FRANKIANA BY YURII MEZHENKO

The name of the prominent scholar Yurii Mezhenko is not commonly associated with the achievements of Franko studies. However, the figure of Ivan Franko was within the scope of Mezhenko’s professional interests, as evidenced by the bibliography of his research, diary entries, and letters. Mezhenko’s most significant contribution to Franko studies is an index to the literary, artistic, social, and political journal “Life and Word” (“Zhytie i Slovo”), which was published from 1894 to 1897 under the editorship of Ivan Franko. This index, co-authored with Yaroslav Dashkevych, has remained unpublished. Halyna Svarnyk and Nadiya Strishenets mentioned Mezhenko’s work on it, but the detailed history of its preparation has never been the subject of a scholarly research. This study is based on Yu. Mezhenko’s published correspondence and archival materials from the collections of Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine. The research employs various methods, including source analysis, textual analysis, historical and literary analysis. By examining the published correspondence and archival materials, the study reconstructs the sequence of events and uncovers the reasons behind the project’s failure. The idea for this work originated with Yu. Mezhenko in 1958. After being invited to collaborate, Ya. Dashkevych helped in uncovering pseudonyms and cryptonyms and wrote an introductory article. Thus, as Yu. Mezhenko emphasized, it was a joint project. The index was intended for publication in the journal “Soviet Literary Studies” (“Radianske literaturoznavstvo”), but the plan was not realized. Efforts to publish it in the Lviv yearbook “Ivan Franko” were also unsuccessful. The manuscript of the work is now preserved in the archival collection of Yurii Mezhenko. A systematic index to the contents of “Zhytie i Slovo,” compiled by Petro Babiak and edited by Mykhailo Humeniuk, was eventually published in 1968.