Vasyl Stus is not only a poet of rare talent, a publicist, translator, and literary scholar but also a person who embodies «the voice of conscience in a world of shaky and blurred notions of honor, truth, and decency.» Almost half of his life was spent in Soviet detention centers, punishment cells, solitary confinement, and labor camps in Mordovia and Kolyma. His poems included in this collection are the finest examples of Vasyl Stus’s lyrical work. In these lines, civic motives and the artist’s pain for Ukraine intertwine with the delicate fabric of love lyrics and philosophical reflections on life and human destiny. The poems are filled with hope and a willpower stronger than steel.
