The article deals with the assessment of Ivan Cankar’s views in the first evaluations of his work by the Slovenian literary historians Ivan Grafenauer (1880‒1964), Ivan Prijatelj (1875‒1937), Alojz Kraigher (1877‒1959), Izidor Cankar (1886‒1958) and France Koblar (1889–1975). The aim of this article is to determine the aspects from which the aforementioned critics judge Cankar’s aesthetic, artistic, life and world views, his view of Slovenian literature and language, and his view of the Slovenian nation and its history. In assessing Cankar’s worldview, they focus on his literature in the various genres of poetry, prose, and drama, as well as his thought prose in the form of political articles, essays, published speeches, critiques, and polemics that respond to the current issues of his time. In assessing Cankar’s worldview, the article does not proceed from philosophical definitions of the term “worldview” and related concepts, but rather focuses on the use of terminology by selected evaluators of Cankar’s works. The article examines how selected critics assess Cankar’s relationship to Christianity between doctrinal on the one hand and general moral laws on the other, the writer’s committed attitude toward Slovenes, and his relationship to justice that transcends ideological or worldview concepts. The aim of the study is to cover the various aspects of Cankar’s worldview as comprehensively as possible and thus to contribute to overcoming the contradictions, inconsistencies and divisions in the perception and interpretation of the writerʼs central works that have determined the past 100 years of reception from the perspective of Cankar’s worldview.
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