POETIC INTERSECTIONS IN IVAN FRANKO'S NOVEL “FATEFUL CROSSROADS” AND ANTUN GUSTAV MATOŠ'S SHORT STORY S “CAMAO”

Abstract Background: Ukrainian-Croatian literary relations have often been the subject of research by Slavic scholars. The subject of research have been both direct contacts between representatives of the literature of these two nations and the reception of Croatian literature in Ukraine and Ukrainian literature in Croatia. Of peculiar interest are comparative literary studies, which outline the parallels and differences between the works of representatives of these Slavic cultures who refer to eternal images or important philosophical concepts. Purpose: The special place of Ivan Franko in the history of Ukrainian culture has been the cause which led to the interest of researchers in various Slavic aspects of studying his work. However, in our opinion, the issues of studying poetic parallels in the works of Ivan Franko and his Croatian contemporaries are still insufficiently covered. Such comparative investigations will help to look at Ivan Franko's works from the point of view of the Central European context of the time, to identify the features of the dominant artistic paradigm and the writer's originality in its interpretation and departure from it. Rich material for such a study is provided by comparing Ivan Franko's prose works marked by the features of modernism and the prose of representatives of the first period of Croatian modernism. Results: In the proposed article we analyse the poetic intersections in Ivan Franko's novel “Fateful Crossroads” and Antun Gustav Matoš's short story “Camao”. Such a choice is caused both by the prominent place of the writers in the national literary canon, the influence of their creative work on the formation of the modernist artistic paradigm in Ukrainian and Croatian literature, and the fact that both works were published in 1900. The study was carried out using historical and literary, comparative, hermeneutical methods, as well as the method of textual analysis with elements of close reading. Comparative reading of Ivan Franko's novel “Fateful Crossroads” and Antun Gustav Matoš's short story “Camao” reveals many common motifs and numerous poetic parallels, which makes it possible to draw conclusions about the peculiarities of the functioning of modernist poetics in the works of the classics of Ukrainian and Croatian literature. Key words: modernism, poetics, Croatian literature, Ukrainian literature, Ivan Franko, Antun Gustav Matos.