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Wow!
This is a novel, first published in 1900, but the ideas of which sound relevant even today. The English title is Intertwined Paths and it is written by Ivan Franko, one of three writers/poets (other two are Taras Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka) on Ukrainian bank notes, Hryvnias. This novel is partially autobiographic and also an early representation of the internal world of people with mental issues and a strong multi-layered portrait of a Jew.

I’ve read it now because this year I plan to read more of Ukrainian classics, so I took (Ukr) and decided to go through the list as it is composed, i.e. chronologically. This is the #9 in the list. It is as well the 2nd novel in the list of the same author �� the first Захар Беркут �� I reviewed here. It is also the earliest novel from the list published in the 20th century.

The story starts with a young lawyer with great potential, Yevhen Rafalovych, coming to work at a relatively small unnamed provincial town in Galicia. He introduces the Ukrainian language in his office, defends the interests of the peasants, and pursues a case against local notables. From the first pages readers see a quite different world from what can be seen in 19th-century Ukrainian classics, mostly written in the Russian empire. Here, in Austria-Hungary, the Ukrainian language can be used in legal documents (in the Russian empire there were several bans), people can officially gather to request/demand changes from the authorities. No, it is far from paradise �� there are poor illiterate peasants, there are corrupt authorities and e.g. a case when a drunk physician, who had to make smallpox vaccinations, infects a score of kids with dirty instruments, and they die from gangrene or a swindler "lawyer" extorting money from villagers, promising to free their sons from recruitment to his invented nearest future war. But the fact that the text uses Latin and German words, and quotes Heine without a translation, shows how different these two parts of Ukraine are.

There is a ‘traditional�� for the period’s literature tragic love affair, with Yevhen years ago as a student, falling in love with an orphan girl, Regina. Her aunt forced her into marriage, and now they meet again. Regina became the wife of Stalsky, whom Yevhen recalls as an older pupil in this school, whose hidden food was once stolen by a cat and Stalsky captured the cat and tortured it to death. While Stalsky doesn’t beat his wife, his sadism of microaggression makes her life miserable. There is a very interesting character of Vahman, a Jewish money-lender, ‘masters�� master��, as he himself recommends during their first meeting: - Yes, so I will tell you that I am indeed a loan shark. Why hide from the truth? So, I won't admit this to others, but I must tell you. I will say even more: my fellow usurers consider me the worst, most dangerous usurer, because I know the laws and a thousand hooks in them, I know people and human nature, and I know how to wrap them so comfortably that not only they fall into my nets, but can never get out of them. On the surface he is a stereotypical anti-Semitic view of a Jew in the region, where most locals meet Jews only as usurers and pub owners, but the truth is of course more complex.

The story sometimes sounds old-stylish, the pace is a little uneven, for it was initially published as a serial in the local monthly, so chapters are short and each tries to concentrate on a separate story. However, a lot of stuff feels relevant even now, chiefly a problem of organizing people for collective action for their own good �� too many assume that any such organization is to promote the schemes of its founders, with people just pawns in a game.

But in another issue, Dr. Rafalovych was at once innovative, consistent, and stubborn: he immediately made his office Ukrainian and made it a rule that no "paper" could leave it in any other language but Ukrainian. It was a true revolution. Although completely legal, this action brought him thousands of troubles, complaints, and friendly reproaches from various government officials who said that they were forced to learn the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian writing in their old age. Several times his applications were rejected, but he stood his ground, did not give in to any persuasion or pity, but, on the contrary, in his usual way, reduced them to jokes, weakened them with laughter, good-naturedness, behind which, like regiments of arms, were invincible legal arguments. And his stubbornness eventually began to win the day. Having been taught time and again, judicial, treasury, and autonomous officials began to accept Ukrainian letters without obstacles and even without a coo, and had to abandon the usual bureaucratic method of hiding the "pieces" they disliked under a cloth and fermenting them until they were "Jews will be let go." The peasants themselves, who had repeatedly asked him to write them submissions in Polish because they had trouble with Ukrainian in the government, began to be convinced of their rights and, on this formality, began to seek respect for their nationality and for their person, hearing that in case of offense they had the assured help of a capable and tireless lawyer. And among the city mayors, who were confused by these innovations, there was now a second ready-made formula to describe Dr. Rafalovych's character: he is a Muscovite! Their brains could not understand any other possibility. A Ukrainian who does not bow to the Polish yoke, who does not kiss up to the Polish hierarchy, is either a demagogue and socialist or a Muscovite. Tertium non datur. At most, the first and the second together.