ABSTRACT
Considering Der Nister's reputation as an elitist modernist with an inclination to mystical symbolism, it may come as a surprise that in the 1920s he was celebrated by some leading Soviet critics as a harbinger of new revolutionary art. In his symbolist tales Der Nister rediscovered the 'cosmic materiality of the world', wrote Nokhum Oyslender in 1924. Another admirer of Der Nister was Moyshe Litvakov, the influential Communist critic and the powerful editor of the Moscow newspaper Der emes [The Truth], the Yiddish equivalent of the Russian Pravda. In 1934 Der Nister decided to write a letter to his brother Mod (Max Kaganovitch) who by that time already owned a prominent art gallery in Paris. Although in The Family Mashber the town and the wanderer are depicted in the realistic manner, their symbolic core remains essentially the same as in Der Nister's earlier texts.
