THE HARBINGER OF JEWISH NATIONALISM (PEREZ SMOLENSKIN) The artistic portrayer of life was, however, a rare exception in the literature of the Haskalah.

Riven by social and cultural strife, the period of enlightenment called rather for theories than for art, and the novelist no less than the publicist was called upon to supply the want.
This theoretic element was paramount in the novels of Perez Smolenskin.
(1842-1885), the editor of the popular Hebrew magazine _ha-Shahar_.

[1] The pupil of a White Russian yeshibah, he afterwards drifted into frivolous Odessa and still later to Vienna, suffering painfully from the shock of the contrast.

Personally he had emerged unscathed from this conflict of ideas.

But round about him he witnessed "the dead bodies of enlightenment, which are just as numerous as the victims of ignorance." He saw the Jewish youth fleeing from its people and forgetting its national language.