The Modern Novel

Biography

Ivan Cankar was born in Vrhnika near Ljubljana in 1876. His father was a poor worker who emigrated to Bosnia soon after Ivan’s birth, leaving Ivan to be brought up by his mother. While at technical school in Ljubljana, he started writing poetry. He then went to the University of Vienna, first studying engineering and then Slavic philology. He became interested in current trends in European literature. He returned to Vrhnika for a while but then returned to Vienna after his mother’s death. At this time, he moved away from naturalism and realism and took up spiritualism, symbolism and idealism. His political ideas moved towards socialism. He joined a Marxist party, the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party, and stood for parliament, but lost.

After a brief stay in Sarajevo he returned to Ljubljana, where he became more interested in a separate Slovenian culture and travelled around the country, giving lectures on the idea. After promoting the idea of unification of the Southern Slavs, he was imprisoned for a week and then, again, at the beginning of World War I he was imprisoned for his pro-Serbian opinions but soon released. He was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army but released because of poor health. He died in 1918 as a result of the Spanish flu pandemic. He wrote novels, plays and poetry but is most famous in Slovenia for his essays.

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Ivan Cankar
Ivan Cankar
Ivan Cankar