Origins & Early Life

Ivan Cankar (pronounced [ˈíːʋan ˈtsàːŋkaɾ], ) (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 Slovene, and has sometimes been compared to Franz Kafka and James Joyce. Ivan Cankar was born in the Carniolan town of Vrhnika near Ljubljana.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

He was one of the many children of a poor artisan who immigrated to Bosnia shortly after Ivan's birth. He was raised by his mother, Neža Cankar née Pivk, 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 (1888–1896). 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.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

In 1893, he discovered the epic poetry...

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