The Maccabaean

"FROM the Valley of Achor" is the name Brenner selected for his first volume of sketches, and he has remained ever since in the "Valley of Achor." From that vale of sorrows he made his debut before the Hebrew public, and has been in a position to paint a true picture of this life in all its details; its socturnal darkness and the gloomy shadows that envelop it.

A certain Yiddish critic has called Brenner the Hebrew Dostoyevsky. This comparison, like similar comparisons, suffers in many points, as there is after all a great difference between Brenner and the Russian novelist. Still, there are points of resemblance between them, and reading Brenner's writings one is reminded involuntarily of Dostoyevsky, for the Hebrew writer, as well as Dostoyevsky, made the object of his study the life of the wretched, the deranged of mind and the pessimistic.

The characteristic feature of Brenner's work is his genuine realism as this term is understood in Russia. Brenner was brought up on Russian literature, and he took it as the model of his writing. The grave earnestness, minute deliberation, deep insight, pschological research, and delineation of particulars and that pessimistic accord that vibrates through and accompanies, as the piano does the melody, his writings, all remind us of the Russian literature whose devoted disciple Brenner is.

Russian literature came to life and began to develop at a time when the Russian people were pining away under the yoke of slavery and no ray of hope to be freed from this abyss of serfdom was seen. Pessimism was spreading throughout the empire and deep despair in Russian literature, and there it found its full expression, as it should, since literature is the reflection of life. From Gogol, the first great novelist, the founder of the

Russian romance, who finds only fault and disorder in every walk of life, and whose writings are full of venomous satire and bitter irony, up to Chechov and Gorki—even Gorki, who wrote his works at the time when the people were hoping for deliverance—you hear the voice of despair ringing through their works. Pessimism is the keynote.

The Hebrew literature underwent a similar process.

The Neo-Hebrew literature was born at the time when the Jewish people were deceived in the hope that they entertained for a short time of enjoying full liberty and of being benefited by the revolutionary doctrine of "Equality, Brotherhood and Liberty." And to emphasize their delusion, their blood was flung into the "Eyes of the Sun of Wisdom." This terrible state of affairs, in truth, gave birth to new hopes; a new movement, the Zionist movement, was originated, and everything at first glance shone with luster and magnificence. Still, the pessimistic spirit penetrated the literature of the period, for this revival was a revival through channels of blood. This renaissance was due to terrible conditions of life and in every triumphant clamor there was heard the screams of despair. Light and darkness were fused together. New flowers were blooming. But those new flowers were not warmed by a beneficent sun and felicitous drops did not moisten them, for which reason they looked pale and meat, feeble and frail, while the shadow of death fluttered over them.

Thinkers and semi-philosophers, like Lilienblum and Achad Haam, romanticists like Feierberg and Berdichevsky, and writers like Brenner and Frishman, and noets like Bialik and Chernichovsky, all are full of expectation for a very important awakening. All prepare themselves for the great day; and earnestly