A Captive of the Dawn: The Life and Work of Peretz Markish (1895-1952)

Peretz Markish (1895-1952), one of Eastern Europe's most important Yiddish poets in the period between the two world wars, was a fiercely independent maverick who published work in all literary genres. Although emerging from the Kiev literary tradition, Markish always went his own way in a literary career spanning four decades and embracing almost all twentieth-century aesthetic movements. After the Revolution, he settled in Poland, but returned to be integrated more closely into Soviet culture than any other Yiddish writer of his generation, receiving the Order of Lenin. It did not save him from Stalin's show-trials of Jewish intellectuals, and he was executed in 1952, but as early as 1955 his writing was being rehabilitated in the Soviet press: a testament to his literary stature. His Yiddish works were widely translated into Russian and Ukrainian, establishing him as a major Russian writer of his times. This new volume serves both as a companion to the life and works of Peretz Markish and as a source-book for future research. A biography and bibliography are combined with some twenty contributed essays by Peretz scholars, surveying the entire corpus of his work and all periods of his career.