In the 1890s one of the most attractive and popular short prose forms was the sketch. Through the works of Peter Altenberg this form influenced beyond Vienna the style of "nervous" prose in this era of an ever faster pace of life. The sketch is characterised by brevity, openness of form, a marked or even total reduction of narrative and a tendency towards a synaesthesic mixing of disparate fields of perception. This "transitory" prose form was strengthened by the appearance of new large circulation illustrated papers. Ivan Cankar had already mastered the sketch during his early Vienna years and continued to develop it right up to Dream Images. In his writings the sketch matured from fleeting recordings of the moment into autonomous, self-contained miniatures in words. The precision of expression and gravity of selected themes demand that we redefine this genre.The tradition of the sketch shaped by Cankar was continued most noticeably by Srečko Kosovel and Slavko Grum.
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