In the organizer's words:

What connects the Ukrainian poet and dissident Vasyl Stus (1938-1985) with the most important German-language poet of the post-war period, Paul Celan (1920-1970)? Both are considered contemporaries, although Stus was 18 years younger than Celan and outlived him by 15 years.
outlived him by 15 years. Both come from the regions of today's Ukraine. Both were persecuted as young people by totalitarian regimes - Celan by the Romanian Nazi henchmen, Stus by the Soviet secret services. Both were uncompromising in their lives and in their poetry, both tried to break new ground. Both died early, before they reached the age of 50, and it was not a natural death, but a physical and psychological after-effect of ethnic and political persecution. The word "Ukraine" appears several times in poems by both of them, albeit in different contexts. The most important thing, however, is that the Ukrainian poet Stus was one of the first to discover and translate Celan's poems into Ukrainian.

In the late 1960s, while Celan was still alive, Vasyl Stus read his poems for the first time in Russian translations by Lev Ginsburg, which made a deep impression on him, but also triggered critical objections. He made the decision to translate them into Ukrainian after reading Celan's "Todesfuge". In the early 1970s, Stus translated a total of 12 of Celan's poems, which were only published a quarter of a century later, after the death of both poets, as part of a multi-volume edition of Stus' works.

The lecture by Ukrainian literary scholar and translator Petro Rychlo, professor of foreign language literature at the National Jurij Fedkowytsch University in Czernowitz, will look at the historical and biographical background of these translations and
analyzes them in detail through the prism of Vasyl Stus' translation work in comparison with the German originals.

A joint event by the Gerhart Hauptmann House Foundation, Karl Arnold Foundation, Consulate General of Ukraine in NRW, Düsseldorf City Libraries, Pilecki Institute Berlin, Düsseldorfer Beiträge "Respekt und Mut", Ridne Slowo e. V., Verein zur Förderung der Städtepartnerschaft Düsseldorf-Czernowitz e. V. and the Studyon Institute for Language and Interculture Düsseldorf and Lviv, co-financed by the European Union.

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM

As part of the exhibition on Vasyl Stus and the "Ukraine is here" series of events, visitors can look forward to a varied accompanying program of concerts, performances and readings. In addition to the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Haus, other cultural venues in Düsseldorf will also be involved in the program