The same traits that distinguish David Pinski as a playwright
characterise him also as a writer of short fiction. The noted Yiddish
author is concerned chiefly with the probing of the human soul,—not
that intangible and inconsequential theme of so many vapourings,
dubbed mystic and symbolistic by the literary labellers,—but the
hidden mainspring that initiates, and often guides, our actions.
Pinski seeks to penetrate into the secret of human motive. It is not
enough for him to depict the deed; he would plumb, if possible, the
genetic impulse. That is why, if he must be classified, one places
him among the psychological realists. He is at his best faithful to
both the inner and the outer life.
Thus we find, in his numerous stories and plays, very little of the
conventional heroism and villainism with which most authors are
concerned, and very much of the deeply human at which the majority
of authors shake their heads. This is not to say that Pinski’s work
lacks heroic figures; on the contrary, in a measure it constitutes a
series of noble and ennobling portraits, representing men and women
who meet life face to face and are scorched by its flames. So, too,
there are less inspiring personages who compromise with life and
their better selves. And in the background lurks our common humanity,
faintly quick with the potentialities of ignominy or greatness.
Despite his growing fame as one of the most significant dramatists
now active, Pinski began his career as a writer of short stories.
He has been recognised as the first Yiddish author to give artistic
treatment to the Yiddish proletariat, and no small part of his
life has been sacrificed to the cause of the oppressed and the
disinherited. His earlier works, both in fiction and in the drama,
were devoted to the depiction of life among the lowly, and it is
characteristic of the man that he does not allow his personal views
to mar his artistic product.
It may be said that three chief periods have thus far appeared in
the labours of the Yiddish author. First there is his proletarian
“manner” in which the life, problems and aspirations of the Jewish
workingman are portrayed in such masterly dramas as “Isaac Sheftel”
(written at the age of twenty-seven) and such incisive commentaries
as the best of the early tales, “Drabkin.” Then there is the genre of
the biblical reconstruction, in which ancient themes are utilised for
the purpose of producing thoroughly contemporary works of art. Among
his plays “The Dumb Messiah” and “Mary Magdalen” represent this phase
of his skill, while among the stories, “Zerubbabel” and “Beruriah”
would come under this category.
There is also the treatment of sex problems, as evidenced by such
plays as “Jacob the Blacksmith” and “Gabri and the Women,” and tales
like “The Awakening” and “The Black Cat.”
I must confess that I am not greatly concerned with the periods
and “manners” of authors; classification has little to do with
genuine literary appreciation. This is all the more true in a case
like Pinski’s, since the various phases of his work follow no
chronological order, and often appear side by side, as it were,
in the same work. Take for instance the first tale in this book,
“Beruriah,” which I consider one of the greatest short stories ever
written, insofar as the wide reading of a single person in some
half dozen or more languages can substantiate such a statement. Who
shall say that the tale is mere reconstruction or elaboration of a
Talmudic legend, or a problem in love, or a psychological study, or
even a symbolic story? It is all of these, and something more. Who
shall say that “Drabkin” is merely a proletarian narrative? To be
sure, the background is furnished by the humble Jewish operatives,
but is the tale itself any the less universal on that account? Is
it any the less a problem in love? Is it any the less a satire upon
human foibles, with the same essential theme as Pinski’s remarkable
work of genius, “The Treasure,”—one of the outstanding dramas of the
century?
The truth is that Pinski harmonises and renders universal almost
everything he touches. From an insignificant three or four line
suggestion in the Talmud he elaborates a “Beruriah,” producing one
of the most striking female portraits that has come from an author
peculiarly rich in well-drawn women. Out of various strands from
Jewish history he weaves a “Zerubbabel,” which flames with a Jewish
patriotism particularly contemporary in application. Nor is this
intense devotion any more exclusively Jewish than the crumbling of
world-philosophies depicted in the epic play, “The Last Jew.”
This human and universal touch is rendered all the more evident by
the author’s attitude, both in life and in the stories that are
the product of his actual experience, toward the oppressed and the
disinherited whose champion he is. With him the independence of the
writer is almost a religion; so much so that he is just as ready to
voice fearlessly the faults of his own people as he is to glorify
their historic and racial virtues. He reveals them to themselves, and
is as little compromising with them as with any other. If he knows
their nobility, he knows, too, their pettiness; he sees them in their
climb up Mount Sinai to talk with the Lord, and in their grovelling
over the heaps of mire called money-making.
Yet it is no part of his art or his purpose to sit in judgment.
Indeed, one of the noblest notes arising from the author’s work as
a whole is the spirit of “Judge not.” This human note rings from
“Mary Magdalene” (an entirely original treatment of the fecund
theme, superior, in my opinion, to both Paul Heyse’s and Maurice
Maeterlinck’s plays upon the same subject) as from the excellent
tales “The Temptation of Rabbi Akiba” and “High Priest Johanan.” He
who beholds in such stories as these only a biblical or religious
strain, misses more than half of their beauty. Rabbi Akiba and High
Priest Johanan are not spirits of an ancient age, individuals of a
departed civilisation. Far from it. They are you and I. “Beruriah”
is by no means the virtuous wife of an overwrought Rabbi. She is an
eternal type; she can be found in the Talmud, in the Icelandic sagas,
in a play by Ibsen, in a novel by Hardy; she is Antigone, she is
Candida; she is the soul of woman clothed in tragic beauty.
Pinski’s tales, then, of which the following comprise the first
series, demand universal appreciation but little less than his
dramas. Theirs is that rare beauty which is an indissoluble union
of manner and matter. In the original, they represent the most
melodious Yiddish that has been written,—a powerful refutation of the
unthinking scorn of those who refer to the tongue as a jargon. They
are for men and women who read with the mind as well as the eye.