ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to redress the balance by giving priority to aesthetics over politics in analysing David Bergelson's writing about the revolution. It analyses the experimental features of two works which chronologically frame the beginning and the end of Bergelson's transformation into a revolutionary writer: the long short story 'Tsugvintn' and the novel Mides-hadin. Bergelson's third complete novel, Mides-hadin, marked a watershed between his modernist and socialist-realist periods. Bergelson was not a Yiddish Bunin or Galsworthy, but rather an experimental writer, an artistic innovator constantly searching for new ways in which to portray changing reality. Bergelson invented new narrative techniques which enabled him to tell the story of the revolution through innovative expressive devices and from multiple perspectives. Mides-hadin represents one of Yiddish prose writing's most ambitious experiments, in which Bergelson succeeded in creating a complex, multi-layered narrative driven by a somewhat primitive thriller-like plot.
