Narrative
The Stone Cross
Камінний хрест
Vasyl Stefanyk · 1900
Opening lines
Відколи Івана Дідуха запам'ятали в селі ґаздою, відтоді він мав усе лиш одного коня й малий візок з дубовим дишлом.
For as long as the village remembered Ivan Didukh as a householder, he had had only one horse and a small cart with an oak shaft.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from uk.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Ivan Didukh has come back from ten years in the army to find his parents dead and, for all his property, the highest and most ungrateful piece of the village hillside. He has carried manure up it on his back all his life, so much so that the village calls him the Broken One. His wife and sons have decided to leave for Canada; the old man has sold everything and invites the whole village to drink a farewell with him. On his hill, he has had a stone cross erected.
Context
The story is drawn from a real event: a man from Rusiv, Stefan Didukh, set up on his field a cross carved from stone before emigrating to Canada, and it is still there. The author, then a student in Kraków, would see Galician emigrants changing trains at the station. Published in 1899 in the Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk of Lviv, the text opened the following year its author's second collection, to which it gave its title. In 1968 Leonid Osyka made from it, with a second story, a film from a screenplay by Ivan Drach. It appeared in English in 1971 and in French in 1975.
Who it is for
Seven short chapters, written in the speech of Pokuttia mixed with the literary language, which translations render poorly. The narrative rests almost entirely on the man's words of farewell to his neighbours.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's best-known work, it is studied in Ukrainian schools.
Sources for this page 12
The pages consulted to check this page.