Franko, but not Franco: Ukrainian writer, record-breaking translator, and Nobel Prize nominee

Six thousand written pieces. One hundred volumes of written works. Hundreds of pseudonyms. Sixty years of life. Twenty working languages. A portrait on the 20 hryvnias bill of Ukrainian currency. Four arrests. Four children. One wife and more than one muse. And it seems like — not a single day wasted.

Ivan Franko was known by many names: Doctor F, Doctor Universalis, Ukrainian Faust, Moses, and self-made man — considered a genius and a prophet by his contemporaries. Despite that, he preferred collecting mushrooms and going fishing over puffing himself up in an academic position or warming a seat in some “respectable” office.

His name was well-known in Europe (primarily due to his sharp journalistic articles and satires published in leading periodicals of the 19th-20th centuries, for instance, the Viennese periodical, “Die Zeit”). Today, his name is known to everyone who has attended school in Ukraine. However, beyond Ukraine he is often mistaken for the Spanish dictator and military general Francisco Franco.

No, they are not related. Yes, understanding European history is impossible without considering both of them. Ukrainian history, culture, and identity are unimaginable without one of them.

So, who is the real Ukrainian Franko, the “human volcano” and master of the impossible?

The many faces of genius: exploring Franko’s contributions

When 19-year-old provincial young man Franko came to Lviv, he didn’t know that within a year, he’d release his first poetry collection, publish his first novel, edit a popular magazine, and become a local celebrity.

Franko, known as a cultural, social, and political activist, hailed from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, a crown land of the Hapsburg Empire. His life spanned from 1856 to 1916, coinciding with 60 of the 68-year reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Franko’s activism was particularly significant in this historical context.

In practical terms,  he was cultivating his skills, learning, living, and creating in a multinational European country where the degree of individual and national freedoms, though far from modern standards, was still significantly greater than in the neighboring Russian Empire, which Franko referred to as “a dark kingdom.”

In fact, Ivan Franko is the first professional Ukrainian writer to earn a living solely through his literary work. He was equally successful in various themes and genres, establishing himself as a poet, prose writer, screenwriter, and journalist.

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Franko is the author of 10 poetry books (“Ballads and Tales,” “Withered Leaves,” “My Emerald,” “Semper Tiro,” and others), 50 poems, more than 100 short stories, fairytales that formed 18 collections of short stories, and 10 works of big prose genres. He also wrote stories and novels (“Boa Constrictor,” “Zakhar Berkut,” “For the Home Hearth,” “Fateful Crossroads,” and others), 15 plays and countless sketches, articles, and essays.

It is clear that Franko’s primary tool was language. And not just one! He was a true polyglot, fluent in 20 languages. So it’s no wonder that Franko was also a record-breaking translator who consciously built bridges of understanding between different cultures and translation techniques. He translated the works of over 200 authors from 20 languages and more than 40 national literature and folklore traditions into Ukrainian. Franko’s translations, spanning from ancient times to the early 20th century, form a comprehensive anthology of World Literature (“Weltliteratur”) masterpieces.

Thanks to Franko’s translation skills, many classical works by these authors can be read or heard in Ukrainian: Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Robert Burns, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Hood, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Nikolaus Lenau, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Paul Verlaine, Jean Moréas, Anatole France, Georges Rodenbach, Multatuli, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Selma Lagerlöf, Karel Havlíček Borovský, Adam Mickiewicz, Jaroslav Vrchlický, Josef Svatopluk Machar, Jan Neruda, Mark Twain, and many others — there are too many to count!

Scientist and scholar

The main competitor of Franko the writer was… Franko the scientist. Both hemispheres of his brain operated at full volcanic capacity, often causing a clash between the author’s imagination and the precise rationality of a scientist. This conflict extended even into his dreams, since he knew and wrote a lot about the symbolism of dreams and hallucinations — in fact, at the same time as Sigmund Freud, his peer.

Ivan Franko received a PhD in philosophy from Vienna University for the dissertation “Barlaam and Josaphat: An Early Christian Spiritual Novel,” which he brilliantly defended under the supervision of famous Slavist Vatroslav Jagić. However, Franko felt constrained within the bounds of philosophy alone.

Despite the fact that Franko considered himself a “science amateur,” he managed to have a professional scientific career. Although he didn’t secure a professorship at the University due to the political situation, he made a colossal contribution: around 3,000 papers (in scientific research, popular science, and scientific journalism) from various fields of knowledge (not only humanities!). Franko’s interests were wide-ranging, covering Biblical sources, folklore song poetics, medieval chronicles, Apocrypha, Shevchenko’s poetry, European symbolism, economics, statistics, music, and theater.

Franko pioneered numerous fields, including Ukrainian folkloristics, medieval studies, apocryphology, paremiology, and translation studies. His significant contributions extended to Shakespeare and Shevchenko studies and Ukrainian scientific studies. More than a scholar, Franko was an innovator who charted new scientific directions.

Moreover, even in his fairytales, he educated children not only about foxes and bears but also about bacteria and viruses when they were just beginning to be studied under the microscope. 

Franko, Ukrainian legend

Ivan Franko, the first Ukrainian to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in late 1915, unfortunately did not receive the award. His untimely death, lack of support, or the challenges of representing a nation without statehood may have been contributing factors. Despite that, the absence of a dignified Nobel prize winner status does not diminish him as an important figure.

Franko is not just a prolific writer. He is one of the most renowned in Ukrainian literature. His name is etched in the bedrock of the national literary canon, consistently making the cut in even the most selective shortlists of Ukrainian classics.

His fame is not merely a result of the sheer volume of his work. Rather, his intellectual bravery to tackle an array of topics and pressing issues sets him apart. The audacious boldness and potent emotional energy imbued in his texts often left his contemporaries in awe. 

Even today, Franko’s work maintains its relevance. His enduring appeal is not solely because he is a staple in school curricula and widely acknowledged as a classic in school anthologies. Rather, it’s the “vitality,” pertinence, and allure of his texts that continue to resonate. His works have been transformed into popular songs by modern rock, pop, and indie artists, adapted into theatrical plays, TV, and films, and have become cherished childhood books that leave a lasting impression. Even cartoons have been based on his work, along with numerous biographical and documentary films.

Franko’s political influence has been significant. He created a vital formula for modern Ukrainian identity and constructed a political agenda for Ukraine’s civilized development along the European path. He elegantly combined the Ukrainian national idea with the European one, much like he paired his father’s vyshyvanka (national embroidered shirt) with a Western European-style suit, setting a powerful trend that is still present in the dress code of modern intellectual youth.

Franko was not only one of the first Ukrainian politicians but also a founder and the first Head of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party (RURP) established in 1890 in Lviv.

A prologue, not epilogue: A journey to the depth of a volcano

Telling Franko’s story in a single article is similar to emptying the sea with a spoon. Given his intense creative energy, it’s rather like attempting to reach the depth of volcanic magma. Yet, this is only the beginning of the journey.

It is incredible how one human life can have so much to tell. It even seems impossible! 

The storylines of Franko’s biography could fill more than one lifetime, and his texts could suffice for more than one writer.

In the end, probably, the main secret of Franko is that despite the vast, almost superhuman, multi-textuality of his legacy, the most fascinating work among his creations is Franko himself.

A human volcano.

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The publication is a part of the “Chytomo Picks: Classics and New Books from Ukraine” project. The materials have been prepared with the assistance of the Ukrainian Book Institute at the expense of the state budget. The author’s opinion may not coincide with the official position of the Ukrainian Book Institute.

Translation: Anastasiia Blazhko

Copyediting: Sheri Liguori, Terra Friedman King