ABSTRACT
Literary manifestos in modern Yiddish letters have already been partly touched upon. This chapter discusses some of the important ideas concerning language and literature and, at the same time, to approach the manifesto as an artistic text performing the proclaimed aesthetics. Two important texts from Peretz Markish’s avant-garde period, Estetik fun kamf in der moderner dikhtung and an introduction to the almanac Khalyastre, will be subjected to a more thorough analysis. Reflection on language was one of the leitmotifs of modernist thought that was also taken up by Markish directly. However, one of his most important texts to deal with the problem of language is his manifesto opening the Khalyastre almanac. It is by no means a balanced consideration of the problem but is rather its metaphoric illustration. It is, as it were, not a discursive reflection but a poetic performance of it.
