Quiet, Vasil

Born in a large family of a middle peasant. He graduated from a village school, studied at Zenkovskaya and Poltava gymnasiums. On the advice of his parents, he entered the agronomic school, but did not finish it, succumbing to the attraction to literary work, which, under the influence of his fellow countryman A. Zalivchy, attracted him from a young age.

He began to publish in 1923. He was a member of the Union of Proletarian-Collective Farm Writers " Plow ", then joined WAPLIT and, after its liquidation, joined the " Prolife Front ".

Being a friend of E. Pluzhnik and G. Epik , Quiet with them was ranked among one "counter-revolutionary organization." He stated about his political views during interrogations after his arrest on December 25, 1934 in Kharkov: “I was not in any parties, I was just a nationalist, I was a pupil of Khvylovy , I was under his influence, and already in 1927-1928 it determined my future political path ". Then he was recognized as a member of the "group of nationalist writers with terrorist attitudes towards the party leaders . "

On March 27-28, 1935, at the Borotbist trial in Kiev, the Warlock, along with 16 other accused, was convicted by the visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR for 10 years in concentration camps. He was serving a link to Solovki.

By a resolution of the three UNKVD in the Leningrad Region, he was again sentenced to death. The sentence was executed on December 8, 1937.

Rehabilitated posthumously in 1956.

Quirky - a prose writer not from the "high-profile" and not from the "spectacular" from the point of view of literary technique. He observed and reproduced not the parade side of life, but the shaded, invisible and at times terrible, dramatic one. Enthusiastic described life without melodramatic tears, in an objective manner, without revealing openly either his emotions or his attitude, while taking care of the plot and the natural form of the story.

The first collection “In the Ravine” (1924), published by the Union of Peasant Writers “ Plow ”, included only four stories - “In the Ravine”, “Off-road”, “In the Forest”, “Darkness”. In each of them - a picture of the black misfortune in the village in a hungry year, which drives from home to work or pushes to crime, murder.

Similar plots in the second collection of the Enemy “Earth” (1925). The psychologically reliable, creepy story “Wolf Bayraki” (later he gave the name to the 1929 collection) is from the life of the poor. The characters live in dug-out holes on the outskirts of the city, feed and dress in garbage dumps. Some go crazy, others degenerate.

Events of the time of the NEP burst into the writer's stories. So, in Pashtetnaya, the former “powers of the world”, looking for ways to get rich after the revolution, set up a brothel under the guise of a sweets shop.

The urgent problems of the education of the homeless are touched by the Quarter in the story "The Life of the White House", published in a separate book in 1927.

Unobtrusive irony and a “sad tone” (the latter was noted by critics of the 1920s) are attractive features of the Enthusiastic narrative. For many of his works, human mercy and cruelty, sometimes unmotivated, became the dominant motive. A psychological study on this subject is “Chamber without a Number”, which was included in the second edition of the collection “Youth” (1929). On several pages, the real tragedy of a terminally ill, lonely teacher, victim of a sadistic prosecutor unfolds.

Moral and ethical problems - in the field of view of the author in the stories "Youth" and "Letter to a friend." They are united to a certain extent by an autobiographical moment, witty sketches of student life - hungry and cold. There are impoverished neighborhoods of the NEP era - as a contrast to the well-fed existence of “NEPMans”, and secret crimes, and gossip-gossip.

In 1929, almost the best work of the Enthusiastic appeared - the story "Father", placed in the collection "Youth" and published as a separate edition. To develop social and moral issues, the author chose an unusual, at least for Ukrainian prose of the 1920s, situation: the son of a priest becomes a revolutionary, after October 1917, at party work. However, the focus is not on the son, but on the father, who is deeply suffering from separation from his son. And although his renunciation of the dignity is not an act of adaptation to circumstances, nevertheless, he secretly hopes that his son’s heart will thaw. Deprived of livelihood, about. Vasily lives in a guard almost in a beggarly position and, without waiting for the slightest attention from his son, commits suicide. In 1930, a Russian translation of the story was published.

In the early 1930s, the writer travels to Kazakhstan. In 1932, his essays on the Caspian appeared - "Deep Intelligence". The trips gave him material for the novel Victory (1932) and the novel The Work of the Heart (1933), which talked about socialist construction in Kazakhstan, in particular, the struggle for oil in Kara-Kuga on the Caspian Sea. These last works of the Enthusiastic quite fit into the context of the best Ukrainian, and not only Ukrainian, so-called “production novels” of the early 1930s: “The Mezhgorye novel” by I. Le, “Time forward” by V. Kataev , “Quartzite” O. Preface and others.

Among the translations of the Warbler is the novel “Shagreen Skin” by Balzac (1929).

On the part of the reviewers, the Quirky constantly sounded petty quibbles, then widespread accusations of "biologism", in attention to the dark sides of life.

• In the summer. - H., 1924.
• Land. - H., 1925.
• Living a white bud. - H., 1927.
• Old Man. - H., 1929.
• Vovchi Bayraki. - H., 1929.
• Youth. - H., 1929.
• Six items. - H.-K., 1930.
• Peremoga. - H., 1932.
• Glibokі rosvidki. Narisi about Caspiy. - H., 1932.
• Right heart. - H., 1933.

In Russian

• Father; [Chamber without number: Stories] / Transl. with Ukrainian O. Gartseva; Foreword V. Derzhavin . - M. — L .: State. Publishing House, 1930. - 134, [2] p.

• Vasil Vrazlivy (Ukrainian)