Gerbel, Nikolai

Gerbel, Nikolai [Гербель, Николай; Gerbel', Nikolaj], b 8 December 1827 in Tver, Russia, d 20 March 1883 in Saint Petersburg. Russian poet, translator, and publisher; the first Russian translator of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry. Gerbel first met Shevchenko in 1846 at the Nizhyn Lyceum. In 1860 he edited and published Shevchenko’s Kobzar in Russian (revised edition 1869 and 1876). The anthology Poeziia slavian (Poetry of the Slavs, 1871), also published by Gerbel, contained translations of several Ukrainian poets and a survey of Ukrainian poetry by Mykola Kostomarov.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]