first established in 1875 but it was more than a decade before this
secured enough funds to enable it to commence publishing operations.
In 1892 it was renamed the Scientific Society and in 1898 it was again
reorganized as the Shevchenko Scientific Society and became for all
practical purposes the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
Thus the movement in Western Ukraine, although it started later,
was able to catch up and even to surpass in self-consciousness the
movement in Russia but as we have mentioned before, the word Ukraine
was always more or less suspicious to the Austro-Hungarian authorities
and for a long while the people were compelled to call themselves
Ruthenians. Even to the most recent times, the Poles have emphasized
this difference between Ruthenians and Ukrainians and have sought to
foster a division between the two groups. So have the Hungarians in
their domination of Carpatho-Ukraine, where the movement after 1848
languished in the isolated valleys of the Carpathian Mountains.
Thus this well-dismembered race finally succeeded in some small degree
in establishing spiritual contacts about the middle of the nineteenth
century. For the first time in centuries, the scattered groups
became aware of their mutual relationships, despite the religious
differences. The people in Russian Ukraine were still Orthodox. Those
in Austria-Hungary were primarily Uniat but the modern trend toward
secular thinking and the diminution of the bitterness of the religious
conflicts allowed them to work together. They could have small hope
of political freedom and of political union, but there was a profound
sense of social solidarity and in the peaceful years of the nineteenth
century, the task of education and of social development took
precedence over the old dreams of attaining liberty and freedom on the
field of battle.
CHAPTER TEN
IVAN FRANKO
In the sixties the writers from Great Ukraine had begun to find
shelter in Lviv and to seek opportunities for publishing there which
had been denied to them in their native land. Yet, when they reached
Galicia, they were passing into another atmosphere and another society.
There were some like Kulish who tried to reconcile the Ukrainians
and the Poles in the province of Austria-Hungary. There were others
as Levitsky, whose works dealt only with the Russian Ukraine and who
described the problems there as they saw them with their own eyes.
They undoubtedly contributed much to the desire on the part of the
people of Western Ukraine to remodel their lives and to commence
social and national work. Yet they themselves were not at home in the
complicated problems of Austro-Hungarian politics and the different
social institutions and they rarely interested themselves in the many
questions that were raised by the existence of Vienna and the Hapsburg
monarchy and the obligations and possibilities that existed in Western
Ukraine as a result of being a part of a great multilingual and
confused area.
If literature in Western Ukraine was to find itself, it could do so
only through the efforts of some one who was born and reared there and
who understood the situation and the lives and thoughts of the people
as a native and a true son of the country. Just as the literature
of Great Ukraine had been responsive in some degree to the moods of
Russian literature, so in Western Ukraine similar influence would be
exerted by the various schools of Polish literature and the changing
literary fashions of Vienna. No one from the outside could steer a
direct course amid this confused and confusing situation. The language
in the two sections might be identical but the overtones and the
connotations would be very different, for even the presence of a few
leaders from Great Ukraine in Galicia had not yet spun together all the
threads that had been torn apart so completely centuries before. The
man who was to found this literature and do more than his share in
bringing together the two Ukraines was Ivan Franko, who is undoubtedly
after Shevchenko the outstanding Ukrainian author.
It is hardly necessary to point out the differences between them.
Shevchenko was a natural genius. Franko was far from that and in his
works, talented and excellent as they are, there is not that supreme
perfection, that incomparable greatness that there was in the older
man. Their lives too are markedly different in every way. Shevchenko,
the self-educated son of a serf, was born in the period when the
Romantic movement was at its height. He was old enough to have thrilled
in his youth to the tales of the men who had taken part in the last
armed revolts of the Ukrainians and his mind often harped back to the
heroic days of the past. There was something romantic and tragic in his
life story. His liberation from serfdom, his service in the Russian
army, his association with many of the broadminded aristocrats of his
day, all lend themselves to the dramatic and the unusual.
There was none of this in Franko. He was more than well educated and
his life is singularly empty of startling episodes. It is a prosaic
record of duty recognized and executed, of articles written, of
difficulties surmounted. If he ever had visions of riding into battle
beside the great hetmans of the past, he did not bring himself to
describe them. He offers us merely the commonplace spectacle of a
hardworking journalist and editor winning his way by the sweat of his
brow and the burning of the midnight oil. It was his task to remake
the moral fibre of his people, to rebuild a shattered edifice and to
expend superhuman energy in the process. All that does not lend itself
to thrilling and unusual episodes but it is none the less valuable both
for the man and his people. It is none the less important because it is
not decked out with gaudy colors and with feats of physical daring and
spectacular sufferings and endurance.
Ivan Franko was born August 15, 1856, in the little village of
Nahuyevichi, in the foothills of the Carpathians only five years before
the death of Shevchenko. He was the son of a poor farmer-blacksmith.
The boy was not deprived of the opportunity of a formal education.
Quite the reverse. He early learned to read and write Ukrainian, Polish
and German and he received most of his early education in a German
speaking school conducted by the Basilian Fathers. His father died
when he was eight years old and his mother soon married again but his
stepfather treated him kindly and helped him with his education.
On finishing the elementary schools, he entered the gymnasium in
Drohobych and during his entire course he stood almost continuously at
the head of his class. His clothes may have been ragged and tattered
and he may have been shy and retiring, but he showed clearly that
he had an acute mind and a great deal of endurance. He dabbled in
literature along with many of his fellow students but there was still
something youthful about his works and they did not appear in all of
their later perfection.
In 1875 he entered the University of Lviv at a time when practically
all the lectures were given in Polish and he was at once plunged into
the frenzied academic debates about the problems of Galicia and the
fate of the Ukrainians there. He listened for hours to the bitter
partisanship over the form of the language to be used in the province
and soon realized the sterility and artificiality of the entire
controversy.
In his first period at the University, he drifted into the Academic
Circle, a group of students that were rather Moscophile in tendency.
At least this group had access to a journal which could publish his
writings, and besides it appeared to be more serious and less devoted
to society and frivolity than some of the groups that were more purely
nationalistic.
It was about this time that he became interested in the writings of
Mikhaylo Drahomaniv, (1841-1895) who was the leading Ukrainian scholar
of the day. Drahomaniv, a great democrat, had taken a relatively
advanced position and was frowned upon as a radical in many quarters.
Yet he held firmly to the idea that the Ukrainians in both sections
should cooperate closely and in order to work more freely in this
connection he moved to Geneva, from which point he found it easier to
communicate with the leaders on both sides of the Russian-Galician
border, and later he was professor in the University of Sofia, Bulgaria.
Drahomaniv used his influence definitely against the Galician
Moscophiles and he had no difficulty in pointing out that this group
was an artificial and insincere creation, for at the very moment when
its members were talking of adapting themselves to the Great Russian
point of view, they were taking little interest in understanding
what that point of view was and they were almost equally innocent of
the achievements of Russian literature. In fact many could not even
use Russian well. This policy brought Franko and Drahomaniv together
and the younger man commenced a correspondence with Drahomaniv that
continued until the latter’s death.
In 1877 Franko had his first taste of Austrian justice. He was arrested
with many of his friends on the charge of being involved in political
conspiracies with Drahomaniv and sentenced to nine months in prison.
When he was finally released, much of the Ukrainian society of Lviv
declined to meet him. He was forbidden to enter many of the gathering
places and was treated as if he had been an ordinary criminal. The
immediate result was a strengthening of his desire to pursue a direct
course for the welfare of his people, as he saw it, and in 1878 with
money which he received from Drahomaniv, who was supported from the
Russian Ukraine, he commenced the publication of the _Hromadsky Druh_
to spread his ideas. The journal lasted about a year but was constantly
in trouble with the censor. The work, however, brought Franko in
contact with the socialists of the province. This had its good and bad
sides. It brought him into contact with the Polish liberal journals and
on the other hand it alienated from his influence many of the people of
the conservative classes. The mood of the young poet can be well seen
in the last stanza of the _Stone Cutters_, which he wrote at this time--
And so we moved ahead, united as one man
By sacred thought, with hammers in our hands.
Let us be cursed by all, forgotten by the world,
But we will break the rocks and build a proper road
And happiness will come for all from our lost bones.
The immediate result of all this activity was a second arrest in 1880
when he was travelling through the country and after three months in
prison he was ordered sent back to his native village, but before he
arrived, he was taken ill and after extreme privations and a long
illness, he was allowed to return to some of his friends. In 1889 he
was arrested a third time and kept in jail for three months without any
formal charges being preferred against him.
During all this time he continued to write and in fact in the early
eighties, he did much of his most significant work. He was not,
however, satisfied and in 1885 he made a trip to Kiev to establish
personal contacts with the Ukrainian leaders there and to arrange for
the publication of their works in Lviv. The following year he returned
to Kiev and there married Olha Khorunzhinska, a marriage which turned
out very happily until his wife was taken ill in his later days.
For the next ten years he made his living by writing for various Polish
liberal papers but he steadily became more disillusioned as to the
possibility of creating a working harmony between the socialist parties
of the two peoples. He came to believe that the ideal of socialism as
preached by the Polish socialists toward the Ukrainian working people
was not deep enough to bind the two peoples together. In 1897 in a
review of _Konrad Wallenrod_, a poem by Mickiewicz, he criticized the
idea that a man could become a national hero solely because of his
treachery. Some of the Poles regarded this as an attack on their whole
nation and it cost him most of his Polish friends and more seriously
yet, his position as correspondent for various Polish papers but he did
not change his opinions to better his financial status.
In 1892-1894 he studied at the University of Vienna and in 1894 he
received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a dissertation on Ivan
Vishensky, a Ukrainian publicist of the early seventeenth century. He
had high hopes of securing the chair of Ukrainian Literature at the
University of Lviv and the faculty approved his candidacy. The governor
of the province, however arbitrarily cancelled the nomination in view
of his three arrests.
Then for a while he dabbled in Galician politics and would have won an
election to the Diet in Vienna as the representative of the Radical
Party, the first party of the Galician Ukrainians to be organized on
a definite economic program, had he not been defeated by the most
unashamed chicanery and cheating. After that he avoided politics in
the strict sense of the word and continued his activities as writer,
critic, scholar, and teacher of his people.
The response on the part of the people of Galicia and the respect
which he had won were fully shown in the reception accorded him on the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his entrance into literature in 1898 and
again on the fortieth anniversary on the eve of the First World War,
when the Shevchenko Scientific Society awarded him a yearly pension and
the Ukrainians in Russia, Galicia and the United States raised for him
the sum of 30,000 Austrian crowns.
His health began to fail in 1908 and he almost lost the use of his
hands but he continued to work without any relaxation. The World War
was an even more serious blow. His sons were mobilized in the Austrian
army. The Russians penetrated into Lviv and Galicia and endeavored to
put an end to all Ukrainian activities. Finally he died on May 28,
1916, just about two years before the collapse of Austria-Hungary and
the temporary independence of Ukraine. His funeral was arranged by the
Shevchenko Society and despite the restrictions of the war, over 10,000
people were in his funeral procession.
It is the simple story of a life devoted to the service of his people.
Most of the controversies that Franko had with other Ukrainian leaders
and the periods when he fell in disfavor were connected with that most
severe problem of a leader, how to guide his people in a democratic
spirit and at the same time not be so far ahead of them that he loses
touch with their feelings and their beliefs and preaches to them real
truths which they cannot and do not wish to comprehend. He summarized
his obligations as he saw them in the preface to the Polish translation
of the _Galician Sketches_:
“Before all I confess it as a sin, that many patriots regard me as
destructive; I do not love the Rusins. Compared with that burning
love, which comes often ‘for a brother race’ from the pen of Polish
conservative journalists, my confession may seem strange. What is to
be done, if it is true. I am not one of those naive and blind lovers
and I can speak soberly about such a tender subject as love. I affirm
again: I do not love the Rusins. I have found so few among them of
righteous character, and so much pettiness, narrow material egotism,
duplicity and pride, that I really do not know for what I could love
them, remembering constantly the thousands of greater and lesser darts,
that they have planted in my skin, often with the best ideas. It is
understood that there are exceptions, many pure personalities, worthy
of all respect among the Rusins (I am speaking of the intelligentsia,
not the villagers), but these exceptions unfortunately only confirm the
general statement.
“I accept it as a great sin; even our Rus I do not love at least as our
patented patriots do or pretend to do. What is there to love in it? To
love it as a geographical conception, I am a foe of empty phrases and
I have seen too much of the world to be able to say that there is no
such beautiful nature as in Rus. To love its history, I know it well
and I love too warmly the general human ideals of justice, brotherhood,
and freedom not to recognize how few examples there are in the history
of Rus of real community spirit, just sacrifice, true love. But it is
important to love this history, for at every time it is necessary to
weep over it. Why can I love Rus as a race--this race which is hard,
intractable, sentimental, a race without temper or strength of will,
so little adapted for political life on its own behalf, and so fertile
in producing renegades of every kind? How can I love the bright future
of this Rus, which I do not know, when I cannot see any basis for this
bright future?
“But if on the other hand, I feel myself a Rusin and with all of my
strength I work for Rus as the honored reader will see, it is not from
reasons of a sentimental nature. I am guided before all by a feeling
of a canine obligation. The son of a Rusin peasant, reared on black
peasant bread, the work of stout peasant hands, I feel myself bound by
the labor of my whole life to repay those coins which a peasant hand
has expended, so that I can ascend to the heights, where one can see
clearly, where freedom is poured out richly, where universal ideals
shine. My Rusin patriotism is not sentiment, not national pride, but
a great yoke placed by fate upon my shoulders. I can protest, I can
quietly curse my fate, for placing that yoke upon me, but I cannot
throw it off, I cannot seek another country, or I would be base against
my own doubts. And if anything lightens for me the burden of this yoke,
it is the sight of the Rusin people, that, although bent, deafened
and demoralized for long centuries, although today poor, awkward, and
joyless, yet is gradually advancing and perceives somehow in the widest
circles the feelings of light, truth, justice and is seeking approach
to them. It is worth while to work for this people and no honorable
work for it is lost.”
We can well understand how such plain speaking aroused criticism
against Franko among those Ukrainians who were flattering the people
and at the same time hindering their educational advance and the
improvement of their social conditions. From the very beginning of
his work Franko took as his goal the good of the people. He realized
that it was no easy task and that his path would not be strewn with
roses. He realized the opposition that he would encounter not only from
his opponents but also from those whom he was trying to help. Yet he
approached his task with the coldly realistic manner of the end of the
century when the hopes of decisive and rapid changes had practically
vanished from the minds of most people and when it was fully understood
that only hard work and slow social reform could benefit the people.
Yet it did not curb his enthusiasm or his belief in the undying spirit
of liberty and the good in man. He summed it up in his poem _The
Eternal Revolutionist_,
A revolutionist eternally
Man’s spirit, driving him to fight
For progress, liberty and right.
It lives, it cannot die.
(Translated by Arthur P. Coleman)
This theme runs through all of his collections, especially of the
early days and the titles are themselves suggestive. _From the
Heights and Depths_, _Sad Songs_, _Night Thoughts_, _The Thoughts of a
Proletarian_, _Ukraine_, _Prison Sonnets_, _Galician Sketches_, _Jewish
Melodies_. The overwhelming mass of his poems especially in his early
years and until about 1893 dealt with various social problems. They
pictured the hardships of society, of the common man and of the poet
himself in his aspirations to do something before the people. They run
through all forms of lyrical verse, sonnets, _et cetera_, and form a
good poetic picture of conditions as they were in Western Ukraine with
the constant struggle against the Polish lords.
It is very rare that Franko creates a true narrative poem and the
best example is the _Nobleman’s Pranks_, a picture of peasant life in
Galicia on the eve of the abolition of serfdom. Pan Mihucki, a strong
willed Polish landlord, could not believe that this liberation would
ever take place. He could not believe either that the peasant had any
rights, even those which were guaranteed by the law. When the devoted
priest on his estate endeavored to preach temperance and to teach the
children to read and write, the autocratic master ordered him to be put
to work in the fields like a common peasant despite the laws of the
land which exempted priests from such labor. The priest was compelled
to work until he dropped dead. The imperial commissioner, an Austrian
German, tried in vain to moderate the lord’s wrath when he learned that
serfdom had been abolished and when all remedies were useless, and
the new order was introduced, he placed the Polish landlord in jail.
It was an overwhelming shock to Pan Mihucki and though he was soon
released, his time was over and within a year he died abroad. His widow
returned but she was entirely in the power of the Jewish agent who held
the mortgages on the estate and soon she too disappeared, “And Moshko
bought the village.” It was a grim warning of a situation that was far
too common in Galicia and not generally recognized.
The priest is one of those types that Franko particularly appreciated
and to which he returns again and again. He is a man who does all that
he can for his fellows and perishes in his attempts to aid them but at
the time he is so conscious of how much more he could have done, that
he feels no self-satisfaction even amid the plaudits of others.
This type of a lost leader appears in a poignant form in the _Death of
Cain_. Old Cain who has struggled with the curse of God for centuries
finally learns that the way to a peaceful and quiet life is through the
virtues of a man’s own heart. He returns to men to tell them of the new
truth and his great grandson Lamech, old and blind, shoots him with
an arrow directed by a little child. Ignorance and misunderstanding
prevent Lamech from learning the message that the old sufferer had
wished to give him.
Of his lyrical collections perhaps the most musical are the _Three
Garlands of the Fallen Leaves_ which appeared between 1893 and 1896.
They are personal poems dealing with the emotion of love and pain. In
the first Garland they emphasize disappointment. In the second pain
is treated as a cult and in the third, Franko glorifies a feeling
of detachment from sensation, a lack of feeling, with a tendency to
glorify Buddha and to approach Nirvana even through suicide. Some of
his critics accused him of accepting the philosophy of the decadents.
He repudiated the idea but these poems strike an unusual note in
Franko’s general attitude of eternal confidence in the human spirit.
Still they are among his best work and together with the collection _My
Emerald_, written during a period of illness, they are among his most
deeply musical creations.
Perhaps the greatest of his longer poems is _Moses_ which he wrote in
1905, and we cannot fail to see in it a certain hidden autobiographical
touch and to regard the Hebrews as types of the contemporary
Ukrainians. Moses, the great prophet, has led his people into the
wilderness with the promise of a happier and a more abundant life. Yet
the new world is not forthcoming and the people whom he has aroused to
action, murmur against him and prefer the advice of the false prophets.
Moses defies them and wins but he withdraws from them to go alone and
by himself to the Promised Land. Yet hardly has he left when doubts
begin to assail him. Can he be sure that he has been on the right path?
Can he be sure that he has acted properly in rousing the people in
the beginning? He grows more and more discouraged and finally loses
faith in God. While the evil spirit mocks him, he curses Jehovah and
can therefore not enter the Promised Land. Yet the people without him
willingly obey the call of Joshua and press on to their destined goal.
His sufferings have not been in vain but that one moment of unbelief
has wrecked his chance to go with them to happiness.