Antun Gustav Research Articles

Adolescents' Knowledge and Attitudes about Contraception, Sexuality, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and Pelvic Health

Background: Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) can cause serious health complications, including pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and cervical cancer. Adolescents and young adults are particularly vulnerable to STIs due to risk-taking behaviors, multiple sexual partners, and inconsistent condom use. Our study aimed to examine the knowledge about contraceptive methods and sexually transmitted infections, and attitudes toward sexual health education among adolescents in Croatia. Methods: The participants were high school students aged 16 to 18 years. The study was conducted at Antun Gustav Matoš Gymnasium, Zabok. We obtained study data via an anonymous survey. Results: The study included 204 adolescents in their final years of high school. The total number of adolescents who had sexual intercourse was 47 (23%). The percentage of sexually active female and male adolescents was 21% and 27%, respectively. In the surveyed group of adolescents, 86% had never heard of subcutaneous progestin implants and 72% had never heard of contraceptive sponges. All adolescents had heard of oral contraceptives and condoms. In the surveyed group of adolescents, 58% had never heard of trichomoniasis and 10% had never heard of HSV. All adolescents had heard of HIV and syphilis. A total of 147 (72%) of the surveyed adolescents believed it as necessary to provide health education in schools. Conclusion: The initiation of sexual activity among adolescents in Croatia remains unchanged when compared to previous studies. Their current knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases and contraceptive methods should be improved through continuous, well-designed, and comprehensive sexual health education.

The Mousetrap of Language: The Mechanism of Anamorphosis in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe and Antun Gustav Matoš

Rethinking conditions of revolutionary potential of literature, with special regard to ways literature incessantly has re-examined otherness in language, in this paper we have chosen to focus on specific mechanism of illusion-making, i.e. anamorphosis taken both as a technique and a theme. Since one of the most famous elaboration of anamorphosis in literature is to be found in Poe’s stories, it is worthwhile to examine how Poe’s game of hide and seek with depth and surface is reflected in his devoted Croatian reader and interpreter A.G. Matos. In a comparative analysis of Poe’s and Matos’s stories, we will elaborate on how a procedure of naming and a procedure of signifying are revealed to be mere effects of anamorphosis in Matos’s short story “Miš” (The Mouse). Since it is an embodiment of a figure designating schism and split, the rodent from the title of Matos’s short story reveals the other side of thinking, which is no other than the other within.

UKRŠTENE STAZE MODERNISTIČKE POETIKE: PROZA IVANA FRANKA I ANTUNA GUSTAVA MATOŠA

The article examines the peculiarities of modernist poetics in the prose works of the classic Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko and the classic Croatian writer Antun Gustav Matoš. For the comparative analysis, the author of the paper has chosen Ivan Franko’s novel Fateful Cross- roads (1900) and Antun Gustav Matoš’s short story Camao (1900). These works, which have never been the subject of comparison, have many common motifs and typological parallels, the analysis of which can provide interesting material for studying the peculiarities of mod- ernism in Slavic pieces of literature. In the proposed article, we analyze these „crossing paths” in the works of Ukrainian and Croatian writers.

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.

МИСТЕЦЬКА ТРАНСКРИПЦІЯ ОБРАЗІВ ЕДГАРА АЛЛАНА ПО У ПРОЗІ АНТУНА ГУСТАВА МАТОША Й МИХАЙЛА ЯЦКОВА

Background: On the one hand, the literary works of A.G. Matoš were studied by Croatian scholars in the context of the philosophy and poetics of modernism. The authors of fundamental studies about A.G. Matoš are Dubravko Jelčić, Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Mladen Dorkin, Zlatko Posavac, Miljenko Majetić and Nada Iveljić. On the other hand, Ukrainian researchers Mykola Ilnytskyi, Solomiya Pavlychko, Oksana Melnyk, and Polish researcher Agnieszka Matusiak analyzed and studied M. Yatskiv's creative style in the context of the aesthetic canons of the modernism. The novelty of this article is in addressing the influence of E. Poe on the literary texts of the Ukrainian and Croatian modernists using the comparative approach. Purpose: This is the first attempt to analyze the influence of E. Poe on A. G. Matoš and M. Yatskiv. This article treats the actual and yet not studied question of a multilayer impact (composition, imagery set) of the American writer on the Croatian and Ukrainian modernist writers. Results: Romanticism writer Edgar Poe undoubtedly influenced Mykhailo Yatskiv and Antun Gustav Matoš, especially with his essay “The Philosophy of Composition”. In this essay the author demonstrates the principle of constructing the plot with the logic and the hidden mechanisms of imagery construction. But in the biography of the American writer we can find facts that poems such as “Nevermore”, “Ligeia” and others weren`t the result of logic, but they were yearning for his wife who passed away being very young. The author of this study found a numerous allusions on the essay “The Philosophy of Composition” by E. Poe, his images of a horror crow and a cat, as well as the images of dead beloved beautyis in many literary works of A.G. Matoš and M. Yatskiv. Croatian and Ukrainian symbolists also used E. Poe`s technique of the total effect. Mystery element is generalized in the literary texts of three authors in the images of the sphinx, which has several meanings. The most common meaning is the abstract definition of something mysterious that needs to be answered. Similarities between Matoš's and Yatskiv's imagery with American writer E. Poe prove, that Ukrainian and Croatian writers were inspired by the world art achievements, creatively transforming ideas that were contemporary both to the romanticism and modernism. Key words: Edgar Allan Poe, Antun Gustav Matoš, Mykhailo Yatskiv, modernism, romanticism, “The Philosophy of Composition”, art scenography.

Between music and ideologies: Croatian music criticism from the beginning to World War II

As the Croatian lands were exposed to often aggressive Austrian, Hungarian, and Italian politics until WWI and in some regions even later, so Croatian music criticism was written in the Croatian, German and Italian languages. To the best of our knowledge, the history of Croatian music criticism began in 1826 in the literary and entertainment journal Luna, and was written by an anonymous author in the German language.A forum for Croatian language music criticism was opened in Novine Horvatzke, i.e. in its literary supplement Danica horvatska, slavonska i dalmatinska in 1835, which officially started to promote the Croatian National Revival, setting in motion the process of constituting the Croatian nation in the modern sense of the word. However, those articles cannot be considered musical criticism, at least not in the modern sense of the word, as they never went beyond the level of mere journalistic reports. The first music criticism in the Croatian language in the true sense of the word is generally considered a very comprehensive text by a poet Stanko Vraz (1810-51) about a performance of the first Croatian national opera Ljubav i zloba (Love and malice) by Vatroslav Lisinski (1819-54) from 1846. In terms of its criteria for judgement, that criticism proved to become a model for the majority of 19th-century and later Croatian music criticism. Two judgement criteria are clearly expressed within it: national and artistic.Regardless of whether we are dealing with 1) ideological-utilitarian criticism, which was directed towards promoting the national ideology (Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, 1834-1911; Antun Dobronić, 1878-1955), 2) impressionist criticism based on the critic’s subjective approach to particular work (Antun Gustav Matoš, 1873-1914; Milutin Cihlar Nehajev, 1880-1931; Nikola Polić, 1890-1960), or 3) Marxist criticism (Pavao Markovac, 1903-41), we may observe the above mentioned two basic criteria. Only at the end of the period under consideration the composer Milo Cipra (1906-85) focused his interest on immanent artistic values, shunning any ideological utilitarianism, and insisting on the highest artistic criteria.

The Role and Legacy of Antun Gustav Matoš in Croatian Art History

The Role and Legacy of Antun Gustav Matoš in Croatian Art History

Krugowcy o Matošu

Antun Gustav Matoš, central figure of Croatian Modernism became an icon and a legend yet in life, which, after the artistʼs death, only strengthened and his influence on the further shape of Croatian literature is difficult to deny. On the other hand, he is not the very often mentioned author the literary journal „Krugovi”, and also he is not considered in the first row of the most influential literary patterns for this generation of writers. However, Antun Gustav Matoš’s image that emerges from the pages of „Krugovi”, although incomplete and fragmentary, is extremely interesting. Young writers attempted to comprehensively educate their literary model reader, so they drew attention to artists who were the most valuable for the native literary tradition. Understanding and acknowledging the importance of his achievements and well-deserved place in the history of Croatian literature, young artists were able, however, to an analytical and critical approach, in the majority of cases presenting a solid argument, not limited to duplication of hackneyed slogans.

Polemički stil A.G. Matoša

Antun Gustav Matoš is the father of the Croatian literary polemics. By confronting his con- temporaries, he shaped a unique style of polemicizing which is characterized by straight- forwardness, wit, elegance of speech and artistry. This style is based on various procedures which Matoš used in his polemics as well as on different textual patterns through which he articulated his polemical thought. The paper descibes and exemplifi es seven stylistic proce- dures (portraying in oposition, polemical quote, polemical naming, polemical verb, polemical maxim, word play, polemical point) and eight textual patterns (literary criticism, fi ctitious dialogue, comical story, polemical poem, aphorism, drama, polemical epistle). The opulence of Matoš’s style produces a polemics which is both carnevalesque and fi ctional. He brings together what is seemingly incompatible – the polemics which is based on the truth principle and fi ction which is essentially indifferent towards that principle.

Hrvatska kratka priča i Antun Gustav Matoš

Antun Gustav Matoš has affirmed the Croatian short story and that is why his short story collections have initiated a major „breakthrough” in terms of this genre’s reception. His narrative oeuvre includes the following collections: Iverje (Wood Shavings, 1899), Novo iverje (New Wood Shavings, 1900) and Umorne priče (Tired Tales, 1909). Depending on the type of motif, his short stories have been read as follows: 1. stories about local people and events; 2. humorous stories about people at home and abroad; 3. stories about unusual, unbelievable „unreal” events; 4. stories of enchanting and yearning love; 5. lyrical cadenzas. His symbolic-grotesque-fantastic story Moć savjesti (The Power of Conscience) marked his entry into the world of narrative literature. In this story, the binary relationship between the theme and the motif is recognised in the gap between the world of wakefulness and the world of dreams, reality and fantasy, what is real and what is unreal, the actual life and the ideal life, the object and the subject. At the same time, however, Matoš is trying to unite these opposites. In his other short stories, unusual plots become an expression of a deep ontological crisis which engulfed the European culture and art during modernism. The maxim of modern art at the turn of the century is „the world is a text”: art is a subjective reconstruction of the world and therefore plots, with all their logical cause and effect relationships, are no longer important since they cannot express other spheres of consciousness. In his short stories, the bizarre plots were used by Matoš to join two worlds, the world of outward reality and the world of imagination, the empirical and the fantastic, the possible and the impossible.

Matoš and Whitman: a Comparison of Two Poems

This essay compares Utjeha kose, translated as The Solace of Hair, by Antun Gustav Matoš and Death’s Valley by Walt Whitman. We analyze similarities in theme, metaphor and poetic style. We also offer a close analysis of verse, together with meter, together with syntax and phonology of the two poems. Matoš and Whitman approach similar themes from different perspectives. However, we find coincidental similarities in both techniques and stylistic devices and the underlying messages of the pieces. We also draw upon our personal vision of the pieces as well as, in the case of Death’s Valley in particular, outside sources, to form our opinions. It is necessary to say that we had no access to any materials on Matoš, and, therefore, all our statements on The Solace of Hair are our personal conclusions and have no intext or works cited documentation.

Portraits of Antun Gustav Matoš by Josip Vaništa and Antun Babić

This essay deals with two visual art portraits by the painter Josip Vaništa and the sculptor Antun Babić. The subject is Antun Gustav Matoš, whom each artist depicts according to his own artistic vocabulary and visual language. There is a difference in both the form and the motivation. For Josip Vaništa, A.G. Matoš announced the dawn of Croatian modernism, which was his painterly point of departure, while for A. Babić, A.G. Matoš was a literary figure who belonged to s specific physical space.

Publicistički diskurs A.G. Matoša – od stila do političkog imaginarija

In the newspaper articles and feuilltons, Antun Gustav Matoš uses a variety of procedures analogous to his artistic creation and develops a rich figuration and characteristic irony. The journalistic discourse constructed in that way consistently creates political and social imaginary which confirms oppositions: nationally/internationally, individual/collective, tradition/modernity and Croat/Serb, where the author clearly states his preference. Although Matoš consistently promote Starčevićʼs heritage, liberalism and individualism, he does not simply convey a political message, but adds meaning to agitation, which boosts its suggestivness, but also causes that it becomes relative.

Matoš i Radić: dwie koncepcje kultury

Antun Gustav Matoš and Antun Radić were leading the Croatian intellectuals of their era. Radić, an ethnologist, formulated the concept of culture, in which the most important significance for the national identity was attributed to the people. He considered peasantry authentic and free of contaminations, accusing the elite of cosmopolitanism and abandoning of the Croatian source values. Meanwhile, for Matoš the most important factor in the Croatian culture was opening to the foreign influences and to their creative force. As a consequence, the opposition between the writer and the ethnologist appears, corresponding to the concept of open and closed culture. Despite the use of the same dichotomy of the elites and the people, each of them assigns different values of both cultural strata. Radić politicizes the peasantry and tries to bring it to the public sphere, pretending to defend the values of the indigenous Croatian culture, while Matoš, regardless of his political nationalism, creates the elitist vision of open and inclusive culture.

Antun Gustav Matoš i Đakovo

The paper deals with the relationship between Antun Gustav Matos and the most important people of the town’s cultural and political life at the turn of the 19 th into 20 th century. The relationship between Matos and the town Đakovo is considered from two perspectives: the first being the perspective of Matos, which is based on his two travel accounts and numerous writings about Đakovo, i.e. the Bishop of the Diocese of Đakovo, Josip Juraj Strossmayer; the second perspective is that of Đakovo-based writers and considers their attitudes towards Matos, with a special regard to the Bishop Strossmayer. The relationship between Antun Gustav Matos and the Bishop Strossmayer was complex, even though it was, seemingly paradoxical, one-sided. Strossmayer was in many, ways an extraordinarily important person for Matos, who wrote many texts about Strossmayer, for Strossmayer however, Matos was only one among many young Croatian writers who were asking him for help and wrote about him. Strossmayer refused to provide Matos with patronage, therefore the aim of this paper is to establish the reasons behind that decision, and determine why Croatia’s most prominent patron could not, or refused to, acknowledge one of Croatia’s most important writers.

Dubravka Oraić Tolić’s Thoughts on Antun Gustav Matoš

The purpose of this appendage (addendum) is to study a position of the female subject in the fictional prosem of Antun Gustav Matoš through the reading of Dubravka Oraić Tolić. This research has shown that female subjects carry, or better to say, possess all features of Matoš’s poetic expression, therefore it is possible to sort them into three different models: woman-mother, woman-aesthetic creation and femme fatale.

O povijesno-književnim (re)konstrukcijama Matoša

This article deals with the constructions of „Matos” in Croatian histories of literature. Central for the study is Alum Munslow’s thesis that history cannot be „non-narrative”. In that respect the relationship between hi/story and narrative genre is studied on examples of how the „character” of Antun Gustav Matos, one of the most famous Croatian writers from the beginning of twentieth century, is both perceived and constructed in historical narrative and in philological context that is discursively circled by the narrative.

Život kao artefakt: Matoševo autorstvo. Povodom knjige Dubravke Oraić Tolić Čitanja Matoša

Paper deals with a conception of Antun Gustav Matoš authorship, regarding his own definition of his life as a work of art. Performing his authorship in a variety of literary texts, letters and notices, he lived in extremes, being flaneur, dandy and a bohem, world traveler and a nationalist ideologist, what influenced reception of his work until recent period. Critical and historiographic, as much as other literary works related to AGM follow this „author-centered” positions regarding his life as a work of art, as much as his literary texts as a reflection of his life. Latest Croatian „Matosiana” book, Dubravka Oraić Tolić̕ Reading Matoš (Čitanja Matoša, 2013), attests some traditional critical assumptions regarding authorship of this canonical writer end expands them in a new context. Different theories of literary canon formation, especially those grounded on feminist or psychoanalytical approach, call in question usual strategies in creation and understanding AGMs authorship, aestheticism and anti-modernism.

Matoš an der Jahrhundertwende

The Croatian essayist and poet Antun Gustav Matos visited during his exile in Paris 1900 the World Exposition. He informed the Croatian reader about the different aspects and events and discussed the main trends in art of that time in a serial of essays: Impressions from the Paris Exhibition for a Zagreb newspaper. He was impressed by the globality of the event, evaluated the rising of hitherto "trivial" art in painting (posters by Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfons Mucha), dance (Loie Fuller), and (African) music, admired the new relationship between literature and journalism, emphasized the role of caricature in arts (Daumier) and literature. The new century opened also in his opinion new relations between art and work, art and industry.

Antun Gustav Matoš. By Eugene E. Pantzer. Edited by John Loud. Boston: Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., 1981. 144 pp. Frontispiece. $15.95.

Antun Gustav Matoš. By Eugene E. Pantzer. Edited by John Loud. Boston: Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., 1981. 144 pp. Frontispiece. $15.95.