Gerbel, Nikolai

Born Nov. 26 (Dec. 8), 1827, in Tver’, now Kalinin; died Mar. 8 (20), 1883, in St. Petersburg. Russian poet, translator, and publisher. Born into the family of an officer.

Gerbel’ graduated from the Nezhin Lycée and served in the guards until 1860. In 1846 he began publishing his translations of European poets. His poetic translation of The Lay of the Host of Igor (1854) is well known. He was close to the circle associated with the journal Sovremennik. From 1857 to 1880 he prepared and published the translations by Russian writers of the collected works of Schiller, Byron, Shakespeare, E. T. A. Hoffman, and Goethe. He published The Kobza Player by T. G. Shevchenko in 1860, and in 1861 he published abroad those poems of A. S. Pushkin that had been banned by the censors. He compiled the following anthologies: The Poetry of the Slavs (1871), Russian Poets in Their Lives and Works (1873), English Poets (1875), and German Poets (1877). He was also the author of a historical work, The Iz’ium Settlement Cossack Regiment (1852).