Cankar and Nietzsche

Abstract

The primary reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy in Slovene literature and culture in general was mainly ideologically and cultural. This holds true of both Catholic-conservative as well as liberal, freethinking people, who espoused the two predominant (and competing) ideological models in Slovenia at the tum of the 19^th and 20^th century. The Slovene relationship towards Nietzsche (and philosophy in general) was such also because, at the end of the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th century, philosophical thought was not sufficiently developed and analyzed to enable a qualified dialogue with Nietzschean philosophy: in Slovenia it did not have the appropriate, i.e. philosophical partner in a conversation. This is demonstrated in the Slovene – also literary – reception of Nietzsche. The reception of Nietzsche in the literature of the Slovene moderna partly overcomes the established ideological framework, although most authors avoid a more radical approach. This »duality« is shown in the literary work {Erotika, Knjiga za lahkomiselne ljudi, Kralj na Betajnovi, Kurent) of one particular author, Ivan Cankar. The most obvious of Cankar’s references to Nietzsche are to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. However, Cankar’s relation to Nietzsche is ambivalent. A horizon of romantic subjectivity can still be found in the background of Cankar’s syntagms and formulations, which enable discussion about Nietzsche. After all, Cankar mainly understands art as an emphasized ethical instance which is most closely interrelated with so-called »life practice«. Hence the realization that, to enter the world of Cankar’s literature, Nietzschean notions such as »will«, »power«, and »superman«, must pass through the filter of humanization. One of Cankar’s words for this is tendentiousness