His poetic manner changed with the new direction taken by his mind. He was no more an artist for art's sake. Classical purity ceased to interest him. What he pursued above all things was an object which can be reached only by struggle and propaganda. His style became more realistic. He saturated it with Talmudic terms and phrases, thus adapting it more closely to the spirit of the scenes and things and acts he was occupied with, and making it the proper medium for the description of a world that was Rabbinical in all essential points. But Gordon never went to excess in the use of Talmudisms; he always maintained a just sense of proportion. It requires discriminating taste to appreciate his style, now delicate and now sarcastic, by turns appealing and vehement. Here Gordon displayed the whole range of his talent, all his creative powers. The language he uses is the genuine modern Hebrew, a polished and expressive medium, yielding in naught to the classical Hebrew. The social condition of the Jewish woman, the saddest conceivable in the ghetto, inspired the first of Gordon's satires. The poem is entitled "The Dot on the I", or, more literally, "The Hanger of the Yod" (_Kozo shel Yod_). "O thou, Jewish Woman, who knows thy life! Unnoticed thou enterest the world, unnoticed thou departest from it. "Thy heart-aches and thy joys, thy sorrows and thy desires spring up within thee and die within thee. "All the good things of this life, its pleasures, its enjoyments, they were created for the daughters of the other nations. The Jewish woman's life is naught but servitude, toil without end. Thou conceivest, thou bearest, thou givest suck, thou weanest thy babes, thou bakest, thou cookest, and thou witherest before thy time." "Vain for thee to be dowered with an impressionable heart, to be beautiful, gentle, intelligent!" "The Law in thy mouth is turned to foolishness, beauty in thee is a taint, every gift a fault, all knowledge a defect.... Thou art but a hen good to raise a brood of chicks!" It is vain for a Jewish woman to cherish aspirations after life, after knowledge--nothing of all this is accessible to her. "The planting of the Lord wastes away in a desert land without having seen the light of the sun...." "Before thou becomest conscious of thy soul, before thou knowest aught, thou art given in marriage, thou art a mother." "Before thou hast learnt to be a daughter to thy parents, thou art a wife, and mother to children of thine own." "Thou art betrothed--knowest thou him for whom thou art destined? Dost thou love him? Yea, hast thou seen him?--Love! Thou unhappy being! Knowest thou not that to the heart of a Jewish woman love is prohibited?" "Forty days before thy birth, thy mate and life companion was assigned to thee." [1]