Nine Yiddish Writers
God, and the Jew of earthly ambitions and lowly ideals. We perceive them emerging gradually, almost imperceptibly, from waves of poetry that beat from the soil below and the sky above. And real as these figures are, they seem delusive and romantic, submerged in the overpowering seas of emotion.
"The Town" is the keynote to Asch's genius and art. In his succeeding work his portrayal of men has grown more definite and more vigorous. His powerful sense of realism has asserted itself and has led him to delve into the least attractive, the least inviting outlets of the Jew's suppressed energy in the lands of his suffering. His poetic power, too, grew more conscious of its elemental force, of its pagan qualities; and he sought his themes in heroes of Biblical days, in the clash of primitive passions and primitive gods and also in the new paganism of modern revolutionary literature.
The first generation of Yiddish literature suffered greatly from the danger that ever lurks in the highways and by-ways of art, the danger of tendency. To teach, to enlighten, to expose, to destroy, to build—each literary light of our early period chose one of these for his motto and aim. Even Perez was beset by this peril most of the time—traces of the ef-
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