Vasyl Stefanyk
| Vasyl Stefanyk Василь Семенович Стефаник |
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| Born | Vasyl Semenovych Stefanyk May 14, 1871 Rusiv, Galicia, Austro-Hungary |
| Died | December 7, 1936 (aged 65) Rusiv, Stanisławów Province, Poland |
| Occupation | prose writer and political activist |
| Language | Ukrainian, Polish, German |
| Nationality | Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland |
| Ethnicity | Ukrainian |
| Alma mater | Krakow University |
| Period | Young Poland |
| Genre | Expressionism |
| Notable works | Stone Cross (1900) |
Vasyl Semenovych Stefanyk (Ukrainian: Василь Семенович Стефаник; May 14, 1871 – December 7, 1936) was an influential Ukrainian modernist writer and political activist. He was a member of the Austrian parliament from 1908 to 1918.
Vasyl Stefanyk was born on May 14, 1871 in the village of Rusiv in the family of a well-to-do peasant. He was born in the historical region of Pokuttya, then part of Austro-Hungary. Today it is part of the Sniatyn Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. He died on December 7, 1936 in the same village, Rusiv, at that time the part of Poland.
His primary education Stefanyk was at the Sniatyn City school. He later studied at Polish gymnasia in Kolomea and Drohobytsch. He was excpelled from the Kolomea gymnasium for participation in a revolutionary group. He eventually graduated from the Drohobytsch gymnasium, and enrolled in the University Kraków in 1892. During his student years Stefanyk became acquainted with Oles Martovych and Lev Bachynsky, both of whom had an influence on his life: Les turned him to writing, and Lev steered him toward community-political involvement. Later, while he was a student of medicine at Jagiellonian University Collegium Medicum in Kraków, Stefanyk was befriended by the Polish Doctor Wacław Moraczewski and his wife, Doctor Sofia Okunevska, who acquainted him with contemporary European culture and literature and with the members of the then-fashionable Polish avant-garde group Młoda Polska, particularly with Stanisław Przybyszewski, Władysław Orkan and Stanisław Wyspianski. The hectic and interesting Bohemian life is reflected in Stefanyk's letters, in which references to the works of modernist authors, such as Charles Baudelaire, Gottfried Keller, Paul Verlaine, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Paul Bourget, abound. Stefanyk's letters, full of poetic prose, lyricism, and introspection, also provide glimpses of the future master of the short story in the various narrative vignettes. Attempts to publish some of the introspective poetic prose in newspapers were unsuccessful, but in 1897 the terse narratives of scenes observed by Stefanyk appeared in Pratsia (engl- Work) (-NL-->Chernivtsi); they were followed by several novellas in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (The Literally-scientific informer, 1898) and finally by Stefanyk's first collection of novellas, Synia knyzhechka (The Blue Book, 1899). With its appearance came the immediate literary acclaim, and other collections followed: Kaminnyi khrest (The Stone Cross, 1900), Doroha (The Road, 1901), and Moye slovo (My Word, 1905). Eventually he quit his schooling in 1900.
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