Talk:Ivan Franko

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I am not an expert on the life and works of Ivan Franko, but even I know that he was never exiled to Siberia. I also was surprised at the paragraph describing his death and stating that he was so neglected at that time. I do know that his funeral was enormous with many prominent Ukrainians and others attending. I have seen a picture of the funeral procession winding through the streets of war-time Lviv and it is very long indeed. I would venture to guess that someone has inserted some misinformation into this article and it should be cleaned up by a knowledgeable person. Mike Stoyik 17:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, half of the article is misinformative. --Comrade Che 1 14:42, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Editing Ivan Franko
I edited the reference to Siberia's Kolyma where Franko allegedly spent his second time in prison. Perhaps it was an honest mistake, since the second time was in Kolomyia, Ukraine. Still, it will take some time to bring this article up to a respectable standard.--Riurik 00:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * That is a funny mistake. Beside that one there are plenty other urban legends circling around as well. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Birthplace seems erratic
Ivan Franko was born in Nahuievychi village, that was in a while called something like Ivana Franka. On the Ukrainian page I could not understand, which is current name today. Anyway no Cobh and no Ivana-Franka seems right.

T6nis (talk) 21:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * on 2009 June 25 Ivana-Franka was renamed back to Nahuievychi -- AS sa 12:19, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Franko is German
Can anybody explain me how Franko relates to German de:Schmied as it being claimed in the article? Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 23:26, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

"Kamenyari" mistranslation.
In the context of the poem, "Kamnenyari" does not at all translate to "Stonemason". In the poem, they are working mightily at a rock face or quarry, which symbolises an enormous task. I have no idea what single English word would most pithily convey that meaning. "Rockbreakers", perhaps? The image of the man on his grave conveys the meaning quite well. Old_Wombat (talk) 07:28, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're still around from time to time,, the best translation is 'groundbreaker' (i.e., that Franko is considered to be a groundbreaker). Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:55, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Alleged homosexuality of Ivan Franko
According to http://www.from-ua.com/voice/45e8a21a5a01e.html Ivan Franko self confessed his homosexuality in a letter to one of his potential fiancés – Olga Roshko: “Я більше мужчин любив у своїм житті, ніж женщин знав... се в мене якась неприродна дика любов... Я знаю, що причина того неприродного потягу до мужчин дуже проста – виховання, зовсім відособлене від женщин, – але чи ж міг я се змінити?” If this information is verifiable, then the homosexuality of Franko must be mentioned in the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.77.2.133 (talk) 07:32, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it is not verifiable. Oles Buzina (author of article) is "yellow journalist".--Максим Пе (talk) 19:28, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

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Anti-Jewish motivated resentments exist in the journalistic and literary work of the author Ivan Franko
Anti-Jewish motivated resentments exist in the journalistic and literary work of the poet Ivan Franko In 2010, the Jewish Community (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde - IKG) informed the University Vienna in writing that the literary and journalistic work of the Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko contains anti-Jewish motivated resentments and that the IKG is thus requesting the removal of the plaque that had been mounted on the Institute for Contemporary History in honour of the poet. Subsequently, the University decided to organise a conference with international participation to validate the allegations against Franko on a scientific level. The conference was held on the 24th and 25th of October 2013 at the University Vienna and was entitled “Ivan Franko and the Jewish Question in Galicia”. The findings of this validation were published in 2016 in the book “Ivan Franko und die jüdische Frage in Galizien: Interkulturelle Begegnungen und Dynamiken im Schaffen des ukrainischen Schriftstellers“ [Ivan Franko and the Jewish Question in Galicia: Intercultural Encounters and Dynamics in the Work of the Ukrainian Writer], edited by Alois Woldan and Olaf Terpitz, Vienna University Press, published by the V & R unipress GmbH publishing house. According to the Ukrainian scholars, there are no anti-Jewish motivated aversions in Franko’s work with Jewish topics, they seem to be merely a report of the visually perceived occurrences. For example, the Ukrainian literary scholar Tamara Gundorova stated that the Jewish topic portrayed in Franko’s work has an accentuated melodramatic background. Quote: “Melodrama as a genre and as a mode of creation is part of the string of popular culture, and we certainly do not spare it when it comes to high literature. In Franko’s work, there are many melodramas. He uses them as a tool to unlock the humanist side of man.” Gundorova in “On Franko as not philo-Semite or anti-Semite, but as a challenge for the Ukrainian Literature” (Про Франка не як філосеміта чи антисеміта, а як виклик українському літературознавству, Тамара Гундорова/Tamara Gundorova, Листопад 2013/November 2013, in http://krytyka.com/ua/community/blogs/pro-franka-ne-yak-filosemita-chy-antysemita-yak-vyklyk-ukrayinskomu#sthash.r2NwCDwh.dpuf). The Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak shares the opinion that Franko’s political or ideological point of view on the Jewish topic in his journalistic work can be assigned to the “progressive - liberal - anti-Semitism”. See “A Prophet in His Country” - “Між семітизмом й антисемітизмом: Іван Франко та єврейське питання”, УДК 821.161.2(477.83=411.16) Г85. "The quintessence of the investigation of the Franko work is to brand the Ukraine as an anti-Semitic and nationalist state," said Yaroslav Hrytsak on 11. 11. 2013 in a news issue of the TV channel "zik", in Lviv. This tendentious presentation of the Jewish question in Franko’s work on the part of the Ukrainian scholars - in light of the Franko cult that exists in the Ukraine - is extremely rarely shared by scholars from other countries. Franko repeatedly introduced an ideological element of an anti-Semitic worldview into the Galician public debate, which was a matrix: “The Jew as bloodsucker and parasite”, while on the other hand the Ruthenians are always depicted in a positive way. Franko was drawing this emblematic constellation also in his extensive literary work, which is full with anti-Semitic passages. The cycle “Jewish Melodies” (Жидівські мелодії) includes a series of poems, all with anti-Semitic background. All include associations with morally negative connoted characteristics and with ugly appearance: “At the Zadik”, “Surke” (Sara), “Pir’ja” (The Feathers), “Zapowit Yakowa” (Jacobs Legacy), “Hawa” (Гава), “Hawa and Wowkun” (Гава і Вовкун), “Herschko, the gold-maker” (Гершко Гольдмахер), “Assimilatoram” (Ассиміляторам), “Sambation” (Самбатіон). In the stage play “The Teacher” (Utschitel), Ivan Franko shows how “the village teacher Omeljan Tkatsch is fighting against the Jewish owner, chairman of the School Council, trader, smuggler and usurer Wolf Silberglanz who in the end gets arrested. But after a short while, the crook returns to the village and the teacher Tkatsch is forced by the provincial authorities to move to a mountain village even farther away...” Franko shows that “...a person such as the Jew Wolf Silberglanz will face no difficulties on his path, he slides over any obstacle and wins.” Franko stigmatises the Jews as collective exploiters of the people and flatly labels them as parasites. The strong increase of the aggressive character of his metaphor - subsequently following his “Borislav cycle” up until later years - can be demonstrated with this example: in the poem “Po ljudsky” - (По людськи - Human) Ivan Franko lets his protagonist, Rabbi Chaїm say the following: “Our tribe in this country only sucks the blood from it,(...) like a bloodsucker with no blood on his own is sucking the blood from others.” The same aggressive tone can be found in the metaphoric image hanging in Hermann Goldkremer’s workroom, depicting a gigantic boa ambushing and strangling a gazelle, so to say: this is what will happen to Goldkremer’s adversaries, the workers of the Boryslav oil pits. Quote I: “Despite the mimetic character of the description, Franko uses stereotypes for the characterisation of his figures. It is important to note that stereotypes do not have an author. By taking over anti-Jewish stereotypes, Franko did not invent them, and also did not question them. Here, at the latest, it should be noted that anti-Jewish stereotypes were particularly prevalent in Galicia, especially in the last decades of the 19th century, on the one hand in the numerous texts dedicated to the literary description of the oil boom, and on the other hand in the city text of Lviv. With these early works, Franko surely also wanted to achieve a political effect: the drastic descriptions with often naturalistic character should rouse the public, perhaps even accuse the political leaders”. (A. Woldan, page 94) quote II: “In ‘Navernnenyj hrišnyk’ (‘The Converted Sinner’): Šmilo, the opponent of the hero, is not individualised, but sketched with a stencil, in complete contrast to the Ruthenian heroes in this and other stories. This is already evident in his outward appearance: he is bony, pale and ‘carp eyed’ (карповоокий); his black clothing is dirty, his thick red beard gives him a somewhat demonic appearance. He is also linguistically distinguished in this story - he speaks broken Ukrainian (apart from some Yiddish insertions), and he cannot pronounce certain consonants. Another stereotype characterizes him with the bloodsucker metaphor, the moral cripple”. (A. Woldan, p. 95), quote III: “The anti-Jewish stereotype of the bloodsucker and parasite, well-defined in the Galician literary tradition, is at hand for the characterization of one side, while the positive description of the Ruthenians stems from of the author's national commitment - Franko always feels like an advocate of his ethnic group”. (A. Woldan, page 107), “Ivan Franko and the Jewish Question in Galicia: Intercultural Encounters and Dynamics in the Work of the Ukrainian Writer”. Franko's relations with leading Jewish intellectuals of his time were only tight until it turned out that Franko was indeed an ambivalent personality, a guy with double moral standards and with a strong nationalist attitude. For example, young Martin Buber, who resided in Vienna, had good relations with Franko for some time and wanted to publish Franko’s contributions on the situation of the Jews in Galicia in his magazine “Der Jude”. Nothing came out of it in the end, because Franko’s publications did not correspond with the intentions of the monthly magazine. This was also confirmed by the exchange of letters with the brothers L. and A. Inländer, N. Bierbaum, H. Barac, K. Lippe, etc. quote IV: “The material published to this day gives room for the conclusion that Franko’s attitude to Judaism was essentially characterised by inner contradictions, doubts, ambivalence and a psychological complex. (...) In this context, it seems important to point out to the later psychological burden, a kind of mystification, be it in terms of social circumstances or because of Franko's illness”. (R. Mnich, page 10), “Ivan Franko and the Jewish Question in Galicia: Intercultural Encounters and Dynamics in the Work of the Ukrainian Writer”. Up until now, nobody has proofed the story of the “Zionist idea of the state”. There is no evidence for a correspondence between Ivan Franko and the main drafter of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, or that the two had met somewhere. The same is true with regard to the Polish-Jewish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa. Franko only tried to get in touch with Jews in Vienna, and to then act against them and to polemicize against them in the media, to speak ill of them and to condemn them. K. Lippe wrote a book about Franko with the title “Symptoms of anti-Semitic mental illness”. quote V: “Cargel Lippe (actually Nathan Petachja, 1830-1915) - Jewish medical practitioner in Jassy (Romania) and publicist. In his book ‘Symptoms of anti-Semitic mental illness’, Lippe discusses the following of Ivan Franko’s publications: 1) Ivan Franko: A diabolical and discarded instigation, in: ‘Przeglad Społeczny’ 1886, S. 458-461; 2) Ivan Franko: Co znaczy Solidarność? (What does solidarity mean?). Galician Purposes. Ze statystyki większych posiadłościw Galiziji (From the statistics of large landowners in Galicia), in: ‘Przeglad Społeczny’ 1886, S. 310-314. Footnote 134“ (R. Mnich in “Ivan Franko in the context of Theodor Herzl and Martin Buber”, page 82, edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre publishing house, Konstanz, Edition 2012). Leading scholars and intellectuals in the period prior to 1990 have sharply criticized Ivan Franko's mindset because of its nationalism, including the philologist and academician Prof. E.P. Kyryljuk and the playwright and composer M. Lysenko in “Sociolohiczny pohl’ady”, etc. Quote VI: The socialism we find in Franko’s work is a “mishmash of unclear terms, from socializing to co-determine, protection of the weak and anarchism up to nihilism, which emerged as the autonomist mainstream, and one can hardly think of a Cesare Battisti or Benito Mussolini dedicating themselves to the maximum or minimum program of ‘The Internationale’. The intelligentsia sought to snatch the leadership from the aristocracy by using, to a large extent, nationalist aspirations, and they also made use of the - later canonical - writings of the great theoreticians. But it took a really long time until the formation of the Labour Party and of similar sister parties in the world”. (...) “The way Franko sketches Jewish financiers speaks very much for the fact that beneath all the mimicry, he was also bearing the latent Slavonic anti-Semitism in an embryonic form in himself, and that these prejudices did not allow the element of class-struggle to come to the foreground”. (K. Treimer in “Ivan Franko”, page 23, Notring publishing house, Vienna 1971). Quote VII: “(...) in three of Franko's contributions to the ‘Jewish question’ in the Lviv monthly magazine ‘Przegląd Społeczny’, the anti-Semitic statements were clearly more dominant (...)” (Kai Struve in “The Jew Question” - a European Phenomenon? page 110, (Ed.) Manfred Hettling, Michael G. Müller and Guido Hausmann, Metropol publishing house, Berlin 2013.) In footnote 53, page 111, Prof. Struve noted the following: “In the copy of ‘Przegląd Społeczny’ that I was using in the Jagiellonian library in Kraków, the pages 455 - 463 were missing”. The Ukrainian version of Franko’s publication “On the Jew Question”, which is available today, published by “The Interregional Academy of Personnel Management” (private university in Kiev, Ukraine) - Межрегиональная Академия управления персоналом (МАУП) - Киев, 2002., shows clear language differences: the article “On the Jew Question” is printed unadorned in the old Ruthenian language, while the articles “The Jewish State” and “My Jewish acquaintances” are written in a friendly and flawless Ukrainian language of today. The Ukrainian scientist and philologist Mychajlo Vosnjak (1881 - 1954) had translated this edition from Polish and first published it in 1913. It is suspected that the content of the last two contributions is not authentic. Quote VIII: “The ‘Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party’, co-founded by Franko, was nationalistic, as becomes evident by its program and the further development of its founders and active members towards a militant nationalism and fascism(...)”. Prof. and member of the Academy of Sciences Jevhen Prokopovitsch Kyryljuk in his book “The life and work of Ivan Franko”, “Naukowa dumka”, Kiev 1983. Quote IX: “Franko and Pavlyk were critical about Marxism. They were in close contact with Mykhailo Drahomanov, a resident of Kiev and later of Switzerland, and supported his evolutionary, anarchist and peasant-oriented ideas of socialism”. (Kai Struve in “The Jew Question” - a European Phenomenon? Footnote 14, page 99). Quote X: “The already evident tensions between the Marxists (the so-called ‘young guys’) on one hand, who welcomed the merging with the Polish socialists, and the Drahomanovists (the so-called ‘old people’) on the other hand, who preferred an independent path, based ‘on the people’ and thus on the masses of Ruthenian peasants, and who accepted the ideological malus of a cooperation with the Ukrainophiles, were initially discharged within the editorship of ‘Tovaryš’ (The Comrade). (...) While the ‘old’ like Franko and Pavlyk wanted to keep an ideological distance to Marxism and feared that the movement would be taken in by the Polish socialists, the ‘young’ were opposing these views. Franko was in particular accused (by the young - E.L.) for having anti-Semitic resentments”. (Kerstin S. Jobst in “Between Nationalism and Internationalism”, page 38, footnote 57, “Dölling und Galitz” publishing house, Hamburg, 1996). Quote XI: “After Franko started supporting the nationalist Ruthenian party, the relationship broke up with his mentor, the anarchist Mykhailo Dragomanov”. (K. Treimer in “Ivan Franko”, page 31, Notring publishing house, Vienna 1971). Franko's party program was characterized by political anti-Semitism. The following article gives insight into the party program of the RURP: “The Jewish question in the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party program and the party’s activities at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century”. Quote XII: “By the year 1898, the RURP (Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party) had already worked out a clear position on the Jewish question. Ivan Franko had taken on the mission of the program designer on this issue. He also wrote a program supplement called ‘The Radical Tactic’. The primer includes a separate chapter on the topic ‘The Jewish question’. Franko had noted in one of the sections that practically the entire program of the RURP is composed in a way to make it impossible ‘for the Jews and the parasites to rule over the working people’ in the future (...) ‘the radicals are not anti-Semites’(...) The rock shatterer (I. Franko) justified the point of view of the party in the following way: ‘The Radicals can differentiate well, and they know that the Jewish sluggard with the payot (sidelocks) (...) is a far lesser enemy to the peasants than the civilized, embellished Jewish financier, millionaire, speculator and mafiosi in his dress coat (...)’”, written by Nasar Waskiv, Assistant Professor in modern and contemporary history at the Franko University of Lviv. Franko in his journalistic article “The Radicals and the Jews” - Quote XIII: “There is in fact no people's assembly of the Radicals, where our speakers do not warn against the Jewish bloodsuckers (...) We are not enemies of the Jews, just because they are Jews, because they are from Palestine, or because they wear sidelocks and dressing gowns and smell of onions”. (R. Mnich in “Ivan Franko in the context of Theodor Herzl and Martin Buber”, page 82, edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre publishing house, Konstanz, Edition 2012). In the run-up to the Franko Conference in October 2013, the University of Vienna announced in a press release that it would add a supplementary plaque to the Franko bust with regard to the Jewish theme in Franko’s work. This did not happen yet. The City Councilor for Culture and Science Vienna, Dr. Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, also expressed in an e-mail release his willingness to add an additional plaque next to the Franko statue in Postgasse 8. Also in this case, nothing has happened so far. —  13:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)