In Their Surroundings

Abstract

David Frishman was the preeminent critic of Hebrew literature in Eastern Europe during the last years of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. He advocated passionately for the creation of a distinctly European Hebrew literature and rarely hesitated to castigate writers who failed, in his view, to develop lyricism and other aesthetic features he argued were essential. As a translator, he created Hebrew versions of many European fictional and philosophical works held in high regard, including texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, George Byron, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. As an editor, he wielded power at many publishing venues for Hebrew writers young and old, such as Ha-Dor (The Generation), Ha-Boker (The Morning), Ha-Tekufah (The Era), and the Stybel publishing house. His literary work in Hebrew and Yiddish, however, was often overshadowed by his other literary pursuits. Still, Frishman's extensive efforts as a cultural agent left a lasting mark on the development of modern Hebrew literary culture.Born in Zgierz, near Łódź, in 1859,1 Frishman spent time in many of the centers of Jewish culture of the time: Warsaw, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Odessa (fig. 1). He started publishing poems, translations, and articles in Hebrew at a young age in a variety of Eastern European Hebrew periodicals. By the late 1880s, he was writing for the Yiddish press as well; his first Yiddish poem, Oyfn bergl (On the Hill), appeared in 1888. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Eastern European Yiddish newspapers such as Yudishes Folks-Blat (Jewish People's Newspaper), Der Yud (The Jew), Der Fraynd (The Friend), and Haynt (Today) were publishing his lyric