He was not a voluminous writer. He began to produce his masterpieces when he was about thirty years of age and for a decade he worked and developed his own gemlike style and his gift of portraiture. The task of composition was not easy and he toiled over almost every phrase and paragraph, tearing up copy after copy, until he had found exactly the right word and the right idea. Then he grew silent and for another decade, although he was recognized as a master, he produced nothing. The impact of the war and the temporary liberation of Ukraine roused him again to write and for the first time he used the word Ukraine and emphasized the unity of the people in both halves of the country. The disastrous situation that ensued as a result of the Ukrainian defeat and renewed division made him again give up writing and return to his former silence. He died in 1936, just before the new catastrophes were to overwhelm his country. He does not reveal himself in his sketches. Far from that. If we read them carefully, we will find few clues to the author and his personality. He does not dwell upon any special theme with marked enthusiasm. He does not comment or give moral judgments upon his characters from which we could infer his own sympathies or his own point of view. He simply in a few well chosen sentences sets out a situation confronting some broken souls and bodies and he objectively pictures a little incident that explains the situation. It is useless for us to ask him why these things happen. They simply do and that is all there is to it. In the beginning there was a slight touch of symbolism in his works as in the _Road_, the pilgrimage of a man through life, nameless and unidentified. He leaves his mother and starts out through the world. He sees people in their agony and despair. At night they lie like stones one by the other. His strength rises and wanes again when he finds his mother’s grave, he sobs with dry eyes. She does not answer him when he calls. “He ran from grave to grave, as autumn flowers. When he had passed one hundred graves, the one hundred first was his. He fell down to it, as he had long ago to his mother’s bosom.” This was the early phase of Stefanyk’s work but he did not long remain at this level. His characters speedily become more individualized and if there is a special symbol that we may deduce from his works to describe the people whom he presents, it is as fallen leaves blown along on the autumn wind. No one understands them nor do they understand themselves.