This essay attempts to trace development of Ludwig Lewisohn, novelist and literary critic, from German-American Jew trying to merge into mainstream culture to committed Zionist and foe of assimilation that he became in his later years. The process is recorded in three volumes of his autobiography: Up Stream (1923), Mid-Channel (1929) and Haven (1940). Lewisohn is otherwise best known for Expression in America (1932), literary history, and for two of his novels, The Case of Mr. Crump (1926) and The Island Within (1928). Always attentive to questions of form, Lewisohn regarded autobiography as an art form and narrative, not just simply a method of reporting.1 Very consciously, he wanted to use events of his life as basis for creating novelistic, and also poetic, literary structures. To considerable extent he succeeded in achieving this aim through lyric beauty of his style and his powers of observation and narration. One of his devices was double perspective, in which he mixed narration of his early life with authorial comment by himself, middle-aged writer. When he published first volume of his autobiography he was changed man, and dramatically so, looking back on mistakes and illusions of an earlier self. As he put it, my present self is ... far removed from that old, boyish self in Queenshaven [Charleston] with its deep faith and ardor.2 Much of Up Stream is full of longing, of nostalgia and poetic renderings of former times and places. The author's earliest recollections of his German childhood were of homely and familiar comfort (11) of apartments and streets of Berlin in 1880s. He recalled beauty of certain porcelain figures observed in window and the great sight of public square that he never saw without a lifting of heart (12). These details suggest recurring themes in Lewisohn's work: quest for security and love in family setting and love of an esthetic perfection that contains seeds of metaphysical revelation.