THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN
Smolenskin owed his vast popularity and his influence on his
contemporaries only in part to his work as a journalist. What brought
him close to the people were his realistic novels, which occupy the
highest place in modern Hebrew literature.
Smolenskin's first piece of fiction, _Ha-Gemul_ ("The Recompense"),
was published at Odessa, in 1868, on a subject connected with the Polish
insurrection. Save its realistic style, there was nothing about it to
betray the future novel writer of eminence.
It was said above, that Smolenskin wrote the early chapters of his
_Ha-To'eh_ while at Odessa, and, also, he planned another novel
there, "The Joy of the Hypocrite". When he proposed working out the
latter for publication in _Ha-Meliz_, the editor rejected the idea
disdainfully, saying that he preferred translations to original stories,
so little likely did it seem that realistic writing could be done in
Hebrew. Once he had his own organ, _Ha-Shahar_, Smolenskin wrote
and published novel after novel in it, beginning with his _Ha-To'eh
be-Darke ha-Hayyim_. In _Ha-Shahar_ it appeared in three parts.
Later it came out in book form, in four volumes. It is the first work of
the Hebrew realistic school worthy of being classed as such.
As Cervantes makes his hero Don Quixote pass through all the social
strata of his time, so the Hebrew novelist conducts his wanderer, Joseph
the orphan, through the nooks and corners of the ghetto. He introduces
him to all the scenes of Jewish life, he displays before his eyes all
its customs and manners, he makes him a witness to all its
superstitions, fanaticism, and sordidness of every kind, a physical and
social abasement that has no parallel. A faithful observer, an
impressionist, an unemphatic realist, he discloses on every page
misunderstood lives, extravagant beliefs, movements, evils, greatnesses,
and miseries, of which the civilized world had not the slightest
suspicion. It is the Odyssey of the ghetto adventurer, the life and
journeyings of the author himself, magnified, and enveloped in the
fictitious circumstances in which the hero is placed, a human document
of the greatest significance.
Joseph, the orphan, whose father, persecuted by the Hasidim,
disappeared, and whose mother died in abject misery, is received into
the house of his uncle, the same brother of his father who had caused
the father's ruin. Abused by a wicked aunt and driven by an irresistible
hankering after a vagabond life, he runs away from his foster home.
First he is picked up by a band of rascally mendicants, then he becomes
an inmate in the house of a _Baal-Shem_, a charlatan wonder-worker,
and thus a changeful existence leads him to traverse the greater part of
Jewish Russia. In a series of photographic pictures, Smolenskin
reproduces in detail the ways and exploits of all the bohemians of the
ghetto, from the beggars up to the peripatetic cantors, their moral
shortcomings, their spitefulness, and their insolence. Impelled by the
wish to acquire an education, and perhaps also put a roof over his head,
Joseph finally enters a celebrated _Yeshibah_. It is the salvation
of the young tramp. He is given food, he sleeps on the school benches,
and he is rescued from military service. But soon, having incurred
disfavor by his frankness, and especially because he is discovered
reading secular books, in which he is initiated by one of his fellow-
students, he is obliged to leave the Yeshibah. By the skin of his teeth
he escapes being packed off to the army as a soldier. He takes refuge
with the Hasidim, and has the good fortune to find favor in the eyes of
the _Zaddik_ ("Saint") himself.
But very soon he revolts against the equivocal transports of the saintly
sect. In his wanderings, Joseph doubtless meets with good people,
disinterested idealists, simple men and women of the rank and file,
Rabbis worthy of the highest praise, enthusiastic intellectuals, but the
ordinary life of the ghetto, abnormal and narrow, disgusts him
completely. He departs to seek a freer life in the West. Passing through
Germany without stopping, he goes on to London. Everywhere he makes
Jewish society the object of study, and everywhere he suffers
disillusionment. _Ha-To'eh_ is a veritable encyclopedia of Jewish
life at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century.
As a work of fiction, the novel cannot bear inspection. It is a
succession of fantastic, sometimes incoherent events, an artificial
complex of personages appearing on the scene at the will of the author,
and acting like puppets on wires. The miraculous abounds, and the
characters are in part exaggerated, in part blurred.
On the other hand, it is an incomparable work taken as a panorama of
realistic scenes, not always consecutive scenes, but always absolutely
true to life--a gallery of pictures of the ghetto.
Joseph is a painter, a realist first and last, and an impressionist
besides. Looking at the lights and shadows of his picture, we feel that
what we see is not all pure, spontaneous art. Like Auerbach and like
Dickens, he is a thinker, a teacher. A true son of the ghetto, he
preaches and moralizes. Sometimes he goes too far in his desire to
impress a lesson. The reader perceives too clearly that the author has
not remained an indifferent outsider while writing his novel. It is
evident that his heart is torn by contradictory emotions--pity,
compassion, scorn, anger, and love, all at once.
In point of style also the novel is a realistic piece of work.
Smolenskin does not resort to Talmudisms, like Gordon and Abramowitsch,
but, also, he takes care not to indulge in too many Biblical metaphors.
This sometimes necessitates circumlocutions, and on the whole his
oratorical manner leads to prolixity, but his prose always remains pure,
flowing, and precise in the highest degree.
To illustrate Smolenskin's way of writing, and all the peculiarity of
the social life he depicts, we cannot do better than translate a few
passages from his novel dealing with characteristic phases of ghetto
life.
Joseph is narrating his adventures and the impressions of his daily
routine. The following is his striking description of the _Heder_,
the well-known primary school of the ghetto, when his uncle first enters
him there as a pupil:
"When I say house, let not the reader imagine a stone structure.
What he would see is a small, low building, somewhat like a dog's
kennel, built of thin boards, rotten at that. The thatch that
covers it by way of roof hangs down to the ground, and yet it
cannot keep off the rain, for the goats browsing in the
neighborhood have munched off half of it to satisfy their
appetite. Within there is a single room covered with black soot,
the four walls garnished with spider-webs, and the floor paved
with mortar. On the eastern wall hangs a large sheet of paper
with the inscription, 'Hence blows the breath of life', which not
many visitors will believe, because, instead of a quickening
breath, pestilential odors enter by the window and offend the
nostrils of those whose olfactory nerve has not lost all
sensitiveness.... On the opposite wall, to the west, appear the
words, 'A memorial unto the destruction of the Temple'. To this
day I do not know what there was to commemorate the fall of the
Holy Place. The rickety rafters? Or were the little creatures
swarming all over the walls to remind one of 'the foxes that walk
upon the mountain of Zion'?
"A huge stove occupies one-fourth of the room-space. Between the
stove and the wall, to the right, is a bed made up ready for
use, and on the other side a smaller one full of straw and hay,
and without bed-covers. Opposite to it stands a large deal table
tattoed with marks that are the handiwork of the _Melammed_.
With his little penknife, which was never out of his hands, he
would cut them into the wood all the time he was teaching us--
figures of beasts and fowl, and queer words....
"Around this table about ten boys were sitting, some conning the
Talmud and others the Bible. One of the latter, seated at the
right of the teacher, was reading aloud, in a sing-song voice,
the section of the Pentateuch assigned for the following Sabbath
in the synagogue, and his cantillation blended with the crooning
of the teacher's wife as she sat by her baby's bed, ... but every
now and then the master's voice rose and drowned the sounds of
both, as the growl of the thunder stifles the roar of the waves.
"... The teacher was hideous to behold. He was short of stature
and thin, his cheeks were withered looking, his nose long and
aquiline. His two _Peot_ [1] were raven black and hung down
like ropes by the side of his face. Old as he was, his cheeks
showed only tufts of beard here and there, on account of his
habit of plucking the hairs out one by one when he was absorbed
in thought, not to mention those plucked out by his wife without
the excuse of thinking. His black cap shone like a buttered roll,
his linen shirt was neither an Egyptian nor a Swiss fabric, and
his chest, overgrown with long black hair, always showed bare
through the slit of his unbuttoned shirt. His linen trousers had
been white once upon a time, but now they were picturesquely
variegated from the dust and soot clinging to them, and by the
stains added by his young hopeful, when he sat and played on his
knees, by way of contributing his share to the glory in which his
father was resplendently arrayed.... His _Zizzit_ hung down
to his bare feet. When my uncle entered the house, the teacher
jumped up and ran hither and thither, seeking his shoes, but he
could not find them. My uncle relieved him from his embarrassment
by presenting me, with the words, 'Here is a new pupil for you!'
Calming down, the teacher resumed his seat, and when we
approached him, he tapped me on my cheek, saying, 'What hast thou
learnt, my son?' All the pupils opened their mouth and eyes in
amazement, and looked at me with envy. These many days, since
they themselves were entered as new pupils in the school, they
had not heard such gentle words issue from the mouth of the
teacher...."
[Footnote 1: See Lev. XIX, 27.]
This odd school prepared the child of the ghetto in very deed for the
life and the struggle for existence awaiting him. In the next higher
school, the Yeshibah, the _alma mater_ of the Rabbinical student,
the happenings were no less curious.
The young people in those strange colleges, for the most part precocious
urchins, fall into classes, which, however, are not sharply divided off
from one another. Day and night they sit bent over the huge folios of
the Rabbis, occupied constantly with the study of the Law. Their meals
are furnished them by the humble people of the town, often under
deplorable conditions, and, on the whole, the life they lead is misery
not untinged with humiliation. Such are the student years of the future
Rabbis. And yet this bohemian existence is not destitute of picturesque
elements and attractive features. Frequently it is at the Yeshibah that
the young man for the first time finds sincere friends for whom he forms
a lasting attachment, and they become his trusted advisers. It is a mob
of young people, enthusiastic and impetuous, yet among them is found the
aristocracy of the ghetto, those endowed with extraordinary intellectual
gifts, and the devotion displayed by some of them to Talmudic knowledge
is absolutely sublime.
Smolenskin paints a characteristic Yeshibah scene enacted by these
embryonic Talmudists:
"It is a strange spectacle that meets the eye of the observer on
his first visit to the women's gallery in the Yeshibah [at
nightfall]. He finds it suddenly transformed into a gathering-
place for merchants. The boys who have bread or money, try their
hands at trafficking, and those who have neither bread nor money,
try theirs at theft, and a large group of those who loathe the
one pursuit as well as the other, sit apart and entertain each
other with the wonderful exploits of brigands, and giants, and
witches, and devils, and evil spirits, who are abroad at night to
affright human beings, and the dead who leave their graves to
terrify the wicked or cure the sick with grass of the field, and
many more such tales that delight the heart and soul of the
listeners. Such things have I myself seen even while the
afternoon and the evening prayers were going on below. I heard
confused sounds. One would cry out, 'Who wants bread?' And
another would sing out in reply, 'Who has bread to sell? Who has
bread to sell?'--'Here is bread!'--'Will you take a penny for
it?'--'Two pennies, and no less!'--'Some one has stolen my bread!
Who stole my bread?'--' My bread is first-class! Come and buy!'--
'But I haven't a red copper!'--'All right, give me a pledge!'--
'You may have my troubles as a pledge, you old curmudgeon!'--
'Here are two pennies, give me the bread!'--'Get out, I was ahead
of you!'--'I insist upon my rights, I was the first.'--'Why, I
handed my money over long ago, it is my bread.'--'You stole my
bread.'--'You lie, it's my bread!'--'You're a liar, a thief, a
robber!'--'The devil take you, you hound!'--'Wait a moment, and
I'll show you my teeth, if I'm a hound!'
"And so the words fly from mouth to mouth in the women's gallery,
and cuffs and blows are not rare things, either, and not one of
the boys remembers that the congregation below is at prayers.
They go on trafficking and telling tales undisturbed, until the
end of the service, and then they return to their seats, every
boy to his own at the long tables, which are lighted each of them
by a single candle for its whole length. A dispute breaks out as
to where the candle is to stand. First one draws it up to
himself, and then another wrests it from his hand and sets it
next to his own book, and finally all decide to measure the
table. One of the boys takes off his belt, and ascertains the
breadth of the table and its length, and the candle is put in the
exact centre. The quarrel is settled, and the students begin to
drawl the text before them, and what they did the whole livelong
day, they continue to do at night.
"Then one of them says, 'I sold my bread for two pennies'.--
'And I bought an apple for one penny and a cake for half a
penny', returns another.--'Darkness swallow up the monitor! He
doesn't give us enough candles to light up the dark!'--'The devil
take him!'--'A plague on him!'--'I am going on a visit home at
Passover.'--'Sarah the widow lent me three pennies.'
"While the boys talk thus over their open books, their bodies are
swaying to and fro like reeds in a pond, and their voices rise
and fall in the same sing-song in which they con their texts, all
to deceive the monitor, who, hearing the usual drawl and seeing
the rocking bodies, believes the students to be busy at their
tasks. But little by little, they forget and drop out of their
recitative into the ordinary conversational tone.--'Tell me,
Zabualean [the pupils are called by their native town in the
Yeshibah], don't you think it's about time for the angel of death
to come and carry off our monitor? Or is he going to live
forever?'--'I pray to God to afflict his body with such ills that
he cannot come to the Yeshibah. Then we should have rest. I take
good care not to ask for his death. Another would take his place,
and there's no telling whether he would not be worse. If pain
keeps him abed, we shall have a respite.'--'But aren't you
committing a sin, cursing a deaf man?' interposes one of the
boys, indignantly.--'Look at that Azubian! A saint, isn't he?
Proof enough that he has seven sins hidden in his heart!' retorts
the Zabualean.--'No need of any such proof! Why, this very
Azubian could not resist the tempter, and is hard at work
studying Russian. That's as bad as bad can be, you don't have to
search out hidden sins.'--'I at least am not perverting the
right,' the Azubian flings out, 'because the Talmud itself says
that the law of the land is law, but you are committing an actual
sin against the Torah in cursing....' The sentence was never
finished, for the monitor had been standing behind the table
observing the boys for some time, and when he saw the excitement
of the Azubian,--being deaf, he could not hear what he said,--he
threw himself upon him, and, seizing him by the ear, shook him as
violently as his strength permitted, crying, 'You wretches, you
rebels, there, that's for you!' and he beat another boy with his
fists, and struck a third upon his cheeks.--'The monitor has
rained profuse kisses upon the Azubian for defending him!' one of
the boys paraphrased Proverbs, [1] drawling in the approved sing-
song, and keeping his eyes fixed upon his book. The others burst
into loud laughter at the sally. Even those who were still
smarting from the monitor's blows could not restrain themselves
and joined in. 'Are you making fun of me? You're not afraid?'
thundered the monitor, in towering rage, turning this way and
that, uncertain whom to select as the first victim of his heavy
hand. Before he could collect his wits, one of the boys yelled,
'Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Isaac, the candles!'--It worked like a
conjurer's charm upon a serpent. In an instant the monitor turned
and ran to his room and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank
into his chair, and groaned: 'Wicked, depraved children! Those
gallows-birds, I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from
their bones!' and he kept on mumbling to himself in this strain,
until sleep fell upon his eyelids shaded by long eyebrows white
as snow, and his head dropped into his hands resting upon the
table.
"As soon as he slept, the boys resumed their talk, and my friend
continued to tell me about life in the Yeshibah.... 'Do you think
that the Yeshibah students are guileless youths who have never
dropped their mother's apron strings? If you do, you are vastly
mistaken. They are up to all the tricks, and the dullest among
them can show a thing or two to the best of the rich boys. You
will do well to observe their ways and learn from them.'--'I
shall try to walk in their footsteps.'....
"Then I went out to get my supper. On returning I found the
greater part of the boys had gone to sleep, and almost all the
candles were out. Only a few of the students were sitting
together and talking. I sought out my friend, and discovered him
lying upon one of the tables in the women's gallery, but he was
still awake. 'Why don't you look for a place to lie down in?' he
asked me.--'I shall lie here next to you,' I replied.--' No, you
can't do that. Here each boy has a place in which he always
sleeps; he never changes about. Go down to the men's hall and
look for an unoccupied spot. If you find a table, so much the
better. If not, you must be satisfied with a bench.'--I did as he
advised. I found a long table in the men's hall, but hardly was I
stretched out upon it when a boy took me by the scruff of my neck
and shook me, saying: 'Get out, this is my place! And all the
tables here are taken by boys who came to the Yeshibah long ahead
of you. You must look for another place.'
"Not very much pleased, I slipped down from the table, and lay on
the bench. But I could not go to sleep. I was not accustomed to
the narrow board, nor to sleep without a bed-cover, and the
little and big insects that swarmed in the cracks of the wood
came forth from their nests and tickled me all over my body. But
there was nothing to do, and I lay there in discomfort until all
the lights were extinguished. Only one light of all burnt the
whole night, the _Ner tamid_, and under it sat two students,
the 'watchers' [whose duty it was to continue at their task until
morning, so that the study of the Law might not be interrupted
day or night]."
[Footnote 1: XXVII, 6.]
A life full of excitement, of which the above is a specimen, was not
likely to displease so adventurous a spirit as Joseph's. When all is
said, the Yeshibah provided a living for the young people, not
overabundant, it is true, but at least they were relieved of material
cares. The pious middle class Jews, and even the poor, considered it
their duty to supply the needs of the young Talmudists, and the ambition
of the latter was satisfied by the general good feeling that prevailed
in their favor. For the aristocracy among the Jews, whose minds had not
yet been stimulated by the new ideas, the Yeshibah was the home of all
the virtues, the school in which the ideal was pursued, and lofty dreams
were dreamed.
In another novel, "The Joy of the Hypocrite," which appeared in Vienna,
in 1872, Smolenskin extols the idealism of his hero Simon, a product of
the Yeshibah:
"Who had implanted in the mind of Simon the ideal of justice and
the sublime word? Who had kindled in his soul the sacred flame,
love of truth and research? Verily, he had found all these in the
Yeshibah. Glory and increase be to you, ye holy places, last
refuges of Israel's real heritage! From your portals came forth
the elect destined from birth to be the light of their people and
breathe new life into the dry bones."
Even during the period of the _Behalah_ ("Terror") the Yeshibah
remained unscathed, beyond the reach of misery and baseness. The venal
jobbers, who, with the assistance of the Kahal, delivered the sons of
the poor to the army in order to shield the rich, did not dare invade
the Rabbinical schools. Like the Temple in ancient times, the
_Yeshibot_ offered a sure refuge. Whenever these sanctuaries were
imperilled, national sentiment was aroused, and the threatened
encroachments upon the last national treasure were resisted with bitter
determination, for the idealism of the people of the ghetto, their hope
and their faith, were enshrined there.
Joseph forfeited the privilege of sanctuary residing in the Yeshibah on
the day he was taken redhanded, in the act of reading a profane book.
Religious fanaticism had never proceeded with so much rigor as during
the reign of terror following upon the disorganization of the social
life of the Jews by the authorities, and the triumphant assertion of
arbitrary power. Nevertheless, even at this disheartening juncture, the
Rabbinical schools were the asylum of whatever of ideal or sublime there
remained in Israel.
They furnished all the champions of humanism and the preachers and
disseminators of civilization. In them Joseph met the generous comrades
who introduced him to the Haskalah, and awakened love for the noble and
the good in him, and boundless devotion to his people.
Hard as flint toward the inefficient leaders, without pity for the
hypocrites and the fanatics, the heart of Joseph yet pulsated with love
for the Jewish masses. Their unsympathetic surroundings and the
persecutions to which they were exposed but increased his compassion for
the straying flock of his people. In the general degradation, he
succeeded in rising to moral heights, and so could set himself up for an
impartial judge. He did not permit himself to be carried away by the
sadness of the moment, though he did not remain indifferent to it, and
his heart bled at the thought of his people's sufferings. In the human
desert, in which he delighted to disport himself, he discovered noble
characters, lofty sentiments, generous friendships, and, above all,
lives devoted entirely to the pursuit of the ideal undeterred by any
obstacle.
One after the other he presents the idealists of the ghetto to the
reader. There is, first of all, Jedidiah, the common type of the Maskil,
working zealously for culture, spreading truth and light in all the
circles he can reach, dreaming of a Judaism, just, enlightened, exalted.
Then there are the ardent young apostles, like that noble friend of
Joseph, Gideon, most enlightened and most tolerant of Maskilim. In the
measure in which Gideon detests fanaticism, he loves the people. He
loves the masses with the heart of a patriot and the soul of a prophet.
He loves them exactly as they are, with their beliefs, their simple
faith, their poor, submissive lives, their ambitions as the chosen
people, and their Messianic hope, to which he himself clings, though in
a way less mystical than theirs. Thrilling, patriotic exaltation
pervades the chapter on "The Day of Atonement." There Smolenskin appears
as a genuine romanticist.
* * * * *
Such in outline are the features of this chaotic, superb novel, which,
in spite of its faults of technique, remains to this day the truest and
the most beautiful product of neo-Hebrew literature.
Ten years after finishing it, the author added a fourth part, which, on
the whole, is nothing but an artificial collection of letters relating
only indirectly to the main story. Joseph takes us with him through the
Western lands, and then to Russia, whither he returns. In France and in
England, he deplores the degeneracy of Judaism, attributing it to the
ascendency of the Mendelssohnian school, and he foresees the approach of
anti-Semitism. In Russia, he notes the prevalence of economic misery in
frightful proportions, especially in the small rural towns, while in the
large centres he regrets to see that the communities use every effort to
imitate Occidental Judaism with all its faults. The overhasty culture of
the Russian Jews, weakly correlated with the economic and political
conditions under which they lived, was bound to bring on the breaking up
of the passive idealism which constituted their chief strength.
The novel _Keburat Hamor_ ("The Burial of the Ass") is the most
elaborate and the most finished of Smolenskin's works. It describes the
time of the "Terror" and the domination of the Kahal. The hero, Hayyim
Jacob, is a wag, but pleasantries are not always understood in the
ghetto, and he is made to pay for them. His practical jokes and his
small respect for the notables of the community, whom he dares to defy
and poke fun at, are his ruin.
He was scarcely more than a child when he was guilty of unprecedented
conduct. Wrapped in blue drapery, like a corpse risen from the grave,
and spreading terror wherever he appeared, he made his way one evening
into the room in which cakes were stored for the next day's annual
banquet of the _Hebrah Kadisha_ ("Holy Brotherhood"), the all-
powerful society, organized primarily to perform the last rites and
ceremonies for the dead, to which the best Jews of a town belong. He got
possession of all the dainty morsels, and made away with them. It was an
unpardonable crime, high treason against saintliness. An inquiry was
ordered, but the culprit was not discovered.
In revenge, the Brotherhood ordained the "burial of an ass" for the
nameless criminal, and the verdict was recorded in the minutes of the
society.
The incorrigible Hayyim Jacob continues to perpetrate jokes, and the
Kahal decides to surrender him to the army recruiting officer. Warned
betimes, he is able to make good his escape. He returns to his native
town later on under an assumed name, imposes upon everybody by his
scholarship, and marries the daughter of the head of the community. But
his natural inclinations get the upper hand again. Meantime, he has
confided the tale of his youthful tricks to his wife. She is disturbed
by what she knows, she cannot endure the idea of the unparalleled
punishment that awaits her husband should he be identified, for to
undergo the "burial of an ass" is the supremest indignity that can be
offered to a Jew. The body of the offender is dragged along the ground
to the cemetery, and there it is thrown into a ditch made for the
purpose behind the wall enclosing the grounds. But was not her father
the head of the community? Could he not annul the verdict? She discloses
the secret to him, and the effect is to fill him with instantaneous
rage: What! to that wicked fellow he has given his daughter, to that
heretic! He wants to force him to give up his wife, but no more than the
husband will the woman listen to any such proposal. Hayyim Jacob
succeeds in ingratiating himself with his father-in-law, though by fraud
and only for a short time. After that, one persecution after another is
inflicted upon him, and he succumbs.
So much for the background upon which the novelist has painted his
scenes, authentic reproductions from the life of the Jews in Russia. The
character of Hayyim Jacob stands out clear and forceful. His wife Esther
is the typical Jewish woman, loyal and devoted unto death, of
irreproachable conduct under reverses of fortune, and braving a world
for love of her husband. The prominent characters of the ghetto are
drawn with fidelity, though the colors are sometimes laid on too thick.
The author has been particularly happy in re-creating the atmosphere of
the ghetto, with its contradictions and its passions, the specialized
intellectuality which long seclusion has forged for it, and its odd,
original conception of life.
Smolenskin goes to the Yeshibah for the subject of one of his novels,
_Gemul Yesharim_ ("The Recompense of the Righteous"). The author
describes the part played by the Jewish youth in the Polish
insurrection. The ingratitude of the Poles proves that the Jews have
nothing to expect from others, and they should count only upon their own
resources.
_Gaon we-Sheber_ ("Greatness and Ruin") is a collection of
scattered novelettes, some of which are veritable works of art.
_Ha-Yerushah_ ("The Inheritance") is the last of Smolenskin's great
novels. It was first published in _Ha-Shahar_, in 1880-81. Its
three volumes are full of incoherencies and long drawn out arguments.
The life of the Jews of Odessa, however, and of Roumania, is well
depicted, and also the psychologic stages through which the older
humanists pass, deceived in their hopes, and groping for a return to
national Judaism.
Smolenskin's last novel, _Nekam Berit_ ("Holy Vengeance", _Ha-
Shahar_, 1884), is wholly Zionistic. It was the author's swan song.
Not long after its completion, an illness carried him off.
* * * * *
The novels of Smolenskin are a series of social documents and
propagandist writings rather than works of pure art. Their chief defects
are the incoherence of the action, the artificiality of the
_dénouement_, their simplicity in all that concerns modern life, as
well as their excessive didactic tendencies and the long-winded style of
the author. Most of these defects he shares with such writers as
Auerbach, Jokai, and Thackeray, with whom he may be placed in the same
class. In passing judgment, it must be borne in mind that the Hebrew
writer's life was one prolonged and bitter struggle for bare existence,
his own and _Ha-Shahar's_, for the periodical never yielded him any
income. Only his idealism and the consciousness of the useful purpose he
was serving sustained him in critical moments. These circumstances
explain why his works bear the marks of hasty production. However that
may be, since he gave them to the Jewish world, his novels have, even
more than his articles, exercised unparalleled influence upon his
readers.
In a word, the life of the Russian ghetto, its misery and its passions,
the positive and the negative types of that vanishing world, have been
set down in the writings of Smolenskin with such power of realism and
such profound knowledge of conditions that it is impossible to form a
just idea of Russo-Polish Judaism without having read what he has
written.
* * * * *