Vasyl Stus: Life in Creativity

by Dmytro Stus

Nobody knows how to explain the mystery of fame. Many once well-known people who spent much of their lives at the core of historic events have fallen into oblivion since. The brilliant East Ukrainian poet and Soviet-era dissident Vasyl Stus (1938-85) became renowned only after his reburial in late Soviet Ukraine in 1989. What are the reasons for the widespread admiration for him in post-Soviet Ukrainian society? The exceptional beauty of his poetry? His stunning courage and selflessness as a Soviet dissident? The irreconcilability of his position as a human being? Or/and Vasyl Stus' ability to feel the pain of others as his own?

Trying to answer these and other questions, the poet's son and literary scholar Dmytro Stus masterfully combines a cultural and biographical study with private recollections and observations of his father. The book offers a sometimes-paradoxical merger of genres mixing academic analysis with novelistic narration. It shows Vasyl Stus through the eyes of his son and researcher against the background of twentieth-century Ukrainian "belated" emergence as a nation-state. The Ukrainian edition of this book won Ukraine's prestigious Shevchenko National Prize.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3838216318
• ISBN13: 9783838216317
• Release Date: November 2022
• Publisher: Ibidem Press
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.7" x 8.4"