The Repressed Body in the Existential Experiences of Vasil' Stus

Abstract

The article explores the discourse of corporeality in the poetic works of Vasyl’ Stus. In situations of constant external control (prison, exile, special regime camp), the existential conflict characteristic of Stus’s artistic worldview intensifies. The themes of internal rupture between body and spirit become more pronounced. The poet conceptualizes the soul and body not as identical to the subject; they are separated from ‘themselves’ and transcend the boundaries of the integrated, transcendent ‘I’. As a result, the physical world in which the artist exists becomes a space of non-presence. Instead, the motif of sleep as a memory-dream is activated, returning to the dreamer sensations stored in the emotional memory of the body. This conscious ‘inward journey’ becomes a form of ‘internal emigration’, allowing the poet to exist in conditions intolerable for such existence: outside his physical body, yet within the mental body’s force field.