ABSTRACT
Warsaw emerged as a centre of modern Yiddish culture in the 1880s owing to a variety of factors. Hebrew printing in general and Yiddish secular printing in particular were subjected to less severe restrictions in Congress Poland than in the rest of the Pale. Although the exact time of Peretz Markish’s first arrival in Warsaw is uncertain, he most probably first came to the capital in early 1921 via Vilna. Literary journals were part and parcel of any Yiddish modernist group.13 Warsaw alone could boast four periodicals- Mikhoel Vaykhert’s and Alter Katsizne’s Ringen , Uri Zvi Grinberg’s Albatros , Melech Ravitch’s Di Vog , and Peretz Markish’s Khalyastre. In Markish’s concept cultural activity is fuelled by certain basic ideals, which he called primitivn, ‘primitive principles’. Markish also pointed out that art, as an organic product of culture, could and should grow independently of any norms or restrictions that cultural institutions might want to impose on it.
