A Few Words Concerning Literary Criticism

Admittedly, it is true that all our hearts will be filled with feelings of astonishment when we recall the giant steps that the new generation has taken upon the peaks of the sciences and forms of technology; we will universally be impressed when contemplating the profound inventions that the people of our generation have revealed out of the dark, which attest that the spirit of man is not akin to that of the beasts that descends ever downward, that human spirit which bursts forth to ascend ever higher toward the hollow of the pit from which its refined soul was dug, and which raises itself above the heights of the mountains of those exalted elements of knowledge and sublime branches of wisdom that distinguish him, and elevate him to the status of a son of God! All our eyes will shed tears of joy when we consider that all this is the handiwork of the “daughter of God”—the soul dwelling within us, which allows no sleep to the eyes of the intellect nor slumber to the eyelids of discernment, and which, on occasion, arouses and bestirs them, with a loud voice, crying out with strength: “Arise, do your work, for it was for this purpose that you were created!” Let us all give thanks to our own generation, as it has achieved great things by openly demonstrating that it is through the various branches of wisdom and the sciences that the feeble human being is capable of having dominion over nature and drain it to its foundations. For who had ever heard of anything like this before, that a man could dispatch his message to his brother living at the end of the earth, and faraway beyond the seas, and send his words to the end of the world, and his friend would be able to listen, and hear them, and even reply to him within an instant (i.e., the telegraph)? And who had ever seen such things as these, that a man should be able to fly by means of a “flying vehicle” over the entire expanse of the world, as one of the heavenly angels and the holy seraphim without becoming tired and weary (i.e., the railway)? And a human being, weak in body and puny in strength, can now proclaim to the ends of the earth and the distant isles: “Approach here, for I have brought you close”; to the inhabitants of the east: “Embrace the men of the west with loving arms!” and to those dwelling in the south: “Fall lovingly upon the necks of your brethren, the inhabitants of the north!”

But despite all this, let us not be guilty of falsehood by boasting and saying that we have already attained the goal which we designated for ourselves, and for which the Supreme Wisdom directed the creation of man; indeed, on the contrary, the more the secrets of nature and its power become revealed to us, the more the abundance of understanding scatters its rays of light over the dark places of the entire globe, the more it appears that we are intellectually naked, and that a veil of thick darkness is spread over all that is governed by the human eye, and that a mask of thick mist, like the heavenly firmament, is spread out over our heads, and that, like blind men, we are groping about at noonday.

The same also appears to be the case in the field of Hebrew literature, as we cannot deny that it has vastly extended its borders during the past eighty years or so (from the time of the publication of the first edition of Ha-me’asef, in 5544 [1784])—and then, not long thereafter, the holy tongue started to compete with the languages in parlance in Europe when three weekly journals (Ha-magid, Ha-melits, and Ha-karmel) and two or three annual journals (Kokhve Yitzḥak, Yeshurun, and Otsar Ha-ḥokhmah) were published; albeit that each year, numerous works in the pure Hebrew tongue were published, which amply attested to the fact that our brethren, the Jewish people, had bestirred themselves and awoken from the mighty trance of darkness into which they had sunk, as though into mighty waters, for a thousand years. Although the eye of anyone bearing affection for his people will delight greatly and laugh when seeing how the thistles and the nettles that have sprung up upon them are slowly, slowly vanishing ever since the day their teachers and parents—their crown—were removed from them, nonetheless we will find thorns too among these lilies, and dark clouds will blacken the purity of the skies of the Hebrew language, for the field of critical appraisal of the works of the sages of Israel has until now, to our sorrow, lain waste and desolate, with neither pruning nor hoeing being carried out in it. Instead of what we see in respect of the gentile languages, critical reviews of a novel quality, fresh as the dawn over the mountains, and the phenomenon of seven critics seizing hold of the corner of the garment of a single writer to tear his work to pieces, leaving no matter, either of a major or a minor nature, intact, without being subjected to the rod of critical appraisal; and not a single book or author avoids receiving either a generous handful of honor and praise, or, alternatively, of shame and disgrace. In contrast to this, among us, the Jews, every reviewer maintains silence, every critic is struck dumb; and from the day that Hame’asef ceased publication, no one subscribes to any journal containing genuine literary criticism; there is no trustworthy critic who will openly present his verdict, without showing favoritism, in the Hebrew language, on the works published in that tongue, and only on infrequent occasions can the voice of a man shouting out be heard, filling his mouth with praises for an author and a work of scientific character, notwithstanding that all those familiar with literature and language will cry out in protest against him, as though he were a thief; we hear the sound of words—words of praise—but we do not see the image of a sound and faithful review, which advises each writer of both his good and his bad points; and even if we were to meet someone who took the task of review seriously and declared that it was his wish powerfully to arouse the slumbering object of his review, to raise it from the abyss of oblivion and to infuse the spirit of life into the nostrils of this unconscious entity, which we regard as already deceased, upon but a little reflection, we shall discover that that individual comes not for the purpose of distinguishing between the good and bad material, but only to uproot and to destroy—and he will gouge out the eye of the writer, he will seek occasion against him and fall upon the author like an enemy and an adversary to smite his work with a ban, as though he were unaware that the time has passed when sages and writers would break each other with the staff of injury, by uttering words with a stream of fury and a torrent of rage, and that, now that the time has arrived for the words of the wise to be heard when spoken in quiet, every sage and writer has the staff of Pleasantness in his hand; no one will strike another, nor will he rule through the rod of his wrath—he will pronounce only an upright judgment, with a view to removing any thorns from the work and to repairing any breaches in it. I find most beautiful the elegant tale of the British savant John Russell, related when he came to submit Louis the Fourteenth, the king of France, to the bar of historical judgment. He tells us what one of the travelers saw with his own eyes: “In an Eastern land, excavators found a certain grave, in which there was the corpse of an unknown individual; all of a sudden, a certain man proclaimed that this deceased person had been known during his lifetime as a saint and miracle worker. Masses of the people who, like fools, believe everything without exposing it to the smelting furnace of scrutiny, instantly erected a glorious edifice, pleasant to the sight (a mausoleum), in honor of the saint over the grave, and a huge crowd of men and women, both old and young, from all the cities and provinces both near and far, assembled to pray at fixed times at the grave of the man of miracles; a few days later, another individual spread a report that the grave actually contained within it the bones of an accursed villain known for his multiple abominations, who, during his lifetime, had become a curse. The men of the East, whose opinions swayed as a reed sways in the water, fell upon the glorious edifice, which their own hands had established just a short while before, with a mighty rage, and destroyed it down to its foundations, not leaving one stone on top of another; they then took out the carcass from its grave, and dragged it through the mire of the streets, after which they cast it away, as food for the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field. A few months later, a wise man came along, and as a result of inquiries and research, gave out that the deceased man was neither an upright individual who was able to perform miracles, nor a wicked and base fellow, but simply a man who conducted himself in a straightforward fashion, keeping to the middle path, in whose lifetime people had neither expressed wonder at his righteousness and holiness nor cursed him with a grievous curse on account of his violence and wickedness.” “In a manner corresponding to this ‘vision,’” the aforementioned sage went on to say, “We may perceive that whenever those who recount the events of the times wish to pass judgment on the character and actions of a famous figure from history, half will glorify and elevate the figure being assessed, and will praise him in excess of the measure required to establish the truth, while the other half will spread a garment of contempt and shame over him to the point where his name is used as a proverb and a byword of reproach. If we investigate thoroughly, and truth serves as a lamp to our feet, we will discover that, in the majority of instances, both sides have missed the mark and have fabricated things that are incorrect.” Something of this kind is happening now in regard to the assemblage of critical reviewers of the literary works of the sages of Israel: some of them mete out to each writer a se’ah’s measure of praise, in overflowing measure, and turn a blind eye to his errors, whereas others thrust him forth with enmity, and procure horns with which to gore him with full strength—they will seek out a pretext, and unbridle their mouths and their tongues to revile and insult him, contrary to the norms of ethical conduct, and in a pressurizing manner.

O you of perfect faith within Israel! Why has no eye been raised to see, in relation to the leading nations in Europe, how gentle and genuine criticism, founded upon the pedestals of peace and truth, has come to be the mother of modern literature and the origin of the most lofty and powerful ideas? Make inquiry of the savants of each nation as to whether it was not literary criticism that first taught them to distinguish between the good and the bad, between truth and falsehood, and between something beautiful and of good taste and something ugly and of repugnant taste!

As for the British—a mighty nation—no science or form of knowledge was beyond their ken, and they were the first who presumed to ascend to the loftiest heights of the sciences—it was in that nation where, in the eighteenth century, the journals The Spectator and the Edinburgh Review started being published. They went forth armed with the following type of weapons: logic and attractive reasoning, against every author, to point out his errors to him, even where he was someone who was acknowledged as worthy of praise, and whose renown was great among the nations. The Edinburgh Review was not afraid to come out against the distinguished poet Byron, to chastise him openly wherever he deviated from the accepted norms governing the composition of poetry; and the other nations saw this practice adopted by the English and followed suit accordingly. The Germans, at the end of the last century, founded the journals Thalia, Deutscher Merkur, Bibliothek für die schoenen Kunste,¹ and the greatest writers, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Wieland, Bürger, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai, were not embarrassed to review even a minor work to ascertain whether it was of fine or of poor quality, and to present their verdict to the general public.

In our native land of Russia too, a new light appeared upon the horizon ever since the time when the great literary critic, Belinsky, started berating every author and every book that had not succeeded in joining the “communal assembly” of books and writers. We still recall the verbal blows he inflicted and the rod administered by him to the back of fools in the columns of Molva, Moskoviskiy, and similar journals. All the writers of his era could attest that it was only from that time on that the Russians began moving forward, rather than backward, over the field occupied by writers. Therefore, sages of Israel, listen to the advice of a man of tender years like me, for happy is the generation in which the seniors listen to their juniors; assemble together as friends, in unison, with a view to founding an “association of critics,” which, like a shepherd inspecting his flock, will examine all Jewish literary works published each year, whether good or bad; you are not to respect the person of any man nor favor the person of any individual, but rather, your path is to be guided exclusively by the power of truth; you are to do battle against the enemies of the truth wielding neither the sword of victory nor the spear of enmity, but only the sword of genuine criticism and the element of soundly based review; and who can assess the immense benefit that will accrue from this to the Hebrew language and to those composing literature in it, as there are currently many young writers who do not know how to read literature in the languages of the gentile nations and who have not experienced the sunlight of critical review. If they should obtain a mere whiff of its scent, they will feel themselves insignificant by reason of the honor accorded to other writers, for which their soul lusts—should they perceive that, instead of glory, they inherit only a double portion of shame; though this is not the case at present, where the Hebrew language is like a city that has been breached, without a wall, and anyone wishing to assume the title of “author” is at liberty to do so. And to the Jewish writers whose names are renowned and lauded, the sunlight of critical review of their works will bring healing in its wings, for error is like a net spread forth to ensnare all living creatures, and sin crouches at the door of the writers. Who has ever succeeded in composing a work free from errors?

Would that the words of a figure of minor importance such as myself were to find a place in the hearts of the great sages of Israel, for then, truth would extend the curtains of its tent, and firmly affix its peg so that it can never be shifted, and the earth would be filled with knowledge as the waters cover the seas!

At the conclusion of my letter, I have seen fit to draw the attention of R. Jacob Ezekiel Levia to the fact that, in his explanation of the statement of R. Ḥanina in tractate Sanhedrin: “What is the meaning of Amen? It stands for ‘God, the faithful King’”—that this is to teach us about the three fundamental principles of our faith (Ha-melits 82, p. 577), he had already been preceded in this exposition by my relative, the rabbi and sage, the bookseller Judah Idel Shereshevskii, in his work Kur la-zahav, see p. 150; and I have seen fit to “restore the lost object to its owner,” in accordance with what we have been commanded by our Sages: “Anyone who cites a statement in the name of the person who said it brings redemption to the world.”

It is well known to all those who are acquainted with the work composed by the savants Masser, Bodek, Fishman, and the band of their associates in their Sefer ha-ro’eh, that they subjected the names of the leading sages of Israel, i.e., Rapaport, Tsoren, Luzzatto, and Reggio, to derision and abuse—we have accordingly seen fit to draw the attention of the sage and rhetorician R. Sholem Abramovitsh, the fruits of whose wisdom we consume and from the clarity of whose language in Ha-melits and Ha-karmel we obtain satisfaction, to the fact that, in our view, he did not act well in heaping contempt and shame upon R. Eliezer Zweifel. In his essay “Kilkul ha-minim,” printed in his work Mishpat shalom last year, his enmity for Zweifel exceeded the bounds of acceptability. The sage R. Sholem Abramovitsh will forgive me if I speak out against him invoking the words of the prophet Micah the Morashite: “They who bite with their teeth and cry ‘Peace!’” And indeed, how great are the words of our Sages of blessed memory: “There are some people whose names are beautiful but whose deeds are ugly,” for the reviewer gave his book the title Mishpat shalom [Judgment of Peace], while in reality it contains neither justice nor peace, but merely a spirit of enmity and hatred, hovering over the surface of the entire critique. Even before he began to review the book Minim ve-ugav, anger issued forth from his mouth and the expressions emanating from his lips were like piercings of a sword, declaring as he did: “Not so are those who halt between two opinions, but rather, they make a noise like dogs, etc. To what can this be compared? To the thief found breaking in with stealth.” However, here is not the appropriate place to demonstrate that, as a result of the reviewer arriving in anger when starting to review a work, he will be bound to reach erroneous conclusions! Even after he has completed the review, not even half of the reviewer’s fury is yet spent; he still fails to return his sword to its sheath, just as our Sages comment on the biblical verse: Et vahev besufah—“his spear is still outstretched in his hand to devour and to destroy!” Once more he directs his face towards R. Eliezer Zweifel to dogmatize that he pretends to be wise, claims to be pious, but that he is in fact a hypocrite and a deceiver (p. 42). Has anyone heard words like these emanating from the mouth of an honest reviewer in our times? Surely not!