Franko was born in the Ukrainian village ofNahuievychi,[3] then located in theAustriankronland ofGalicia, today part ofDrohobych Raion,Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. As a child, he was baptized as Ivan by Father Yosyp Levytsky, known as a poet and the author of the first Galician-RuthenianHramatyka ("Grammar"), who was later exiled to Nahuievychi for a "sharp tongue". At home, however, Ivan was called Myron because of a local superstitious belief that naming a person by a different name will dodge death.[4] Franko's family in Nahuievychi was considered "well-to-do", with their own servants and 24 hectares (59 acres) of owned property.[5]
Franko's family possibly had German origins, being descendants of German colonists. Ivan Franko believed it to be true.[6] That statement is also supported byTimothy Snyder who describes Yakiv Franko as a village blacksmith of GermanRoman Catholic descent.[7] For certain the Franko family was already living in Galicia when the country was incorporated into Austria in 1772. Ivan Franko's great-grandfather Teodor (Fed) Franko baptized his children in theGreek Catholic church.[6]
Franko's mother Maria came from a family ofpetty nobility. The Kulczyckis (or Kulchytskys) were an ancient noble family hailing from the village ofKulchytsi in theSambir Raion.[8] Her mother was Ludwika Kulczycka, a widow with six children fromYasenytsia Silna [uk].[9] Researchers describe Franko's mother's nationality as Polish or Ukrainian.[7][10][11] The petty gentry inEastern Galicia often retained elements of Polish culture and fostered a sense of solidarity with the Polish nobility, but they also Ruthenized and blended in with the surrounding peasantry.[12] For example, Franko's uncle Ivan Kulczycki took part in thePolish uprising of 1863. Franko's distant relative, his aunt Koszycka, with whom he lived while studying in Drohobych, spoke Polish and Ruthenian.[13]
Ivan Franko attended school in the village Yasenytsia Sylna from 1862 until 1864, and from there attended theBasilian monastic school inDrohobych until 1867. His father died before Ivan was able to graduate from thegymnasium (realschule), but his stepfather supported Ivan in continuing his education. Soon, however, Franko found himself completely without parents after his mother died as well and later the young Ivan stayed with totally unrelated people. In 1875, he graduated from the Drohobych Realschule, and continued on toLviv University, where he studied classical philosophy, Ukrainian language andliterature. It was at this university that Franko began his literary career, with various works of poetry and his novelPetriï i Dovbushchuky published by the students' magazineDruh (Friend), whose editorial board he would later join.
An 1886 edition ofZoria magazine, to which Franko contributed
A meeting withMykhailo Drahomanov at Lviv University made a huge impression on Ivan Franko. It later developed into a long political and literary association. Franko's own socialist writings and his association with Drahomanov led to his arrest in 1877, along withMykhailo Pavlyk andOstap Terletsky, among others. They were accused of belonging to a secret socialist organization, which did not in fact exist. However, the nine months in prison did not discourage his political writing or activities. In prison, Franko wrote the satireSmorhonska Akademiya (The Smorhon Academy). After release, he studied the works ofKarl Marx andFriedrich Engels, contributed articles to the Polish newspaperPraca (Labor) and helped organize workers' groups inLviv. In 1878 Franko and Pavlyk founded the magazineHromads'kyi Druh ("Public Friend"). Only two issues were published before it was banned by the government; however, the journal was reborn under the namesDzvin (Bell) andMolot (Mallet). Franko published a series of books calledDribna Biblioteka ("Petty Library") from 1878 until his second arrest for arousing the peasants to civil disobedience in 1880. After three months in theKolomyia prison, the writer returned to Lviv. His impressions of this exile are reflected in his novelNa Dni (At the Bottom). Upon his release, Franko was kept under police surveillance. At odds with the administration, Franko was expelled from Lviv University, an institution that would be renamed Ivan Franko National University of Lviv after the writer's death.
Franko was an active contributor to the journalSvit (The World) in 1881. He wrote more than half of the material, excluding the unsigned editorials. Later that year, Franko moved to his native Nahuievychi, where he wrote the novelZakhar Berkut, translatedGoethe'sFaust andHeine's poemDeutschland: ein Wintermärchen into Ukrainian. He also wrote a series of articles onTaras Shevchenko, and reviewed the collectionKhutorna Poeziya (Khutir Poetry) byPanteleimon Kulish. Franko worked for the journalZorya (Sunrise), and became a member of the editing board of the newspaperDilo (Action) a year later.
Franko married Olha Khoruzhynska fromKyiv in May 1886, to whom he dedicated the collectionZ vershyn i nyzyn (From Tops and Bottoms), a book of poetry and verse. The couple lived inVienna for some time, where Ivan Franko met withTheodor Herzl andTomáš Garrigue Masaryk. His wife was to later suffer from a debilitating mental illness due to the death of the first-born son, Andriy,[14] one of the reasons that Franko would not leave Lviv for treatment in Kyiv in 1916, shortly before his death.[citation needed]
In 1888, Franko was a contributor to the journalPravda, which, along with his association with compatriots fromDnieper Ukraine, led to a third arrest in 1889. After this two-month prison term, he co-founded theRuthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party withMykhailo Drahomanov and Mykhailo Pavlyk. Franko was the Radical party's candidate for seats in theparliament of Austria and theGalicia Diet, but never won an election.
In 1891, Franko attended theFranz-Josephs-Universität Czernowitz (where he prepared a dissertation onIvan Vyshensky), and then attended theUniversity of Vienna to defend a doctoral dissertation on the spiritual romanceBarlaam and Josaphat under the supervision ofVatroslav Jagić, who was considered the foremost expert ofSlavic languages at the time. Franko received his doctorate of philosophy from University of Vienna on July 1, 1893. He was appointed lecturer in the history ofUkrainian literature at Lviv University in 1894; however, he was not able to chair the Department of Ukrainian literature there because of opposition fromVicegerentKazimierz Badeni and Galician conservative circles.
One of Franko's articles,Sotsiializm i sotsiial-demokratyzm (Socialism and Social Democracy), a severe criticism of Ukrainian Social Democracy and the socialism ofMarx andEngels, was published in 1898 in the journalZhytie i Slovo, which he and his wife founded. He continued his anti-Marxist stance in a collection of poetry entitledMii smarahd (My Emerald) in 1898, where he called Marxism "a religion founded on dogmas of hatred and class struggle".[citation needed] His long-time collaborative association with Mykhailo Drahomanov was strained due to their diverging views on socialism and the national question. Franko would later accuse Drahomanov of tying Ukraine's fate to that of Russia inSuspil'nopolitychni pohliady M. Drahomanova (The Sociopolitical Views of M. Drahomanov), published in 1906. After a split in the Radical Party, in 1899, Franko, together with the Lviv historianMykhailo Hrushevsky, founded the National Democratic Party, where he worked until 1904 when he retired from political life.
In 1902, students and activists in Lviv, embarrassed that Franko was living in poverty, purchased a house for him in the city. He lived there for the remaining 14 years of his life. The house is now the site of the Ivan Franko Museum.
In 1904 Franko took part in an ethnographic expedition in theBoyko areas withFilaret Kolesa,Fedir Vovk, and a Russian ethnographer.
1914 saw publication of his jubilee collection,Pryvit Ivanovi Frankovi (Greeting Ivan Franko), and of his collectionIz lit moyeyi molodosti (From the Years of My Youth).
In the last nine years of his life, Franko seldom physically wrote, as he suffered fromrheumatism which eventually paralyzed his right arm. He was assisted asamanuensis by his sons, particularly Andriy.
Grave of Ivan Franko in theLychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine depicting a stone breaker, in reference to his famous poem "Kameniari".
During the last eight years of his life Franko suffered from numerous sicknesses includingmigraines,tinnitus andpolyarthritis, which were accompanied withfever,insomnia andhallucinations. After the start of theFirst World War, the author lost the care of his family, as his children Taras and Petro volunteered to the frontline, and his wife Olha was herself undergoing medical treatment in a psychiatric establishment. Starting from November 1915 Franko lived in a shelter organized for members of theUkrainian Sich Riflemen. Suffering from new bouts of sickness, Ivan Franko died at the establishent at 4 pm on 28 May 1916.
On his deathbed Franko refusedconfession fromGreek Catholic priests. As a result, the Church initially refused to bury the author, who was reputed to have been anatheist: permission for a public funeral was received only after the gravity of Franko's symptoms, from which he had suffered immediately before his death, and which could be attributed to mental illness, was proven to authorities. On 31 May numerous visitors came to the late author's residence in Lviv to pay him last respect, including his son Petro, composerVasyl Barvinsky, who directed the solemn choir, and lawyerKost Levytsky, who made the funeral speech. The funeral procession was accompanied by soldiers of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen.
Due to wartime conditions, it was impossible to immediately allocate a burial plot, so Franko's body was initially interred in avault rented from another family. Only five years after his death, on 28 May 1921, Ivan Franko's remains were reburied on the main alley ofLychakiv Cemetery in Lviv. In 1933 a monument depicting a stone-hewer, the main figure of one of Franko'sfamous poems, was opened at the site of his grave.[16]
Olha Fedorivna Khoruzhynska (m. 1886-1941), a graduate of the Institute of Noble Dames inKharkiv and later the two-year higher courses inKyiv, she knew several languages and played piano, died in 1941
One of many portraits of Ivan Franko by Ukrainian impressionist artistIvan Trush
Zenovia Franko (1925-1991), a Ukrainian philologist[17] and an outstanding person of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the times of the Soviet Union[18] had two sons.
Daryna Franko (1926-2015).
Roland Franko (1931-2021), a Ukrainian politician,[19] diplomat, and graduate ofKyiv Polytechnic Institute. By his efforts, in 1996, the United Kingdom freely transferred its Antarctic station Faraday to Ukraine, and it was later renamed theVernadsky Research Base.
Hanna Klyuchko (Franko) (1892 - 1988), a Ukrainian writer, publicist, memoirist
According to Roland Franko, his grandfather was 1.74 metres (5.7 ft) tall, had red hair, always wore a mustache, and the Ukrainian embroidered shirt (vyshyvanka), even with a dress-coat.
Some of Franko's descendants emigrated to the US and Canada. His grand-nephew,Yuri Shymko, is a Canadian politician and human rights activist living in Toronto, who was elected to Canada's Parliament as well as the Ontario Legislature during the 1980s.
Cover of the 1932 edition of Franko's novellaZakhar Berkut
Lesyshyna Cheliad andDva Pryiateli (Two Friends) were published in the literary almanacDnistrianka in 1876. Later that year he wrote his first collection of poetry,Ballads and Tales. His first of the stories in theBoryslav series was published in 1877.
Franko depicted the harsh experience of Ukrainian workers and peasants in his novelsBoryslav Laughs (1881–1882) andBoa Constrictor (1878). His works deal withUkrainian nationalism and history (Zakhar Berkut, 1883), social issues (Basis of Society, 1895 andWithered Leaves, 1896), social and psychological problems (Crossed Paths, 1900), and philosophy (Semper Tiro, 1906).
He drew parallels between the Israelite search for a homeland and the Ukrainian desire for independence inIn Death of Cain (1889) andMoses (1905).Stolen Happiness (1893) is considered as his best dramatic masterpiece. In total, Franko wrote more than 1,000 works.
He was widely promoted in Ukraine during the Soviet period, particularly for his poemKameniari ("Stonebreakers" or "Stone-hewers") which contains revolutionary political ideas, hence earning him the nameKameniar ("Stone-hewer").
A memorial plaque to Ivan Franko on the house in which he resided during his stay in Vienna
Franko's early works were influenced byrationalist andpositivist ideas, which he adopted from his mentor Drahomanov, and were characterised with realist aesthetics, apology ofreason and promotion of art as a civic phenomenon that should be available to the masses. However, later in his career Franko's views became closer to the schools ofLebensphilosophie and "idealistic realism", based on the national romantic tradition and belief in creativity as purpose of the human spirit.
The central problem of Franko's literary work is the issue of the individual as opposed to the crowd. This contradiction is projected through the author's own experience as a member of theintelligentsia of a stateless folk, who must be ready to sacrifice his own life for the greater good of his community in order to turn it into an active and self-conscious national force. Franko's ideal is "full, unbound and unlimited [...] life and development of the nation". According to him, this ideal can be realized only by an integral personality, who devotes own feelings, thoughts and will to its achievement and believes in historical progress whose path lies in emancipation of the individual.
Franko was wary of excessivematerialism and combined rationalism in faith and realism in art with romantic and idealistic beliefs expressed in his literary works. He dedicated an especially important role to the cultural development of Ukraine, the contemporary state of which he recognized as insufficient, and condemned UkrainianMarxists for prioritizing global problems over the particular needs of the Ukrainian nation.[32]
A number of Franko's publications were dedicated to the search for an optimal model of state organization. He opposedanarchist views on the state as the root of all evil and saw the majority of his contemporaries as too immoral and uneducated to be able to live in a society with no central authority. An important argument used by Franko to oppose anarchistfederalism was the history of thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where unlimited freedom of local nobles resulted in total subjugation of the popular majority and decline of the state, leading to its eventualpartition. At the same time, Franko also criticized the concept ofproletarian dictatorship developed bysocial democrats. According to him, such a form of government would result instate capture by ruling circles and lead to cessation of any social progress. Franko saw an alternative to Marxism inleft-libertarianism promoted by his contemporaryHenry George. In his latter works he also criticized the federalist views of Drahomanov, which opposed the concept of national autonomy for Ukrainians and replaced it with self-government based on a territorial principle. According to Franko, not separate classes, but only nations, which he saw as the most stable form of human community, could act as subjects of history.[33]
Ivan Franko's literary heritage has produced varying interpretations of his views on society and politics. This ambiguity intensified after the disappearance of censorship with the fall of theCommunist regime in Ukraine, which allowed the publication of the author's previously little-known texts. One of the most controversial topics in relations to the legacy of Franko's personality is his attitude toJews: during the Soviet era some of his works, including the poemMoses, were banned from publication by theUkrainian Soviet government due to their sympathetic depiction of the plight of the Jewish people, and his contribution to the improvement ofUkrainian-Jewish relations was also positively evaluated by authors from theUkrainian diaspora; on the other hand, non-Ukrainian authors have in most cases presented Franko as ananti-semite, blaming him for the negative depiction of Jews in some of his works. On the centenary of Franko's birth American Jewish magazineForverts accused him of presagingpogroms and compared the author to thehaidamaks and other historical personalities known for their persecutions of Jews includingBohdan Khmelnytsky andNikita Khrushchev. Some of Franko's texts have also been used to justify antisemitism by anti-semitic publications such asKrakivski Visti.
Front page of Franko's novellaBoryslav Laughs, which produced accusations of anti-semitism against its author
Franko's own memoirs contain some mentions of his Jewish acquaintances starting from his childhood years. His mother had friendly relations with a local Jewish woman who was a tavern-keeper, and denied the truthfulness of the "blood fable" which was frequently employed against theJews in Galicia. During his school studies Franko befriended a son of another Jewish tavern-keeper. In Drohobych he became friends with Isaac Tigerman, who was a relative of painterMaurycy Gottlieb. After Tigerman's death his father continued corresponding with Franko and even visited theSich student society. Observations of the cultural differences between Jews and non-Jews aroused Franko's interest in cultures of theEast and moved him to read theOld Testament, from which he made several translations into Ukrainian. As a Socialist activist Franko supported the right of the Jews for their own national branch in the Socialist movement. A number of Jews were also his colleagues in publishing activities. Franko also collectedethnographic material, including proverbs and sayings related to Jews, and his knowledge ofYiddish allowed him to get a better understanding of the life of poor Jewish workers in the area ofBoryslav.
However, the majority of Ukrainian political movements in Galicia during Franko's time shared a negative attitude to Jews and considered them to be a threat to the Ukrainian people:populists such asStepan Kachala, as well asRussophiles headed byIvan Naumovych and even Socialists likeMykhailo Pavlyk accused Jews of treachery and demoralization of Ruthenian-Ukrainian peasantry. Compared to them, Franko's promotion of solidarity with the Jews went contrary to the prevailing sentiments, as a result of which he was accused by some of his contemporaries of being a "Jewish hireling" and "half-Jew".[34] During his stay in Vienna in 1893 Franko met withZionist leaderTheodor Herzl, and later wrote the foreword to the Lviv publication of his workDer Judenstaat. While Franko didn't fully agree with Herzl's idea of creating a Jewish state, considering it unrealistic, he recognized the need of solidarity between Jews to protect themselves from antisemitism. At the same time, Franko was highly critical of rich Jewish business owners, and depicted them as main antagonists of his novellaBoryslav Laughs, dedicated to the workers' movement in Galicia. He also denied the truthfulness of the works ofNathan Hanover dedicated to the pogroms during theKhmelnytsky Uprising of 1648-1657, claiming that the depiction of those events by the author was exaggerated.[35]
Ivan Franko portrait on obverse ₴20.00bill circa 2018Ivan Franko memorial museum in his former villa in Lviv
In 1962 the city of Stanyslaviv in Western Ukraine (formerly Stanisławów, Poland) was renamedIvano-Frankivsk in the poet's honor.
On the Centennial of Franko's PhD defence in 1993, the then Austrian vice chancellorErhard Busek had a commemorative bust installed in the university building on Ringstrasse, oppositeÜbungsraum 1 and 2 at the Department of Germanistik. In 2013, an additional plaque was added, after an academic symposium had clarified Franko's relationship to Judaism, mentioned anti-Semitic stereotypes in Franko's work as well as close Jewish friends.[36]
As of November 2018, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Ukraine, there were 552 streets named after Ivan Franko, includingone in the national capital Kyiv.[37]
He is also associated with the nameKameniar after his famous poem, "Kameniari"[38] ("The Stone-hewers"), especially during the time of theSoviet regime. Although he was asocialist, his political views mostly did not correspond toSoviet ideology. On 8 April 1978, the astronomerNikolai Chernykh named anasteroid in honor of Franko by way of this name,2428 Kamenyar.
In the Americas, Ivan Franko's legacy is alive to this day.Cyril Genik, the best man at Franko's wedding, emigrated to Canada. Genik became the first Ukrainian to be employed by the Canadian government – working as an immigration agent. With his cousin Ivan Bodrug, and Bodrug's friend Ivan Negrich, the three were known as the Березівська Трійця (the Bereziv Triumvirate) in Winnipeg. Imbued by Franko's nationalism and liberalism, Genik and his Triumvirate had no compunction about bringing Bishop Seraphim to Winnipeg in 1903 – a renegade Russian monk, consecrated a bishop on Mount Athos – to free the Ukrainians of all the religious and political groups in Canada who were wrangling to assimilate them. Within two years, the charismaticSeraphim built the notoriousTin Can Cathedral in Winnipeg's North-End, which claimed nearly 60,000 adherents. Today, the bust of Ivan Franko, which stands triumphantly on a pillar in the courtyard of the Ivan Franko Manor on McGregor St. in Winnipeg, looks fondly across the street. Two churches stood here, the first (this building has since been demolished) that Seraphim blessed and opened for service upon his arrival, before building his Cathedral. The second was the Independent Greek Church (this building is still intact) of which Ivan Bodrug became the head after Seraphim was removed. Franko's consciousness had been bold, and on the level playing ground of the new world, it served Ukrainians in Canada to find their own identity as Ukrainian-Canadians.
In 2001 one of Franko's iconic poems,Moses, was adopted as anopera by Ukrainian composerMyroslav Skoryk.
In 2019 a Ukrainian-American historical action filmThe Rising Hawk with budget $5 million was released. It is based on the historical fiction bookZakhar Berkut by Ivan Franko.
^Franko, Ivan (1948). Clarence A. Manning (ed.).Ivan Franko, the Poet of Western Ukraine: Selected Poems. / Translated with a biographical introduction by Percival Cundy. New York: Philosophical Library. p. 265.[...]his indefatigable industry, his social consciousness and sense of mission, and the undaunted courage he displayed all through his life.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
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