Ivan Cankar
Encyclopedia
Ivan Cankar (10 May 1876 – 11 December 1918) was a Slovene writer
, playwright
, essayist, poet
and political activist
. Together with Oton Župančič
, Dragotin Kette
, and Josip Murn, he is considered as the beginner of modernism
in Slovene literature. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the Slovene language, and has sometimes been compared to Franz Kafka
and James Joyce
.
n town of Vrhnika
near Ljubljana
. He was one of the many children of a poor artisan who emigrated to the United States
shortly after Ivan's birth. He was raised by his mother, with whom he established a close, but ambivalent relationship. The figure of a self-sacrificing and submissively repressive mother would later become one of the most recognizable features of Cankar's prose. After finishing grammar school in his hometown, he studied at the Technical High School (Realka) in Ljubljana.
During this period, he started writing literature, mostly poetry, under the influence of Romantic and post-Romantic poets such as France Prešeren
, Heinrich Heine
, Simon Jenko
and Simon Gregorčič
. In 1893, he discovered the epic poetry of Anton Aškerc
, which had a huge influence on the development of his style and ideals. Under Aškerc's influence, Cankar rejected the sentimental post-Romantic poetry and embraced literary realism
and national liberalism
.
In 1896, he enrolled at the University of Vienna
, where he studied engineering
, but later switched to Slavic philology. In Vienna, he soon started to lead a bohemian lifestyle
. He came under the influence of contemporary European literature
, especially decadentism
, symbolism
and naturalism
. He became friends with Fran Govekar, a young Slovene writer and intellectual living in Vienna, who introduced him to positivism
and naturalism
. Between 1897 and 1899, Cankar's core ideas were essentially positivistic. In the spring of 1897 he moved back to Vrhnika. After his mother's death in autumn of the same year, he moved to Pula
and in 1898 back to Vienna, where he lived until 1909.
During his second stay in Vienna, Cankar's worldview underwent a deep change. In a famous letter to the Slovene feminist author Zofka Kveder
in 1900 he rejected positivism and naturalism. He embraced spiritualism
, symbolism and idealism
, and later publicly broke with Fran Govekar. At the same time, he became highly critical of Slovene liberalism
, published a devastating criticism of Anton Aškerc's poetry and gradually moved towards socialism
. He was strongly influenced by the Slovene Roman Catholic priest and thinker Janez Evangelist Krek
, who advocated radical social activism on a Christian basis. He nevertheless continued to oppose the clericalism
and conservativism of Austrian Christian socialists in general and Krek's Slovene People's Party
in particular. He joined the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party, an Austro-Marxist party active in the Slovene Lands
and in Istria
. In the first general election
s to the Austrian Parliament
in 1907, he ran as a candidate for the party in the largely working-class electoral district of Zagorje
-Litija
in Carniola, but lost to a candidate of the Slovene People's Party.
In 1909, he left Vienna and moved to Sarajevo
in Bosnia and Hercegovina, where his brother Karlo worked as a priest. During his stay in Sarajevo, he gradually turned away from his previous militant anti-clericalism
, becoming more receptive to Christian spirituality. The same year, he settled in the Rožnik
district of Ljubljana. Although he remained an active member of the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party, he rejected the party's view on Yugoslav nation-building
: in a resolution in 1909, the party favoured a gradual unification of Slovene culture
and language with the Serbo-Croatian
ones in order to create a common Yugoslav
cultural nation. Cankar, on the other hand, strongly defended the national and linguistic individuality of Slovenes. Together with Mihajlo Rostohar
, he became the most vocal defender of Slovene individuality within a South Slavic political framework. Already after his electoral defeat in 1907, Cankar had started to publish numerous essays explaining his political and aesthetic views and opinions. After his return to Carniola in 1909, he began travelling throughout the Slovene Lands, delivering lectures and conferences. The most famous of these lectures were "The Slovene people and the Slovene culture" (Slovensko ljudstvo in slovenska kultura), delivered in Trieste
in 1907, and "Slovenes and Yugoslavs" (Slovenci in Jugoslovani), delivered in Ljubljana in 1913. In the latter, Cankar expressed a favourable opinion on the political unification of all South Slavs
, but rejected a cultural merger of South Slavic peoples. Because of the lecture, he was sentenced to one week in prison for defamation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
.
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was again imprisoned in Ljubljana Castle
for supposed pro-Serbian
attitudes, but was soon released.
In 1917, he was drafted in the Austro-Hungarian Army
, but was demobilized due to poor health. In his last lecture, delivered in the National Club of Trieste just after the end of the War, he called for a moral purification and rejuvenation of Slovene politics and culture. He moved from Rožnik to the center of Ljubljana, where he died in December 1918. His funeral was attended by a huge crowd and highest representatives from the cultural and political life in Slovenia. In 1936, his grave was moved to the Žale
cemetery in Ljubljana, where he was buried next to his youth friends and fellow authors Dragotin Kette
and Josip Murn.
, 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.
Cankar was raised as a Roman Catholic. In his high school years, he became a typical liberal freethinker
. He rejected the religious dogmas and embraced the rational explanations provided by contemporary natural and social sciences. Between 1898 and 1902, he fell under the influence of the thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Friedrich Nietzsche
. In the writings of the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck
Cankar found the idea of the existence of a world soul, with which the individual souls are connected and employed it in his own works. Already around 1903, however, he turned to an original, slightly anarchist interpretation of Marxism
. His later life was marked by a gradual evolution towards orthodox Christianity, which became evident after 1910 and especially in the last year of his life. Although he never officially rejected his Roman Catholic faith, he was generally considered an agnostic, albeit sympathetic to some elements of traditional Catholic devotion.
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Cankar was an influential author already during his lifetime. His works were widely read and Cankar was the first author in Slovene language who could make a living exclusively from writing. He became even more influential after his death. Due to his insistence on the cultural and national specificity of the Slovene people, Cankar became the referential figure for the young generations of Slovene intellectuals who rejected the centralistic and unitaristic policies of the Serb
political elite in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
. In the early 1920s, a group of young Catholics, mostly of Christian Socialist convictions, took the title of one of Cankar's minor novels, Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain), as the name of their journal. The group, known as the "Crusaders" , became the focal point in the emergence of the Christian left
in Slovenia in the 1920s and 1930s.
Cankar's work and his personal world view influenced all three major literary trends in Slovene literature between 1918 and 1945: the expressionism
of Catholic authors such as Ivan Pregelj
, Stanko Majcen, and France Bevk
, the social realism
of the liberal left and Marxist authors (particularly Miško Kranjec
, Prežihov Voranc
, Ciril Kosmač
, and Mile Klopčič
) and the avantgardism of Srečko Kosovel
. During the same period, Cankar's political ideas influenced the Slovene social-democratic
ideologist Etbin Kristan
, the Christian Democratic political theorist Andrej Gosar
and the democratic
thinkers Albin Prepeluh
and Dragotin Lončar
. Cankar's psychological introspections became a major source of Edvard Kocbek
's and Anton Trstenjak's inquiry in the Slovene national character
.
During the dictatorship of King Alexander
(1929–1934), Cankar's works were removed from the school curriculum, because he was considered a dangerous advocate of Slovene particularism
and nationalism
. After 1935, his status as one of the greatest Slovene writers was never put under serious question. In 1937, the first integral collection of Cankar's work was published, edited and annotated by his cousin and conservative
literary historian and critic Izidor Cankar
. After World War II, the publishing house Cankarjeva založba (literally, 'Cankar Press') was established, which took care of the edition of his collected works.
Cankar was especially influential as a playwright. He is considered the father of modern Slovene theatre and has had a major influence on almost all Slovene playwrights thereafter, starting from the expressionist theatre of the 1920s (Slavko Grum, Stanko Majcen). Between the 1950s and 1970s, most of the modernisators of Slovene theatre, such as Jože Javoršek
, Dominik Smole
, Marjan Rožanc
, Primož Kozak
, and Bojan Štih
, have been influenced by Cankar's plays. The works of many contemporary Slovene playwrights and screenwriters, including Drago Jančar
, Dušan Jovanović
, Tone Partljič
and Žarko Petan
, continue to show a clear influence of Cankar's concepts.
Many of the prominent Slovene thinkers reflected on Cankar's works, including Dušan Pirjevec Ahac, Milan Komar
, and Slavoj Žižek
.
Already during his lifetime, his works were translated into German
, Czech
, Serbian
, Croatian
, Finnish
and Russian
. Later, his work has been translated also into French
, English
, Italian
, Hungarian
, Romanian
, Polish
, Slovak
, Bulgarian
, Macedonian
, Albanian
and Turkish
. Cankar's influence outside the Slovene-speaking area has been small, although his work did influence some non-Slovene authors, such as the French Henri Bordeaux, who also published an essay on Cankar in the 1920s, the Austrian Josef Friedrich Perkonig and the Italian Fulvio Tomizza
. According to the testimony of the literary critic Josip Vidmar
, Cankar's novel Hiša Marije Pomočnice
was well received by the famous German writer Thomas Mann
, who helped to publish a German edition in 1930.
Numerous streets, squares, public buildings and institutions have been named after Ivan Cankar. During World War II, two military units of the Partisan resistance, the Cankar Brigade and the legendary Cankar Battalion, were named after him. Since the 1980s, Slovenia's largest congress centre, the Cankar Hall
in Ljubljana, has borne his name. Between June 1994 and January 2007, Cankar was portrayed on the 10,000 Slovenian tolar
bill.
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, essayist, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and political activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
. Together with Oton Župančič
Oton Župancic
Oton Župančič was a Slovene poet, translator and playwright.Župančič is regarded, alongside Ivan Cankar, Dragotin Kette and Josip Murn, as the beginner of modernism in Slovenian literature...
, Dragotin Kette
Dragotin Kette
Dragotin Kette was a Slovene Impressionist and Neo-Romantic poet. Together with Josip Murn, Ivan Cankar and Oton Župančič, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature.-Life:...
, and Josip Murn, he is considered as the beginner of modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
in Slovene literature. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the Slovene language, and has sometimes been compared to Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
.
Biography
Ivan Cankar was born in the CarniolaCarniola
Carniola was a historical region that comprised parts of what is now Slovenia. As part of Austria-Hungary, the region was a crown land officially known as the Duchy of Carniola until 1918. In 1849, the region was subdivided into Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, and Inner Carniola...
n town of Vrhnika
Vrhnika
Vrhnika is a town and a municipality in Slovenia. It is situated on the Ljubljanica River, 21 km from Ljubljana along the A1 motorway.-History:...
near Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
. He was one of the many children of a poor artisan who emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
shortly after Ivan's birth. He was raised by his mother, with whom he established a close, but ambivalent relationship. The figure of a self-sacrificing and submissively repressive mother would later become one of the most recognizable features of Cankar's prose. After finishing grammar school in his hometown, he studied at the Technical High School (Realka) in Ljubljana.
During this period, he started writing literature, mostly poetry, under the influence of Romantic and post-Romantic poets such as France Prešeren
France Prešeren
France Prešeren was a Slovene Romantic poet. He is considered the Slovene national poet. Although he was not a particularly prolific author, he inspired virtually all Slovene literature thereafter....
, Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
, Simon Jenko
Simon Jenko
Simon Jenko was a Slovene poet, lyricist and writer.Jenko was born in Podreča in the Sora Plain in Upper Carniola, then part of the Austrian Empire, now in Slovenia, as an illegitimate son of poor peasant parents...
and Simon Gregorčič
Simon Gregorcic
Simon Gregorčič was a Slovene poet and Roman Catholic priest.- Biography :Gregorčič was born in the small mountain village of Vrsno above the river Soča in the County of Gorizia and Gradisca. In 1851, he attended primary school in Libušnje, but was in 1855 sent to school in Gorizia. After...
. In 1893, he discovered the epic poetry of Anton Aškerc
Anton Aškerc
Anton Aškerc was a Slovene poet and Roman Catholic priest, best known for his epic poems.Aškerc was born into a peasant family near the town of Rimske Toplice in the Duchy of Styria, then part of the Austrian Empire . His exact birthplace is unknown because his family was on the move at the time...
, which had a huge influence on the development of his style and ideals. Under Aškerc's influence, Cankar rejected the sentimental post-Romantic poetry and embraced literary realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
and national liberalism
National liberalism
National liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining nationalism with some liberal policies, especially regarding economic liberalism. The roots of it are to be found in the 19th century, when conservative liberalism was the ideology of the political classes in most European countries, then...
.
In 1896, he enrolled at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
, where he studied engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, but later switched to Slavic philology. In Vienna, he soon started to lead a bohemian lifestyle
Bohemian style
In modern usage, the term "Bohemian" is applied to people who live unconventional, usually artistic, lives. The adherents of the "Bloomsbury Group", which formed around the Stephen sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in the early 20th century, are among the best-known examples...
. He came under the influence of contemporary European literature
European literature
European literature refers to the literature of Europe.European literature includes literature in many languages; among the most important of the modern written works are those in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech and Russian and works by the...
, especially decadentism
Decadentism
Decadentism was an Italian artistic style based mainly on the Decadent movement in the arts in France and England around the end of the 19th century. The main authors associated with decadentism were Antonio Fogazzaro, Italo Svevo, Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D'Annunzio...
, symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
and naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
. He became friends with Fran Govekar, a young Slovene writer and intellectual living in Vienna, who introduced him to positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
and naturalism
Naturalism (philosophy)
Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...
. Between 1897 and 1899, Cankar's core ideas were essentially positivistic. In the spring of 1897 he moved back to Vrhnika. After his mother's death in autumn of the same year, he moved to Pula
Pula
Pula is the largest city in Istria County, Croatia, situated at the southern tip of the Istria peninsula, with a population of 62,080 .Like the rest of the region, it is known for its mild climate, smooth sea, and unspoiled nature. The city has a long tradition of winemaking, fishing,...
and in 1898 back to Vienna, where he lived until 1909.
During his second stay in Vienna, Cankar's worldview underwent a deep change. In a famous letter to the Slovene feminist author Zofka Kveder
Zofka Kveder
Zofka Kveder was writer, playwright, translator and journalist who wrote in Slovene and later in life also in Croatian. She is considered one of the first Slovene women writers and feminists...
in 1900 he rejected positivism and naturalism. He embraced spiritualism
Spiritualism (beliefs)
Spiritualism is a dualist metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at least two fundamental substances, matter and spirit. This very broad metaphysical distinction is further developed into many and various forms by the inclusion of details about what spiritual entities exist such as a...
, symbolism and idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
, and later publicly broke with Fran Govekar. At the same time, he became highly critical of Slovene liberalism
Liberalism in Slovenia
This article gives an overview of liberalism in Slovenia. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ means a reference to another party in that scheme...
, published a devastating criticism of Anton Aškerc's poetry and gradually moved towards socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. He was strongly influenced by the Slovene Roman Catholic priest and thinker Janez Evangelist Krek
Janez Evangelist Krek
Janez Evangelist Krek was a Slovene Christian Socialist politician, priest, journalist and author.He was born in a peasant family in the village of Sveti Gregor , in what was then the Austrian Empire. His father died when he was a child...
, who advocated radical social activism on a Christian basis. He nevertheless continued to oppose the clericalism
Clericalism
Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based, leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of either the church or broader political and sociocultural import...
and conservativism of Austrian Christian socialists in general and Krek's Slovene People's Party
Slovene People's Party (historical)
The Slovene People's Party was a Slovenian political party in the 19th and 20th centuries, active in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Between 1907 and 1941, it was the largest and arguably the most influential political party in the Slovene Lands...
in particular. He joined the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party, an Austro-Marxist party active in the Slovene Lands
Slovene Lands
Slovene Lands or Slovenian Lands is the historical denomination for the whole of the Slovene-inhabited territories in Central Europe. It more or less corresponds to modern Slovenia and the adjacent territories in Italy, Austria and Hungary in which autochthonous Slovene minorities live.-...
and in Istria
Istria
Istria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
. In the first general election
General election
In a parliamentary political system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.The term...
s to the Austrian Parliament
Reichsrat (Austria)
The Imperial Council of Austria from 1867 to 1918 was the parliament of the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a bicameral legislature, consisting of the Herrenhaus and the Abgeordnetenhaus...
in 1907, he ran as a candidate for the party in the largely working-class electoral district of Zagorje
Zagorje ob Savi
Zagorje ob Savi is a town and a municipality in central Slovenia. It is located in the valley of Medija Creek, a minor left-bank tributary of the Sava River, east of Ljubljana southwest of Celje, and west of Trbovlje. Traditionally the area was part of the Upper Carniola region. The entire...
-Litija
Litija
Litija is a town and a municipality in central Slovenia. It is located in the valley of the river Sava, to the east of the capital Ljubljana. Traditionally, the area was situated on the border between the historical provinces of Carniola and Styria. Most of the municipality belonged to the...
in Carniola, but lost to a candidate of the Slovene People's Party.
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
in Bosnia and Hercegovina, where his brother Karlo worked as a priest. During his stay in Sarajevo, he gradually turned away from his previous militant anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
, becoming more receptive to Christian spirituality. The same year, he settled in the Rožnik
Rožnik
The Rožnik District or simply Rožnik is a city district of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It consists of much of Rožnik Hill and includes also Tivoli Park. The Ljubljana Zoo is located here....
district of Ljubljana. Although he remained an active member of the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party, he rejected the party's view on Yugoslav nation-building
Nation-building
For nation-building in the sense of enhancing the capacity of state institutions, building state-society relations, and also external interventions see State-building....
: in a resolution in 1909, the party favoured a gradual unification of Slovene culture
Culture of Slovenia
Slovenia's first book was printed by the Protestant reformer Primož Trubar . It was actually two books, Katekizem and Abecednik, which was published in 1550 in Tübingen, Germany....
and language with the Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
ones in order to create a common Yugoslav
Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs is a national designation used by a minority of South Slavs across the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the diaspora...
cultural nation. Cankar, on the other hand, strongly defended the national and linguistic individuality of Slovenes. Together with Mihajlo Rostohar
Mihajlo Rostohar
Mihajlo Rostohar was a Slovenian psychologist, author and educator, who played an important role during the creation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs...
, he became the most vocal defender of Slovene individuality within a South Slavic political framework. Already after his electoral defeat in 1907, Cankar had started to publish numerous essays explaining his political and aesthetic views and opinions. After his return to Carniola in 1909, he began travelling throughout the Slovene Lands, delivering lectures and conferences. The most famous of these lectures were "The Slovene people and the Slovene culture" (Slovensko ljudstvo in slovenska kultura), delivered in Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
in 1907, and "Slovenes and Yugoslavs" (Slovenci in Jugoslovani), delivered in Ljubljana in 1913. In the latter, Cankar expressed a favourable opinion on the political unification of all South Slavs
South Slavs
The South Slavs are the southern branch of the Slavic peoples and speak South Slavic languages. Geographically, the South Slavs are native to the Balkan peninsula, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps...
, but rejected a cultural merger of South Slavic peoples. Because of the lecture, he was sentenced to one week in prison for defamation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
.
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was again imprisoned in Ljubljana Castle
Ljubljana Castle
Ljubljana Castle is a medieval castle in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is located on the Castle Hill overlooking the old town.- History:According to archeological surveys, the area of the present castle has been settled continuously since 1200 BC, when the first settlements and later fortifications were...
for supposed pro-Serbian
Kingdom of Serbia
The Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karađorđevic dynasty from 1817 onwards . The Principality, suzerain to the Porte, had expelled all Ottoman troops by 1867, de...
attitudes, but was soon released.
In 1917, he was drafted in the Austro-Hungarian Army
Austro-Hungarian Army
The Austro-Hungarian Army was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint army , the Austrian Landwehr , and the Hungarian Honvédség .In the wake of fighting between the...
, but was demobilized due to poor health. In his last lecture, delivered in the National Club of Trieste just after the end of the War, he called for a moral purification and rejuvenation of Slovene politics and culture. He moved from Rožnik to the center of Ljubljana, where he died in December 1918. His funeral was attended by a huge crowd and highest representatives from the cultural and political life in Slovenia. In 1936, his grave was moved to the Žale
Žale
Žale Central cemetery , often abbreviated to Žale, is the largest and the central cemetery in Ljubljana. It is located in the Bežigrad district and operated by the Žale Public Company.- History :...
cemetery in Ljubljana, where he was buried next to his youth friends and fellow authors Dragotin Kette
Dragotin Kette
Dragotin Kette was a Slovene Impressionist and Neo-Romantic poet. Together with Josip Murn, Ivan Cankar and Oton Župančič, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature.-Life:...
and Josip Murn.
Work
Ivan Cankar wrote around 30 books and is considered one of the primary exponents of Slovene modernist literatureModernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, alongside Oton Župančič
Oton Župancic
Oton Župančič was a Slovene poet, translator and playwright.Župančič is regarded, alongside Ivan Cankar, Dragotin Kette and Josip Murn, as the beginner of modernism in Slovenian literature...
, Dragotin Kette and Josip Murn. Cankar is also considered one of Europe's most important fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
. He dealt with social, national and moral themes. In Slovenia, his best-known works are the play Hlapci ("Serfs"), the satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
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
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
sketches and other short stories, which, in their mixture of symbolism, modernism and even expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, 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
Ljubljanski zvon
Ljubljanski zvon was a journal published in Ljubljana in Slovene between 1881 and 1941. It was considered one of the most prestigious literary and cultural magazines in Slovenia.- Early period :...
. 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
Decadentism
Decadentism was an Italian artistic style based mainly on the Decadent movement in the arts in France and England around the end of the 19th century. The main authors associated with decadentism were Antonio Fogazzaro, Italo Svevo, Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D'Annunzio...
and sensualist
Sensualism
Sensualism is a philosophical doctrine of the theory of knowledge, according to which sensations and perception are the basic and most important form of true cognition. It may oppose abstract ideas...
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
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
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
Hiša Marije Pomočnice
Hiša Marije Pomočnice is a novel by the Slovenian author Ivan Cankar. It was first published in 1904. It was translated into English in 1968 by Henry Leeming as The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy....
(The Ward of Mary Help of Christians
Mary Help of Christians
Mary Help of Christians , is a Roman Catholic Marian devotion with a feast day celebrated on May 24. John Chrysostom was the first person to use this title in 345 as a devotion to the Virgin Mary....
) 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
Slovene People's Party (historical)
The Slovene People's Party was a Slovenian political party in the 19th and 20th centuries, active in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Between 1907 and 1941, it was the largest and arguably the most influential political party in the Slovene Lands...
, he wrote his most influential play, the satire Hlapci (Serfs), in which he satirized the conformism of the former progressive and agnostic public servants
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
who embraced Catholicism
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
after the defeat of the liberal party
National Progressive Party (Slovenia)
The National Progressive Party was a political party in the Carniola region of Austria-Hungary. It was established in 1894 by Ivan Tavčar as the National Party of Carniola and renamed in 1905 to The National Progressive 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
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
.
His last collection of short stories, entitled Podobe iz sanj (Images from Dreams), which were published posthumously in 1920, is a magically realistic
Magic realism
Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
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.
Personality and world view
Cankar was a relatively fragile personality, both emotionally and physically, but showed an unusually strong and persistent intellectual vigour. He was a sharp thinker, who was able of poignant criticism of both his environment and himself. He was also full of paradoxes and loved irony and sarcasm. He was an unusually sentimental and somehow ecstatic nature, intensely sensitive to ethical issues. He was very introspective: his works, which are to a large extent autobiographic, became famous for the ruthless analysis of his own deeds and misdeeds.Cankar was raised as a Roman Catholic. In his high school years, he became a typical liberal freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
. He rejected the religious dogmas and embraced the rational explanations provided by contemporary natural and social sciences. Between 1898 and 1902, he fell under the influence of the thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. In the writings of the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
Cankar found the idea of the existence of a world soul, with which the individual souls are connected and employed it in his own works. Already around 1903, however, he turned to an original, slightly anarchist interpretation of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. His later life was marked by a gradual evolution towards orthodox Christianity, which became evident after 1910 and especially in the last year of his life. Although he never officially rejected his Roman Catholic faith, he was generally considered an agnostic, albeit sympathetic to some elements of traditional Catholic devotion.
Influence
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
political elite in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
. In the early 1920s, a group of young Catholics, mostly of Christian Socialist convictions, took the title of one of Cankar's minor novels, Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain), as the name of their journal. The group, known as the "Crusaders" , became the focal point in the emergence of the Christian left
Christian left
The Christian left is a term originating in the United States, used to describe a spectrum of left-wing Christian political and social movements which largely embraces social justice....
in Slovenia in the 1920s and 1930s.
Cankar's work and his personal world view influenced all three major literary trends in Slovene literature between 1918 and 1945: the expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
of Catholic authors such as Ivan Pregelj
Ivan Pregelj
Ivan Pregelj was a Slovene writer, playwright, poet, and critic.- Life :Pregelj was born to a tailor's family in Most na Soči . His father died while Pregelj was still a child. He attended school with the help of the parish priest...
, Stanko Majcen, and France Bevk
France Bevk
France Bevk was a Slovene writer, poet and translator. He also wrote under the pseudonym Pavle Sedmak.-Biography:...
, the social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
of the liberal left and Marxist authors (particularly Miško Kranjec
Miško Kranjec
Miško Kranjec was a Slovene writer.Kranjec was born in the village of Velika Polana in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as the son of the village tailor Mihalj Kranjec...
, Prežihov Voranc
Prežihov Voranc
Prežihov Voranc was the pen name of Lovro Kuhar, a Slovene writer and Communist political activist. Voranc's literary reputation was established during the 1930s with a series of Slovene novels and short stories in the social realist style, notable for their depictions of poverty in rural and...
, Ciril Kosmač
Ciril Kosmač
Ciril Kosmač was a Slovenian novelist and screenwriter.- Life :He was born in a Slovene family in the village of Slap ob Idrijci near Sveta Lucija , in what was then the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca . He attended high school in Tolmin and Gorizia...
, and Mile Klopčič
Mile Klopčič
Mile Klopčič was a Slovenian poet and translator. Together with Tone Seliškar, he is considered as the foremost representative of Slovene social realist poetry of the 1930s and 1940s....
) and the avantgardism of Srečko Kosovel
Srecko Kosovel
Srečko Kosovel was a Slovene expressionist poet who evolved towards avant-garde forms. Since the 1960s, Kosovel has become a poetic icon, in the league of the most prestigious Slovene literates like France Prešeren and Ivan Cankar. Together with Edvard Kocbek, he is considered as the most...
. During the same period, Cankar's political ideas influenced the Slovene social-democratic
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
ideologist Etbin Kristan
Etbin Kristan
Etbin Kristan was a Slovenian labour leader and Social Democratic politician and writer during the late-Austrian-Hungarian and the Yugoslav monarchy.-Biography:...
, the Christian Democratic political theorist Andrej Gosar
Andrej Gosar
Andrej Gosar was a Slovenian and Yugoslav politician, sociologist, economist and political theorist.- Early life and career :...
and the democratic
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
thinkers Albin Prepeluh
Albin Prepeluh
Albin Prepeluh was a Slovenian left wing politician, journalist, editor, political theorist and translator. Before World War I, he was the foremost Slovene Marxist revisionist theoretician...
and Dragotin Lončar
Dragotin Lončar
Dragotin Lončar was a Slovenian historian, editor and Social Democratic politician.He was born as Karel Lončar in Selo near Lukovica in Upper Carniola. After finishing the State Gymnasium in Ljubljana, he studied history at the Charles University in Prague, graduating in 1904...
. Cankar's psychological introspections became a major source of Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...
's and Anton Trstenjak's inquiry in the Slovene national character
National Character Studies
National character studies refers to a set of anthropological studies conducted during and directly after World War II that arose from the Culture and Personality School within psychological anthropology....
.
During the dictatorship of King Alexander
Alexander I of Yugoslavia
Alexander I , also known as Alexander the Unifier was the first king of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as well as the last king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes .-Childhood:...
(1929–1934), Cankar's works were removed from the school curriculum, because he was considered a dangerous advocate of Slovene particularism
Political particularism
Political particularism is the ability of policymakers to further their careers by appealing to narrow interests rather than the wider interests of the country...
and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
. After 1935, his status as one of the greatest Slovene writers was never put under serious question. In 1937, the first integral collection of Cankar's work was published, edited and annotated by his cousin and conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
literary historian and critic Izidor Cankar
Izidor Cankar
Izidor Cankar was a Slovenian author, art historian, diplomat, publicist, translator, and liberal conservative politician...
. After World War II, the publishing house Cankarjeva založba (literally, 'Cankar Press') was established, which took care of the edition of his collected works.
Cankar was especially influential as a playwright. He is considered the father of modern Slovene theatre and has had a major influence on almost all Slovene playwrights thereafter, starting from the expressionist theatre of the 1920s (Slavko Grum, Stanko Majcen). Between the 1950s and 1970s, most of the modernisators of Slovene theatre, such as Jože Javoršek
Jože Javoršek
Jože Javoršek was the pen name of Jože Brejc , a Slovenian playwright, writer, poet, translator and essayist. He is regarded as one of the greatest masters of style and language among Slovene authors...
, Dominik Smole
Dominik Smole
Dominik Smole was a Slovenian writer and playwright.-Biography:Smole was born in Ljubljana in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia...
, Marjan Rožanc
Marjan Rožanc
Marjan Rožanc was a Slovenian author, playwright and journalist. He is mostly known for his essays, and is considered one of the foremost essayists in the Slovene language, along with Ivan Cankar, Jože Javoršek and Drago Jančar, and as a great master of style.He was born in a working-class suborb...
, Primož Kozak
Primož Kozak
Primož Kozak was a Slovenian playwright and essayist. He was, together with Dominik Smole, Dane Zajc and Taras Kermauner, the most visible representative of the so-called Critical generation, a group of Slovenian authors and intellectuals that reflected on the paradoxes of the Communist regime,...
, and Bojan Štih
Bojan Štih
Bojan Štih , was a Slovene literary critic, stage director, and essayist. He was one of the most influential figures in modern Slovene theatre after 1945....
, have been influenced by Cankar's plays. The works of many contemporary Slovene playwrights and screenwriters, including Drago Jančar
Drago Jancar
Drago Jančar is a Slovenian writer, playwright and essayist. Jančar is one of the most known contemporary Slovene writers. In Slovenia, he is also famous for his political commentaries and civic engagement.-Life:...
, Dušan Jovanović
Dušan Jovanović
Dušan Jovanović is a retired footballer who played as a forward for clubs in Greece.-Playing career:Jovanović spent most of his career playing for clubs in the Greek second division, including Pontii Veria F.C., Panetolikos F.C., Panserraikos F.C. and Panachaiki F.C....
, Tone Partljič
Tone Partljič
Tone Partljič is a Slovene writer, playwright and politician. Betwen 1990 and 2004 he was a member of the Slovenian National Assembly, form 1994 as a member of the LDS party. He was also president of the Slovene Writers' Association between 1983 and 1987.Partljič was born in Maribor and grew up in...
and Žarko Petan
Žarko Petan
thumb|Žarko PetanŽarko Petan is a Slovenian writer, essayist, screenwriter, and theatre and film director. He is most famous as writer of aphorisms....
, continue to show a clear influence of Cankar's concepts.
Many of the prominent Slovene thinkers reflected on Cankar's works, including Dušan Pirjevec Ahac, Milan Komar
Milan Komar
Milan Komar, also known as Emilio Komar was a Slovene Argentine Catholic philosopher and essayist.-Life:...
, and Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
.
Already during his lifetime, his works were translated into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. Later, his work has been translated also into French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Macedonian
Macedonian language
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
, Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
. Cankar's influence outside the Slovene-speaking area has been small, although his work did influence some non-Slovene authors, such as the French Henri Bordeaux, who also published an essay on Cankar in the 1920s, the Austrian Josef Friedrich Perkonig and the Italian Fulvio Tomizza
Fulvio Tomizza
Fulvio Tomizza was an Italian language writer. He was born in Giurizzani in Kingdom of Italy ....
. According to the testimony of the literary critic Josip Vidmar
Josip Vidmar
Josip Vidmar was a prominent Slovenian literary critic and essayist. Vidmar is remembered because of his role in the Slovenian resistance during World War II, and for his influence in the cultural policies of the Titoist regime in Slovenia from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s.He was born in...
, Cankar's novel Hiša Marije Pomočnice
Hiša Marije Pomočnice
Hiša Marije Pomočnice is a novel by the Slovenian author Ivan Cankar. It was first published in 1904. It was translated into English in 1968 by Henry Leeming as The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy....
was well received by the famous German writer Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, who helped to publish a German edition in 1930.
Legacy
To this day, Cankar's prose is regarded as one of the finest examples of Slovene style. His influence as a novelist has faded since the 1960s, but his plays are still among the most popular theatre pieces in Slovene theatres.Numerous streets, squares, public buildings and institutions have been named after Ivan Cankar. During World War II, two military units of the Partisan resistance, the Cankar Brigade and the legendary Cankar Battalion, were named after him. Since the 1980s, Slovenia's largest congress centre, the Cankar Hall
Cankar Hall
Cankar Hall is a cultural and congress center in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It stands on the central Republic Square , opposite the Parliament of Slovenia....
in Ljubljana, has borne his name. Between June 1994 and January 2007, Cankar was portrayed on the 10,000 Slovenian tolar
Slovenian tolar
The tolar was the currency of Slovenia from 1991 until the introduction of the euro on 1 January 2007. It was subdivided into 100 stotins...
bill.
Further reading
- Izidor CankarIzidor CankarIzidor Cankar was a Slovenian author, art historian, diplomat, publicist, translator, and liberal conservative politician...
, Preface to "Ivan Cankar, Zbrani spisi" (Ljubljana: Blasnikova tiskarna, 1937) - France Bernik, Ivan Cankar: monografska študija (LJubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1987)
- Arnaldo Bressan, Le avventure della parola: saggi sloveni e triestini (Milan: Il saggiatore, 1985)
- Andrej Inkret, Romantične duše: razmišljanja ob dramatiki Ivana Cankarja (Ljubljana: Prosvetni servis, 1966)
- Dušan Kermauner, Ivan Cankar in slovenska politika leta 1918 (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1968)
- Taras KermaunerTaras KermaunerTaras Kermauner was a Slovenian literary historian, critic, philosopher, essayist, playwright and translator.- Life :...
, Dolina i nebo: eseji o Cankaru (Belgrade: Vuk Karadžić, 1979) - Alojz Kraigher, Ivan Cankar: študije o njegovem delu in življenju, spomini nanj (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1954)
- Matevž Kos, Cankar in Nietzsche (Ljubljana: društvo za primerjalno književnost, 2001)
- Primož KozakPrimož KozakPrimož Kozak was a Slovenian playwright and essayist. He was, together with Dominik Smole, Dane Zajc and Taras Kermauner, the most visible representative of the so-called Critical generation, a group of Slovenian authors and intellectuals that reflected on the paradoxes of the Communist regime,...
, Temeljni konflikti Cankarjevih dram (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1980) - Filip Kumbatovič Kalan, Trois précurseurs du théǎtre contemporain en Yougoslavie: Branislav Nušić, Ivan Cankar, Miroslav Krleža (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1963)
- Marija Mitrović, Cankar in kritika (Koper: Lipa, 1976)
- Boris Paternu, Ivan Cankar in slovenska literarna tradicija (Ljubljana: Slavistično društvo Slovenije, 1969)
- Dušan Pirjevec Ahac, Hlapci, heroji, ljudje (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1968)
- Jože PogačnikJože PogačnikJože Pogačnik is a retired Slovenian film director and screenwriter.After studying film directing, Pogačnik first worked as a film critic, before becoming a prominent author of docmentary films in the 1960s, manly dealing with social issues...
, Ivan Cankar und Oton Župančič (Munich: Selbstverlag der Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, 1991) - Dimitrij RupelDimitrij RupelDimitrij Rupel is a Slovenian politician.- Biography :Rupel was born in Ljubljana, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, into a bourgeois family of former anti-fascist political emigrants from the Julian March .After receiving a bachelor's degree in comparative literature and...
, Svobodne besede : od Prešerna do Cankarja: sociološka študija o slovenskem leposlovju kot glasniku in pobudniku (Koper: Lipa, 1976) - Anton Slodnjak, Ivan Cankar in Slovene and world literature (London: Modern Humanities Research Association for the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1981)
- Miran Štuhec, Esejistika Ivana Cankarja (Ljubljana: Slavistično društvo Slovenije, 2006)
- Josip VidmarJosip VidmarJosip Vidmar was a prominent Slovenian literary critic and essayist. Vidmar is remembered because of his role in the Slovenian resistance during World War II, and for his influence in the cultural policies of the Titoist regime in Slovenia from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s.He was born in...
, Ivan Cankar (Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije, 1969) - Božo Vodušek, Ivan Cankar (Ljubljana: Hram, 1937)
- Dimitrije Vučenov, Ivan Cankar (Belgrade: Rad, 1962)
- Boris Ziherl, Ivan Cankar i njegovo doba (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1949)