Perez Markisch

Age Kacyzne , Perez Markisch and Moyshe Broderzon in the twenties (from left to right)

Peretz Markish ( Russian : Перец Давидович Маркиш, Yiddish : פּרץ מאַרקיש, including: Peretz Markish or Markish; * 7. December 1895 in Polonnoje , volhynian governorate , Russian Empire [now Polonne, Ukraine ]; † 12 or 13. August 1952 in Moscow ) was a Soviet revolutionary lyric poet who enriched the Yiddish language with many new expressions and phrases and introduced a previously unheard-of pace and pulsation into it. Unlike Kwitko , he was not only a staunch communist , but also a conscious Jew and clearly emphasized the Jewish part in the revolution and socialist construction.

Life

Perez Markisch came from an originally Sephardic family. As a child he sang in the synagogue choir of Berditschew from 1906 and later attended school in Odessa . In 1916 he was drafted into the army . Released from military service because of a slight wound at the front , Markish went to Yekaterinoslav .

Since 1917 his poems and essays have appeared in various journals. In 1919 he published his first collection of songs under the title Schweln ("thresholds"). In 1921 Markisch held public lectures on modern poetry and recited his own works. His poem Die Kupe (for example: “Der Trümmerhaufen”) about a pogrom , published at this time, made him the spokesman for the revolutionary Yiddish young poets in Poland and a powerful voice in the Kiev group; henceforth works by him appeared in many Jewish magazines and collector's books in the Soviet Union , Poland and the USA .

At that time he led an unsteady life and frequently changed his whereabouts: Berlin , Warsaw , London , Paris , Rome etc. In Paris he edited the expressionist collector's book Chaliastra together with Oser Warschawski . In 1924 he was one of the co-founders and since then also editor of the Literary Bleter in Warsaw.

Peretz Markisch returned to the Soviet Union in 1926. He belonged to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and was initially intended to accompany Solomon Michoels on his missions abroad (especially in the USA), but was replaced by the poet and NKVD informant Itzik Feffer . Despite Markisch's revolutionary attitude and although he had received the Stalin Prize , the Soviet Union's highest civilian award, in 1946 , he too fell victim to the Stalinist purges . Arrested in 1948, on the orders of Beria , Markisch was shot together with about thirty other Jewish personalities on the night of the murdered poets from August 12 to 13, 1952 in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow .

Some of his works have been translated into Russian by Anna Andreevna Akhmatova .

Works (selection)

• Smolder, 1919
• schtam, Jekaterinoslaw 1920 (2nd edition Warsaw 1922)
• Piss and Pass, 1920
• Inmitn weg, Yekaterinoslav 1920
• Wolin, Wilna 1921 (Poem)
• Di kupe, Kiev 1922 (Poem about the pogroms in Ukraine)
• Chaliaßre Almanach ( collector's book , 1922; including the poem Wochntog and the essay On ajnschluss, directed against Jewish writers in emigration ; the second volume, published in Paris, was illustrated by Chagall)
• Owntschoen, Kiev 1922
• Radio, Warsaw 1923 (Poem)
• Sang-Gesang ( song series, which takes up the four seasons, ca.1926)
• The galaganer hon, drawings by Joseph Tschaikow , in Yiddish first Berlin 1922. In Yiddish and in German translation contained in: David Bergelson, Lejb Kwitko, Peretz Markisch, Ber Smoliar : Der Galaganer Hahn. Yiddish children's books from Berlin; Yiddish and German. Translated from Yiddish and edited. by Andrej Jendrusch. Ed. DODO, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-934351-06-9 .
• Farbajgejendik, ca.1927 (collection of essays)
• Brider, 1929 (epic poem, glorification of the sacrificial death of two proletarian brothers who gave their lives to the revolution)
• Dor ojß, dor ajn, 1929 (on the coming and going of generations in the Russian shtetlech)
• Ejnß ojf ejnß, 1934 (novel about the heroic story of a Jewish mason who leaves America to help build socialist Russia)
• Poeme wegn ßalinen ("Ode to Stalin"), 1940
• Milchome, 1948 ("War", his main work on which he had worked for years: a 20,000 line epic about the Second World War)

literature

• Litwakow, in: Book World, 1919.
• Halpern, in: Our Tog, 1921.
• Hillel Zeitlin, in: Moment, 1921.
• I. Singer, in: Bücherwelt, 1925.
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. IV, Orient Printer, Chernivtsi 1930.
• Salman Reisen : Lekßikon fun der Yidischer literature un press. Vilnius 1926–1930.
• Literary papers, May 19, 1929.
• Ilja Ehrenburg : People - Years - Lives (Memoirs). Vol. II: 1923-1941. Munich 1962, special edition Munich 1965, ISBN 3-463-00512-3 , pp. 122–127 (portrait).
• Günter Stemberger : History of Jewish Literature. 1977.
• Joseph Sherman (Ed.): A captive of the dawn. The life and work of Peretz Markish (1895-1952). Legenda, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-906540-52-4 .

Web links

Commons : Perez Markisch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Boris Sandler: Peretz Markish . Section Tog bay tog - Yidish-calendar, ed. by The Forward , dated December 7, 2015 (Yiddish, with English subtitles).
• Two poems by Perez Markisch (Yiddish - Latin transcription - English translation) (PDF file; 331 kB)