Temptations

TEMPTATIONS A BOOK OF SHORT STORIES BY DAVID PINSKI AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE YIDDISH BY DR. ISAAC GOLDBERG
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
Copyright in U.S.A.; 1919, by Brentano’s
First published in Great Britain 1921
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.