Topos "Sacred Light" in Taras Shevchenko's Poetry

Abstract

Background. Taras Shevchenko repeatedly uses the image of "quiet light". This image comes from Christian hymnography. "Quiet Light" is one of the oldest Christian hymns. This is not only the gratitude of believers for the day that has passed: worship of natural light, as was the case among the pagans, is here replaced by worship of the spiritual light – Jesus Christ. In the Greek original of the hymn "φώς ίλαρόν" literally means "light of joy", however, in our tradition the translation, and therefore the image of Christ, as a "quiet" light, has become entrenched. This epithet is very successful and is not inferior in beauty and power to the original image. 
Methods. The article is based on a combination of intertextual, 
comparative, and contextual methods. 
Results. In Shevchenko, the image of the "tykhyj svit" is used primarily in the meaning of "quiet light". The main allegory of the Christian hymn – the evening light as Christ-God, is transferred by the poet to Ukraine. In this way, the sacralization of the Motherland takes place. Shevchenko often depicted the happy future of Ukraine in the coordinates of apocalyptic ideas, using images of a renewed earth and the Kingdom of God on it. In this context, the end of the message "To the dead and to the living…" can be interpreted as a premonition of the rebirth of the Ukrainian land, associated with the parousia – the second coming of the Son of God in Glory – no longer as an evening, but as a bright light. 
Despite the presence in the poem "O Light clear! O Light quiet!" of calls for the destruction of "shrines", it is not blasphemous, anti-Christian or anticlerical. In this poem, Shevchenko satirically exposes the most powerful political instrument of the empire – the church without Christ. 
Conclusions. Shevchenko most often gives the image of the "quiet light" the meaning of sacred light and connects it with the person of Christ, which testifies to the direct intertextual connection of his poems with the Greek hymn. Using the image of the "quiet light", Shevchenko calls for the renewal of the Church of Christ, sacralizes Ukraine and paints its happy future.