AVROM KORALNIK (ABRAHAM CORALNIK) (October 16, 1883-July
16, 1937)
He was
born in Uman, Kiev district, to a father who was a scholar and a follower of
the Jewish Enlightenment. He received
his Jewish education at home, and he studied general subject matter at and
graduated from high school in Zhitomir.
He studied at the Universities of Vienna, Kiev, Florence, Berlin, and
Bonn, and in 1908 he received his Ph.D. in Vienna. His literary activities commenced in 1903 in
German as a contributor to Die Welt
(The world) in Vienna, the central organ of the Zionist world
organization. He later edited German
periodicals in Czernowitz, Vienna, and Zagreb.
He placed work in German philosophical journals and major German
newspapers. He wrote several dramas in
German and Das Russenbuch (The
Russian book) (Strassburg, 1922), 471 pp., an anthology of Russian
literature. He also wrote for several
Russian newspapers and from 1911 was a correspondent (writing from Berlin,
Copenhagen, and Rome) for the St. Petersburg newspaper Rech’ (Speech). Several of
his essays appeared in Haatid (The
future) in Berlin over the years 1908-1913.
In 1914 he lived for a short time in Copenhagen, and in 1915 he
emigrated to New York and became a contributor to Tog (Day). His first article
in Tog appeared on October 11,
1915. Koralnik had published essays
earlier in Yiddish but only rarely and by chance in: “Di yudishe froy, oder
yudn in kunst” (The Jewish woman, or Jews in art), in Avrom Reyzen’s Dos yudishe vort (The Jewish word)
(Cracow, January 2, 1905; January 24, 1905); several pieces in Dos yudishe folk (The Jewish people)
(Vilna, 1906-1907), edited by Dr. Yoysef Lurye.
After the outbreak of the February Revolution (1917), Koralnik headed
for Russia. He worked for a short time for
Birzhevie vedomosti (Stockbroker’s gazette), later for the daily Russkaia volya (Russian will), among
other Russian-language newspapers. A
number of his articles appeared at this time in Petrograder togblat (Petrograd daily newspaper), edited by Y.
Grinboym. In 1918 he was living in Kiev,
and the next year he left the Soviet Union and by the end of the year was back
in New York. He again became a contributor
to Tog until the end of his
life. From time to time, he published
essays in Tsukunft (Future), Tealit (Theater and literature), and Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of
labor). He was active in the PEN Club,
president of the Y. L. Perets writers’ association, and at his own initiative a
“conference on the Yiddish word” was called.
He was the founder of the American League for the Defense of Jewish
Rights, which in April 1933 declared a boycott against Nazi Germany. He was active in the Zionist organization,
participated in Zionist congresses, and in 1927 was selected onto the Zionist “action
committee.” Koralnik was a journalist
and essayist, and he would treat problems in depth. He wrote with elegance, irony, and
finesse. Various matters interested him:
philosophical, literary, and political, as well as day-to-day events. He often expressed paradoxical ideas, but
always wrote seriously and with a style that was both pithy and poetic. “The melancholy strain in Koralnik’s essay,”
opined Shloyme Bikl, “was so light, so playful and sweet, that each preparation
for the reader was perpetual…. Over
Koralnik’s essay was spread limitless beauty; over Koralnik himself there
hovered limitless tragedy.” “When one speaks
of the essay in Yiddish,” wrote Arn Glants-Leyeles, “Koralnik’s name comes to
mind by itself, because he was the essayist in Yiddish—without the shadow of a
doubt.” “A fatally inquisitive person…whose
life brought him much pain,” noted Khayim Grinberg, “because of the dreadful
disproportion between questions and answers.”
His books include: Dos bukh fun
vortslen (The book of roots) (Warsaw, 1928), 263 pp.; Viderklangen un vidershprukhn (Echoes and contradictions) (Warsaw,
1928), 2 parts; Dos bukh fun bleter
(The book of pages) (Warsaw, 1928), 2 parts; Shriftn (Writings) (New York, 1938-1940), 3 vols.—1. Geshtalten un gedanken (Figures and
ideas); 2. Iden un identum (Jews and
Judaism); 3. Shtimungen un bilder
(Moods and images). He wrote the preface
to Semyon Yushkevitsh’s collection Epizodn
(Episodes) (Paris, 1937). He translated
Pierre Proudhon’s Vos iz eygentum
(What is property? [original: Qu’est-ce
que la Propriété?]) (New York, 1917), 341 pp. In Hebrew: Babayit uvaḥuts (At home and outside) (Tel Aviv, 1964), 315 pp.,
prepared by various translators, with several essays originally in
Hebrew.) He died in New York.
On the cover of a
volume translated into English
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Avrom Reyzen, Epizodn
fun mayn lebn (Episodes from my life), vol. 2 (Vilna, 1929), pp. 221-23ff, vol. 3 (Vilna, 1935), pp. 48,
296-97; B. Y. Byalostotski, Lider un
eseyen (Poems and essays), vol. 3 (New York, 1932), pp. 217-29; M.
Zilberfarb, Gezamlte shriftn
(Selected writings), vol. 2 (Warsaw, 1937), pp. 321-26; Arn Glants-Leyeles, in Tog (New York) (July 18, 1937); Shmuel
Niger, in Tog (July 22, 1937); M.
Grosman, in Tog (August 1, 1937); H.
Leivick, in Tog (August 14, 1937);
Khayim Grinberg, introduction to Koralnik’s Shriftn
(Writings), vol. 1 (New York, 1938); Abe Gordin, Denker un dikhter
(Thinker and writer) (New York, 1949), pp. 35-46; Y. N. Shteynberg, Mit eyn fus in amerike (With one foot in
the United States) (Mexico City, 1951), pp. 94-100; Shloyme Bikl, Shrayber fun mayn dor (Writers of my
generation) (New York, 1958), pp. 203-7; Sh. D. Zinger, Dikhter un prozaiker (Poet and prose writer) (New York, 1959), pp.
284-90; D. Shub, Fun di amolike yorn (From years gone by) (New York, 1970), pp. 445-47, 569-70ff; Sol Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature (New York, 1972), pp. 179-81.
Elye (Elias) Shulman
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