Chapter Eight
A Novelist
Altho Abraham Cahan began his literary career as a Yiddish writer for the Ghetto newspapers his important work has been written and published in English. His work as a Yiddish writer was of an almost exclusively educational character. This at once establishes an important distinction between him and the Yiddish sketch-writers considered in the foregoing chapter. A still more vital distinction is that arising from the relative quality of his work, which as opposed to that of the Yiddish writers, is more of the order of the story or of the novel than of the sketch. Cahan"s work is more developed and more mature as art than that of the other men, who remain essentially sketch-writers. Even in their longer stories what is good is the occasional flash of life, the occasional picture, and this does not imply characters and theme developed sufficiently to put them in the category of the novel. Rather than for the art they reveal they are interesting for the sincere way in which they present a life intimately known. In fact the literary talent of the Ghetto consists almost exclusively in the short sketch. To this general rule Abraham Cahan comes the nearest to forming an exception. Even in his work the sketch element predominates; but in one long story at least something more is successfully achieved; in his short stories there is often much circ.u.mstance and development; and he has now finished the first draft of a long novel. His stories have appeared from time to time in the leading English magazines, and there are two volumes with which the discriminating American and English public is familiar, _Yekl_ and _The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories_. As well as his work Cahan"s life too is of unusual interest. He had a picturesque career as a Socialist and an editor in the Ghetto.
Abraham Cahan was born in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, Russia, in 1860. He went as a boy to the Jewish "chaider," but took an early and overpowering interest in the Russian language and ideas. He graduated from the _Teacher"s Inst.i.tute_ at Vilna, and was appointed government teacher in the town of Velizh, Province of Vitebsk. Here he became interested, altho not active, in the anarchistic doctrines which filled the intellectual atmosphere of the day; and, feeling that his liberty and activity were endangered by a longer sojourn in Russia, he came to America in 1882, when a time of severe poverty and struggle ensued.
From the first he, like most Russian Jews of intelligence, was identified with the Socialist movement in the New York Ghetto; he threw himself into it with extraordinary activity and soon became a leader in the quarter. He was an eloquent and impa.s.sioned speaker, went twice abroad as the American-Jewish delegate to Socialist congresses, and was the most influential man connected with the weekly _Arbeiterzeitung_, of which he became editor in 1893. This paper, as has been explained in a former chapter, for several years carried on an aggressive warfare in the cause of labor and Socialism, and attempted also to educate the people to an appreciation of the best realistic Russian writers, such as Tolstoi, Turgenieff and Chekhov. It was under Cahan"s editorship of this weekly, and also of the monthly _Zukunft_, a journal of literature and social science, that some of the realistic sketch-writers of the quarter discovered their talent; and for a time both literature and Socialism were as vigorous as they were young in the colony.
Literature, however, was at that time to Cahan only the handmaiden of education. His career as an east side writer was that primarily of the teacher. He wished not merely to educate the ignorant ma.s.ses of the people in the doctrines of Socialism, but to teach them the rudiments of science and literature. For that reason he wrote in the popular "jargon," popularized science, wrote Socialistic articles, exhorted generally. Occasionally he published humorous sketches, intended, however, always to point a moral or convey some needed information. In literature, as such, he was not at that time interested as an author.
It was only several years later, when he took up his English pen, that he attempted to put into practice the ideas about what const.i.tutes real literature to which he had been trying to educate the Ghetto.
The fierce individualism which in spite of Socialistic doctrine is a characteristic of the intellectual element in the Ghetto soon brought about its weakening effects. The inevitable occurred. Quarrels grew among the Socialists, the party was split, each faction organized a Socialist newspaper, and the movement consequently lost in significance and general popularity. In 1896 Cahan resigned his editorship, and retired disgusted from the work.
From that time on his interest in Socialism waned, altho he still ranges himself under that banner; and his other absorbing interest, realistic literature, grew apace, until it now absorbs everything else. As is the case with many imaginative and emotional men he is predominantly of one intellectual pa.s.sion. When he was an active Socialist he wanted to be nothing else. He gave up his law studies, and devoted himself to an unremunerative public work. When the fierce but small personal quarrels began which brought about the present confused condition of Socialism in the Ghetto, Cahan"s always strong admiration for the Russian writers of genius and their literary school led him to experiment in the English language, which gave a field much larger than the "jargon." Always a reformer, always filled with some idea which he wished to propagate through the length and breadth of the land, Cahan took up the cause of realism in English fiction with the same pa.s.sion and energy with which he had gone in for Socialism.
He became a partisan in literature just as he had been a partisan in active life. He admired among Americans W. D. Howells, who seemed to him to write in the proper spirit, but he felt that Americans as a cla.s.s were hopelessly "romantic," "unreal," and undeveloped in their literary tastes and standards. He set himself to writing stories and books in English which should at least be genuine artistic transcripts from life, and he succeeded admirably in keeping out of his work any obvious doctrinaire element--which points to great artistic self-restraint when one considers how full of his doctrine the man is.
Love of truth, indeed, is the quality which seems to a stranger in the Ghetto the great virtue of that section of the city. Truth, pleasant or unpleasant, is what the best of them desire. It is true that, in the reaction from the usual "affable" literature of the American book-market, these realists rather prefer the unpleasant. That, however, is a sign of energy and youth. A vigorous youthful literature is always more apt to breathe the spirit of tragedy than a literature more mature and less fresh. And after all, the great pa.s.sion of the intellectual quarter results in the consciously held and warmly felt principle that literature should be a transcript from life. Cahan represents this feeling in its purest aspect; and is therefore highly interesting not only as a man but as a type. This pa.s.sion for truth is deeply infused into his literary work.
The aspects of the Ghetto"s life which would naturally hold the interest of the artistic observer are predominatingly its characteristic features--those qualities of character and conditions of social life which are different from the corresponding ones in the old country. Cahan came to America a mature man with the life of one community already a familiar thing to him. It was inevitable therefore that his literary work in New York should have consisted largely in fiction emphasizing the changed character and habits of the Russian Jew in New York; describing the conditions of immigration and depicting the clash between the old and the new Ghetto and the way the former insensibly changes into the latter. In this respect Cahan presents a great contrast to the simple Libin, who merely tells in heartfelt pa.s.sionate way the life of the poor sweat-shop Jew in the city, without consciously taking into account the relative nature of the phenomena. His is absolute work as far as it goes, as straight and true as an arrow, and implies no knowledge of other conditions. Cahan presents an equally striking contrast to the work of men like Gordin and Gorin, the best part of which deals with Russian rather than New York life.
If Cahan"s work were merely the transcribing in fiction form of a great number of suggestive and curious "points" about the life of the poor Russian Jew in New York, it would not of course have any great interest to even the cultivated Anglo-Saxon reader, who, tho he might find the stories curious and amusing for a time, would recognize nothing in them sufficiently familiar to be of deep importance to him.
If, in other words, the stories had lacked the universal element always present in true literature they would have been of very little value to anyone except the student of queer corners. When however the universal element of art is present, when the special conditions are rendered sympathetic by the touch of common human nature, the result is pleasing in spite of the foreign element; it is even pleasing because of that element; for then the pleasure of easily understanding what is unfamiliar is added to the charm of recognizing the old objects of the heart and the imagination.
Cahan"s stories may be divided into two general cla.s.ses: those presenting primarily the special conditions of the Ghetto to which the story and characters are subordinate; and those in which the special conditions and the story fuse together and mutually help and explain one another. These two--the "information" element and the "human nature" element--struggle for the mastery throughout his work. In the most successful part of the stories the "human nature" element masters, without suppressing, that of special information.
The substance of Cahan"s stories, what they have deliberately to tell us about the New York Ghetto, is, considering the limited volume of his work, rich and varied. It includes the description of much that is common to the Jews of Russia and the Jews of New York--the picture of the orthodox Jew, the pious rabbi, the marriage customs, the religious holidays, etc. But the orthodox foreign element is treated more as a background on which are painted in contrasting lights the moral and physical forms resulting from the particular colonial conditions. The falling away of the children in filial respect and in religious faith, the consequent despair of the parents, who are influenced only in superficial ways by their new environment; the alienation of "progressive" husbands from "old-fashioned" wives; the inst.i.tution of "the boarder," a source of frequent domestic trouble; the tendency of the "new" daughters of Israel to select husbands for themselves in spite of ancient authority and the "Vermittler," and their ambition to marry doctors and lawyers instead of Talmudical scholars; the professional letter-writers through whom ignorant people in the old country and their ignorant relatives here correspond; the falling-off in respect for the Hebrew scholar and the rabbi, the tendency to read in the Astor library and do other dreadful things implying interest in American life, to eat _treife_ food, talk American slang, and hate being called a "greenhorn," _i. e._, an old-fashioned Jew; how a "Mister" in Russia becomes a "Shister" (shoemaker) in New York, and a "Shister" in Russia becomes a "Mister" in New York; how women lay aside their wigs and men shave their beards and ride in horse-cars on Sat.u.r.day: all these things and more are told in more or less detail in Cahan"s English stories. Anyone who followed the long series of Barge Office sketches which during the last few years Cahan has published anonymously in the _Commercial Advertiser_, would be familiar in a general way with the different types of Jews who come to this country, with the reasons for their immigration and the conditions which confront them when they arrive. Many of these hastily conceived and written newspaper reports have plenty of life--are quick, rather formless, flashes of humor and pathos, and contain a great deal of implicit literature. But the salient quality of this division of Cahan"s work is the amount of strange and picturesque information which it conveys.
Many of his more carefully executed stories which have appeared from time to time in the magazines are loaded down with a like quant.i.ty of information, and while all of them have marked vitality, many are less intrinsically interesting, from the point of view of human nature, than even the Barge Office sketches. A marked instance of a story in which the information element overpoweringly predominates is "The Daughter of Reb Avrom Leib," published in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ for May, 1900. The tale opens with a picture of Aaron Zalkin, who is lonely. It is Friday evening, and for the first time since he left his native town he enters a synagogue. Then we have a succession of minutely described customs and objects which are interesting in themselves and convey no end of "local color." We learn that orthodox Jewish women have wigs, we read of the Holy Ark, the golden shield of David, the illuminated _omud_, the reading platform in the centre, the faces of the worshippers as they hum the Song of Songs, and then the cantor and the cantor"s daughter. We follow the cantor in his ceremonies and prayers. Zalkin is thrilled by the ceremony and thrilled by the girl. But only a word is given to him before the story goes back to picturing the scene, Reb Avrom Leib"s song and the actions of the congregation. In the second division of the story Zalkin goes again the next Friday night to the synagogue, and the result is that he wants to marry the girl. So he sends a "marriage agent" to the cantor, the girl"s father. Then he goes to "view the bride," and incidentally we learn that the cantor has two sons who are "American boys," and "will not turn their tongues to a Hebrew word."
When the old man finds that Zalkin is a Talmudic scholar he is startled and delighted and wants him for a son-in-law. They try to outquote one another, shouting and gesticulating "in true Talmudic fashion." There is a short scene between the two young people, the wedding-day is deferred till the "Nine Days" are over, for "who would marry while one was mourning the Fall of the Temple?" And it is suggested that Sophie is not quite content. Then there is a scene where Zalkin chants the Prophets, where the betrothal articles, "a mixture of Chaldaic and Hebrew," are read and a plate is thrown on the floor to make a severance of the ceremony "as unlikely as would be the reunion of the broken plate." Then there are more quotations from the cantor, a detailed picture of the services of the Day of Atonement, of the Rejoicing of the Law, blessing the Dedication Lights, The Days of Awe, and the Rejoicing of the Law again. The old man"s character is made very vivid, and the dramatic situation--that of a Jewish girl who, after the death of her father, marries in compliance with his desire--is picturesquely handled. But the theme is very slight. Most of the detail is devoted to making a picture, not of the changing emotions in the characters and the development of the human story, but of the religious customs of the Jews. The emphasis is put on information rather than on the theme, and consequently the story does not hold the interest strongly.
Many of Cahan"s other short stories suffer because of the learned intention of the author. We derive a great deal of information and we generally get the "picture," but it often requires an effort to keep the attention fixed on what is unfamiliar and at the same time so apart from the substance of the story that it is merely subordinate detail.
In these very stories, however, there is much that is vigorous and fresh in the treatment and characterization; and a vein of lyric poetry is frequent, as in the delightful _Ghetto Wedding_, the story of how a poor young Jewish couple spend their last cent on an elaborate wedding-feast, expecting to be repaid by the presents, and thus enabled to furnish their apartment. The gifts don"t turn up, only a few guests are present, and the young people, after the ceremony, go home with nothing but their enthusiastic love. The _navete_ and simplicity of the lovers, the implicit sympathy with them, and a kind of gentle satire, make this little story a gem for the poet.
_The Imported Bridegroom_ is a remarkable character sketch and contains several very strong and interesting descriptions. Asriel Stroon is the central figure and lives before the mind of the reader.
He is an old Jew who has made a business success in New York, and retired, when he has a religious awakening and at the same time a great longing for his old Russian home Pravly. He goes back to Pravly on a visit, and the description of his sensations the day he returns to his home is one of the best examples of the essential vitality of Cahan"s work. This long story contains also a most amusing scene where Asriel outbids a famous rich man of the town for a section in the synagogue and triumphs over him, too, in the question of a son-in-law.
There is in Pravly a "prodigy" of holiness and Talmudic learning, Shaya, whom Reb Lippe wants for his daughter, but Asriel wants him too, and being enormously rich, carries him off in triumph to his daughter in America. But Flora at first spurns him. He is a "greenhorn," a scholar, not a smart American doctor such as she has dreamed of. Soon, however, Shaya, who is a great student, learns English and mathematics, and promises Flora to become a doctor. The first thing he knows he is a freethinker and an American, and Flora now loves him. They keep the terrible secret from the old man, but he ultimately sees Shaya going into the Astor Library and eating food in a _treife_ restaurant. His resentment is pathetic and intense, but the children marry, and the old man goes to Jerusalem with his faithful servant.
The book, however, in which there is a perfect adaptation of "atmosphere" and information to the dramatic story is _Yekl_. In this strong, fresh work, full of buoyant life, the Ghetto characters and environment form an integral part.
_Yekl_ indeed ought to be well known to the English reading public. It is a book written and conceived in the English language, is essentially idiomatic and consequently presents no linguistic difficulties. It gives a great deal of information about what seems to me by far the most interesting section of foreign New York. But what ought to count more than anything else is that it is a genuine piece of literature; picturing characters that live in art, in an environment that is made real, and by means of a story that is vital and significant and that never flags in interest. In its quality of freshness and buoyancy it recalls the work of Turgenieff. None of Cahan"s later work, tho most of it has vital elements, stands in the same cla.s.s with this fundamentally sweet piece of literature. It takes a worthy place with the best Russian fiction, with that school of writers who make life actual by the sincere handling of detail in which the simple everyday emotions of unspoiled human nature are portrayed. The English cla.s.sic novel, greatly superior in the rounded and contemplative view of life, has yet nothing since Fielding comparable to Russian fiction in vivid presentation of the details of life. This whole school of literature can, I believe, be compared in quality more fittingly with Elizabethan drama than anything which has intervened in English literature; not of course with those maturer dramas in which there is a great philosophical treatment of human life, but in the lyric freshness and imaginative vitality which were common to the whole lot of Elizabethan writers.
_Yekl_ is alive from beginning to end. The virtuosity in description which in Cahan"s work sometimes takes the place of literature, is here quite subordinate. Yekl is a sweat-shop Jew in New York who has left a wife and child in Russia in order to make a little home for them and himself in the new world. In the early part of the book he is becoming an "American" Jew, making a little money and taking a great fancy to the smart Jewish girl who wears a "rakish" hat, no wig, talks "United States," and has a profound contempt for the benighted pious "greenhorns" who have just arrived. A sweat-shop girl named Mamie moves his fancy deeply, so that when the faithful wife Gitl and the little boy Yossele arrive at the Barge Office there is evidently trouble at hand. At that place Yekl meets them in a vividly told scene--ill-concealed disquiet on his part and nave alarm at the situation on hers. Gitl"s wig and her subdued, old-fashioned demeanor tell terribly on Yekl"s nerves, and she is shocked by everything that happens to her in America. Their domestic unhappiness develops through a number of characteristic and simple incidents until it results in a divorce. But by that time Gitl is becoming "American" and it is obvious that she is to be taken care of by a young man in the quarter more appreciative than Yekl. The latter finds himself bound to Mamie, the pert "American" girl, and as the book closes is in a fair way to regret the necessity of giving up his newly acquired freedom. This simple, strong theme is treated consistently in a vital presentative way. The idea is developed by natural and constant incident, psychological or physical, rather than by talk. Every detail of the book grows naturally out of the situation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A SWEAT-SHOP GIRL MOVES HIS FANCY DEEPLY]
"Unpleasant" is a word which many an American would give to _Yekl_ on account of its subject. Strong compensating qualities are necessary to induce a publisher or editor to print anything which they think is in subject disagreeable to the big body of American readers, most of whom are women. Without attempting to criticise the "voice of the people,"
it may be pointed out that there are at least two ways in which a book may be "unpleasant." It may be so in the formal theme, the characters, the result--things may come out unhappily, vice triumphant, and the section of life portrayed may be a sordid one. This is the kind of unpleasantness which publishers particularly object to; and in this sense _Yekl_ may fairly be called "unpleasant." Turgenieff"s _Torrents of Spring_ is also in this sense "unpleasant," for it tells how a young man"s sincere and poetic first love is turned to failure and misery by the illegitimate temporary attraction of a fascinating woman of the world. But Turgenieff"s novel is nevertheless full of buoyant vitality, full of freshness and charm, of youth and grace, full of life-giving qualities; because of it we all may live more abundantly.
The same may be said of many another book. When there is sweetness, strength and early vigor in a book the reader is refreshed notwithstanding the theme. And it is noticeable that youth is not afraid of "subjects."
Another way in which a book may be "unpleasant" is in the quality of deadness. Many books with pleasant and moral themes and endings are unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. Even a book great in subject, with much philosophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to the vital qualities, to the effects of spring, to the joy in mere physical life, which are so marked and so genuinely invigorating in the best Russian fiction. The extreme of this kind of unpleasantness is shown in the case of some modern Frenchmen and Italians; not primarily in the theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, of hope; in a sodden maturity, often indeed combined with great qualities of intellect and workmanship, but dead to the little things of life, dead to the feeling of spring in the blood, to nave readiness for experience. An American who is the ant.i.thesis of this kind of thing is Walt Whitman.
His quality put into prose is what we have in the best Russian novels.
In the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, too, it cannot be applied to _Yekl_; for _Yekl_ is youthful and vital. There is buoyant spring in the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it may be.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GITL]
_Apropos_ of Cahan"s love of truth, and that word "unpleasant," a discussion which took place a few years ago on the appearance of Zangwill"s play, _The Children of the Ghetto_, is illuminative. That poetic drama represented the life of the poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy and truth; but for that very reason it was severely criticised by some uptown Israelites. Many of these, no doubt, had religious objections to a display on the stage of those customs and observances of their race which touched upon the "holy law." But some of the rich German Jews, practically identified with American life, and desiring for practical and social purposes to make little of their racial distinction, deprecated literature which portrayed the life of those Jews who still have distinctively national traits and customs. Then, too, there is a tendency among the well-to-do American Jews to look down upon their Ghetto brethren, to regard the old customs as benighted and to treat them with a certain contempt; altho they spend a great deal of charitable money in the quarter. Feeling a little ashamed of the poor Russian east side Jew, they object to a serious literary portrayal of him. They want no attention called to what they deem the less attractive aspects of their race. An uptown Jewish lady, on the appearance in a newspaper of a story about east side Jewish life, wrote a protesting letter to the editor. She told the writer of the sketch, when he was sent to see her, that she could not see why he didn"t write about uptown Jews instead of sordid east side Jews. The scribe replied that he wrote of the Ghetto Jew because he found him interesting, while he couldn"t see anything attractive or picturesque about the comfortable Israelite uptown.
Abraham Cahan"s stories have been subjected to criticism inspired by the same spirit. Feeling the charm of his people he has attempted to picture them as they are, in shadow and light; and has consequently been accused of betraying his race to the Gentiles.
The att.i.tude of the east side Jews towards writers like Zangwill and Cahan is in refreshing contrast. The Yiddish newspapers were enthusiastic about _Children of the Ghetto_, in which they felt the Jews were truthfully and therefore sympathetically portrayed. In the literary sketches and plays now produced in considerable numbers in the "jargon," a great pride of race is manifest. The writers have not lost their self-respect, still abound in their own sense and are consequently vitally interesting. They are full of ideals and enthusiasm and do not object to what is "unpleasant" so strenuously as do their uptown brethren.
Chapter Nine
The Young Art and its Exponents
On Hester Street, east of the Bowery, the poor Jew is revealed in many a characteristic way. It is the home of the sweat-shop, of the crowded tenement-house. Old pedlers, as ragged as the poorest beggars, stand on street corners. In long uninterrupted lines are the carts--containing fruit, cake, dry goods, fish, everything that the proletarian Jew requires. Behind these tower the crowded tenement-houses, with fire-escapes for balconies. Through the middle of the street constantly moves a ma.s.s of people. No vehicle can go rapidly there, for the thoroughfare is literally alive. In the least crowded part of the day, however, tattered little girls may sometimes be seen dancing with natural grace to the music of a hand-organ, the Italian owner of which for some strange reason has embedded himself in the very heart of poverty. Between the lumbering wagons which infest the street at the less busy part of the day these little children wonderfully sway and glide and const.i.tute the only gladsome feature of the scene. Just as Ca.n.a.l Street, with its cafes where the poets, Socialists, scholars and journalists meet, is the mind of the Ghetto, so Hester Street represents its heart. This picturesque street has recently become the study of several young Jewish artists.
The last few years have brought the earliest indications of what may develop into a characteristic Ghetto art. In the course of their long civilization the Jews have never developed a national plastic art.
Devoted to the things of the spirit, in an important period of their history in conflict with the sensuous art of the Greeks, they have never put into external forms the heart of their life. There have been occasional painters and sculptors among them, but these have worked in line with the Gentiles, and have in no way contributed to a typical or national art. With the slackening of the Hebraic religion, however, which prohibits images in the temple--that fertile source of inspiration in Christian art--the conditions have been more favorable, and the beginning of a distinctive Ghetto art has already made its appearance in New York.
On the corner of Hester and Forsyth streets is a tumble-down rickety building. The stairs that ascend to the garret are pestiferous and dingy. In what is more like a shed than a room, with the wooden ribs of the slanting roof curtailing the s.p.a.ce, is the studio of an east side artist. A miserable iron bedstead occupies the narrow strip of floor beneath the descending ceiling. There is one window, which commands a good view of the pushcart market in Hester Street. Near the window is a diminutive oil-stove, on which the artist prepares his tea and eggs. On a peg on the door hang an old mackintosh and an extra coat--his only additional wardrobe. About the narrow walls on the three available sides are easels, and sketches and paintings of Ghetto types.
Jacob Epstein, the name of the artist, has a melancholy wistful face.
He was born in the Ghetto twenty years ago, of poor Jews, who were at first tailors and afterwards small tradespeople, and who had emigrated from Poland. He went to the public schools until he was thirteen years old. Since then he has worked at various jobs. Until recently he was an instructor in the boys" out-door gymnasium near the corner of Hester and Ess.e.x streets. For one summer, in order to get a vacation, he became a farm laborer. His art education as well as his education in general is slight, consisting of two terms at the Art Students"
League. But for so young a man his intellectual, as well as his artistic activity has been considerable. He belongs to a number of debating societies, and is now hesitating in his mind whether to become a Socialist or an Anarchist, altho he is tending towards a humane socialism.
Two things, however, he seems definitely to have settled--that he will devote himself to his art, and that that art shall be the plastic picturing of the life of his people in the Ghetto. He seems to rejoice at having lost his various pot-boiling positions.
"I was not a gymnast," he said cheerfully, explaining why he left the last one, "and now they have a gymnast."
Now he lives alone on his beloved Hester Street and the studio, where he sleeps and eats. For that modest room he pays $4 a month, and as he cooks his own meals, $12 a month is quite sufficient to satisfy all his needs. This amount he can usually manage to make through the sale of his sketches; but when he does not he "goes to bed," as he puts it, and lies low until one of his various little art enterprises brings him in a small check. Withal, he is very happy, altho serious, like his race in general; and full of idealism and ambition. On one occasion the idea occurred to him and to his friend, Bernard Gussow, that men ought to live closer to nature than they can in the Ghetto.
It was in the winter time that they were filled with this conviction, but they nevertheless packed off and hired a farmhouse at Greenwood Lake, and stayed there the whole winter. When their money gave out they cut ice in the river to pay the rent.
"We enjoyed it very much," said Epstein, "but there were no artistic results. The country, much as I love it, is not stimulating. Clouds and trees are not satisfying. It is only in the Ghetto, where there is human nature, that I have ideas for sketches."
With a kind of regret the artist spoke of the beauty of Winslow Homer"s landscape. He called it "epic," and was filled with sorrow that such an art could not be in the Ghetto.
"There is no nature in the sweat-shop," he said, "and yet it is there and in the crowded street that my love and my imagination call me. It is only the minds and souls of my people that fill me with a desire to work."