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could never catch the only important issue between them, nor gradations,
subleties or concessions of thought. Only one doctrine could strike the
point of possible cleavage between the world of Kasrielevky and the
world at large, and that was the doctrine, Zionist
in
whatever form, that
not until the Jews once again had a home could they hope to attain,
without foregone futility, the values and responsibilities of modem life.
Consequently he could find no standard for evaluating the variety of
revolutionary theories which were beginning to appear even in Kasriel·
evky. He could extend his sympathy to all of them, but his hope to none.
The breakdown of Jewish life could only be accelerated by participation
in the class struggle (a participation which he nevertheless approved) •
But for the Jews even the most basic revolution in society could only be
reformist
in
scope. Their revolution would first have to be historical:
the history of Diaspora would first have to be brought to a close. Until
then they had not even chains to lose, nor, since chains imply fixation,
even the hope of acquiring a few.
Sholom Aleichem has often been compared with Dickens. The com–
parison is superficially plausible, as far as resemblances in verbal humor
and characterization are concerned. But there is a fundamental diverg–
ence between the two, which typifies the Jewish author's removal from
the entire tradition which, in greater or less degree, has united all social
novelists. Society, for Sholom Aleichem, was less the object than the
source of his sentiment, and thus love, more than indignation, gave
motive to his art. What he felt toward his people, toward their poverty
and hopelessness, was always directed outward, as if proceeding from
their, rather than his own heart. He himself was perhaps capable of a
greater individual expression that the one he achieved. But folk artists
lose nothing by their sacrifices. He would not instruct, rouse, organize
his
people toward any perspective available only to himself; he would
not go beyond the limitations they themselves could not transcend. But
it was not so much selflessness as an extreme self-development through
love which reinfon_::ed his original fidelity to the sources of his growth.
He could see the hopelessness of his people's traditions from the libera–
tion of his own knowledge; but he also knew, through the identity of
personal experience, the hopelessness of their lives. And it was his love,
not only his. uncertainty, which made him cling with them to a faith he
had abandoned, and to celebrate, with as great a joy and tenderness as
possible, the impoverished world within which they built, and later lost
their lives.
IsAAc RosENFELD
AN ABSTRACTION BLOODED
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.
By
Wallace Stevens. The Cummington
Press. $3.00.
Parts of a World.
By
Wallace Stevens. Knopf.
$2.00.
In
one of Mr. Stevens' early poems he made the simple declaration
that "Poetry is the supreme fiction," and in another there was a phrase
about "the ultimate Plato, the tranquil jewel in this confusion." Now,
in
Note& toward
a
Supreme Fiction,
he shows us a combination of the
two notions with a development into a third thing, which
if
it
is
not
