Babii, Oles

Babii, Oles [Бабій, Олесь; Babij, Oles'], b 17 March 1897 in Serednie, Kalush county, Galicia, d 2 March 1975 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Teacher, poet, writer, journalist, playwright, and literary critic. In 1922 he was one of the Galician symbolist poets grouped around the journal Mytusa in Lviv, after which he switched to the writing of nationalist poems and prose. Persecuted by the Polish authorities for his involvement with the Ukrainian Military Organization, Babii moved in 1924 to Prague, where he received his Ph D in literature in 1929 from the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute. After returning to Lviv, he was arrested in 1931 and spent four years in prison. After the Second World War he lived briefly in Munich and then emigrated in 1949 to the United States of America. Babii is the author of the poetry collections Nenavyst' i liubov (Hatred and Love, 1921), Poeziï (Poems, 1923), Hutsul's'kyi kurin' (The Hutsul Kurin, 1927), Perekhrestia (Crossroads, 1930), Za shchastia omanoiu (After the Delusion of Happiness, 1930), Pozhnyv'ia (After the Harvest, 1937), Zhnyva (The Harvest, 1946), Svit i liudyna (The World and Man, 1947), and Povstantsi (The Insurgents, 1956). His prose includes the sketches Shukaiu liubovy (I Search for Love, 1921), the story collection Hniv (Anger, 1922), and the short war novels Pershi stezhi (First Patrols, 1937), Dvi sestry (Two Sisters, 1938), and Ostanni (The Last Ones, 1938). Babii also wrote three plays and many articles of literary criticism, including studies on Mykola Yevshan (1930) and William Shakespeare (1965).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]