Vortex gathers a wide-ranging selection of poetry by Vasyl Stus (1938–1985), one of the central figures of twentieth-century Ukrainian literature, an uncompromising dissident, Gulag prisoner, and translator of Goethe and Rilke. Widely regarded as the moral voice of his generation, Stus wrote under Soviet persecution and died in a labor camp, yet he transformed historical extremity into poetry of exceptional philosophical depth and psychological intensity.
This bilingual volume presents the most substantial English-language selection of Stus's work to date, spanning from his experimental early poems and a grotesque vision of Soviet totalitarianism to intricate, multilayered meditations written in the Gulag. This volume reveals a poet of rare lyrical power whose voice moves between history and the human condition, confronting freedom, justice, and self-creation with singular ethical force.