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
Perez has written more than fifty sketches, all of them of the same
sterling value as the three described above. Every new one is an
additional gem in the crown he is making for himself. They are all
characterized by the same tender pathos, the same excellence of style,
the same delicacy of feeling. He generally prefers the tragic moments in
life as fit objects for his sympathetic pen, but he has also treated in
a masterly manner the gentle sentiment of love. But it is an entirely
different kind from the romantic love, that he deems worthy of
attention. It is the marital affection of the humblest families, which
is developed under difficulties, strengthened by adversity, checkered by
misfortune; it is the saintliest of all loves that he tells about as no
one before him has ever told. In the same manner he likes to dwell on
all the virtues which are brought out by suffering, which are evolved
through misery and oppression, which are more gentle, more unselfish,
more divine, the lower we descend in the scale of humanity. Nor need one
suppose that in order to show his characters from that most advantageous
side, the author has to resort to disguises of idealization. They are no
better and no worse than one meets every day and all around us; but they
are such as only he knows who is not deterred by the shabbiness of their
dress and the squalor of their homes from making their intimate
acquaintance. They do not carry their virtues for show, they do not give
monetary contributions for charities, they do not join societies for the
promotion of philanthropic institutions, they do not preach on duties to
God and on the future life, they are not even given to the expression of
moral indignation at the sight of sin. But they are none the less
possessed of the finer sentiments which come to the surface only in the
narrower circle of their families, in their relations to their
fellow-sufferers. Not even the eloquent advocate of the people generally
cares to enter that unfamiliar sphere as Perez has done. His affection
for the meanest of his race is not merely platonic. He not only knows
whereof he speaks: he feels it; and thus we get the saddest, the
tenderest, the sweetest stories from the life of the lowliest of the
Jews that have ever been written.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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