First edition. 124, [1] pp., quarto, 214:163 mm., light age staining, wide margins. A good copy bound in the original boards, rubbed.  

This volume contains poetry, short stories, translations into Yiddish and essays by Shemarya Gorelik (1877–1942), Yiddish essayist and literary critic. Much of the Yiddish is vowelized. Born in the Ukraine, he joined the Zionist movement in 1905, after having been an advocate of socialism. He wrote for various Zionist publications, and in 1908 joined S. Niger and A. Veiter in founding and editing Literarishe Monatsshriften, a Vilna literary monthly which attracted writers of diverse ideologies and furthered the Yiddish cultural resurgence that followed the 1908 Czernowitz Yiddish Conference. The periodical gave expression to the new national and romantic-symbolist trends in Yiddish literature. During World War I, Gorelik lived in Switzerland, participated in pacifist agitations, and was sentenced to prison for six months. He later described his experiences during these years in a German volume, Fuenf Jahre im Land Neutralia. After the war, he lived in Germany and contributed to German Zionist periodicals, until forced to leave in 1933. He then settled in Palestine and wrote for the Hebrew press.

Gorelik's Yiddish essays were collected in five volumes (1908–24). A posthumous selection, with an introduction by his brother, M. Horelik, appeared in Los Angeles in 1947. A Hebrew translation of Gorelik's essays by Abraham Shlonsky, was published in Tel Aviv (Massot, 1937). As a literary critic whose studies were impressionistic, Gorelik was not primarily interested in stylistic innovations but rather sought to educate his readers by directing their attention to new insights and ideas.

EJ