This book is an attempt to rethink the biography of Lesya Ukrainka, in which illness and creativity, Ukraine and "foreigner", politics and literature, classics and modernity, love and death are intertwined. Illness and writing. The birth of creativity from the trauma experienced at the bedside of the terminally ill Merzhynskyi. Spiritual and intellectual closeness to Drahomanov. Relations with Kobylyanskaya as a metaphor for women's culture. Fatum of artistic madness, which she knew in moments of creative elevation. Travels in Europe and sanatorium tourism. The status of "otherness" as the recognition of a "new woman" and a "foreigner" in the homeland. "Own" through the prism of historical and cultural exoticism. All this enabled Larisa Kosach-Kvittsa to follow her own path and become a prophetess of the emerging 20th century. In the last year of her life, Lesya Ukrainka confessed to her mother: ".only a woman can write Mavka's story." But the truth is that all her works could have been written only by a woman who lived and created mit Todesverachtung, that is, in contempt of death.