Six Plays of the Yiddish Theatre Volume 1 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... DAVID PINSKI By reason of the chaste art, the modern technique and the pregnant vision of his best plays, David Pinski is entitled to be considered the most significant of contemporary Jewish dramatists. In him the satiric spirit of Goldfaden and the theatrical talents of Jacob Gordin are fused in an artistry greater than that attained by either of his noted predecessors; he represents the latest and best phase of the rapid'and irregular evolution of the Jewish drama since the foundation of the Yiddish stage, in Roumania,in 1876 by Abraham Goldfaden. Pinski was born at Mobilov, Russia, in 1872. Early moving to Moscow, he was forced to leave in 1892 at the time of the expulsion of the Jews. Proceeding to Warsaw, he began to write the stories of proletarian life in the Russian ghetto which first brought him recognition. Pinski soon went to Berlin for study. In 1899 he came to New York to assume the duties of literary editor upon a Socialist weekly. He has also been a student at Columbia University. "Like all the more notable masters of the modern theatre," says Ludwig Lewisohn, "he started out as a consistent naturalist, embodying in 'Eisik SchefteV and in other plays the struggle and tragedy of the Jewish proletariat; like them he has, in later years, cultivated vision and imagination in 'The Eternal Jew' and 'The Dumb Messiah' and a series of exquisite plays in one act dealing with the loves of King David. These plays are written in a rhythmic prose created by Pinski himself. That prose is as subtly beautiful as Maeterlinck's or Yeats'; in passion and reality the Jewish playwright surpasses both." Among the better known of Pinski's longer plays is "The Treasure", produced in Berlin (1910) in a German translation, by Max Rheinhardt. The...