Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
Todos Osmachka is a writer with a dramatic fate, a bright and extraordinary figure in Ukrainian literature of the 20th century. The beginning of his work falls on the period of the national renaissance of the 20s. The writer managed to survive and preserve his inner freedom in the 30s, under totalitarian conditions, during the destruction of Ukrainian culture. Having chosen the fate of an emigrant, he sought to tell about his experiences, to convey to descendants the tragedy of his generation.
Todos Stepanovych Osmachka was born in the village of Kutsivka in the Cherkasy region. He received his secondary education there. He began writing poems while still at school. In the 1920s, he graduated from the Kyiv Institute of Public Education, worked as a teacher in Kyiv schools, and joined the literary group "Lanka". He published three collections of poetry: "Krucha" (1922), "Skytskyi ognyi" (1925), and "Klekit" (1929).
Since 1926, Osmachka belonged to the MARS organization (Workshop of Revolutionary Word). In the 1930s, with the beginning of Stalinist repressions, he tried to cross the western border, but was caught, served time in Butyrka, Lukyanivka prison, underwent a course of forced treatment in the Kyrylivka psychiatric hospital, from where he escaped and hid in his native village.
In 1942, Osmachka arrived in Lviv, and from there he went to the West. He lived in camps for displaced persons, driven by persecution mania, constantly moving from place to place. He actively collaborated in the organization of émigré writers "Artistic Ukrainian Movement" (MUR).
On July 6, 1961, in Munich, Todos Osmachka suffered a stroke. Friends transported the poet to New York for treatment. On September 7, 1962, Todos Osmachka died.
– “He was one of a kind. No one followed his path. He had neither followers nor disciples. It is difficult to say who could have endured all this,” wrote the author of the novel-biography M. Slaboshpytsky about Todos Osmachka. Indeed, his whole life was filled with so many hardships and such pain that it seemed to have absorbed dozens of martyrs' lives.
The memory of the poet is alive and will live on for centuries of many generations. After all, Todos Osmachka, who carried through his entire suffering life an unwavering love for the sorrowful Ukraine, returns to us in wonderful works, good memories. In 2013, the Todos Osmachka Literary Prize was established, the first laureate of which was Myroslav Dochynets. We invite you to the college library and information center to familiarize yourself with the exhibition of literature dedicated to the Ukrainian poet, prose writer, and translator.
Svitlana ANDRIYCHUK,
Lead Librarian of the BIC
