Наративна емпатія у двох романах Івана Цанкара

Abstract

Scholarship began systematically to deal with emotions and empathy only at the start of the 20th century; today, narrative empathy is most systematically dealt with in post-classical narrative theory. With these approaches, I analyse two noted novels by the central Slovene writer Ivan Cankar (1876–1918), Na klancu (1902) and Hiša Marije Pomočnice (1904). I trace narrative empathy through the three elements of author, text, and reader, and hence deal with the empathy of each. Regarding the empathy of the author I consider three paths: autobiography, heightened authorial empathy, and the aesthetics of production. I find that authorial empathy can be seen in the large share of autobiographical material, the obvious sensitivity toward impoverished workers, disfranchised women and powerless children, and the refined blend of realism, symbolism and impressionism as the aesthetics of production. I analyse textual empathy through the choice of genre and narrative techniques, e.g. the proletarian novel, the vivid and non-moralising presentation of sexual abuse in the form of a dramatic scene, the creation of a particular narrative rhythm, the child’s point of view, and the aesthetics of the ugly. Finally, I present the empathy of the reader, which took quite opposite forms when the two novels were published: the former was praised, the latter was rejected by the critics. Keywords: narrative empathy, Ivan Cankar, author’s empathy.