III.

The Classical Age

The brief classical age of Yiddish literature, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, is epitomized in three great writers of fiction: Shalom Jacob Abramowitz, better known as Mendele Mokher Sefarim (Mendele the Itinerant Bookseller); Shalom Aleichem; and Isaac Leib Peretz. All wrote about everyday life in the Jewish Pale of western Russia and particularly about life in the shtetl, the Jewish village. Their work represents a balancing of folk and literary influences and shows an awareness of life outside their ghettos.

Mendele Mokher Sefarim was the first to use Yiddish as a vehicle of literary creation. In his stories he combined a compassionate love for his people with a rejection of the degradations of ghetto life and of the stultifying influence of antiquated Jewish traditions. Shalom Aleichem, the most loved of all Yiddish writers, depicted with humor, sadness, and tenderness the characters in the ghetto. Peretz, who had assimilated the influences of the great Russian authors of his time and of the classic literature of Western Europe, was the most intellectual and the most cosmopolitan of the three writers. His stories and novelettes display a remarkable psychological subtlety.