Cankar’s novel Milan and Milena, the first fairy-tale novel in Slovenia

Abstract

Cankarjev deseti roman Milan in Milena (1913) zaznamujejo žanrske, zgodbene in pripovedne inovacije. Ni samo prvi avtorjev pravljični roman, pač pa je tudi prvi slovenski pravljični roman, katerega pravljičnost določa simbolistična estetika s poetično lepoto in sugestivnim hrepenenjem. Medtem ko pravljična perspektiva zaobseže predvsem idealizacijo pravljice kot drugega (lepšega in boljšega) sveta, sestavljata pravljični okvir dve lastnosti, tj. pravljični začetek in selstvo. Poleg žanrskih novosti so pomembne tudi zgodbene in pripovedne inovacije: med prvimi npr. ljubezen kot vrhovna vrednota in pot do spoznanja ter samota in dolgčas kot obliki plemenitega individualizma; med drugimi pa kritika kapitalistične družbe skozi optiko moškosti in ženskosti ter zgodbeni paralelizem oziroma paralelizem moške in ženske perspektive.

Cankar’s tenth novel Milan and Milena (1913) is marked by genre, story and narrative innovations. It is not only the author’s first fairy-tale novel, but is also the first Slovenian fairy-tale novel, the fairy-tale of which is determined by symbolist aesthetics with poetic beauty and suggestive longing. Whereas the fairy-tale perspective sencompasses the idealisation of the fairy-tale as another (more beautiful and better) world, the fairy-tale framework consists of two qualities: the fairy-tale beginning and relocation. Beside genre innovations there are important story and narrative innovations: love as the supreme value and symbolist element, longing as a way out of modern nihilism, loneliness and boredom as a signifier of noble individualism, critique of capitalist society through the optics of masculinity and femininity, and the narrative parallelism or parallelism of the male and female perspective.