anxiety, and the struggle — when it lives alongside the new. And then when the old rises up, clinging to life, and the new rebels, demanding its share of life.

A similar incident happened to me some months ago, with one of our women story writers — although I was wearing a dress that she herself wears. But the essence of the difference between us was the "literary dress."

I entered her office; she drew back a little when she saw me, and fell silent... as though her lips were too sacred to argue with "a fledg-ling like me." The atmosphere of silence weighed heavy around us, and soon she grew vexed — exactly like my grandmother — and began to defend the old dress,

and presented me with a great deal of advice...

Among it: that I withdraw from writing, because in literature there are barriers hard to cross... and however much "we little ones" try to create and to originate, we shall remain in the depths, our cries and the scratching of our pens fading away amid the chasms of darkness and emptiness...

And "the little fledgling" is a callow child who tries to imitate, and will be good at nothing but imitation, and then believes that he is truly a writer. And she gave me an example of this:

If he wants to describe nature, he uses the phrases he finds in his book:

"The sun rose in its heights and sent down its golden threads upon a green carpet of brocade."

If he sings of the emotion of motherhood, he cries out: "She who rocks the cradle with her right hand rocks the world with her left?"

And if patriotic zeal seizes him, he shouts with all the life that is in him: "I would ransom you with my soul, O my homeland!"

And she went on — the new writer does not succeed, and may not even understand, the presentation of social problems, and then the criticism and analysis of the old literary heritage, or the world's.