The Power of Love and Guilt

This monograph sheds light on the mother and woman as portrayed in the works of Ivan Cankar. Through the figure of the mother, he reveals also his delicate and subtle relation to weaker individuals in general; the figure of woman in his works reveals his complicated, often two-fold, internally contradictory relation to love and sexuality. 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 Dreams: 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.