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ABSTRACT
Chatrydag (1919), a poem cycle of 36 sonnets, is an early masterpiece of Peretz Markish. Offering one of the first descriptions in Yiddish of the Crimean Peninsula, it can be read as a counterpart to Adam Mickiwicz’s Crimean Sonnets. Markish makes innovative use of modernist poetics within the classical format of the sonnet. As is the case with a number of Russian poets, he presents a romanticized, “Middle Eastern” Crimea, filled with details of Muslim life. Although none of the sonnets depict Jews or Jewish themes, some of their imagery suggests that Markish is pointing to Crimea as a future Promised Land for Soviet Jews.
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Notes
1 In Yiddish, Chaterdag, but I use the spelling Chatyrdag, because it is closer to the phonetic norm.
2 Crimea was the birthplace and the home of two Jewish Turkic-speaking ethnic groups – Krymchaks and Karaites. However, Markish did not mention any Jewish communities or Jewish historical sites in his Crimean cycle.
3 Markish, Chatyrdag (Stikhotvorenia i poemy), 677.
4 Markish, Chaterdag (Stam), 135.
5 Here and throughout, all translations from Yiddish, Polish, and Russian are mine.
6 Translations of Crimean Sonnets into Yiddish were done at a fairly high level and in full only in 1955, by Leib Olitsky. See Mitskevich, Poezye, 15–32.
7 Mickiewicz, Sonety krymskie, 10.
8 Mitskevich, Chatyrdag (Iz tsikla "Ktymskie sonety"), 387.
9 Markish, Chaterdag (Stam), 135.
10 Pushkin, Bakhchisariskiy Fontan, 143.
11 Bunin, Grobnitsa Rakhili, Ierusalim, 274–275.
12 Finkin, “With Footsteps Marking Roundabout Paths.”
13 Pushkin, Otryvki iz "Putehestvia Onegina," 187.
14 On the ideological aspects of Jewish agricultural colonization in the Crimean steppes, see Dymshits, Historical Chance.
15 Maykovskiy, Evrey (Tovarishcham iz Ozeta).
16 Markish, Galil.
17 Hofstein, Kavkaz.
18 Greenberg, Dorem-berg.
19 Mickiewicz, Sonety krymskie, 10.
20 Mitskevich, Chatyrdag (Iz tsikla "Ktymskie sonety"), 387.
21 Markish, Chaterdag (Stam), 135.
22 Ibid., 134.
23 Mani Leyb, A mayse vi azoy eliyohu hanovi …
24 Markish, Chaterdag, 43.
25 Sutskever, Ode tsu der toyb.
26 Sutskever, Ikh hob shtilerheit gebencht aikh, 9.
27 Markish, Chatyrdag (Stikhotvorenia i poemy), 281.
28 See, e.g., Erenburg, Liudi, godi, zhizn, 455–456.
29 Markish-Lazebnikova, The Long Return, 143.
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Valery Dymshits
Valery Dymshits is a professor in the Liberal Arts and Science Department at St. Petersburg State University and a researcher and lecturer at the European University at St. Petersburg. He teaches Jewish ethnography and folklore, history of Yiddish and Russian–Jewish literature and Jewish fine arts.