Isaac Bashevis Singer
NY Times, Sept. 20, 1964
CAN a folk writer be a genius, and can a genius think and feel just like an average man? If such a phenomenon is possible, Sholem Aleiohem is its closest approximation. He had the creative instincts and the inborn mastery of a genius while, at the same time, holding the common outlook on life of the great majority of his readers. He almost never lifted himself above them.
Sholem Aleichem used the monologue more than any writer of his time, but even when he wrote in the third person, he wrote a disguised monologue in which he always let his heroes tell their own stories. It is their style, their manner of description, their humor, their philosophy that emerges. Even in his memoirs, the reader has the impression that it is not Sholem Aleichem who is speaking, but one of the heroes of his fiction.
Actually, his hero is the same person under various guises, nearly al Solomon Rabinowitz, celebrated under the pseudonym of Sholem Aleichem was born in 1859. near Kiev, Russia, came to this country in 1906, and died in. the Bronx, New York City, in 1916. The New York Times asked Isaac Bashevis Singer, prominent Yiddish poet and author, for an appraisal of Sholem Aleichem and his beloved Tevye. ways a schlemiel, a half or complete pauper, a faithful husband, a loving father, a man who can laugh at himself and at his milieu—not in anger but good – naturedly. And if a genius cannot be sentimental, then Sholem Aleichem is not a genius. He is sentimental in all his works, but his sentimentality is redeemed by its utter genuineness, which shows no trace of artifice and is therefore never vulgar. His laughter is as genuine as his tears.
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