The B'nai B'rith magazine · 1927-06-01 · 9 (6.1927) · p. Seite 389

Sholom Asch A Romantic Realist By Sarah Goldberg T VARIOUS times critics have called Sholom Asch "The Yiddish Maupassant," "The Yiddish Charles Dickens" or "A Yiddish Gorki." But Asch's originality does not so easily lend itself to classification. Indeed, there are some scenes and incidents in his stories that remind one of the delightful drollery and appealling grotesqueness of Charles Dickens' writings. In dealing with problems of sex and the relationship between the sexes, Asch is like Maupassant. And like Gorki, Asch has a profound sympathy for the weak, and a great love for the people of the soil. Nevertheless he remains himself; distinct, different. His spontaneity and peculiar artistry make him the outstanding figure in contemporary Yiddish literature. He is a realist and romanticist, naturalist and idealist, novelist and playwright. His styles are varied. He is unwilling to be influenced by schools or guided by literary theories. It is true that some of his books will be forgotten. For he is melodramatic, and at times inconsistent and faulty in style and construction. But his best works, distinguished by charming simplicity and original treatment, will never be erased by time and new literary standards. Among the various comparisons which have been applied to Sholom Asch, there is one which designates him as the grandchild of Mendele Mochar Seforim, the sede, as he was lovingly called by his contemporaries. That is more like it. Though the few decades that have elapsed between the sede and the ainikel have wrought great changes, not only in the history and life of the people these writers so lovingly depicted, but also Jn the very literature they helped to create, there nevertheless exists a decided kinship between them. They both love the simple, credulous, small-town Jew, and they both recognize the close relationship between the cosmopolitan, ruthlessly sophisticated Jew and nature. They see the oneness of all life, the complete and perfect unity between the Jew and his physical world. Like his great predecessor, Asch is aware of the beauty and wholesome- Sholom Asch ness of the naively religious Jew and of his ritualism and orthodoxy. At twenty-four years of age, Sholom Asch wrote "Die Shtedtle" which brought him immediate recognition and placed him among the foremost Yiddish authors. It is one of his most perfect novels and is characteristic of his best writing. "Die Shtedtle" is a panegyric of a small, typical village of the Pale. It consists of a series of sketches, scenes and incidents. Asch regards the villages from a unique point of view. His Shtedtle is alien to the towns of Sholom Aleichem, Peretz and others. In Asch's town one does not feel the oppression and cruelty of the Czarist regime. There are no overwhelming misery, sorrow, poverty, or want in his village. Instead, there are romance, beauty, peace and happiness. It is spring when, with the wanderer, we arrive in the Shtedtle. The thaw is beginning to uncover the black, pregnant earth beneath the snow, and the crows are on the white branches of the bare trees. We see the beautiful spring nights come upon the Shtedtle. We feel the peace and witchery of the summer evenings. Happy mothers sitting at their doors with babes in their arms. Mischievous urchins playing pranks, young girls 389 whispering foolish, delightful secrets. Man in true harmony with the beauty and peacefulness of the summer moon and stars, of the fragrance of the trees in the orchards, of the aroma of the green grass, of the singing of birds and insects. Delightful Friday afternoons in summer. Boys, freed from cheder, hurrying with their fathers from the barber to the bath house. The peace and holiday spirit of Sabbath mornings. Autumn in the town is heralded by a mysterious stranger, dressed in woolens and rubber boots, who sells winter clothes; and by a sad-eyed Jew making his annual collection of the pushkes for Palestine. Days of dead leaves flying through the streets; threatening winds, muddy roads. We leave the town after the arrival of the first snow. The night is clear and peaceful; the moon floats gracefully among the clouds. Boys returning from cheder carry little lanterns But the moon is a better light and they extinguish their lights. Their laughter dies away. In the stillness of the night we are transported from the Shtedtle. And the people of the town? They are kindly, simple, loveable folk. There is old Ezekiel, the rich, powerful man of the village, who is moved to tears of happiness when he thinks of the learned young man who is to become his son-in-law. What joy can be compared to his when, in old age, under his own roof, he will see the young man at prayer and at study. And there is sweet, good Leah, his daughter, the ideal of Jewish womanhood; and beautiful is the pure love between her and her chosin. Old Mume Rochel Leah, the incarnation of the old matriarch; the Deutschel who knows arithmetic well and can write a beautiful hand; the Weibershermann who is very fond of the ladies and is a welcome guest in every kitchen—these and other types of the Shtedtle, who may be found in every Polish village, are seen through the romance and poetry of Sholom Asch. While "Die Shtedtle" is representative of Sholom Asch's pastoral sketches of the old home and its life, "Motke Ganoff" is typical of his longer, realistic novels. There is little romance or poetry in the lives, and the people of the underworld as they are depicted