Vynnychenko was born to a poor peasant family on 28 July 1880 in the city of Yelysavethrad (Kirovohrad today) in the steppe region of south-central Ukraine (at that time part of the Russian Empire). After graduating from the gymnasium in 1899, he wandered through the country, a common practice of the revolutionary intelligentsia in the Russian Empire. The goal of “khodinnia v narod” [going to the people] was to observe the life of various strata of the population. Their efforts were also connected with the socialist ideals of the intelligentsia, which aimed to enlighten the illiterate peasantry and improve social...

Literary critics have tended to frame Vynnychenko’s stay abroad in terms of two concepts – émigré and exile, which indeed were dominant faces of his displacement. Such critics have also taken for granted Vynnychenko’s orientation towards Ukraine, focusing on hardships of his displacement. They have referred to his time abroad as “difficult” (Doroshkevych, 219), as a “miserable existence” (Richytsky, 11) and, in the Soviet time in a more ideological vein, as part of an “emigrant rubbish heap” (Shabliovsky, 48). Displacement, however, is a complex phenomenon, and I will challenge the established approach to reveal another face of Vynnychenko’s displacement – the face...

The practice of exile has its beginnings with the advent of settled and socially organized societies. The first known human experience of exile, the story of Sinuhe (documented on an Egyptian papyrus), dates back to 2000 BC (Tabori, 43). The limited social mobility, settled way of life, and minimal knowledge of the “other” in geographical and cultural terms in early societies meant that physical expulsion from the homeland was one of the most severe forms of punishment, almost equivalent to death.¹ Exile is connected to a range of other important signifiers: separation, loss, alienation, loneliness, and nostalgia. Having undergone “a...

In 1920, Vynnychenko found himself in a new displacement, which would last for more than thirty years until his death in 1951. The writer had plunged actively into politics after his illegal return to Ukraine in 1914, and from 1917 to 1920 he was one of the leaders of the Ukrainian revolution. He was the first Chair of the Ukrainian government, 1917–18, and head of the revolutionary Directory, 1918–19. After the collapse of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), Vynnychenko left the country and resided briefly in Semmering, Budapest, Lienz, Vienna, and Prague. In the Czech capital of Prague...

The reactions of displaced writers who remain outside their homelands for a considerable period of time generally range between two extreme groups – isolationism and universalism. According to Rubchak, for writers who belong to the first group, writing becomes either “a vehicle for memories and hopes or a totally self-enclosed shell” (101). Thomas Mann speaks about another extreme which he experienced personally: “Exile has become something quite different from what it once was; it is no longer a condition of waiting programmed for an ultimate return, but rather [it] hints of the dissolution of nations and the unification of the world”...

The waning years mark a stage in life when it is natural for people to feel nostalgic and recollect their pasts. Kathleen Woodward and Murray Schwartz argue that “aging anticipates loss,” which intensifies the work of memory and fantasy (3). Although it is generally understood that the elderly experience a waning in their ability to remember, the decline mainly affects the recall of new learning, while the capacity to vividly recall episodes from the past may be high and even stronger than that of young adults (Burke, 124–6). Verbal narrative, imagery, and emotions are the three main components of...