A close reading of Cankar's Dunajski večeri (Vienna Evenings) shows that by filling gaps the lyrical cycle can be narrativised. The story of Dunajski večeri from the first edition of Erotika (Erotica, 1899), in brief, concerns how the first person narrator is unfaithful to his girlfriend and relishes sensuality, until he sobers up and longs for death. In the second edition of Erotika (1902) the basic story remains unchanged, although two new poems are added. The combined effect of the omissions and rearrangements is a more defined narrative span with fewer tangents. Among the themes that triggered a wave of moralising, in addition to adultery, are the beautiful female sinner and the femme fatale. By aestheticising sensuality, or equating beauty and sin, Cankar showed that he understood decadence as a means of flight from reality into dreams or art.
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