The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth CenturyWiener, Leo
History
The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century
Wiener, Leo
Yiddish literature -- History and criticism
Of the other works[86] of Abramowitsch the most important is his drama
'The Enlistment,' which deals with the same subject as Aksenfeld's 'The
First Recruit,' but referring it to more modern times. After a long
silence the author has again resumed his pen, and one may look forward
for some new classics in Judeo-German. He has also written a number of
popular scientific articles, which have been widely circulated by means
of calendars which he has edited. His popularity as a writer is best
illustrated by the fact that for a series of years his income from his
books and calendars has amounted to three thousand roubles a year.
Considering the poverty of the reading public, for whom cheap editions
have to be issued, and the general custom of borrowing books rather than
buying them, this will appear as a very great sum indeed. Many of the
younger authors lovingly refer to him as the 'Grandfather,' although no
one has attempted to imitate him either in manner or style. He forms by
himself a school, and would have been the last to write in the dialect
but for the occurrences of the eighties that have been the cause of a
new set of writers who have no reason to follow the authors of the
period of the Haskala, but who dip their pens in the blood that has been
shed in the riots, or who from the same cause speak to their brethren,
though not of them.
XI. PROSE WRITERS FROM 1863-1881: LINETZKI, DICK
In 1867 the _Kol-mewasser_ began publishing a serial story by
Linetzki[87] under the name of 'The Polish Boy.' Its popularity at once
became so great that to satisfy the impatient public the editor was
induced to print the whole in book form as a supplement long before it
had been finished in the periodical. The interest in the book lay not so
much in the fact that it was written with boundless humor as in its
being practically an autobiography in which the readers found so much to
bring back recollections of their own sad youth. They found there a
graphic description of the whole course of a Khassid's life as no one
before Linetzki had painted it,--as only one could paint it who had
himself been one of the sect, standing in an even nearer relation to
their Rabbis than had been the case with Aksenfeld. While the latter had
been a follower of one, Linetzki had narrowly escaped being a Rabbi
himself, had suffered all kinds of persecution for attempting to abandon
the narrow sphere of a Khassid's activity, and knew from bitter
experience all the facts related in his work. The story of his own life,
unadorned by any fiction, was dramatic enough to be worth telling, but
he has enriched it with so many details of everyday incidents as to
change the simple biography into a valuable cyclopedia of the life and
thoughts of his contemporaries, in which one may get information on the
folklore, games, education, superstitions, and habits of his people in
the middle of our century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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