which still showed strong naturalistic features, combined with allegorical symbolism and an unusual, biblically inspired style, gained him widespread recognition. In the novels Gospa Judit (Madame Judit) and Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The Ward of Mary Help of Christians) and Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain), all published in 1904, he turned to spiritualism and idealism, maintaining as central theme the oppressed people and their yearning for a better life. In 1906, he wrote the short novel Martin Kačur with the subtitle "The Life Story of an Idealist", which is a ruthless analysis and self-analysis of the failure of an abstract idealist. During the general elections of 1907, he published the short story Hlapec Jernej in njegova pravica (The Servant Jernej and His Justice), in which he describes a clash between the individual worker and both the capitalist and traditional society, the laws of which he cannot understand. Following the electoral victory of the Slovene People's Party, he wrote his most influential play, the satire Hlapci (Serfs), in which he satirized the conformism of the former progressive and agnostic public servants who embraced Catholicism after the defeat of the liberal party. 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. 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. Cankar was also famous for his essays, most of which were published between 1907 and 1913, where he showed stylistic mastery and great irony. 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. It shows a clear move from symbolism to expressionism and it has been regarded as the finest example of Cankar's poetic prose. Personality and world view Cankar was a relatively fragile personality, both emotionally and physically, but showed an unusually strong and persistent intellectual vigour. He was a sharp thinker, who was capable of poignant criticism of both his environment and himself. He was also full of paradoxes and loved irony and sarcasm. He had an unusually sentimental and somehow ecstatic nature, intensely sensitive to ethical issues. He was very introspective: his works,