Epigonism after Abramovitsh and Bialik

Abstract

WHO prose? ARE The THE great ORIGINALS original and was the S.Y. epigones Abramovitsh, in modern according Hebrew prose? The great original was S.Y. Abramovitsh, according to H.N. Bialik and a century of impassioned literary reception. Abramovitsh wrote half a dozen Hebrew stories from 1886 to 1896 and subsequently translated his Yiddish novels into Hebrew. Ever since, many critics and teachers have repeated the notion that these Hebrew texts dominated the so-called revival of Hebrew literature. On the occasion of S.Y. Abramovitshs seventy-fifth birthday, Bialik celebrated his accomplishments in Hebrew by crowning him 'the creator of the nusah' Bialik s extravagant praise suggests that Abramovitsh (whom he calls Mendele) is the true original, and after him modern Hebrew writers could scarcely hope to be more than his epigones. This simplistic and overstated theory of the nusah found supporters throughout the twentieth century. Even today, some critics write as if the main line of modern Hebrew literature connects Abramovitsh and Bialik through S.Y. Agnon, or through an ů-nusah authors such as Y.H. Brenner to the present. Following Bialik, many twentieth-century writers saw the nusah as a decisive influence, although they often tried to avoid its commonplaces and probably did not want to be perceived as epigones. In order to escape from this one-sided version of literary his-