Crossroads: the life and poetic ways of Ivan Franko

This article deals with the poetry of Ivan Franko, an outstanding Ukrainian writer, scholar, revolutionary-democrat, so-called extraordinary phenomenon both in Ukrainian and in world literature. The main part investigates the poetic achievements with reference the author’s biography. The autobiographic meaning of his works is revealed in textual analysis of place names used in Franko’s verses. By studying the poetic material we find a logical parallel of his life roads and years of writing about the places he visited. This article is focused on temporality and locality of his poetry, especially at the time of the creation of certain verses containing place names, which in turn played an important role in his life. We also conduct partial analysis of some toponyms based on their etymology. Attempts at tracing the pathes of the life of the writer, based not only on the materials about him, but also on his own remarks and recollections are made.Российский университет дружбы народов289-29