Past year, to mark Den’s 20th anniversary, the editorial board prepared an original gift to its readers – a treasure chest. One of its components was a sachet with marigold seeds. These seeds are not simple. They were gathered in Nahuievychi, where Ivan Franko’s mansion-cum-museum is located, from the crop reaped in the year when Ukraine celebrated the 160th anniversary of the famous genius’s birth. It is written on the sachet: “We’ll sow – they’ll sprout.” It is under this slogan that Den has been working in the past 20 years.
According to Den/The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa IVSHYNA, the ripe seeds of “Franko’s marigolds” are supposed to create a real energy-filled “Franko’s marigold space” in and out of Ukraine. It is spring now, so the time is coming to plant marigolds and… wise ideas.
The seed sachet from the treasure chest is at the same time a souvenir and a symbol of “sowing rational seeds,” which Franko used to do and Den is trying to. It is gratifying that there are also others who are willing to help in the difficult job of intellectual sowing. Oresta REZEKULOVA, director of the Nahuievychi State Historical and Cultural Preserve, helped Den with pleasure past year to carry out this unusual project. She does not conceal that she is ready to continue promoting this initiative.
“We will be planting marigolds this year in Nahuievychi again. All of the museum staff approve of Den’s project. If there is a need to share the seeds of Franko’s marigolds this year again, we will certainly do so without any questions.
“A lot of people come to Nahuievychi to see and feel the place where Ivan Franko was born and raised. However, it is, unfortunately, of no interest to many. They are not willing to travel and see the great Stonecutter’s birthplace. Why? Because we, Ukrainians, forget about our greatest compatriots who did and still do, thanks to their ideas, create the history of Ukraine. This is why Den’s initiative is very topical and timely. I hope we will go on cooperating in this field, sowing Ukrainian lands and minds with Franko’s rational seeds. And they are sure to sprout,” Rezekulova points out.
Bohdan TYKHOLOZ, the newly-appointed director of the Lviv National Ivan Franko Literary and Memorial Museum, also welcomes and supports Den’s initiative. “The sprouting of seeds is one of nature’s greatest mysteries. When a tiny seed gives birth to a living plant which reaches up, surmounting any obstacles on its way, this inspires belief in our own ability to overcome difficulties of our own. ‘We’ll sow – they’ll sprout’ is a splendid initiative of the newspaper Den which seems to make us regain faith in ourselves. It is hard to imagine something more precious at a time of total disbelief. Franko’s marigolds, sown all over Ukraine and even very far from it, are certain to sprout with fruitful ideas and good deeds. It is a symbolic communion with Franko’s spirit, stripped of festive unctuousness and false pomp. Maybe, our painful and dramatic comeback to our own selves, free and worthy of out great predecessors, originates from this kind of seemingly simple initiatives. Of course, not all the seeds will sprout, not every seed will fall on a fertile ground.
“Ivan Franko has a versed parable, ‘On Sowing the Divine Word’ based on the well-known evangelical plot: ‘A sower went to the field to sow seeds, but the wind scattered the seeds somewhere.’ Likewise, it scattered Ukrainians all over the world, scattered the ashes of the scorched houses of Ukrainian Donbas, and is dispelling our illusions of a ‘fast, painless, and bloodless’ acquisition of true Ukrainian independence. The wind blows where it wants to. But a good seed that was planted into a good soil sprouts through the frozen ground in order to blossom and bear fruits: ‘Those ear, stem, and peelings know that they grew for the grain only, and that the latter will only be full when the plant puts all of its living juice into it.’ It is Franko, one of our sowers, again. We are to care for and increase what he sowed, without waiting for glory and gratitude. Let us begin at least with marigolds. They smell of the fatherland. What was sown will sprout even if our land has been trampled upon with foreign jackboots and burned with fire. The spring is only beginning, as is our history. No sowing is useless,” he said.
