Vasyl Stus and Russian Culture : a complex issue

My paper is part of a larger project, aimed at studying the many influences and intertextual connections of Vasyl’ Stus, one of the figures of key significance for contemporary Ukrainian cultural identity, with writers of both Western and Russian literature. Scholarship on Stus is growing very quickly, but still fails to grasp the richness of his knowledge of foreign literatures. More specifically, studies on the last, hard twenty years of his life often cast a shadow on a truly scientific approach to his literary heritage. For quite obvious reasons, one of the most neglected aspects of his biography as a poet is the role of Russian language, culture and literature on his artistic development. I here contend that a detailed study of the writer’s Russian readings and of the possible influence they might have had on his work would help better understand his literary genealogy, his way of thinking and his poetic work. Discussions of works and authors of Russian literature constitute a significant part of his letters. Russian (Soviet) reviews and translations were often for him the key to various foreign literatures and cultures. Russian writers and thinkers aroused his interest in a particular, "privileged" way. Special attention should also be paid to the role of the particular Donbas culture in shaping the identity of the young Stus. This is quite evident in his prose.