SOURCE: "Dovid Bergelson: Novelist of Psychological Refinement," in Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers, Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1968, pp. 426-48.

In the following excerpt, Madison presents an overview of Bergelson's life and work.

Dovid Bergelson was born near Kiev in 1884. His father, already elderly, was a Hasid, well versed in Hebrew religious tradition, a wealthy merchant in lumber and wheat. The most prominent citizen in town, he frequently entertained neighboring businessmen and pious scholars. Dovid, a precocious child, readily absorbed the talk at his father's table as well as the personal peculiarities of the participants. At the age of four he began going to kheder, and for the next decade studied Hebrew books on Judaism. In 1901, with both his parents dead, he went to Kiev to live with a much older brother. By that time he was already reading Russian and Hebrew books and felt quite at...