To the same period as the fables belong the several volumes of tales published by Gordon, Shene Yomim we-Laïlah Ehad ("Two Days and One Night"), 'Olam ke-Minhago ("The World as It is"), and later the first part of Kol Kitbe Yehudah ("Collected Writings of Gordon"). They also relate to the life and manners of the Jews of Lithuania, and the struggle of the modern element with the old. Gordon as story teller is inferior to Gordon as poet. Nevertheless his prose displays all the delicacy of his mind and the precision of his observations. At all events, these tales of his are not a negligible quantity in Hebrew literature.
The reaction which set in about 1870, after a period of social reforms and unrealized hopes, affected the poet deeply. The government put obstacles in the forward march of the Jews, the masses remained steeped in fanaticism, and the men of light and leading themselves fell short of doing their whole duty. Disillusioned, he cherished no hope of anything. He could not share the optimism of Smolenskin and his school. For an instant he stops to look back over the road travelled. He sees nothing, and in anguish he asks himself:
"For whom have I toiled all the years of my prime?
"My parents, they cling to the faith and to their people, they think of nothing but business and religious observances all day long; they despise knowledge, and are hostile to good sense….
"Our intellectuals scorn the national language, and all their
love is lavished upon the language of the land.
"Our daughters, charming as they are, are kept in absolute
ignorance of Hebrew….
"And the young generation go on and on, God knows how far and
whither … perhaps to the point whence they will never return."
He therefore addresses himself to a handful of the elect, amateurs, the only ones who do not despise the Hebrew poet, but understand him and approve his ways:
"To you I bring my genius as a sacrifice, before you I shed my
tears as a libation…. Who knows but I am the last to sing of
Zion, and you the last to read the Zion songs?"
This pessimistic strain recurs in all the later writings of Gordon. Even after the events of 1882, when revived hatred and persecution had thrown the camp of the emancipators into disorder, and the most ardent of the anti-Rabbinic champions, like Lilienblum and Braudes, had been driven to the point of raising the flag of Zionism, Gordon alone of all was not carried along with the current. His skepticism kept him from embracing the illusions of his friends converted to Zionism.