Ukraine and Lebanon reimagined : cosmopolitanism and nationalism in the works of Taras Shevchenko and Mikhail Naimy

Abstract

In this thesis, I attempt to trace the aesthetic, cultural and literary connections that exist between the works of the nineteenth-century Ukrainian poet and painter, Taras Shevchenko, and the twentieth-century Lebanese writer, poet and artist, Mikhail Naimy, despite the differences that exist between the time in which they lived, their native languages, their socio-political backgrounds and some of the places to which they traveled. To do so, I analyze two of Shevchenko’s best-known epic poems, “The Dream” and The Caucasus,” which he wrote during different stages of his troubled life. “The Dream” is composed of two parts, the first written in 1844 in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, and the second in 1847 during his exile in the southeast steppe region of Orsk. “The Caucasus” was written in 1845 in his native Ukraine. I compare these poems to Naimy’s writings in his autobiographical trilogy Sab’ūn: Story of a Lifetime, which describes his life in Lebanon and subsequent travels to Palestine, Ukraine, and the United States, and with other texts from a collection of his stories entitled A New Year. Drawing on the parallelisms that exist between the history, ideology and policies of the two foremost Eastern empires, the Russian and the Ottoman, I try to find common themes in the writings of Shevchenko and Naimy, particularly as they reflect their extraordinary experiences and political positions. Two concepts that are widely utilized in this study are Benedict Anderson’s notion of “imagined communities” and contemporary notions of “cosmopolitanism,” especially as described in the essays contained in Cosmopolitanism, edited by Bruce Robbins and Paulo Horta. In chapter one, I describe Shevchenko, the historical events and the socio-political circumstances that shaped his identity as simultaneously a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, and a bilingual, cosmopolitan traveler, writer and artist. I analyze