Ivan Yakovych Franko

WebSite

Ivan Yakovych Franko (Ukrainian: Іван Якович Франко (August 27 [O.S. August 15] 1856 – May 28 [O.S. May 15] 1916) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language. He was a political radical, and a founder of the socialist and nationalist movement in western Ukraine. In addition to his own literary work, he also translated the works of such renowned figures as William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Dante, Victor Hugo, Adam Mickiewicz, Goethe and Schiller into the Ukrainian language. Along with Taras Shevchenko, he has had a tremendous impact on modern literary and political thought in Ukraine. Franko was born in the Ukrainian village of Nahuievychi located then in the Austrian kronland Galicia, today part of Drohobych 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-Ruthenian Hramatyka and who was exiled to Nahuyevychi for a "sharp tongue". At home, however, Ivan was called Myron because of a local superstitious belief that naming a person by different name will dodge a death. Franko's family in Nahuyevychi was considered "well-to-do", with their own servants and 24 hectares (59 acres) of their own property. Franko senior was reportedly to be a Ukrainized German colonist, or at least Ivan Franko himself believed. That statement is also supported by Timothy Snyder in his book The reconstruction of nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, which claims that Yakiv Franko was a village blacksmith of German descent. Snyder however stated that Ivan Franko's mother was of Polish petty noble origin, while more detailed sources state that she came from an impoverished Ukrainian noble background, from the well-known Ukrainian noble family Kulchytsky and was remotely related to Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny. According to Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ivan Franko was of mixed German, Polish and Ukrainian ancestry. Ivan Franko attended school in the village Yasenytsia Sylna from 1862 until 1864, and from there attended a Basilian monastic school in Drohobych until 1867. His father passed away before Ivan was able to graduate from the gymnasium (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 to Lviv University, where he studied classical philosophy, Ukrainian language and literature. It was at this University that Franko began his literary career, with various works of poetry and his novel Petriï i Dovbushchuky published by the students' magazine Druh (Friend), whose editorial board he would later join.

Ivan Yakovych Franko

Books