Cherkasenko, Spyrydon

Cherkasenko, Spyrydon [Черкасенко, Спиридон; Čerkasenko], b 24 December 1876 in Novyi Buh, Kherson gubernia, d 8 February 1940 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Writer, dramatist, journalist, and pedagogue. Beginning in 1895, he worked as a teacher, primarily in the Donets Basin (1899–1908). He wrote for the daily newspaper Rada (Kyiv), the journal Svitlo (Kyiv), and other magazines. In 1917–18 he worked for the Ukrainian National Republic Ministry of Education, preparing readers and primers for Ukrainian elementary schools. An émigré from 1919, he edited school textbooks in Vienna. From 1929 he lived near Prague. Cherkasenko, whose pseudonyms were Petro Stakh and Provintsial, made his literary debut as a poet in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk in 1904. He published short story collections, including Na shakhti (In the Mine, 1909) and Vony peremohly (They Conquered, 1917). His lyric poetry appeared in three volumes of his Tvory (Works, 1920–2), published in Vienna. His most successful dramas were Kazka staroho mlyna (Tale of the Old Mill, 1914) and Pro shcho tyrsa shelestila (What the Feather Grass Whispered, 1916). His work is imbued with the national aspirations of Ukraine’s struggle for independence and is modernist—predominantly symbolist—in style.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]