Part 14 (1/2)
As was mentioned above, Gottlober founded his review, _Ha-Boker Or_, in 1876, to ensure the continuity of the humanist tradition and defend the theories of the school of Mendelssohn. The last of the followers of German humanism rallied about it,--Braudes published his princ.i.p.al novel ”Religion and Life” in it,--and it also attracted the last representatives of the _Melizah_, like Wechsler (_Ish Naomi_), who wrote Biblical criticism in an artificial, pompous style.
This artificiality, fostered in an earlier period by the _Melizim_, had by no means disappeared from Hebrew literature. Its most popular devotees in the later day of which we are speaking were, besides Kalman Schulman, A. Friedberg, who wrote a Hebrew adaptation of Grace Aguilar's tale, ”The Vale of Cedars”, published in 1876, and Ramesh, the translator of ”Robinson Crusoe.”
Translations continued to enjoy great vogue, and it was vain for Smolenskin, in the introduction to his novel _Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha- Hayyim_, to warn the public against the abuses of which translators were guilty. The readers of Hebrew sought, besides novels, chiefly works on the natural sciences and on mathematics, especially astronomy. Among the authors of original scientific books, Hirsch Rabinowitz should be given the first place, as the writer of a series of treatises on physics, chemistry, etc., which appeared at Wilna, between the years 1866 and 1880. After him come Lerner, Mises, Reifmann, and a number of others.
The period was also prolific in periodicals representing various tendencies. At Jerusalem appeared _Ha-Habazzelet_, _Sha'are Ziyyon_ (”The Gates of Zion”), and others. On the American side of the Atlantic, the review _Ha-Zofeh be-Erez Nod_ (”The Watchman in the Land of the Wanderer”) reflected the fortunes and views of the educated among the immigrants in the New World. Even the orthodox had recourse to this modern expedient of periodicals in their endeavor to put up a defense of Rabbinism. The journal _Ha-Yareah_ (”The Moon”), and particularly _Mahazike ha-Dat_ (”The Pillars of the Faith”), both issued in Galicia, were the organs of the faithful in their opposition to humanism and progress. _Ha-Kol_, the journal founded by Rodkinson (1876-1880), with reform purposes, played a role of considerable importance in the conflict between the two parties.
Already tendencies were beginning to crop up radically different from any Judaism had betrayed previously. In 1877, when Smolenskin was publis.h.i.+ng his weekly paper _Ha-Mabbit_ (”The Observer”), Freiman founded the first Socialistic journal in Hebrew, _Ha-Emet_ (”The Truth”). It also appeared in Vienna. And, again, S. A. Salkindson, a convert from Judaism, the author of admirable translations of ”Oth.e.l.lo”
(1874) and ”Romeo and Juliet” (1878), both published through the endeavors of Smolenskin, brought out the Hebrew translation of an epic wholly Christian in character, Milton's ”Paradise Lost”. It was a sign of the times that this work of art was enjoyed and appreciated by the educated Hebrew public in due accordance with its literary merits.
The clash of opinions and tendencies encouraged by the authority and the tolerance of Smolenskin was fruitful of results. _Ha-Shahar_ had made itself the centre of a synthetic movement, progressive and national, which was gradually revealing the outline of its plan and aims. The reaction caused by the unexpected revival of anti-Semitism in Germany, Austria, Roumania, and Russia, had levelled the last ruins of German humanism in the West, and had put disillusionment in the place of dreams of equality in the East. Whoever remained faithful to the Hebrew language and to the ideal of the regeneration of the Jewish people, turned his eyes toward the stout-hearted writer who ten years earlier had predicted the overthrow of all humanitarian hopes, and had been the first to propose the practical solution of the Jewish problem by means of national reconstruction.
Smolenskin's fame had by this time transcended the circle of his readers and those interested in Hebrew literature. The _Alliance Israelite Universelle_ entrusted to him the mission of investigating the conditions of the life of the Roumanian Jews. During his stay in Paris, Adolphe Cremieux, the tireless defender of the oppressed of his race, agreed, in conversation with him, that only those who know the Hebrew language, hold the key to the heart of the Jewish ma.s.ses, and, Cremieux continued, he would give ten years of his life to have known Hebrew.
[Footnote: Brainin, in his admirable ”Life of Smolenskin”, Warsaw, 1897, p. 58; _Ha-Shahar_, X, 532.]
The war of 1877 between Russia and Turkey, and the nationalistic sentiments it engendered everywhere in Eastern Europe, awakened a patriotic movement among the Jewish youth who had until then resisted the idea of national emanc.i.p.ation. A young student in Paris, a native of Lithuania, Eliezer Ben-Jehudah, published two articles in _Ha- Shahar_, in 1878, in which, setting aside all religious notions, he urged the regeneration of the Jewish people on its ancient soil, and the cultivation of the Biblical language.
In 1880, Smolenskin, who had undertaken a new and complete edition of his works in twenty-four volumes, at Vienna, went on a tour through Russia. Great was his joy when he noted the results produced by his own activity, and saw that he had gained the affection and approval of all enlightened cla.s.ses of Jews. Under the influence of _Ha-Shahar_, a new generation had grown up, free and nevertheless loyal to its nativity and to the ideal of Judaism. Smolenskin's journey resembled a triumphal procession. The university students at St. Petersburg and Moscow arranged meetings in honor of the Hebrew writer, at which he was acclaimed the master of the national tongue, the prophet of the rejuvenation of his people. In the provincial districts, similar scenes were enacted, and Smolenskin saw himself the object of honors never before accorded a Hebrew author. He returned to Vienna, encouraged to pursue the task he had a.s.sumed, and full of hope for the future.
It was the eve of the cataclysm foretold by the editor of _Ha- Shahar_.
CHAPTER XI
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 cla.s.sed as such.
As Cervantes makes his hero Don Quixote pa.s.s 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 superst.i.tions, fanaticism, and sordidness of every kind, a physical and social abas.e.m.e.nt 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 fict.i.tious circ.u.mstances in which the hero is placed, a human doc.u.ment 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 _Yes.h.i.+bah_. 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 Yes.h.i.+bah. 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. Pa.s.sing 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 d.i.c.kens, 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, compa.s.sion, 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 circ.u.mlocutions, and on the whole his oratorical manner leads to prolixity, but his prose always remains pure, flowing, and precise in the highest degree.