Vasyl Stus is the Ukrainian existential poet, who used aesthetic of surrealism and expressionism. This text presents surreal elements in the Vasyl Stus’s poems which are connected with the idea of hell. Author gives examples of different images of hell in European culture and literature and also analyzes the surrealist poems of Vasyl Stus from his book Merry Cemetery.

The author presents a sketch of the history of concepts and imaginative geography of the lands located in the hereafter: earthly and heavenly Paradise, Purgatory and Heaven. He reaches back to the origins of these images in ancient Eastern cultures, the culture of Antiquity, and patristic writings. He traces their development throughout the Middle Ages to the time of Dante, whose La Commedia sanctioned the separation of the hereafter into topographically located Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.