Oleksandr Oles
Oleksandr Oles (born Kandyba) was a Ukrainian symbolist poet and playwright. He was born on 23 November 1878 at the Kandyba farmstead near Bilopillia in the Sumy region. He studied at the Kharkiv agricultural school and then at the Kharkiv veterinary institute. He published nine poetry books, among them 'Z zhurboiu radist obnialas' and 'Komu povim pechal moiu', and several dramatic works. In 1908 he was among the staff of the Kyiv newspaper Rada. From 1920 he lived in exile in Vienna and, from 1924, in Prague. There he was close to the Ukrainian Free University, which had moved from Vienna to Prague. His son was the poet and archaeologist Oleh Olzhych. Oles died in Prague on 22 July 1944, soon after the news of his son's death in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was buried at Olšany Cemetery in Prague; in January 2017 his remains were reburied in Kyiv.Collection5