I. Franko in the Intertextual Field of Literature

Abstract

The article explores the creative dialogue of Ivan Franko with Juliusz Słowacki, Jan Kasprowicz, and other writers of the 19th century as well as different time-spaces. Franko’s intertextual practice demonstrates not only the quoting possibilities of artistic literature, which go beyond mere reminiscences and allusions, but also provides a process of transforming certain plots into the author’s own narrative, mediating both direct and indirect communication between writers, and ensuring the circulation of ideas and images in their works, which each time acquired new artistic qualities at the intersection of common and distinctive features.

This is not about mechanical imitation or borrowing but rather about a meaningful conversation between Ivan Franko, Juliusz Słowacki, and other writers – a creative rivalry. This dialogue is documented in the poems “Odpowiedź na “Psalmy przyszłości” Spiridionowi Prawdzickiemu” (“A Response to the “Psalms of the Future” to Spiridion Prawdzicki”, addressed to Z. Krasiński) by Juliusz Słowacki and “Вічний революціонер” (“Eternal Revolutionary”) by Ivan Franko, filled with each poet’s personal interpretations related to stylistic features of different epochs, as well as semantic and historically specific contexts.

The article examines the possibilities of the “speech ontology” of Franko’s “Тюремні сонети” (“Prison Sonnets”), evidently inspired by Jan Kasprowicz’s cycle “Z więzienia” (“From the Prison”), as well as Franko’s dialogue with other sonneteers (L. de Vega, A.–W. Schlegel) concerning the poetic definition of strict stanzaic form. Analogies are traced between Franko’s edition and Jan Kasprowicz’s poetry collection “Miłość” (“Love”, 1895), with its characteristic three-phase composition (poems “L’amore desperato”, “Miłość-Grzech”, “Amor vincens”) and the three cycles of Franko’s “Зів’яле листя” (“Withered Leaves”).

Finally, the article clarifies the specifics of Franko’s socio-psychological novel “Лель і Полель” (“Lelum and Polelum”), which alludes to Juliusz Słowacki’s drama “Lilla Weneda”, yet expands its spatial and semantic dimensions.