The Stone Cross (Ukrainian: «Камі́нний хрест», romanized: Kaminnyi Hrest) is an epic psychological novel written in 1900 by Ukrainian writer Vasyl Stefanyk. The story is dedicated to the farewell of emigrant peasants to their native land before leaving for Canada at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, after leaving the homeland of old Ivan Didukh. The author reveals the depressing feelings of the emigrant at the moment of his break with his native village and a piece of land, in the cultivation of which he invested all his life and must leave.
Genre specifics According to genre features, The Stone Cross is a short story. However, by analogy with many other works of the writer, it is called a novel. The author himself called his work a studio, i.e., an artistic study of the inner world of the protagonist. "The Stone Cross," in this case, is a study of the soul of a Ukrainian peasant worker, whose social circumstances force him to break the age-old connection with the soil where he grew up. The author emphasizes the diligence and virtue of the hero over other aspects of life. The desire to leave a memory - to put a stone cross on the hill - has a deep psychological connotation. Ivan Didukh puts a cross on his blood-soaked field and buries himself alive. However, he wants to live in the memory of his descendants, and he wants this cross to connect him to his native village both when he is far away in a foreign land and when he is not alive. The work raises the problem of eternal connection with the native land; conscientious work on the land as a manifestation of national ethics and morality, as a duty, the only means and justification of the existence of the peasant; mass impoverishment of peasants, which caused a wave of emigration overseas.
Plot
The novel is composed of seven chapters.
The first chapter The first chapter serves as an exposure, which reveals the hero's background. The former mercenary Ivan Didukh, who had served 10 years in the imperial army, returned home and found only a dilapidated house and the worst part of the field on a barren sandhill, inherited from his dead parents. And even though Ivan brought the money from the army, with which he bought a good land and became owner, he still undertook to cultivate the mound, setting himself an ambitious goal: forcing this mound to produce bread. Ivan devoted his whole life to achieving this goal. Every year he harnessed himself next to a horse and took manure, covered the hill with sod so that the rains would not wash away the soil, and cultivated the field. He lost his strength in taking care of the hump, and the work bent him in an arc, for which Ivan was called Perelamaniy (broken) in the village. He denied himself everything he needed, went to church only on Easter, had lunch in a hurry, without even sitting at the table; trained chickens who did not dare to rake the manure because every small thing was destined for the hump, every minute of time was given to work. It is noticeable sаy that Ivan works on the hill, and his relatives cultivate other fields. Exhaustive work on a barren hill and a great desire to master it appear as a duel with a powerful opponent, like a duel of two giants: on the one hand, it is a hill, a "terrible giant"; on the other hand, he is an exhausted worker, a small man whose creative work turns a barren hill into a flowering field, and therefore Ivan's shadow on the hill in the rays of the setting sun looks like the shadow of a giant. Ivan transforms the embodiment of his dream, about which he says: "Oh no, God forbid, ran into an arc! But as long as he has no legs, he must give birth to bread!" The author's final words sound enthusiastic: "Such was Ivan, strange both in nature and in work."
The second chapter In the second chapter, which serves as a tie, Ivan, finally succumbing to the persuasion of his sons, decides to emigrate to Canada. The reader is presented with pictures of Ivan's farewell to his fellow villagers, whom he invited to his household before leaving abroad. He thanked the people who came to say goodbye, treated them to vodka, and spoke kind words to them. He turned to Mikhail's godfather, Timothy's godmother, and shouted at the woman to cry less and watch the guests more. The writer avoids unnecessary descriptions, forcing the protagonist to reveal himself, makes maximum use of dialogues and monologues. Thus, he focuses on describing the emotional drama of the hero, who is compared to a stone that was thrown, albeit from a difficult, but native place. With stingy strokes, the author conveys the longing that tears the soul of the sаe hero: "He gritted his teeth like a millstone, threatened the woman with his fist like a bullet and beat in the chest."
The third chapter In the third chapter, Ivan explains to people the reasons for his decision to leave, about how difficult it was for him because hard work has completely exhausted him, he does not have the strength to start a new life overseas. He was forced to agree because of the future of his sons, for whom there was no prospect in his native land. Neighbors comfort Ivan, emphasizing the complete hopelessness of the peasants: "This land is not worthy of restraining a few people and of enduring a few troubles. The man is not worthy, and she is not worthy", on the fact that soon he will have to leave himself. Ivan appreciates the support, but he cannot accept this situation calmly; when he has to leave the world in his old age from his native place, he is frightened by an unknown life, which for him is like death. He publicly apologizes to his wife Catherine for the wrongs he did to her during her married life, as before her death, because he does not know whether they will survive the crossing of the ocean or die on the way.
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