Tujci, prvi roman Ivana Cankarja

Ivan Cankar’s first novel Tujci (Strangers, 1901) surpassed the level of previous Slovenian novels in many ways. The paper examines two innovations in depth: essayisation (discursivity) and genre syncretism. In explaining digressive innovation, I shed light on the fundamental antagonisms of Cankar’s narrative, expressed through irony and satire, directed by strong (social or socialist) empathy. I consider genre syncretism and interpret triple love failure as triple alienation – alienation from the homeland and a foreign country, from art and work, and from women and family – and finally synthesise all of these alienations through the gap between town and countryside. The complex research indicates not only the outlines of future novelistic poetics, but also Cankar’s philosophical potential, reflected in the thought cores and their subtle unmasking of various phenomena.