He was strongly influenced by the Slovene Roman Catholic priest and thinker Janez Evangelist Krek, who advocated radical social activism on a Christian basis.

In his last lecture, delivered in the National Club of Trieste just after the end of the War, he called for a moral purification and rejuvenation of Slovene politics and culture.

In 1936, his grave was moved to the Žale cemetery in Ljubljana, where he was buried next to his youth friends and fellow authors Dragotin Kette and Josip Murn.

Ivan Cankar wrote around 20 books and is considered one of the primary exponents of Slovene modernist literature, alongside Oton Župančič, Dragotin Kette and Josip Murn.

[7] In Slovenia, his best-known works are the play Hlapci ("Serfs"), the satire Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorijanski (Scandal in St. Florian Valley) and the novel Na klancu (On the Hill).

However, his importance for Slovene and European literature probably lies in his symbolist sketches and other short stories, which, in their mixture of symbolism, modernism and even expressionism, convey a high degree of originality.

Decadentist and sensualist influences were evident and the then bishop of Ljubljana Anton Bonaventura Jeglič was so scandalized by the book that he bought all the copies and ordered their destruction.

[7] In 1902, he wrote his first play Za narodov blagor (For the Welfare of the Nation), which was a violent parody of the liberal nationalist elite in the Slovene Lands, especially in Carniola.

[20] The same year, he published the short novel Na klancu (On the Hill), in which he described the misery of the small rural proletariat and the poor material and spiritual conditions of the common people.

The novel, which still showed strong naturalistic features, combined with allegorical symbolism and an unusual, biblically inspired style, gained him widespread recognition.

Both the liberal and the Catholic conservative parties in the Slovene Lands reacted acrimoniously against the play: its staging was delayed until after Austria-Hungary's dissolution in Autumn 1918.

[21] In the play Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorjanski (Scandal in St. Florian Valley, published in 1908), Cankar made fun of the moral rigidness and culturally backward mentality of Carniola's small semi-urban society.

His last collection of short stories, entitled Podobe iz sanj (Images from Dreams), which were published posthumously in 1920, is a magically realistic and allegorical depiction of the horrors of World War I.

In the early 1920s, a group of young Catholics, mostly of Christian Socialist convictions, took the title of one of Cankar's minor novels, Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain), as the name of their journal.

[27][28] Cankar's work and his personal world view influenced all three major literary trends in Slovene literature between 1918 and 1945: the expressionism of Catholic authors such as Ivan Pregelj, Stanko Majcen, and France Bevk, the social realism of the liberal left and Marxist authors (particularly Miško Kranjec, Prežihov Voranc, Ciril Kosmač, and Mile Klopčič) and the avantgardism of Srečko Kosovel.

Cankar's psychological introspections became a major source of Edvard Kocbek's and Anton Trstenjak's inquiry in the Slovene national character.

During the dictatorship of King Alexander (1929–1934), Cankar's works were removed from the school curriculum, because he was considered a dangerous advocate of Slovene particularism and nationalism.

After World War II, the publishing house Cankarjeva založba (literally, 'Cankar Press') was established, which took care of the edition of his collected works.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, most of the modernizers of Slovene theatre, such as Jože Javoršek, Dominik Smole, Marjan Rožanc, Primož Kozak, and Bojan Štih, were influenced by Cankar's plays.

The works of many contemporary Slovene playwrights and screenwriters, including Drago Jančar, Dušan Jovanović, Tone Partljič and Žarko Petan, continue to show a clear influence of Cankar's concepts.

Many prominent Slovene thinkers reflected on Cankar's works, including Dušan Pirjevec Ahac, Milan Komar, and Slavoj Žižek.