Ivan Franko. Duel

Ivan Franko

Work proposed for translation:

Duel 
Short stories (1880–1906)
Length: 192 pp.
Copyright: public domain

Ivan Franko (1856–1916) is an influential Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, intellectual, and public figure. He received his education at the philosophical faculties of the universities of Lviv and Chernivtsi, and his doctorate in literary studies at the University of Vienna. The author’s political position, due to which he was imprisoned several times, ruined his academic career, which had begun brilliantly. Therefore, he continued to live off his literary activities. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but his death prevented this. In the multi-vector and thoroughness of Franko, who worked in various genres of artistic creativity, branches of humanitarian and economic thought and public and political activity, he has no analogues among the people of that time. It is with Franko that significant milestones in Ukrainian culture are associated: the emergence of Ukrainian literary modernism, the development of humanitarian, in particular philological science, the formation of political culture, etc. Franko’s artistic and intellectual heritage numbers about 100 volumes.

The collection of short stories Duel clearly presents the author as a talented fiction writer who, despite deep insight into the characters of his characters, manages not to complicate the text, making it alive. Sometimes the writer uses laconicism of expression, and achieves psychological accuracy through non-standard artistic decisions. Many of his texts are full of internal autobiographical nature. Franko’s creative evolution is indicative and symptomatic. Social issues and naturalism in early creativity turn into psychologism and even mysticism of the mature period. The theme of borderline states and situations in Franko’s works concerns both the inner world of man and the social context. One of the cross-cutting problems of his texts in this regard is the splitting of personality, embodied in a whole palette of dialogues-confrontations: between intuitive feeling and cold reason; ecstatic love and the balance of a mature, albeit wounded person; the energetic feeling of a social activist — and the delusions and eccentricities of an outsider; conscience and business interest; faith in virtue and disappointment in reality; infantilism and maturity; visible and invisible layers of existence; consciousness and subconsciousness; mystical experience and “sober” perception of reality.