Creative activity of I. Franko

Franko, Ivan (pseuds: Dzhedzhalyk, Zhyvyi, Kremin, Myron, etc), b 27 August 1856 in Nahuievychi (today Ivan Franko), Drohobych county, Galicia, d 28 May 1916 in Lviv. Writer, scholar, political and civic leader, publicist; like Taras Shevchenko, one of Ukraine's greatest creative geniuses. His first literary works—poetry (1874) and the novel Petriï i Dovbushchuky (1875)—were published in the students' magazine Druh, whose editorial board he joined in 1875

During the first period of his creative work Franko wrote political poems, such as ‘Kameniari’ (The Stonecutters, 1878), ‘Vichnyi revoliutsioner’ (The Eternal Revolutionary, 1880), and ‘Ne pora...’ (This Is Not the Time..., 1880), which became patriotic anthems and influenced the outlook of a whole generation; the novels Boa constrictor (1878), Boryslav smiiet’sia (Boryslav Is Laughing, 1881), and Zakhar Berkut (1883); and a series of literary and journalistic articles. Leaving the populists, who were apprehensive about his radical socialist and revolutionary ideas, Franko tried to set up an independent journal

For a while in 1888 Franko was a contributor to the journal Pravda. His ties with compatriots from Dnieper Ukraine led to a third arrest in 1889. In the following year, with the support of Mykhailo Drahomanov, Franko co-founded the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical party and drew up its program.

mj Franko parted with Drahomanov, accusing him of tying Ukraine's fate to that of Russia.

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With his many gifts, encyclopedic knowledge, and uncommon capacity for work, Franko made outstanding contributions to many areas of Ukrainian culture. He was a poet, prose writer, playwright, critic, literary historian, translator, and publisher. The themes of his literary works were drawn from the life and struggle of his own people and from sources of world culture: Eastern cultures and the classical and Renaissance traditions. He was a ‘golden bridge’ between Ukrainian and world literatures.

Franko was one of the first realists in Ukrainian literature and the most outstanding poet of the post-Shevchenko period. His second collection, Z vershyn i nyzyn (From the Heights and the Depths, 1887, expanded 1893), which included the masterpieces of his social lyrical poetry,. It radicalized the younger generation and for this reason was banned in Ukraine under Russia. Franko's Ziv’iale lystia (Withered Leaves, 1896) marks the culmination of his love poetry. Philosophical themes predominated in the collection Mii izmarahd (1898)—reflections on good and evil, beauty, fidelity, duty, and the meaning of life. But the collection also contained some social poetry that depicted the suffering of the Ukrainian people—’Po selakh’ (Through the Villages), ‘Do Brazyliï’ (To Brazil), etc.His greatest poem, Moisei (Moses, 1905), which in a biblical setting deals with the conflict between a leader and his people and proclaims the ideal of service to one's people, was based to a large extent on autobiographical material.

Franko's prose works include over 100 short stories and dozens of novels

In drama Franko proved himself a master of the sociopsychological and historical play and of comedy. His first attempts in this area date back to his gymnasium days— Iuhurta (1873), Try kniazi na odyn prestol (Three Princes for One Throne, 1874), and others. He wrote the largest number of his plays in the 1890s. His best plays are the sociopsychological drama Ukradene shchastia (Stolen Happiness, 1894) and the historical drama in verse Son kniazia Sviatoslava (The Dream of Prince Sviatoslav, 1895

In the area of linguistics Franko produced several studies of the Ukrainian literary language, including ‘Etymolohiia i fonetyka v iuzhno-rus’kii literaturi’ (Etymology and Phonetics in Southern Ruthenian Literature, 1894), ‘Literaturna mova i diialekty’ (The Literary Language and Dialects, 1907), and ‘Prychynky do ukraïns’koï onomastyky’ (Materials on Ukrainian Onomastics, 1906). He defended the view that there is only one Ukrainian literary language, based primarily on the Dnieper dialects and enriched with dialects from Western Ukraine. For his philological contributions Franko was awarded an honorary doctorate by Kharkiv University in 1906. He was also elected to a number of Slavic scholarly associations. Aleksii Shakhmatov's and Fedor Korsh's recommendation to admit Franko to the Russian Academy of Sciences was rejected by the tsarist government.

In the field of ethnography and folklore Franko collected a wealth of source material and wrote a series of studies and articles about the clothing, food, art, and folk beliefs of the Galician people.

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Franko formulated his philosophical, sociological, and political ideas in the following studies: ‘Nauka i jej stanowisko wobec klas pracujących’ (Scholarship and Its Attitude to the Working Classes, 1878), ‘Mysli o evoliutsiï v istoriï liuds’kosty’ (Reflections on Evolution in the History of Mankind, 1881–2), and ‘Najnowsze prądy w ludoznawstwie’ (The Newest Trends in Ethnology, 1895). His article ‘Sotsiializm i sotsiial-demokratyzm’ (1897) is a critique of ‘scientific socialism’ and the materialist conception of history

Franko's works in economics deal with the condition of the workers and peasants from a historical viewpoint: About a hundred published works, most of them dealing with the peasant movement and the 1848 revolution in Galicia and with Ukrainian-Polish relations, were the subjects of Franko's sociological, sociopolitical, and historical-economic studies.

Franko's journalistic work evolved with his outlook and was governed by his scientific approach. Hence, it is often difficult to distinguish his scholarly articles from his journalistic writings. Franko regarded Ukraine as a sovereign entity belonging to ‘the circle of free nations.’ At the same time he devoted much attention to the defense of universal human rights