The established interpretations of Ivan Cankar's short story The Servant Jernej and his Justice often read it as a symbolic vision of the socialist revolution, an affirmative announcement of the ...subsequent revolutionary events in the writer's homeland and abroad. The first part of the article presents - with a close reading of the central narrative and its fragmented retrospective elements - the fundamental problems of such interpretations. The second part of the article examines the religious aspects of the story that reflect Cankar's ambivalent attitude towards Christianity, while also revealing Cankar's intuition that modern revolutionary phenomena are based on a specific transformation of Christian eschatology.
Razprava obravnava dva obstoječa angleška prevoda Cankarjeve povesti Hlapec Jernej in njegova pravica (Adamič, Jeras-Guinot & Grant) in tri ruske prevode (Šerementjev, Ohrimenko, Urban), in sicer z ...ozirom na to, kako je v njih zajeto bistveno nasprotje v povesti med "božjim" in "posvetnim". Najprej je obravnavana Ohrimenkova različica: le-ta ni prevod Cankarjevega izvirnika, ampak Adamičevega prevoda; izpusti skoraj vse verske prvine iz izvirnika, a je v tem nedosledna. Za analizo so verske prvine iz izvirnika razvrščene v pet kategorij in analiziranih je vseh pet besedil. Med obravnavanimi prevodi se pokažejo občutne razlike. Avtor poda tudi pregled dveh prejšnjih ocen Adamičeve "priredbe" povesti. Meni, da razlike med ruskimi različicami ustrezajo stopnji sovjetske protiverske propagande v času njihove objave.