The new authors rapidly advanced the technique of poetry and at the same time they broadened the range of materials which were regarded as proper subjects. For a half century there had been predominant a form of realism which conceived as within its scope only the contemporary lives of the people. It remained to go outside of the conventional and to choose subjects from the entire field of recorded history. Lesya Ukrainka had started this with her dramas and sketches from the antique world. Even this was not enough and as the symbolistic movement expanded, the authors flew from the earth to the heavens, to other planets, to imaginary scenes and they sought in all these areas that which they considered beauty in their own imaginations. Many schools of thought arose among the new artists and basking in the light of self-adulation, they cared little for the old-fashioned social motifs which had been instrumental in training the people for the last half century. They cared little more for the enthusiastic admiration of the great masses who were beginning to appreciate at long last the older writers and were content to read new and ever new reinterpretations of the old themes. Ukrainian literature was no exception to the general rule, and around 1890 at the very end of the century the new movement made its appearance. It rapidly forced into the background the older writers. In the meanwhile life was changing and the symbolists and decadents were being attacked on all sides. The champions of the old order had not spared even Franko for his _Withered Leaves_ and they were even more concerned with the vagaries of the still younger authors.