Student Years
His primary education Stefanyk obtained in the Sniatyn City school and later studied in Polish gymnasiums of Kolomea and Drohobytsch. He was excluded from the Kolomea gymnasium for participation in a revolutionary circle. Upon graduation from the Drohobytsch gymnasium he enrolled into the Krakow's University (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 Krakow, 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.
Read more about this topic: Vasyl Stefanyk
Famous quotes containing the words student and/or years:
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)