Hryts’ko Kernerenko (Ukrainian: Грицько Кернеренко, born Grigorii Borisovich Kerner; 1863–1941Zayarnyuk, Andriy and Ostap Sereda
''The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Ukraine: The Nineteenth Century''
Taylor & Francis, 2022.) was a Jewish-Ukrainian poet.Petrovsky-Shtern, Yohanan
"Ukrainian Literature."
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The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ''The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe'' is a two-volume, English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry in this region, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale Univ ...

'' He may have been the first poet of Jewish descent to write in Ukrainian, and was the first to write on the topic of Jewish-Ukrainian identity.Shkandrij 71

Biography

Kernerenko was born into a wealthy Russian-speaking family in

Huliaipole Huliaipole ( ; ) is a small city in Polohy Raion, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. It is known as the birthplace of Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary Nestor Makhno. In January 2022, it had an estimated population of Huliaipole was attacked by ...

.Shandrij 69 Due to the quota then in place in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

limiting restricting the number of Jews able to attend university, Kernerenko was instead sent to study agronomy at a polytechnic college in Munich. He apparently traveled through Europe and visited Austria and Italy in 1883, and upon finishing his studies returned to Huliaipole to become a manager of his own estate. He began publishing poems in ' ("Literary Scientific Herald," the most important Ukrainian periodical of the time) and other magazines in the 1880s. His poems were widely anthologized.Shkandrij 70 Kernerenko published four books of poetry, as well as short stories and plays.Frolov, Mykhaylo and Serhii Zvilinsky
In search of Hrytsko Kernerenko, person without a profession: A genealogical mystery
''Ukrainian Jewish Encounter''. September 7, 2021 He also translated works by

Sholem Aleichem Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (; May 13, 1916), better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish language, Yiddish and , also spelled in Yiddish orthography#Reform and standardization, Soviet Yiddish, ; Russian language, Russian and ), ...

, Shimen Frug,

Semyon Nadson Semyon Yakovlevich Nadson (; 14 December 1862 – 19 January 1887) was a Russian poet and essayist. He is noted for being the first Jewish poet to achieve national fame in the Russian Empire. Biography Nadson's father was a Jew who converted to ...

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary criticism, literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his ...

, and

Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is consid ...

into Ukrainian. Many of Kernerenko's poems center on feelings of love and loneliness but he also wrote on Ukrainian national themes. After 1900 he began writing poems with Jewish subject matter and expressing support for Zionism. He married Rebecca Gordskoff and had three sons: Yakov, Victor, and Emile. Records are scarce, but the family appears to have left Ukraine for Turkey after the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

, subsequently moving on to France. Kernerenko died in Paris in 1941.

References

{{Reflist

Sources

*Shandrij, Myroslav
"The Jewish Voice in Ukrainian Literature"
''The Ukrainian Quarterly'', Vol. LXII, No. 1, Spring 2006. Jewish Ukrainian poets 1863 births 1941 deaths