Exhibition “Unbroken in Spirit” Presented for the Birthday of Vasyl Stus

An exhibition-personalia titled “Unbroken in Spirit” has been presented to mark the birthday of Vasyl Stus.

Today we remember not just a “poet from the pages of a textbook,” but a person of incredible strength of will and resilience. Stus represents dignity that cannot be broken.

• He started going to school on his own at the age of five. Little Vasyl simply began attending lessons without his parents knowing. The teacher noticed the “extra” pupil only when she saw that he was coming to school barefoot.
• A principled Ukrainian in Donetsk. Stus always spoke Ukrainian. Once in the university cafeteria this ended in a fight: he could not tolerate disrespect toward the language from one of the visitors.
• A self-taught polyglot. Vasyl was fluent in German, Spanish, French, and English. Most of his translations of world classics (Goethe, Rilke, Lorca) were done in solitary confinement or during breaks between hard labor.
• “Those who oppose tyranny — stand up!” In 1965, during the premiere of the film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” at the “Ukraine” cinema, Stus stood up and called on people to protest against the arrests of intellectuals. The very next day he was expelled from his postgraduate studies.
• Raising his son through letters. While imprisoned, he could not see his son for years. In his letters he gave Dmytro “man-to-man” advice: how to train the body, why learning languages is important, and how to remain a Human being under any circumstances.

🕊️ Vasyl Stus died in a punishment cell of the “Perm-36” camp. The light of his word remains with us.