WHAT IT IS NOT CUSTOMARY TO TALK ABOUT, BUT WHAT IVAN FRANKO AND GABRIELA ZAPOLSKA WROTE ABOUT (SCANDALOUS NOVELS «DLA OGNISKA DOMOWEGO» AND «O CZYM SIĘ NIE MÓWI»)
Authors:   Ivan Franko Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Nakhlik Yevhen 
Published: June 2023

For the first time, a comparative analysis of the novels «Dla og- niska domowego» (in Polish, 1892) by Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko and «O czym się nie mówi» (1909) by Polish writer Gabriela Zapolska was carried out. These works are quite close not only in terms of themes and problems, but also in terms of ideological and artistic approach, interpretation, plot development, plot moves, characters and individual details. In both novels, the action takes place in the heterogeneous ethnic environment of Lviv – mostly Polish, partly Jewish, Austrian and Ukrainian. The «Lviv text» in both works is in many ways similar and at the same time different. The comparative analysis in the article includes other works by Franko (in Ukrainian): the early unfinished poem «Сяся» (the first two chapters and the beginning of the third were written in 1882), the prose dramatic miniature «Чи вдуріла? Сцена» (1904), the story «Між добрими людьми» (1890). Franko in the story «Між добрими людьми», and Zapolska in the story «O czym się nie mówi», revealing the inner world of prostitutes, emphasize their fatalistic perception of their own fate. In the center of Franko’s story «Dla ogniska domowego» is the sociology and anthropology of women’s welfare of the «home» through the organization of illegal prostitution, and at the same time – the dual (ostensible and hidden) attitude of men to the sexual trade. At the center of Zapolska’s story is the sociology and anthropology of prostitution itself: the drama and tragedy of the social position of a legalized prostitute and her mental torment, as well as the dual attitude of men towards prostitutes (using their services and disdain for them), similar to Franko’s story. Franko developed the work as a socio-psychological story and at the same time as a crime story. The genre of social and psychological novel clearly dominates in Zapolska’s work, and only at the end do elements of a criminal novel appear. The driving spring of the plot development in both stories is the leitmotif of faith (trust) and deception. In both works, the woman hides her actions from her husband, deceives him, and he, at first naively trusting, and then filled with suspicions and doubts, tries to find out the truth about her. It is the man in both stories who is the leading character, while the woman or girl is the cause of problems. The coincidences in both works are striking: the scheme of characters, es- pecially the main couple (husband – wife, boyfriend – girlfriend), one leading and other secondary subjects of (de)disguise, the only main character-object, at whom the masks of other characters are directed, conversations-confrontations between a man and a woman, the growing sense of horror in both of them (in the man – before the unexpected discovery of the shocking truth about the woman, and the woman – before exposing her and bringing her to criminal responsibiliity), the stunning disclosure of the secret, the mental torment experienced by the main pair of characters, and, finally, the partial rehabilitation of the lost woman against the background of moral condemnation of «respectable» men and the author’s accusations of hypocritical society of male chauvinism. These coincidences may be caused by Zapolska’s acquaintance with Franko’s story based on the Ukrainian auto-translation published in Lviv in 1897, or on the manuscript of the Polish text, or on the German translation of the Polish text published in 1898 in the supplement to the Berlin Social Democratic newspaper «Vorwärts» (Unterhaltungsblatt der «Vorwärts») under the title «Am häuslichen Herd. Roman von Iwan Franko». Or they can be caused by the typology of independent from each other writer’s thinking, subject to moral, ethical and aesthetic trends of the time. The authors created the stories at about the same time (with a difference of only 16 years) and probably depended in their ideological and artistic searches on similar social circumstances and events in Lviv related to prostitution, and on the poetry of the same literary sources (for example, the drama by H. Ibsen «A Doll’s House» or «Nora»).