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IVAN FRANKO AND THEODOR HERZL 237own midst defenders ready for martyrdom if need be. ... It is true thatMoseses aren't born every day; they are formed under pressure from theoutside. . . . And in our case, outside pressure is tenfold stronger than inyours. Should your people feel it one day as we feel it now, then they, too, willbegin to look about for their own Moses and they will certainly find him,though today they would probably still stone him to death. Besides, time mayprecipitate everything.""Here I agree with you completely," admitted Franko after a moment ofsilence, and cordially shook Herzl's hand. I did not realize then what it wasthat Herzl had in mind when he said that time may precipitate everything; lateron Franko said to me that all this can be precipitated by a change in thepolitical constellation of Europe. He did not foresee the consequences of thegreat war, because he did not expect it.Unfortunately, in my notes taken in those olden days, I have not found anyother mention of Franko's attitude toward Herzl. I can only add that wheneverI met Herzl, he always asked me what Franko was doing. When informing himabout Franko's past works on the Semitic question, I could give him no morethan superficial reports. Now that Professor P. Kudrjavcev of Kiev has givenus a special study of the subject, this could be handled differently. But evensuch a scrupulous scholar as Professor Kudrjavcev proved to be could not havedreamed that the idea for Franko's most outstanding epic poem, entitled"Moses," emerged from the conversation of its author with Herzl summarizedabove.Franko entertained this idea a long — very long — time. Already in 1893 inVienna he drafted an outline of the poem, trying to depict the Jewish Moses insuch a way that the Ukrainian reader would recognize in him the fate of aUkrainian leader. When his first attempts did not succeed, he threw his workinto the wastebasket. Only years later, after bitter personal experiences hadled to his well-known conflicts with both the Ukrainian and Polish communities,did he feel more strongly the tragedy of the Jewish leader and give us apoem historical only superficially, because it was full of contemporary importabout the fate of a leader of the Ukrainian nation. This happened in 1905 —who knows if not just in connection with emotions evoked by Herzl's death. 9II. Franko's Review of Herzl's Der JudenstaatFrom childhood Ivan Franko was a very assiduous reader. Hardly animportant new European book appeared that Franko did not notice.Not only did he commonly read such new books upon publication, buthe immediately reacted to them and shared his opinions with the9The text has been translated from the Polish by Dr. Paulina Lewin of HarvardUniversity.