“That makes great difference to me”. 210th anniversary of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko

March 9 is the birthday of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. He is a national hero and a symbol of Ukraine. Shevchenko's literary heritage became the basis of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, of the literary Ukrainian language.
Taras Shevchenko was born on March 9, 1814, in a family of peasant serfs. He had a natural talent as an artist and a poet and was severely condemned for poetry against the Russian tsar. He was sent for ten years to Orenburg, near the Caspian Sea, to do hard military service with a ban on writing and drawing. However, he secretly wrote and drew.
Shevchenko wrote the poem "It makes no difference to me" in 1847, before this exile, while he was in the casemate, awaiting the verdict.
In the 2017 documentary “Ukrainian Rhapsody”, Shevchenko's poem to the music of the outstanding Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko was recorded for BIS record by baritone Luthando Qave from South Africa and Natalia Pasichnyk, a pianist born in Ukraine. Both of them now live and work in Sweden.