A Book Of Short Stories

Download or read book Temptations a book of short stories written by David Pinski and published by BEYOND BOOKS HUB. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The same traits that distinguish David Pinski as a playwright characterise him also as a writer of short fiction. The noted Yiddish author is concerned chiefly with the probing of the human soul,—not that intangible and inconsequential theme of so many vapourings, dubbed mystic and symbolistic by the literary labellers,—but the hidden mainspring that initiates, and often guides, our actions. Pinski seeks to penetrate into the secret of human motive. It is not enough for him to depict the deed; he would plumb, if possible, the genetic impulse. That is why, if he must be classified, one places him among the psychological realists. He is at his best faithful to both the inner and the outer life. Thus we find, in his numerous stories and plays, very little of the conventional heroism and villainism with which most authors are concerned, and very much of the deeply human at which the majority of authors shake their heads. This is not to say that Pinski’s work lacks heroic figures; on the contrary, in a measure it constitutes a series of noble and ennobling portraits, representing men and women who meet life face to face and are scorched by its flames. So, too, there are less inspiring personages who compromise with life and their better selves. And in the background lurks our common humanity, faintly quick with the potentialities of ignominy or greatness. Despite his growing fame as one of the most significant dramatists now active, Pinski began his career as a writer of short stories. He has been recognised as the first Yiddish author to give artistic treatment to the Yiddish proletariat, and no small part of his life has been sacrificed to the cause of the oppressed and the disinherited. His earlier works, both in fiction and in the drama, were devoted to the depiction of life among the lowly, and it is characteristic of the man that he does not allow his personal views to mar his artistic product. It may be said that three chief periods have thus far appeared in the labours of the Yiddish author. First there is his proletarian “manner” in which the life, problems and aspirations of the Jewish workingman are portrayed in such masterly dramas as “Isaac Sheftel” (written at the age of twenty-seven) and such incisive commentaries as the best of the early tales, “Drabkin.” Then there is the genre of the biblical reconstruction, in which ancient themes are utilised for the purpose of producing thoroughly contemporary works of art. Among his plays “The Dumb Messiah” and “Mary Magdalen” represent this phase of his skill, while among the stories, “Zerubbabel” and “Beruriah” would come under this category. There is also the treatment of sex problems, as evidenced by such plays as “Jacob the Blacksmith” and “Gabri and the Women,” and tales like “The Awakening” and “The Black Cat.” I must confess that I am not greatly concerned with the periods and “manners” of authors; classification has little to do with genuine literary appreciation. This is all the more true in a case like Pinski’s, since the various phases of his work follow no chronological order, and often appear side by side, as it were, in the same work. Take for instance the first tale in this book, “Beruriah,” which I consider one of the greatest short stories ever written, insofar as the wide reading of a single person in some half dozen or more languages can substantiate such a statement. Who shall say that the tale is mere reconstruction or elaboration of a Talmudic legend, or a problem in love, or a psychological study, or even a symbolic story? It is all of these, and something more. Who shall say that “Drabkin” is merely a proletarian narrative? To be sure, the background is furnished by the humble Jewish operatives, but is the tale itself any the less universal on that account? Is it any the less a problem in love? Is it any the less a satire upon human foibles, with the same essential theme as Pinski’s remarkable work of genius, “The Treasure,”—one of the outstanding dramas of the century? The truth is that Pinski harmonises and renders universal almost everything he touches. From an insignificant three or four line suggestion in the Talmud he elaborates a “Beruriah,” producing one of the most striking female portraits that has come from an author peculiarly rich in well-drawn women. Out of various strands from Jewish history he weaves a “Zerubbabel,” which flames with a Jewish patriotism particularly contemporary in application. Nor is this intense devotion any more exclusively Jewish than the crumbling of world-philosophies depicted in the epic play, “The Last Jew.” This human and universal touch is rendered all the more evident by the author’s attitude, both in life and in the stories that are the product of his actual experience, toward the oppressed and the disinherited whose champion he is. With him the independence of the writer is almost a religion; so much so that he is just as ready to voice fearlessly the faults of his own people as he is to glorify their historic and racial virtues. He reveals them to themselves, and is as little compromising with them as with any other. If he knows their nobility, he knows, too, their pettiness; he sees them in their climb up Mount Sinai to talk with the Lord, and in their grovelling over the heaps of mire called money-making. Yet it is no part of his art or his purpose to sit in judgment. Indeed, one of the noblest notes arising from the author’s work as a whole is the spirit of “Judge not.” This human note rings from “Mary Magdalene” (an entirely original treatment of the fecund theme, superior, in my opinion, to both Paul Heyse’s and Maurice Maeterlinck’s plays upon the same subject) as from the excellent tales “The Temptation of Rabbi Akiba” and “High Priest Johanan.” He who beholds in such stories as these only a biblical or religious strain, misses more than half of their beauty. Rabbi Akiba and High Priest Johanan are not spirits of an ancient age, individuals of a departed civilisation. Far from it. They are you and I. “Beruriah” is by no means the virtuous wife of an overwrought Rabbi. She is an eternal type; she can be found in the Talmud, in the Icelandic sagas, in a play by Ibsen, in a novel by Hardy; she is Antigone, she is Candida; she is the soul of woman clothed in tragic beauty. Pinski’s tales, then, of which the following comprise the first series, demand universal appreciation but little less than his dramas. Theirs is that rare beauty which is an indissoluble union of manner and matter. In the original, they represent the most melodious Yiddish that has been written,—a powerful refutation of the unthinking scorn of those who refer to the tongue as a jargon. They are for men and women who read with the mind as well as the eye....FROM THE BOOKS.