In the epilogue to his Vinjete (Vignettes, 1899), Cankar commented that the writer's eyes are not a camera, thus setting out his stylistic approach to writing: he decided against the conventionalised use of language resources. In this context, the most interesting features to consider are idioms, as semantically rich multi-word expressions which, through innovative interventions (into form and/or meaning), can exist in a text on two levels - as a free combination or as an idiomatic expression. The paper discusses idioms, particularly their phraseological renewal, in two key collections of Cankar's sketches Vinjete and Podobe iz sanj (Images from Dreams). His writing in this context gives us a sense of the limits of the renewal process.
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