DELIVERANCE
DELIVERANCE
BY MAX SIMON NORDAU
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The fame of “Degeneration,” that vigorous polemic against abnormal vice, has so overshadowed Max Nordau’s other literary accomplishments that it will be a surprise to many American readers to see his name among the master foreign writers of short stories. “Degeneration” has only an ethical value and does not rank by any means with the author’s best literary work, for he has written, besides short stories of great merit, novels, essays, satires, critiques—all more or less bold attacks on existing conventionalities.Nordau was born a Jew at Buda-Pesth. For a while he was a teacher, then he studied medicine, and after six years of travel returned and practised his profession of medicine, first at Buda-Pesth and afterward at Paris, where he settled, and is now a prominent leader in the Zionist movement in Europe.
The fame of “Degeneration,” that vigorous polemic against abnormal vice, has so overshadowed Max Nordau’s other literary accomplishments that it will be a surprise to many American readers to see his name among the master foreign writers of short stories. “Degeneration” has only an ethical value and does not rank by any means with the author’s best literary work, for he has written, besides short stories of great merit, novels, essays, satires, critiques—all more or less bold attacks on existing conventionalities.
Nordau was born a Jew at Buda-Pesth. For a while he was a teacher, then he studied medicine, and after six years of travel returned and practised his profession of medicine, first at Buda-Pesth and afterward at Paris, where he settled, and is now a prominent leader in the Zionist movement in Europe.
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