SOURCE: A preface in The Bailiff Yerney and His Rights, translated by Sidonie Yeras and H. C. Sewell Grant, Dražvna Založba Slovenije, 1968, pp. v-xviii.

In the following essay, Kreft considers the artistic and political significance of Bailiff Yerney and His Rights, calling the work Cankar's masterpiece.

The artistic value of a literary creation or of any other work of art does not depend on its author's origin. It does not matter whether he belongs to a great, powerful nation or to a small, almost unknown one. History gives us many examples confirming that truth. One of them is certainly the work of Ivan Cankar (1876–1918). Ivan Cankar is a classical writer of modern Slovene literature, that being one of the prominent literatures of the Yugoslavs. Among Cankar's works, the most conspicuous is perhaps Bailiff Yerney and His Rights, not only by the ideas it brings out, by...