Two hearts

“But I tell you in all conscience that I loved her as much as I was capable of loving” (from Ivan Franko’s letter to Mykhailo Pavlyk)

The poet was referring to Olha Roshkevych, his first love, which was “as timid as a white lily.” Even though “love appeared three times” to Franko, he had strong, lifelong feelings for that enchanting, educated, and talented Boiko woman from the highland village of Lolyn. Franko’s wife Olha Khoruzhynska, the mother of his children, whom the poet loved, understood his feelings and desperation better than anyone. Before his death Franko refused to see the proud Celina Zygmuntowska, who came uninvited to his home. This fact is recorded in the memoirs of Sofia Manrzejewska, the nurse who tended the ailing writer and was destined to “close his eyes and wash his body for the coffin.”

Ivan Franko died in his unfinished home in a suburb of Lviv. He asked Mykhailyna to invite her sister Olha to come so that he could bid her farewell. When she told Olha about his request, she began crying. But she did not go.

Franko’s last feat was to sing the song “Oy zatsvily fialonky, zatsvily.” It was recorded by Roshkevych in Lolyn, and they used to sing it together while wandering around the rural copses. Now, with tears rolling down her face, she stood by a window, watching through a crack in the blinds as the coffin was carried out. With a weak and trembling hand she made the sign of the cross over the body, begging the Lord to rest his soul. This was their last bitter parting.

Mykhailo Pavlyk did not like Olha Roshkevych because he saw his sister Anna suffering because of her love for his friend. He did his best to dissuade Franko not to succumb to his “first love” and to break his liaison with Olha. But what was Anna to him with Olha waiting in the remote village of Lolyn? Pavlyk should have realized this. True, he must be credited with eventually understanding that Olha Roshkevych was Ivan Franko’s only love. He noted that almost all of Franko’s female characters resembled Olha, and that all his life Franko had sought her image in other women.

Franko’s remarkable journalistic talent was the object of much envy. Untalented individuals and political turncoats persecuted not only Franko and Roshkevych. In time his wife also fell prey to them, although she was kind-hearted and “sensitive to human suffering” and protected her husband “with her hands and eyes.” Galicia refused to accept her at the time because she “did not know the Ukrainian language well” and did not sense “the depth of Franko’s feelings for his people.”

However, after Franko’s death these two loving women met a second time and spent the rest of their lives quietly mourning his passing, cherishing memories of the beloved man in their sorrowful hearts. For Roshkevych, Franko was the same person who had uttered the first “I love you” in Lolyn. After Franko’s death she could not live in Lviv, where “every stone reminds me of him,” the man whom she had loved all her life.

Celina Zygmuntowska was the only one who shamelessly demanded material benefits, advertising her relationship with Franko, which was more imaginary than real. In the end, the new Soviet government gave her a nice home in Briukhovychi.

The passage of time blew away the ash but could not extinguish the fire of Franko and Roshkevych’s love. The contemporary Galician intelligentsia slandered the sacred feelings of these two hearts because, in the opinion of the local aristocracy and some of its Ruthenian lackeys, it was not appropriate for a “revolutionary” to be involved with “the daughter of a Ruthenian priest.” Roman Horak writes that to them he (Franko) was a “stonecutter, who had to smash the cliff with his pick.” A “melancholy mood” should not emanate from the “leader of the masses.” In fact, Franko, in his own words, wanted to “keep pace with his age and be a whole man.” He wanted to be that way only for Roshkevych, not for anyone else. He fought for his love, but the social system proved stronger and its millstones ground up the destinies of these people, along with hundreds of others.

The next social system did not turn out to be any better. Roshkevych was rarely mentioned in the emasculated Soviet literary studies. Instead, in order to demean Franko, Soviet literary scholars wrote about the “manipulator,” who, as Celina described herself, had “a bit of knowledge, a bit of decency, a bit of hypocrisy, but lots of charm.” Celina’s haughty aunt taught her niece that “the future of any decent woman lies in her husband’s pocket.” Franko was no exception. Celina was never interested in Franko’s literary endeavors. She hated writing letters and barely read letters from Franko when he was alive. This explains why Franko scholars, Mykhailo Vozniak in particular, called into question the original notes that she presented to Franko’s literary memorial museum.

The Communist Party, with its militant atheism, forbade Franko researchers to mention Olha Roshkevych, a well-educated woman who knew several European languages, had translated Emile Zola into Ukrainian at Franko’s request, and whose translations were bestsellers in Lviv. Nor could they mention that Roshkevych had done Ukrainian translations of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina for literary magazines in Galicia, and written a study of Sophocles’s Antigone, short stories, and compiled folklore collections. There was only one reason for keeping this from the public eye: Olha Roshkevych was the daughter of a Greek Catholic priest; her father belonged to the Uniate Church, which was severely persecuted by the Soviet authorities.

Regrettably, some contemporary researchers are repeating past mistakes, alleging that Olha’s father, who made Franko break off relations with his daughter, was to blame for their unhappy love affair. It is a shame that even today some journalists representing central publishing companies still rely on distorted communist-controlled literary sources. Apparently, they have never read Ivan Franko’s letter to Ahatanhel Krymsky, in which he admits, “My relations with women have had a significant influence on my life and thus on my literary work. Even as a high school student, I fell in love with Olha Roshkevych, the daughter of a Ruthenian priest...”

Lolyn, however, is where one can learn all there is to know about Ivan Franko and Olha Roshkevych — and not just from the writer’s letters, which form his rich epistolary heritage. Here, memories of Roshkevych are very much alive, as well as the respect of the local residents for their noted fellow countrywoman. Franko’s great, tragic love for this woman may have contributed to his becoming an unparalleled and world- class lyricist and playwright. A unique festival of Franko’s lyrical poetry takes place in this village and nowhere else-not the home towns of his other women, Juzefa Dzvonkovska or Celina Zygmuntowska. This village seems to be a place where Franko’s spirit still exists. He spent time there and will always be there because Olha Roshkevych’s fellow villagers love Franko and read his works. You won’t find a single person in Lolyn who does not know that Franko’s first love lived there. There is much to be proud of.

Franko’s great creative spirit born of Lolyn would later inspire such noted Ukrainian poets as Dmytro Pavlychko and Stepan Pushyk. Pushyk, for example, told colleagues that they should visit Lolyn so that they can partake of Franko’s creative spirit and his unfettered thought and word.

This year marks the 14 th anniversary of Franko’s lyrical poetry festival, during which local villagers, both young and old, and their guests recite his poems and sing songs recorded by him, Olha, and her sister Mykhailyna (the premiere Galician writer whose talent was praised by both Franko and Pavlyk).

Lolyn emits a bright aura born of the pure and tender love cherished by two hearts, as evidenced by the heartfelt letters Franko addressed to Roshkevych. Here one finds the whole truth about the mournful songs of Ziviale lystia (Faded Leaves) and Kartky liubovy (Cards of Love), which was revealed primarily by the Franko scholar Mykhailo Vozniak. Unfortunately, some of Olha’s letters to Franko will never be read by anyone. Before she died, she begged her sister to place the letters, tied with a blue ribbon, under her head in the coffin. These letters were her greatest treasure. Mykhailyna complied with her sister’s last wish.

People in Lolyn know that after Olha’s death Mykhailyna opened the ancient oak cupboard where she kept a copy of Goethe’s Faust. “This book was the first manifestation of Ivan Franko’s friendship and affection for my sister,” Mykhailyna would write later. Franko left the book at the Roshkevych home in Lolyn when he left in 1874 to vacation at his own home, after “he had finished the seventh grade of the gymnasium.” He wrote the dedication to Olha on a page of the book. For more than 60 years Roshkevych kept the Goethe work that Franko had given her. In fact, Franko mentions Goethe in his foreword to the collection of poems Ziviale Lystia. This is hardly a coincidence. “I am reminded of Goethe’s Werther and of what Goethe wrote on a copy of this book. With these words I present these poems to our younger generation: ‘Be a courageous person and never follow in my footsteps.’”

Olha Roshkevych inspired the poet to write mournful songs, like Ziviale lystia, which are the height of intimate, lyrical poetry. Such verse is born of heartfelt love and utter sadness. “I will lock my love inside myself, I will live deep inside myself,” Olha wrote to Franko. “I will do the same,” he replied.

Their love affair was doomed for a number of reasons, although both of them contributed to this state of affairs. Was this what the poet cautions against in his foreword to Ziviale lystia?

In losing Roshkevych forever, Franko had lost the only woman without whom life was unimaginable. Even Pavlyk failed to sense the pain in Franko’s bleeding heart. The great poet had to hide his love and forced himself to talk about work issues: “...To work, to work, to work, /To die from work!”

The year that his story “Na dni” (At the Bottom) was published, the writer resolutely denied the allegation that it was an autobiographical story, yet 23 years later, in the article “How Did This Happen?” he admitted that the plot was based on facts borrowed from his own life, meaning that the main characters Andriy and Hania could actually be Ivan and Olha.

As the duped Hutsuls were dancing and drinking, cheering the emperor, the local post office was sending Franko’s letter to Olha, in which he shared his plans concerning the journal Nova osnova (New Foundation) and his next major novel Boryslav smiyetsia (Boryslav Is Laughing). Indeed, whom else could he confide in if not Olha, whose opinion he treasured?

It was Olha Roshkevych who introduced Ivan Franko to Natalia Kobrynska, that “voivode of Ruthenian womanhood.”

In their brief obituaries of Olha Roshkevych the influential Galician newspapers Dilo (Action) and Hromadsky holos (Public Voice) had to acknowledge the talent of this priest’s daughter and Ivan Franko’s undying love for her. Hromadsky holos wrote that Roshkevych had helped publish the works of Franko and Pavlyk, and that for Franko she was “the first woman whom he deeply loved and to whom he dedicated a number of his poetical works.”

Over the years the village of Lolyn has heard the rhetorical question posed by Franko researcher Maria Derkach and replied firmly in the affirmative. In her article “A Trip to Lolyn, the Home of Franko’s Muse,” she asked future generations whether they would know Franko as the man who, contrary to his revolutionary verse, created Ziviale lystia and Kartky liubovy.

Hundreds of thousands of people who love the written word, songs, plays, journalism, and folklore have attended the 13 festivals devoted to Franko’s lyrical poetry in Lolyn. These events have received detailed press coverage, including a chronicle of sorts that was recreated on the pages of such newspapers as Svicha (Candle), Tyzhnevyk Halychyny (Galicia Weekly), Halychyna, Holos Ukrainy (Voice of Ukraine), and Literaturna Ukraina (Literary Ukraine). These and other periodicals have published special sections containing works that heard in Lolyn. The greatest contribution to this good cause is being made by the literary-artistic association Soniachna Krynytsia (Sunny Well) which works out of the editorial office of Svicha under the direction of Vasyl Oliynyk. The local administration assists the festival of Franko’s lyrical poetry, which has acquired regional status and is attended by dozens of creative delegations from Ukraine and other countries. People who visit Lolyn for the festivities commemorating Ivan Franko make repeat visits.

In Lolyn Franko made a handwritten notation about this village when he was writing his well-known stories “Vuhliar,” (The Coalminer), “Lesyshyna cheliad,” (Les’s Servants), and “Dva pryiateli” (Two Friends). Practically every resident of this village can recite excerpts from these stories and his lyrical poems. It was in this village that the writer recorded the folk song “Pisnia pro shandaria,” (The Song of the Gendarme) from an elderly village woman by the name of Yavdokha Chyhur. This song would become the core of his world-famous drama Stolen Happiness. Most people in Lolyn know the plot by heart, along with hundreds of folk songs recorded by Roshkevych and Franko.

Lolyn has preserved the authenticity of these folk songs. Among the most popular are the ladkanka wedding songs, without which no wedding party is held in this village. Lolyn’s amateur folk song group, which holds prestigious “national ensemble” status, has performed all over Ukraine. Franko was enchanted by the songs of Lolyn. “How many superb images there are...so much feeling, so many brilliant comparisons, so many profoundly ancient recollections and tidbits,” he wrote. When he was preparing a book of Lolyn songs for publication, he once again asked Olha to supply him with a detailed description of the village: “Don’t miss a single day, so that...even a small note can be added to the collection. This is the only road to developing one’s talent.” Franko wanted Olha to become his literary equal. The two prepared the collection of Lolyn songs as a wedding present to themselves — except that the wedding was not destined to take place.

The shining face of the Ukrainian Moses dominates the center of Lolyn, set among mighty aspens. The village has an excellent museum located on the premises of the new House of Culture. Its exposition reveals all those unforgettable encounters between the young high school student and the gifted daughter of a local parish priest, and the Herculean efforts of the renowned poet in the national cultural, literary, and journalistic domain. Also on display are old Boiko domestic items, including household appliances, musical instruments, clothing, and footwear. The members of the folkloric group use these items to reproduce a colorful Lolyn wedding party, where the village head Ivan Datsio acts as the starosta, the master of ceremonies. This village has its own coat of arms portraying a quill and two hearts symbolizing the poetry and love of Ivan Franko and Olha Roshkevych.

Franko polished his oratorical skills by addressing workers at the town square in the Dolyna area. From generation to generation local townspeople have passed down a story about the writer’s brilliant speech delivered during a popular assembly in 1884: “How Should We Become Organized to Get out of Our Current Poverty?” Franko suggested organizing trade and commerce, setting up a bank, returning the forests to the people, promulgating education, and establishing political parties. Even now his theses, which date back more than a century, remain topical, including those relating to the development of local salt-mining deposits.

Some Franko scholars, in particular Prof. Yaroslav Hrytsak, argue that “love appeared” to the poet more than “three times.” The main thing about such literary studies is not to descend to the level of a Buzyna [Kyiv-based journalist and author of an unflattering portrait of Taras Shevchenko — Ed.]. Klementyna Popovych, who knew Franko well, insists that “Olha Roshkevych is the name of his first and probably only love.”

Lolyn, the village that occupies a special place in Franko’s biography, lives vicariously through his and Roshkevych’s radiant, pure love and creativity. Perhaps in the future a bronze sculpture will be unveiled here of Ivan Franko and Olha Roshkevych, united forever.