The article deals with numerous interpretations of works of Ivan Cankar, who occupies an honorable place in the canon of the Slovenian literature. We put under the scrutiny the intensive reception of Cankar, not only within Slovenia and Yugoslavia, but also in the Soviet Union and Russia. Many research works have been written about Cankar, while his texts still evoke completely heterogeneous interpretations and reactions of readers (from enthusiastic to extremely negative). Various research methods are used in the works about Cankar’s writings: historical and biographical method, immanent analysis, close reading, method of system analysis, comparative, cultural, psychological and psychoanalytic method, reading against the grain, sociological method, the method of feminist criticism etc. The figure of the mother occupies a central place in the Cankar’s works, therefore there is no coincidence that the theme of the mother in the Cankar’s texts has attracted many researchers, while it gets a completely different