Page:Nine Yiddish Writers.djvu/22

 and peculiar qualities that assure for the literary man lasting memory.

To begin with, Rosenfeld is before all else a Jewish writer. His is the truly national genius. His pathos, his humor, his satire, his general outlook upon life, are all unmistakably Jewish. Like many of his colleagues, Rosenfeld had no liberal education, no European culture. He began to study English and read German after his genius had ripened. Since then, he has read widely in all poetry, but that only helped to develop him on the road he had started. It didn't broaden his view, it didn't enrich his ideas, it didn't corrupt his intensely Jewish individuality.

His second claim to classic prominence is his wide universal appeal. In the age of literary restlessness and iconoclasm, when the healthy commonplace passions are almost tabooed and all but adventitious growths fill the garden of letters, Rosenfeld remains faithful to the sound and sane school. He deals with the sorrow and joys that are known to all Jewish hearts the same emotions that thrilled their ancestors generations ago, and that will agitate the souls of their offspring for the generations to come. Symbolism, mysticism, decadence all these