NEWS AND VIEWS

Ivan Franko - a poet of ideas born 149 years ago on August 27

by Eugene and Helena Melnitchenko

August 27 marks the 149th anniversary of Ivan Franko's birth (1856-1916). It seems appropriate that he was born so close to the date of Ukrainian independence for, with his work, he was instrumental in its realization.

As pointed out in a 2004 article on philately in The Ukrainian Weekly, in Ukrainian poetry Franko is ranked second only to Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861). While Shevchenko was a romantic poet of feelings that change into ideas, Franko was an intellectual, a poet of ideas that change into feelings. Some of his poetry is equal to Shevchenko's and perhaps deeper, for example "Kameniari" (The Highway Builders - 1878) and "Moisei" (Moses - 1905).

But Franko was much more than a poet. He was an essayist, a writer of short stories and novels, a journalist, a scholar and a prolific translator, fluent in Polish, German and Russian. An avid reader, he introduced some of the great Western European literature to Ukraine, hoping that it would expand the Ukrainian outlook and expectations.

Like Shevchenko, Franko had a modest background. His father was a blacksmith in a village near Drohobych (Halychyna), where he was born. In his memoir "U Kuzni" (In a Blacksmith's Shop, 1902), he describes how the shop's fire and his father's and their neighbor's tales influenced him and gave him strength.

He completed Drohobych Gymnasium and studied at Lviv University, but was not allowed to continue his studies there because of "political radicalism." He was compelled to do his doctor's dissertation at the University of Vienna. Although obviously qualified, he was not allowed to teach at Lviv University because of his political activities.

He made his living with his publications and as a journalist for a Polish (Lviv Courier) and a German (Times) newspaper.

Franko was a man of his time. He lived in western Ukraine which was ruled by the Austro-Hungarian empire, but politically and economically controlled by Polish shlachta (aristocracy) who took advantage of the uneducated, unenlightened peasants. It was a time of rapid advances in science, industrialization and the evolution of socialism. Franko never forgot his modest roots and gave all his energy to writing about plain people and the injustice they suffered. As a son of a Ukrainian peasant, he felt compelled to pay back his debt to his brethren. It was they who had made it possible for him to climb to a level where he saw light, freedom and the shining of humanity' s ideals.

"Moses" is his masterpiece. Franko uses the allegory to describe the Ukrainian condition and his own mission in life. In the introduction to the poem, he describes his countrymen as being tortured, broken up, as a paralytic at the crossroads. He calls on them to realize their condition, raise their expectations, set higher objectives, and seek freedom. Like Moses, Franko felt it was his obligation to show his people the way. Also like Moses, during his long journey to the promised land, he at times questioned his own wisdom, but:

All he had in life, he gave
To one idea,
And burned, and shone, and suffered,
And worked hard for it.

Life is truly life, he said, when it is propelled by ideals: truth, human decency, justice and freedom. Although he thought the surface of Ukrainian life was overgrown with weeds, he believed its roots were strong.

The time will come, and you with fiery light
Will shine among freedom loving people,
Will shake the Caucasus ...
Will spread freedom over the Black Sea,
And will see how a man
Becomes a master of his house and fields."

In his early historical novel "Zakhar Berkut" (1882), Franko colorfully describes a peaceful, freedom-loving village in a valley of the Carpathian Mountains. The village is led by its elders, at the head of which was a wise old man, Zakhar Berkut. He thoughtfully advised the elders, taught the young and healed the wounded and the sick. "Life has value only when man can help others," was his humanist philosophy. The village prospered by hunting, tending its stock, farming and trading with other local communities.

However, its serenity was interrupted by the arrival to the area of a nobleman, Tuhar Vovk, (an apt name, the last name meaning wolf) and his heroic and beautiful daughter, Myroslava. The land was granted to Vovk for his services to King Danylo Romanovych in the year 1241.

Vovk built an elaborate estate, despised the villagers and forbid them to use his woods and pastures. During a long hunting expedition by the nobleman and his friends, guided by Zakhar Berkut's brave young son Maksym, Maksym saves Myroslava's life by killing a huge bear that was attacking her. Maksym and Myroslava fall in love. But when Maksym asks the nobleman for his daughter's hand, Vovk is offended and refuses him because of the difference in their social status.

At a village meeting, where the nobleman is asked to explain his actions before the village elders, he mocks them and kills a witness who was about to testify that Vovk was a traitor during Ghenghis Khan's invasion of Rus'. The village elders ban the nobleman from their land and he joins the Mongol horde invading the country under the leadership of Ghenghis Khan's grandson, Batu. Myroslava is shocked by her father's decision and disowns him.

When the village elders send Maksym and a group of young men to destroy the nobleman's property, Vovk and the Mongols attack them. All the villagers are killed, except Maksym who is taken prisoner, as Vovk had promised Myroslava that he would not be harmed.

Vovk then leads the plundering Mongols to the village to find a path through the Carpathian Mountains to Hungary. When the villagers find out about the advancing horde, under the leadership of Zakhar Berkut they allow the Mongols to enter the valley, then barricade all the exits. Vovk and the Mongols are trapped. Because of her love for Maksym and the shameful actions of her father, Myroslava leaves the valley to fight against the Mongols.

Again, under Zakhar Berkut's guidance, the villagers dam the valley, redirect a stream into it and, with the help of the deluge from heavy rains in the mountains, drown the Mongols. Their leader offers to exchange Maksym for his remaining warriors' lives, but Zakhar refuses. The leader then tries to kill Maksym with his ax, but Vovk cuts off his hand with a saber. Both the leader and Maksym fall into the water. The remaining Mongols are pelted and killed with rocks, while Maksym, in a Victorian ending, miraculously emerges from the water and is saved by his friends. Zakhar gives his blessings to Myroslava and Maksym, and counsels them and the villagers to live in peace. Having fulfilled his mission in life, he dies.

"Boryslav is Laughing" (1892) is a totally different novel, belonging to the school of realism, as contrasted with the romantic "Zakhar Berkut." It is a social commentary, in the vein of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (1906). (Sinclair, an American, was a Pulitzer Prize winner.) Franko writes about the serious change that the discovery of oil and natural wax in Boryslav, near Drohobych, made on the local community. This discovery attracted shrewd capitalists to the region, who cheated the local population out of their property and then exploited them in their mines and refineries. While the new owners get rich and build fancy new homes, the workers starve and die in the mines.

An outsider, Benedio, arrives from Drohobych and makes them understand that, while individually they are weak and helpless, their power is in numbers. He suggests that the workers organize, collect dues to take care of the unemployed and those injured or killed at work, challenge the owners peacefully and demand higher wages. This lifts the workers' expectations and morale, giving them new hope.

When Benedio and his compatriots challenge the owners by organizing a strike, the owners agree to join them and contribute financially to their self-insurance (samopomich). But when they steal the union funds and the workers again are forced to slave in the mines and factories for a pittance, some decide to deal with their exploiters with violence.

This is consistent with Franko's early poem "On Trial" (1880):

Please tell me, how this establishment
We want to change?
Not with weapons, not might
Fire, iron and war,
But with justice and work
And knowledge.
But if bloody war happens
It will not be our fault.

Like Shevchenko's, many of Franko's poems were composed into still popular songs (Dva Koliory, Moya Divchyno). He believed literature should reflect real life: analyze it, point out its mistakes and show how to correct them. He thought knowledge was power and suggested that his countrymen develop the same thirst for it that he had himself. He was a real "khudoznyk slova" - an artist of words. Like Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka, he wrote in Ukrainian, reinforcing and strengthening the language.

Politically, Franko was heavily influenced by the leading Ukrainian scholar of the day, Lesia Ukrainka's uncle Mykhailo Drahomanov (1814-1895), who advocated democracy and closer cooperation between Ukrainians in both the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.

But, unlike Drahomanov, who thought Ukraine should "seek a common roof with Russia," culturally and politically, Franko believed that it should seek its interests independently. He was jailed three times for his beliefs and political actions.

In answer to those who thought that Ukrainian independence was impossible, he strongly defended his position in his essay "Beyond the Limits of the Possible." His conclusion was that "if we feel this ideal in our hearts and use all our means and energy to approach it, it will become possible." In the essay, he quoted the Czech poet Jan Neruda:

Among the heavenly stars there is one great law,
Written there and cast in gold,
A law above all laws, you will
Love your native land above all.

Needless to say, in Ukrainian intellectual circles, it was Shevchenko, Franko, Ukrainka and the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866-1934) who have probably contributed most to lead Ukraine in that direction. They were, in Franko's terminology, its "Kameniari" (Stonecutters) and "Rubachi" (Woodcutters - 1900). Now that Ukraine has independence, we hope that, despite the 70 years of persecution, jailing and execution of Ukrainian intellectuals by the former Soviet Union, new intellectual talent will surface and help preserve it.

After years of studying Western literature and philosophy, Eugene and Helena Melnitchenko are revisiting Ukrainian literature in their home by the Chesapeake Bay.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 21, 2005, No. 34, Vol. LXXIII

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