‘A FRAGMENT OF WHOLENESS’: THE MAKING OF THE POETIC SUBJECT IN VASYL STUS’S PALIMPSESTS Bohdan Tokarskyi St John’s College University of Cambridge The dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2019 PREFACE This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit of 80,000 words. ii ABSTRACT Bohdan Tokarskyi ‘A Fragment of Wholeness’: The Making of the Poetic Subject in Vasyl Stus’s Palimpsests My PhD thesis investigates the exploration of the self and the innovative poetical language in the works of the Ukrainian dissident poet and Gulag prisoner Vasyl Stus (1938-1985). Focusing on Stus’s magnum opus collection Palimpsests (1971-1979), where the poet casts the inhuman conditions of his incarceration to the periphery and instead engages in radical introspection, I show how Stus’s poetry foregrounds the very making of the subject as the constant pursuit of the authentic self. Through my examination of unpublished archival materials, analysis of Stus’s underexplored poems, and the contextualisation of the poet’s works within the tradition of the philosophy of becoming, I propose a new reading of Palimpsests, one that redirects scholarly attention from the historical and political to the psychological and philosophical. This new perspective allows me to explore the writer’s complex concept of authenticity, which oscillates between ‘recollection’ and ‘repetition’, the desire for sameness and the temporal non-coincidence of the self. It affords the opportunity to analyse Stus’s unique poetical language, which captures the very coming-to-be of the subject before it reaches any stable identity. Palimpsests enacts repetition-as-difference on the level of words, poems, and the collection as a whole. I scrutinise the permeating self-doubling in Stus’s poetry and show that the central poetic persona in Palimpsests is, unusually, not ‘I’ but ‘you’ – the specular double of the speaker. This self-address positions ‘oneself as another’ and leads me to assert that Stus’s Palimpsests opens up new avenues for the study of lyric address as such. I contend that the process of the making of the self surpasses the poet’s text and his own historical circumstances and involves the reader in the process of self-writing. My thesis reshapes our understanding of Stus’s verse and contributes to the study of subjectivity and authenticity in Soviet dissident literature and in the Ukrainian tradition of metaphysical poetry. iii iv NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION In this thesis, I use the modified Library of Congress system without diacritics and ligatures for the transliteration of Ukrainian and Russian. For the sake of readability, I omit the soft sign (‘ь’) and do not transliterate it with an apostrophe. The Ukrainian letters ‘і’, ‘ї’, ‘й’ are all transliterated as ‘i’ in English. For the transliteration of ‘зг’ I use the combination ‘zgh’ to distinguish it from ‘ж’ (‘zh’). v vi ABBREVIATIONS Works by Vasyl Stus S* Tvory: u chotyrokh tomakh (shesty knyhakh). Z dodatkovymy 5 i 6 (u dvokh knyhakh) tomamy (Lviv: Prosvita, 1994-1999) P Zibrannia tvoriv: u dvanadtsiaty tomakh. Tom 5. Palimpsesty (Naipovnishyi nezavershenyi korpus) (Kyiv: Fakt, 2009) Pa Palimpsesty: Virshi 1971-1979 rokiv, ed. by Nadia Svitlychna (New York: Suchasnist, 1986) DZ Zibrannia tvoriv: u dvanadtsiaty tomakh. Tom 3. Chas tvorchosti / Dichtenszeit (Kyiv: Fakt, 2008) ZD Zymovi dereva (Brussels: Literatura i mystetstvo, 1970) * I refer to this edition as ‘S volume, book: page’. E.g. ‘S VI, 1: 480’ stands for p. 480 in book 1 of volume VI. vii viii Завжди любити, щоб завжди помилятися. Але – завжди любити. І відтак існувати, а існувати – це помилятися. Василь Стус Always to love to always err. But – to always love. And therefore to exist, because to exist is to err. Vasyl Stus ix x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Working on this thesis has been a long journey and at the end of it (which is but another stop) I feel that I only start to approach the magnetic and mesmerising works of Vasyl Stus. This journey has not always been easy and straightforward, but I have been blessed with love and support from so many outstanding people, who are all part of this thesis in one way or another. I am deeply grateful to my supervisor Dr Rory Finnin. It all started with you giving a chance to an international law student, and I have been incredibly fortunate to have your support every step of the way. Thank you for your patience with that voluminous folder filled with the many drafts of my work and for our countless many-hour conversations at Adams Road and beyond. With whom else would I speak about Stus alongside quantum physics and celestial bodies? For your generosity, rigour, and kindness I will always be deeply grateful. It has been a privilege to learn from you both as a scholar and as a person. I am proud to have been a Gates scholar and a member of St John’s College, and I am immensely grateful to the Gates Trust and to my College for funding my research and for recognising its importance. Without this, and without the generous moral and practical support of the amazing people working both with Gates and at St John’s, this thesis would not have been possible. A great thank you is also due to the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme, which has given me important opportunities and has been a home for me over this time. I am also very grateful to Bohdan Hawrylyshyn and Ihor Bardyn for your support in funding my Master’s, which was the crucial stepping stone for my PhD project. My gratitude goes to all of my colleagues at the Department (now Section) of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. It has been a great pleasure to work with you. I would like to say thank you to my adviser Dr Olenka Pevny for your solid academic support, your enthusiasm, and your kind-hearted attitude, which I have really appreciated during these years. I am grateful to Dr Stanley Bill for your valuable suggestions and encouragement at different stages of my work, and for being an inspiration for me. I am thankful to Olga Płócienniczak – for your door always being open and for our special conversations. This is also a great chance to say thank you to our Ukrainian Studies cohort at Cambridge, Drs and future Drs: Ivan Kozachenko, Daria Mattingly, Jon Roozenbeek, Iryna Shuvalova, and Maria Terentieva. Thank you for our stimulating discussions and for all the cups of tea that we have shared. An additional thank you to Jon for your skillful programming that has helped me to look at Stus’s texts in a different way. I would like to say thank you to Dr Martin Crowley for taking interest in my work and for helping me to consider Stus’s works within a broader context. I am grateful to Dr Vitaly Chernetsky for making it all the way to Cambridge for my viva, and for your insightful comments that have certainly made this thesis a better piece of work. Stus Studies have been expanding in a big-bang fashion, and I am grateful to other Stus scholars Dr Alessandro Achilli, Dr Halyna Kolodkevych, Dr Tetiana Mykhailova, and Professor Liudmyla Tarnashynska for the opportunity to share our fascination with Stus and to learn from your work. I am indebted to Dr Dmytro Stus – thank you for your openness, for the insights about Vasyl Stus’s life and art that you have shared with me, and, of course, for your dedicated efforts, which have made it possible to relish Vasyl Stus’s works. Meeting Valentyna Popeliukh was xi unforgettable – thank you for your warm welcome and for sharing your sacred memories with me. I am also grateful to Vasyl Ovsiienko – you have been a powerful voice of your generation, whose significance we are yet to comprehend. Thank you for preserving this memory and for teaching me that Stus put the stress on Зимові деревá. I am thankful to my esteemed colleagues in Germany and France, Professors Iryna Dmytryshyn, Susanne Frank, and Andrii Portnov for being so welcoming and for broadening my horizons. I would like to express my gratitude to my dear friends in Ukraine and beyond. To Kateryna Busol – for being a special presence in my life and an example for me in important ways. To Vasyl Liutyi – for our strong friendship that has withstood time and, of course, for our table tennis rallies. I am thankful to Geoffrey Engel for the consolation of philosophy and for the unique gift of our intellectual kinship. And to Giovanni Miglianti – thank you for being my inspiring sparring partner during our Master’s and for our continued friendship ever since. I am grateful to my ever-present mentor Dr Mykola Gnatovskyy, for your unfailing guidance and care, and for always finding the time. I would like to say thank you to my housemates and friends at Brooks Road, Drs and future Drs: Rosie Finlinson, Oliver Mayeux, Martin Michel, and Syamala Roberts. Our house was my happiest abode in Cambridge.