The Stone Cross

A short story by Vasyl Stefanyk about the peasant Ivan Didukh, who sells everything and leaves with his family for overseas. Before departing he raises a stone cross on his hill bearing his own name and his wife's — a gravestone for living people taking leave of a place forever. Stefanyk builds the text as a scene of parting: talk, weeping, and a dance in which old Ivan says goodbye not to people but to the land. Written in the Pokuttia dialect, the story avoids all explanation and moral; everything rests on direct speech and gesture. It became the best-known Ukrainian text about the emigration of the late nineteenth century and one of the strongest examples of short psychological prose. The story is required reading and remains the most frequently quoted of Stefanyk's texts. The story is printed together with the other texts of its collection, allowing the author's design to be seen whole.