ФРАНКОЗНАВЧІ ПРАЦІ МИКОЛИ ІЛЬНИЦЬКОГО (СПРОБА МЕТАКРИТИЧНОГО ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ)

The article examines the Ivan Franko studies by Mykola Ilnytskyi, a well-known and authoritative literary historian, theorist, and literary critic. It has been established that in his scientific work the study of Ivan Franko’s work occupies a significant place. The legacy of the writer really interested M. Ilnytskyi even in his student years, when he dutifully reread the 20-volume collection of works, wrote term papers and went to give lectures about him, visited the places of Drohobych and Turka regions where Franko used to visit. It was found out that the researcher’s appeal to the figure of the writer was at first random, sporadic, and since 1986, when the magazine «Zhovten» («October», contemporary «Dzvin») published the work «Everything I had in Life: The Story “Crossroads” in the light of the author’s personality» became permanent. It was revealed that the convergence of the image of the main character with the figure of the author in the novel that the researcher took care of led him to Franko’s lyrical drama «Withered Leaves», the study of which from a new angle of view was intensified at that time. From the point of view of the clear correlation between the image of the author and the heroes of the lyrical drama and the novel «Crossroads», the scientist found a lot in common, so an expanded and in-depth study «Everything I had in Life: The Story “Crossroads” and the lyrical drama “Withered leaves” in the light of the author’s personality». In the collection of Franko Studies by M. Ilnytskyi’s «Ivan Franko: Antinomy of Nature and Spirit: Explorations, Interpretations», which was published in 2023, was published in a prominent place by the will of the author. Under the cover of this book, 19 works were collected. Each of them in the reader’s imagination revealed a new facet of the researcher Franko’s works, who knows how to add what no one else has been able to do: to find consonant motifs in the works of various writers (I. Franko and J. W. von Goethe, I. Franko and A. Mickiewicz, I. Franko and H. Hotkevych); get closer to uncovering the secrets of Franko’s work (veiled appeals to mythology, folklore, symbolism, etc.); build your own, deeply personal line of knowledge and interpretation of the artist’s text. What is characteristic of it: M. Ilnytskyi undertakes to raise difficult and contradictory problems of «eternal links of the spirit» in relationships with nature. Studio M. Ilnytskyi was written over a rather long period of time, but none of them has lost its relevance and demonstrates to the reader the «rich treasure of feeling» of their author.

It was found that the researcher uses different approaches and methods of material analysis: comparative, hermeneutic, psychological, close reading, historical-literary, etc., which makes it possible to understand the essence of a literary phenomenon, to compare it with a phenomenon of the same type from other literatures, to find out the subtleties of the psychology of creativity, worldview and aesthetic components of the evolution of Franko’s creative path, to understand the philosophy of the existence of a person, an artist, a society, a nation. Thanks to his wide erudition, M. Ilnytsky considers every problem in a broad literary (more broadly, humanitarian) context.