Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
On August 27, 1856, the writer, publicist, translator, and public figure Ivan Franko was born. What do we know about him? That he is called the "Ukrainian Stonemason," that he wrote the story "Zakhar Berkut," and his "Eternal Revolutionary" is quoted by people all over the world...
We offer our users 13 facts about the life of the genius of the Ukrainian word.
1. Ivan Yakovych Franko was born on August 27, 1856, in the hamlet of Voytova Hora, Nahuyevychi village (now Drohobych district, Lviv region), into the family of a wealthy village blacksmith. In 1865, when Ivan was nine, his father died. His mother remarried, but she herself gave her soul to God in 1872. Despite the fact that young Franko grew up an orphan, he began to receive a thorough education in 1864.
2. While studying at the Drohobych Franz Joseph Gymnasium, Franko showed phenomenal mental abilities: he could quote verbatim an hour-long lecture from his teacher, knew the entire "Kobzar" by heart, read a lot and translated the works of ancient authors, in particular Sophocles and Euripides. At the same time, he began to complete his own library, which included almost 500 books in Ukrainian and other European languages. In total, his library numbered 12 thousand copies.
3. In 1875, Franko received a scholarship and in the fall entered the Philological Faculty of Lviv University. He participated in the activities of the student social and cultural society "Academic Circle", was its librarian. Since 1874, he published his first works in the publication of the "circle" - the magazine "Friend", and 2 years later he joined its editorial committee.
4. Under the influence of three letters from Mykhailo Dragomanov to the editorial office of "Druha", Franko switched to radically oriented worldview positions. For his relations with this Ukrainian publicist, whom the Galician police considered the head of a secret international socialist organization, he was first arrested in July 1877. After a 7-month trial, Franko was sentenced to another 6 weeks in prison.
5. Despite the short sentence, its consequences for Franko were terrible. First, a person with a criminal record could not become a teacher, so the purpose of studying at the University became unclear. Second, while in prison, Franko caught a bad cold - later this disease became chronic and haunted him throughout his life. Third, priest Mykhailo Roshkevych (father of Olga Roshkevych, Franko's fiancée) refused Ivan's matchmaking and forbade his daughter from seeing and corresponding with the "criminal."
6. On March 4, 1880, he was arrested in Kolomyia - again on suspicion of socialist agitation. He was held in custody for three months before the trial, until it was declared unfounded. On June 13, 1880, Franko was sent under escort from Kolomyia to Nahuyevich. The impressions of this imprisonment formed the basis of the story "At the Bottom".
7. For the third time, the police mentioned Franko as a "socialist agitator" in connection with the arrival of a group of Kyiv Ukrainians in Lviv. On August 17, 1889, he was arrested in Lviv - investigators tried to link socialism with espionage in favor of Russia. On November 16, 1889, he was released due to lack of evidence. This time, Franko's experiences were reflected in the poetic cycle "Prison Sonnets".
8. In his creative work, the writer used about a hundred pseudonyms and cryptonyms: Ruslan, Unknown, Ivan Zhivy, Non-Theophrastus, One of the Youth, One of the Rusyns of the City of Lviv, Non severus, Vivus and many others. The most famous and popular of them is Myron (in numerous spelling variants). However, the first in this long list of pseudonyms was the mysterious name Dzhedzhalyk. It was Dzhedzhalyk, not Franko, who gained his first fame among the Galician educated youth and even became, in his own words, "some kind of curiosity or celebrity" in Lviv.
9. Despite his seriousness as a writer, Franko really enjoyed riding a bicycle (although he never bought one), picking mushrooms, and going fishing. The writer did not use a fishing rod, because he preferred nets that he wove himself. Moreover, he could catch fish even with his bare hands.
10. Franko is also known for his love of embroidered shirts, which he wore both on weekdays and on holidays, thereby becoming the originator of a new fashion - after all, he combined a shirt with Ukrainian ornaments with a European suit. Ironically, Franko, who loved wearing embroidered shirts so much throughout his life, was buried in someone else's shirt, because at that moment there was "not a single decent one" at hand.
11. Franko was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature - his candidacy was proposed by Professor and Doctor of Philosophy from Vienna Josip Zastyrec. There are two known reasons why Ivan Franko never became a laureate. The first is that the letter from Zastyrec arrived too late, when the list of nominees had already been approved. The second is the death of Ivan Franko (according to the rules of the Nobel Committee, the prize is awarded only to living candidates).
12. Franko's health deteriorated significantly in 1908, but the writer continued to work until the end of his life. He wrote: "For 14 days I could not sleep either day or night, I could not sit, and when I did, I did it in terrible pain." Ivan Franko died on May 28, 1916 in Lviv, where he was buried at the Lychakiv Cemetery.
13. Franko's death was marked by a conflict with the clergy. Olga Rozdolska wrote in her memoirs: "The community wanted to give the deceased a state funeral with a larger number of priests. But it quickly turned out that this was out of the question, because the deceased was an "open enemy of the clergy." Atheism was the main pillar of his worldview. When Franko was dying, priest Teodoziy Galushchynskyi persuaded him to reconcile with God and the church, but received the answer: "What would the youth say to that, whom I have taught all my life not to believe in God?"
The most famous works of Ivan Franko
Franko is the author of about 6,000 works, including 10 poetry collections, 1 collection of poems (50 in total), 10 works of prose and about 100 short stories, and over 3,000 journalistic articles. Here are the most famous of them:
– “Zakhar Berkut” (1883) – a historical novel about the struggle of ancient Carpathian communities against the Mongol invasion;
– “Mykyta the Fox” (1890) – Franko’s most famous fairy tale about the life of forest animals;
– “Stolen Happiness” (1893) – a tragic parable about the fact that you cannot build your happiness on someone else's misfortune, just as you cannot overcome evil with evil;
– “Crossroads” (1900) – a masterpiece of world literature, a story about the complex relations between the people and the intelligentsia of Western Ukraine;
– The poem “Moses” (1905) is a philosophical work about the relationship between the leader and the people in the process of searching for the “promised land”, a poem about the future of the Ukrainian nation;
– “Ivan Vyshensky” (1900) – a poem written in 1900, which tells about the end of Ivan Vyshensky’s life.
During his more than 40 years of creative activity, Franko worked extremely fruitfully. His creative output was written in Ukrainian (most of the texts), Polish, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Czech. During Franko's lifetime, over 220 publications of individual books and brochures appeared, including more than 60 collections of his original and translated works of various genres. Franko's prose work includes 10 works of major prose genres - short stories and novels and 18 collections of short prose. Franko's dramaturgy enriched Ukrainian literature with examples of historical, psychological drama, social comedy, neo-romantic-phantasmagoric dramatic poem-tale, philosophical dialogue, one-act play. The writer translated about 200 authors from 14 languages and 37 national literatures into Ukrainian, including samples of Babylonian, Egyptian, ancient Indian, ancient Arabic literature, ancient writing, lyrical and epic poetry of the peoples of the world, works of foreign classics.
In his honor, in 1962, the city of Stanislav was renamed Ivano-Frankivsk (the regional center), and the urban-type settlement of Yaniv was renamed Ivano-Frankovo. Lviv University, the Kyiv Drama Theater, and many educational, scientific, and cultural institutions in Ukraine and abroad are named after Ivan Franko. The asteroid 2428 Kamenyar is named in his honor.
The Library and Information Center invites our users to reread the works of the famous writer. Books and materials about Ivan Franko are presented at a book exhibition in the reading room.
Lyudmila BURYACHYNSKA,
Lead Librarian of the BIC
