J. L. Peretz, A Criticism
(Translated from the Hebrew by Sampson Lederhendler).
PERETZ is rather a prolific writer. During the twenty-five years of his literary labors he has produced hundreds of tales and poems, both in Hebrew and Yiddish. He confined himself to brief productions, such as sketches, short stories, snapshot glimpses of life, poems of twenty or thirty verses. He has never attempted a complete novel or a long poem. Had Peretz lived in the days of prolix romances, he would hardly have made much of a figure. At that time no one was of any account who had not turned out an imposing heavy volume. Happily, Peretz did his work in the eighties and nineties of the last century, when the zest for long-winded, voluminous literature had abated, and the public taste showed a marked leaning toward light, racy reading matter. The treatise gave place to the essay, and the bulky romance to the short story.
When we have a clear conception of the scope and significance of the romance and the story, we shall see that the change from the one to the other was not a matter of mere accident. It is an error to assume that the distinction between a romance and a story or novelette is purely one of length, that a work of fiction spreading over four pages is a story, and a like work of fiction spreading over forty pages is a romance. The difference between the two is more vital and deep-seated. The object of the story is to seize upon a floating moment of a man's life, upon a single and isolated incident, and bring it out conspicuously and strikingly.
ingly. The hero is not profoundly affected by the episode portrayed, his moral and intellectual character is nowise altered, and he is substantially the same sort of a man from beginning to end. Even when the hero is represented as radically influenced in thought and sentiment by a peculiar event, and induced to turn over a new leaf for the rest of his life, it is not through a gradual development and growth of character, but by a sincele and sudden stroke.
The romance, on the other hand, properly concerns itself with a complete period of the life of one or more men. There should be ample illustration of the natural development of traits and qualities in the personages of the story, and there should also be a clear setting forth of the relation of the men to the society and circumstances which surround them. A portrayal of the spirit of the time and a strong view of life are often interwoven in the texture of a good romance. The adventures and happenings of the hero should not be ephemeral shadows that come and pass without producing any effect or lasting impression. Each and every incident should be pregnant with meaning, and should appreciably assist in the growth and unfolding of the characters of the principal actors. The hero's mind should not be stationary but progressive, so that in the end he should be another man from what he was at the beginning.
The romancer has to call into being a new world, to body forth an entire epoch,