#СправаВасиляСтуса Stus — Cherry | Lana Del Rey

Vasyl Stus is an Ukrainian poet and human rights activist, who is famous for the dissident movement against Soviet power of the XX century.

“Mentally I realised that prison’s gate had already been opened for me, that those days it was going to close after I enter the prison – close for a long time. But what should I have done? Ukrainians were not allowed to go abroad and I didn’t want actually – to go abroad: otherwise, who would be a voice of resentment and protest in a Great Ukraine? It is my fate, and we can’t choose a fate. We can only take it – whatever it is like. And when we don’t, it chooses us not giving us a choice… But I wasn’t going to give up by any means. Ukraine and my poor people were behind me. I have to stand for its honor until my death.”
(Vasyl Stus, from Camp Notebook)

His death is still a mystery. There are some versions. The first is a heart attack. The second is suicide. The third is a death blow by heavy plank-bed which was undone from a wall by a warden on purpose. The fourth is exposure. We are unlikely to find out what really happened, but in some days, Stus’s widow was announced about his death. Valentyna Popeliukh bought a zinc coffin and set out. In the airport, KGB agents recommended her to leave the coffin – she won’t get the body anyway. “… the most tolerant soviet law didn’t let a prisoner’s body be taken or reburied until their sentence was over. The dead were still prisoners.” (Vasyl Ovsienko)

Translation:
How good it is that I’ve no fear of dying
Nor ask myself how ponderous my toil
Nor bow to cunning magistrates, decrying
resentiments of unfamiliar soil,
That I have lived and loved, yet never burdening
My soul with hatred, curses or regret.
My people! It is to you I am returning.
In death I somehow find my fate.
I turn my pained but goodly face to living.

- Vasyl Stus
(translated by Marco Carynnyk)

Original:
Як добре те, що смерті не боюсь я
і не питаю, чи тяжкий мій хрест.
Що вам, богове, низько не клонюся
в передчутті недовідомих верств.
Що жив-любив і не набрався скверни,
ненависті, прокльону, каяття.
Народе мій, до тебе я ще верну,
і в смерті обернуся до життя
своїм стражденним і незлим обличчям,
як син, тобі доземно поклонюсь
і чесно гляну в чесні твої вічі,
і чесними сльозами обіллюсь.
Так хочеться пожити хоч годинку,
коли моя розів'ється біда.
Хай прийдуть в гості Леся Українка,
Франко, Шевченко і Сковорода.
Та вже! Мовчи! Заблуканий у пущі,
уже не ремствуй, позирай у глиб,
у суще, що розпукнеться в грядуще
і ружею заквітне коло шиб.

Василь Стус
Musiс І used in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbqLnVziQA

Видео #СправаВасиляСтуса Stus — Cherry | Lana Del Rey канала Lina Kumori