ANSKY Introduction

Ansky's dramatically changed focus after 1905 could not but provide a glaring contrast to his earlier life. Speaking at a 1910 banquet in his honor in St. Petersburg, Ansky expressed anguish and a conviction that he had earlier abandoned his people.

 

"Bearing within me an eternal yearning toward Jewry," he confessed to his audience in Russian, "I nevertheless turned in all directions and went to labor on behalf of another people. My life was broken, severed, ruptured. Many years of my life passed on this frontier, on the border between two worlds. Therefore, I beg you, on this twenty-fifth year of summing up my literary work, to eliminate sixteen years." [Read more about Ansky's dramatic return to his people. ]