Ivan Franko’s Concept of Theatrical Modernism: Ukrainian-Polish Typological Aspect

Abstract

This article examines Ivan Franko’s views on the development of theatrical modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within the Ukrainian and Polish theatrical scenes. It demonstrates that this issue has been raised repeatedly in numerous publications by scholars from both Ukraine and Poland, though not always consistently or in detail, focusing primarily on its literary studies aspect and on artistic materials related to the various genres of the modern Western European stylistic system, mainly in lyric and epic genres. Thus, drama (both Ukrainian and Polish) and theater have, in such studies, remained somewhat on the sidelines of the scholarly analysis of Franko’s concept of modernism in the performing arts.

That is why this study of the issue draws upon the ideological and aesthetic phenomena of Ukrainian and Polish theater of the specified period as reflected in Ivan Franko’s scholarly reception, which he articulated in many of his articles, essays, and studies.

To this end, we have analyzed literary-critical materials identified in the writer and scholar’s legacy, as well as reviews of plays by Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Stanisław Przybyszewski, Vasyl Pachovsky, and Stanisław Wyspiański. It has been demonstrated that Ivan Franko, despite the subjectivity of his perception of their works staged in Ukraine and Poland, always objectively assessed the contribution of these playwrights to the development of modernism in the theatrical spheres of the two neighboring nations. In this way, Ivan Franko not only observed the emergence of modernist artistic thought in their work but also demonstrated its organic integration into the system of literary and theatrical processes in the Ukrainian-Polish region of that time.

It is important to note that in examining the issue of dramaturgical and theatrical modernism in the Ukrainian-Polish regions during the specified period, Ivan Franko’s scholarly concept is substantiated in the context of his views on innovative techniques and stylistic foundations of Ukrainian and Polish literature in general, particularly those of the members of “Moloda Muza” and “Young Poland” (Młoda Polska).

This approach to understanding Ivan Franko’s views on the development of Ukrainian-Polish theatrical modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided grounds for asserting that the Ukrainian scholar was well acquainted with the various forms of innovative artistic thought within the national contexts of Poland and Ukraine, while identifying the leading proponents of this ideological and aesthetic consciousness in the drama and performing arts of the time; furthermore, he objectively evaluated their dramatic works and their stage adaptations. Thus, Ivan Franko not only documented in his works the emergence of modernism as a pan-European concept but also its various manifestations in the Polish and Ukrainian theatrical scenes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.