[Footnote 2: Written under the influence of Turgenyev's famous novel which bears the same title. See above, p. 210, n. 1.]
Accordingly, Abramovich began to write in the dialect of the people, under the assumed pen-name of Mendele Mokher Sforim (Mendele the Bookseller). Choosing his subjects from the life of the lower classes, he portrayed the pariahs of Jewish society and their oppressors (Dos kleine Menshele, "A Humble Man"), the life of Jewish beggars and vagrants (Fishke der Krummer, "Fishke the Cripple"), and the immense cobweb which had been spun around the destitute masses by the contractors of the meat tax and their accomplices, the alleged benefactors of the community (Die Taxe, oder die Bande Stodt Bale Toyvos, "The Meat Tax, or the Gang of Town Benefactors"). His trenchant satire on the "tax" hit the mark, and the author had reason to fear the ire of those who were hurt to the quick by his literary shafts. He had to leave the town of Berdychev in which he resided at the time, and removed to Zhitomir.
Here he wrote in 1873 one of his ripest works, "The Mare, or Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" (Die Klache). In his allegorical narrative he depicts a homeless mare, the personification of the Jewish masses, which is pursued by the "bosses of the town" who do not allow her to graze on the common pasture-lands with the "town cattle," and who set street loafers and dogs at her heels. "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" (the Government) cannot make up its mind whether the mare should be granted equal rights with the native horses, or should be left unprotected, and the matter is submitted to a special commission. In the meantime, certain horsemen from among the "communal benefactors" jump upon the back of the unfortunate mare, beat and torment her well-nigh to death, and drive her for their pleasure, until she collapses.
Leaving the field of polemical allegory, Abramovich published the humorous description of the "Travels of Benjamin the Third" (Masse'ot Benyamin ha-Shelishi, 1878), [1] portraying a Jewish Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, who make an oversea journey to the mythical river Sambation—on the way from Berdychev to Kiev. A subtle observation of existing conditions combined with a profound analysis of the problems of Jewish life, artistic power matched with publicistic skill—such are the salient features of the first phase of Abramovich's literary activity.
[Footnote 1: A famous Jewish traveller by the name of Benjamin lived in
the twelfth century. Another modern Jewish traveller by the name of
Joseph Israel, who died in 1864, adopted the name Benjamin II.
Abramovich humorously designates his fictitious travelling hero as
Benjamin III.]
In the following period, beginning with the eighties, his literary creations exhibit greater artistic harmony in their content. As far as their linguistic garb is concerned, they combine the Yiddish vernacular with the Hebrew national tongue, which are employed side by side by our author as the vehicles of his thought, and reach at his hands an equally high state of perfection.
6. THE HARBINGER OF JEWISH NATIONALISM (PEREZ SMOLENSKIN)
The artistic portrayer of life was, however, a rare exception in the literature of the Haskalah. Riven by social and cultural strife, the period of enlightenment called rather for theories than for art, and the novelist no less than the publicist was called upon to supply the want. This theoretic element was paramount in the novels of Perez Smolenskin. (1842-1885), the editor of the popular Hebrew magazine ha-Shahar. [1] The pupil of a White Russian yeshibah, he afterwards drifted into frivolous Odessa and still later to Vienna, suffering painfully from the shock of the contrast. Personally he had emerged unscathed from this conflict of ideas. But round about him he witnessed "the dead bodies of enlightenment, which are just as numerous as the victims of ignorance." He saw the Jewish youth fleeing from its people and forgetting its national language. He saw Reform Judaism of Western Europe which had retained nothing of Jewish culture except the modernized superficialities of the synagogue. Repelled by this spectacle, Smolenskin decided from the very beginning to fight on two fronts: against the fanatics of orthodoxy in the name of European progress, and against the champions of assimilation in the name of national Jewish culture, and more particularly of the Hebrew language. "You say," Smolenskin exclaims, addressing himself to the assimilators, "let us be like the other nations. Well and good. Let us, indeed, be like the other nations: cultured men and women, free from superstition, loyal citizens of the country. But let us also remember, as the other nations do, that we have no right to be ashamed of our origin, that it is our duty to hold dear our national language and our national dignity."
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 218.]
In his first great novel "A Rover on Life's Paths" (Ha-to-'eh bedarke ha-hayyim, 1869-1876), Smolenskin carries his hero through all the stages of cultural development, leading from an obscure White Russian hamlet to the centers of European civilization in London and Paris. But at the end of his "rovings" the hero ultimately attains to a synthesis of Jewish nationalism and European progress, and ends by sacrificing his life while defending his brethren during the Odessa pogrom of 1871. The other Tendenz-novels of Smolenskin reflect the same double-fronted struggle: against the stagnation of the orthodox, particularly the Hasidim, and against the disloyalty of the "enlightened."