Between Fact and Ego-Literature: Memoir and Publicistic “Odyssea” by Anna Franko-Klyuchko (Genre-Thematic Polyphony)

Abstract

Article is devoted to the memoir and artistic and journalistic work of Anna Franko-Klyuchko (1892–1988), the youngest daughter of Ivan Franko. The purpose of the studio is to reveal the creative individuality of the author as a representative of the literary dynasty of the Franks. The investigation is based on historical and documentary research using analytical, synthetic, biographical, bibliographic, cultural-historical, and geneological methods. The novelty of the research consists in understanding and introducing into scientific circulation a number of memoirs and journalistic texts of Anna Franko-Klyuchko, which were scattered in diasporic periodicals and for a long time were out of the attention of researchers. On the basis of the analysis of these texts, conclusions are made about the peculiarities of the creative style of Anna Franko-Klyuchko, which is characterized by a high degree of autobiography, emotionality and imagery, and the dominance of the genres of essays and memoirs. The texts of Anna Franko-Klyuchko can be considered documents of the author's creative and life history (characteristically ego-literature). As a whole, the memoir and journalistic texts of Anna Franko-Klyuchko make up a long story of the life of the author herself: one text grows into another, creating a travelogue lasting a lifetime with unrealized dreams and real events. The source for Anna Franko-Klyuchko’s texts was either her memories of the years she lived in Ukraine, or events from the author’s emigrant life, which as a whole represented the great drama of the generation that suffered defeat in the national liberation contests of the beginning of the 20th century. In the psychoanalytical dimension, literary creativity was for Frank's daughter an attempt to go beyond the limits of the possible: a way to return home (imaginatively in dreams, memories and fantasies), when in reality she could not return there, when the ship of her life was sailing in the opposite direction from her native home, and her soul was torn home. This form of creative existence became the secret of the author’s longevity and at the same time vividly reflected the tragedy of the generation of Franko’s children, whose lives were spent in emigration.