ‘priest’ or ‘church’ are analyzed, which allows to draw conclusions about Shevchenko’s attitude towards religion. The diarist respects the Christian religion for its ideas of charity and forgiveness, which is verbalized by the usage of the lexeme христианский (Christian) as a contextual synonym to the adjective свободный (free) introducing meanings of ‘brotherly love’, ‘humanity’ and ‘equality’ in the text. The poet understands the word христианин (a Christian) in his own way and associates it with ‘decency’, ‘kindness’, ‘purity of thoughts’ and ‘sincerity’.

Even though Shevchenko highly estimated religion, faith and Christianity, he was critical of the Russian Orthodox Church. He considered it one of the tsar’s tools in internal policy and therefore used the lexeme православный (orthodox) with irony in order to verbalize such senses as ‘imperfection’, ‘mercilessness’ and ‘cruelty’. Shevchenko’s attitude towards religious practices is ambiguous – the poet experiences a wide range of feelings – from delight to disappointment. The diarist uses certain lexemes to nominate temples. Sometimes they are employed to verbalize negative meanings such as ‘unreal’, ‘histrionic’, ‘unfamiliar’, ‘contradictory’, ‘intolerable’, which is connected with the imperial meaning of Byzantinism. Shevchenko’s diary abounds in names of priests used with ironic-negative connotation, which resembles the traditional image of the clergy in the Ukrainian linguistic culture.