Monish

First published in 1888, this poem was recognized in its day as the first self-consciously modern poem written in Yiddish and understood retrospectively as a founding moment of modern secular Yiddish language culture. Peretz revised the poem significantly several times in the years that followed, removing or refining elements that came to seem outmoded as Yiddish culture itself matured; the excerpt offered here, representing the first half of the poem, is from the final 1908 version.