The Poetry of Ivan Franko

Abstract

This paper is based on the political, philosophical, and journalistic poetry of the Ukrainian writer, thinker, and public and political figure Ivan Franko (1856–1916), on top of the evolution of his views on the problems of national unity of eastern and western Ukrainians, the achievement of Ukrainian statehood, and the ways and means of the liberation struggle is highlighted. The poet and thinker expressed these views in poems of various genres (sonnet, epistle, manifesto, duma, dedication – posviata, apostrophe, “fairy tale,” obituary, pomennyk, “prologue,” “march,” etc.) and lyrical epics. In Franko’s early poetry, the future social and national liberation of Ukraine is linked to a universal and socialist perspectives, while the Ukrainian people play a messianic role in liberating peoples from the yoke of Russian tsarism. In the mature Franko, the messianic emphasis changes from universal to national. It is noteworthy that in Franko’s poetry of 1875–1905 the image of the national (native/our/our own) home appears regularly. At the beginning of the twentieth century, his poetry shows an awakening neo-romantic current. Franko’s state-building poetic discourse is characterized by prophesying freedom, relentless therapeutic exposure and scourging of the inert slave mentality of the oppressed nation. In his state-building pathos, Franko refers to the historical duchies, resorts to poetic allegory, and originally processes biblical (Old Testament) plots, images, and motifs, actualizing them and projecting them onto his contemporary Ukraine; he weighs the priorities between humanism and militant nationalism, and reflects on the rationale of numerous Ukrainian sacrifices in the bloody liberation struggle. Reflecting on the problem of power in history, the poet came to the conclusion that national will is measured by the degree of struggle to gain it (and the degree of its defense).