Wahnsinnig Liebe Ich Das Leben

Mykola Khvylovyi (1893–1933) was one of the most important authors of Ukrainian modernism and a central figure of the so-called “Shot Revival”—that generation of artists persecuted under Stalin’s terror.

His literary work represents the dream of Ukrainian cultural self-assertion amidst revolutionary upheaval. Khvylovyi consciously turned away from the Russian language and oriented himself toward European movements such as French Symbolism and German Romanticism.

As a combative intellectual, he criticized Russian cultural imperialism and shaped the cultural life of the 1920s through journal projects, pamphlets, and novellas. His suicide in 1933 is considered the symbolic end of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance.