Irena Avsenik Nabergoj Livres

This book deals with the works of Ivan Cankar, the greatest Slovenian writer, focusing on his relation to existential, social, and moral reality as reflected in individuals and in society at large. The method of literary analysis shows a surprising harmony between personal confessions and a rich symbolism that reveals the writer’s unconditional belief in the power of conscience, strong conviction of the sense of victims and the longing for the triumph of love and justice. A holistic interpretation yields the conclusion that most of Cankar’s works are confessions that purport to be true to life. His inclination to self-disclosure in dreams alongside the objective disclosure of imperceptible reality indicates that expressive language and a lyrical style are of vital importance to him.

The book shows Ivan Cankar (1876–1918) as the first Slovenian writer to examine the human conscience, justice, guilt and punishment in a way comparable to Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and influenced also by the Bible. Given Cankar’s own bitter childhood experience of poverty and his awareness of the ceaseless injustice which rules the world, he has compassion for the wrongdoings carried out by people from lower social realms, especially children, and is all the more critical towards higher classes who cause their suffering. In his last book, Dream Visions, he reveals his experience of the First World War. He encompasses feelings of fear and anguish before death and surpasses them with the faith in redemption of all suffering people.

The Slovenian dramatist, poet, literary critic and essayist Ivan Cankar (1876-1918) was one of the greatest Slovenian writers and stylists, as well as the pioneer of modern Slovenian literature. This book, a follow-up to the author’s study Mirror of Reality and Stories and Confessions of Ivan Cankar , is the second English-language monograph on Cankar’s literary œuvre. Whereas the first study focused on Cankar’s social and moral criticism, this monograph sheds light on the mother and woman as portrayed in his works. Through the figure of the mother, Cankar reveals his delicate and subtle relation to weaker individuals in general; the figure of woman in his works illustrates his complicated, often two-fold, internally contradictory relation to love and sexuality.

This study provides a critical survey of views on reality and truth in the realm of philosophy and literary theory. Its aim is to show how important it is to focus our critical attention on literature itself as a way of conveying a general view of totality of things, with special attention to human life and death, effort and suffering, success and failure. A work of literature and art does not characterize experience and knowledge as such, but rather the response of concrete characters to the problems of human existence and fate. The monograph deals with pre-modern philosophical reflection on reality and truth, with post-modern ways of representation of reality in myth, history, biography, autobiography and fiction, and with sublime perceptions of beauty, love and forgiveness. The views of the writers show that there are important differences in presenting reality and truth in relation to material and historical facts. But the most important distinction is in dealing with dimensions of true life of human persons in their ineffable feelings and ideas.