Ivan Cankar - Work

Work

Ivan Cankar wrote around 30 books and is considered one of the primary exponents of Slovene modernist literature, alongside Oton Župančič, Dragotin Kette and Josip Murn. Cankar is also considered one of Europe's most important fin de siècle. He dealt with social, national and moral themes. In Slovenia, his best-known works are the play Hlapci ("Serfs"), the satire Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorijanski (Scandal in the St. Florian Valley) and the novel Na klancu (On the Hill). However, his importance for Slovene and European literature probably lies in his symbolist sketches and other short stories, which, in their mixture of symbolism, modernism and even expressionism, convey a high degree of originality.

Cankar started as a poet. He published his first poems already as a teenager in the prestigious liberal literary magazine Ljubljanski zvon. In Vienna, he frequented a group of young Slovene artists and authors, among whom were Oton Župančič, Fran Eller and Fran Govekar, who introduced him to the modernist currents of European literature. In 1899, Cankar published his first collection of poetry under the title Erotika. Decadentist and sensualist influences were evident and the then bishop of Ljubljana Anton Bonaventura Jeglič was so scandalized by the book that he bought all the copies and ordered their destruction. Another edition was issued three years later, but by that time Cankar had already abandoned poetry and moved to engaged literature. In 1902, he wrote his first play Za narodov blagor (For the Welfare of the Nation), which was a violent parody of the liberal nationalist elite in the Slovene Lands, especially in Carniola. The same year, he published the short novel Na klancu (On the Hill), in which he described the misery of the small rural proletariat and the poor material and spiritual conditions of the common people. The novel, which still showed strong naturalistic features, combined with allegorical symbolism and an unusual, biblically inspired style, gained him widespread recognition.

In the novels Gospa Judit (Madame Judit) and Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The Ward of Mary Help of Christians) and Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain), all published in 1904, he turned to spiritualism and idealism, maintaining as central theme the oppressed people and their yearning for a better life. In 1906, he wrote the short novel Martin Kačur with the subtitle "The Life Story of an Idealist", which is a ruthless analysis and self-analysis of the failure of an abstract idealist. During the general elections of 1907, he published the short story Hlapec Jernej in njegova pravica (The Servant Jernej and His Justice), in which he describes a clash between the individual worker and both the capitalist and traditional society, the laws of which he cannot understand. Following the electoral victory of the Slovene People's Party, he wrote his most influential play, the satire Hlapci (Serfs), in which he satirized the conformism of the former progressive and agnostic public servants who embraced Catholicism after the defeat of the liberal party. Both the liberal and the Catholic conservative parties in the Slovene Lands reacted acrimoniously against the play: its staging was delayed until after Austria-Hungary's dissolution in Autumn 1918. In the play Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorjanski (Scandal in the St. Florian Valley), Cankar made fun of the moral rigidness and culturally backward mentality of Carniola's small semi-urban society.

Cankar was also famous for his essays, most of which were published between 1907 and 1913, where he showed stylistic mastery and great irony.

His last collection of short stories, entitled Podobe iz sanj (Images from Dreams), which were published posthumously in 1920, is a magically realistic and allegorical depiction of the horrors of World War I. It shows a clear move from symbolism to expressionism and it has been regarded as the finest example of Cankar's poetic prose.