Book Description

Excerpt from The Evolution of Modern Hebrew Literature, 1850-1912 In writing this book, I have had in view not so much the appreciation of the individual authors and their productions per se, as their relation to the period in which they lived, the ideas and emotions by which they were, consciously or unconsciously, actuated, and what they contributed, as individuals or as a class, to the development of Hebrew literature. In short, I purpose to give here the evolution of the latter rather than its history, in the common sense of the term. This mode of treatment has been more and more pursued by literary historians since Taine; and should, in particular, be followed by any one that writes for a reading public to whom the literature treated is entirely foreign. Readers such as these are certainly more interested in the trend of thought, in the flux and flow of ideas, and in the artistic temperament of the period as a whole and in the literature as a whole, than in any particular writer. Hence, some authors, who would otherwise deserve a fuller treatment, have been dealt with rather summarily. For though as individual writers they may be of very high standing, yet their contribution to the development of Hebrew literature may have been less marked than that of other writers of inferior talent, who have, nevertheless, formed links in the chain of this development, and who have consequently been treated more fully. I have selected as my subject the period between the fifties of the last century and our own time, and I did not go back to the middle of the eighteenth century, which is generally considered the terminus a quo of modern Hebrew literature, for the following reason. As I am here dealing mainly with belles-lettres and allied branches, I could have found very little scope in the literature of the hundred years preceding the middle of the nineteenth century. The novel in Hebrew had not yet been produced. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.