The Genius of Perez
literary Jews wrote in Hebrew. Yiddish they despised as a barbarous jargon, a "language of captivity," an emblem of slavery, unsuited and impossible for artistic purposes. They called Hebrew the "mistress" and Yiddish, her "handmaiden."
And all these epithets ascribed to the language were indeed true. In order to write literature in Yiddish, the language had to be molded and cast into an artistic form. Abramovitz took up the task and accomplished it to wonderful perfection. This the first and perhaps the greatest service that he did to his literature.
But he went still further. With these implements that he had himself created, he dug up the raw material from which precious literary metals were later extracted. He was the first of the Yiddish writers who turned to the study of the Jew as a distinct people, a nation amongst nations, a race amongst races. He portrayed the Jewish tragedy in allegory and in fiction. He embodied both the merits and defects of all Jews in general types, heroic, pathetic, and pitiful. His literature is social, racial. His plots are puerile, the characters uncertain, the style confusing. But there is spirit and soul pervading it all there is a living atmosphere in which his
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