Peretz Markish’s Chatyrdag: The Jewish Search for Romantic Poetry

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.