ABSTRACT
Many European Jewish artists of the early twentieth century who joined in the contemporaneous ferment of modernist trends considered the language of poetic expression a major defining feature. Numerous Jewish writers were equally at home in both Yiddish and Hebrew, and often wrote in both languages at different points in their careers, possibly finding it difficult to choose one exclusively over the other. Markish never affiliated himself explicitly with a specific modernist trend outside his Yiddish literary ‘circle’, yet he was closely attuned to the Russian varieties of international literary modernism, which held that language needed to be freed from the shackles of tradition. The leaders of avant-garde movements such as Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Ego-Futurism, and Imaginism saw their mission in terms of social as well as artistic revolution. Characteristically, Markish employs a verb that is polysemous in Yiddish culture: toyvlen can also refer to baptism, the act that symbolizes conversion to Christianity.
