Sergei Yesenin years. Literary and historical notes of a young technician. The last years of Yesenin's work

Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:	The village of Konstantinovo, Kuzminskaya volost, Ryazan district, Ryazan province, Russian Empire
Date of death:
A place of death:	Leningrad, USSR
Citizenship:
Occupation:
Years of creativity:
Direction:	New Peasant Poets (1914-1918), Imagism (1918-1923)
Language of works:

Professional life

Yesenin symbolism

Personal life

Streets, boulevards

Monuments

Lifetime

Basic

Film incarnations

(September 21 (October 3) 1895, village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province - December 28, 1925, Leningrad) - Russian poet, representative of new peasant poetry and (in a later period of creativity) imagism.

Biography

Born in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, into a peasant family, father - Alexander Nikitich Yesenin (1873-1931), mother - Tatyana Fedorovna Titova (1875-1955). In 1904, Yesenin went to the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School, then began studying at a closed church-teachers school.

Upon graduation, in the fall of 1912, Yesenin arrived in Moscow, worked in a bookstore, and then in the printing house of I. D. Sytin.

In 1913, he entered the historical and philosophical department of the Moscow City People's University named after A. L. Shanyavsky as a volunteer student. He worked in a printing house and had contacts with poets of the Surikov literary and musical circle.

Professional life

In 1914, Yesenin's poems were first published in the children's magazine Mirok.

In 1915, Yesenin came from Moscow to Petrograd, read his poems to A. A. Blok, S. M. Gorodetsky and other poets. In January 1916, Yesenin was called up for military service and assigned to the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital as an orderly. At this time, he became close to the group of “new peasant poets” and published the first collections (“Radunitsa” - 1916), which made him very famous. Together with Nikolai Klyuyev, he often performed in stylized “folk” clothing, including in front of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters in Tsarskoe Selo.

In 1915-1917, Yesenin maintained friendly relations with the poet Leonid Kannegiser, who later killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky.

In 1917, he met and on July 4 of the same year married Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, a Russian actress, the future wife of the outstanding director V. E. Meyerhold. At the end of 1919 (or in 1920), Yesenin left his family, and Zinaida Reich, who was pregnant with her son (Konstantin), was left with her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Tatyana. On February 19, 1921, the poet filed for divorce, in which he undertook to provide for them financially (the divorce was officially filed in October 1921). Subsequently, Sergei Yesenin repeatedly visited his children adopted by Meyerhold.

Yesenin's acquaintance with Anatoly Mariengof and his active participation in the Moscow group of imagists dates back to 1918 - early 1920s.

During the period of Yesenin’s passion for imagism, several collections of the poet’s poems were published - “Treryadnitsa”, “Confession of a Hooligan” (both 1921), “Poems of a Brawler” (1923), “Moscow Tavern” (1924), the poem “Pugachev”.

In 1921, the poet traveled to Central Asia, visited the Urals and Orenburg region. From May 13 to June 3, he stayed in Tashkent with his friend and poet Alexander Shiryaevets. Despite the informal nature of the visit, Yesenin spoke to the public several times, read poems at poetry evenings and in the houses of his Tashkent friends. According to eyewitnesses, Yesenin loved to visit the old city, teahouses of the old city and Urda, listen to Uzbek poetry, music and songs, and visit the picturesque surroundings of Tashkent with his friends. He also made a short trip to Samarkand.

In the fall of 1921, in the workshop of G. B. Yakulov, Yesenin met the dancer Isadora Duncan, whom he married six months later. After the wedding, Yesenin and Duncan traveled to Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, Italy) and to the USA (4 months), where he stayed from May 1922 to August 1923. The Izvestia newspaper published Yesenin’s notes about America “Iron Mirgorod”. The marriage to Duncan ended shortly after their return from abroad.

In one of his last poems, “The Country of Scoundrels,” the poet writes very harshly about the leaders of contemporary Russia, which could be perceived by some as an indictment of Soviet power. This attracted increased attention to him from law enforcement agencies, including police officers and the OGPU. Sharply critical articles about him began to appear in newspapers, accusing him of drunkenness, fights and other antisocial behavior, although the poet, with his behavior (especially in the second quarter of the 1920s), sometimes himself gave grounds for this kind of criticism from his ill-wishers. The board of the USSR Writers' Union tried to take part in the poet's treatment, repeatedly forcing him to undergo treatment in psychiatric clinics and resorts, but apparently this did not produce results. In the early 1920s, Yesenin was actively involved in book publishing, as well as selling books in a bookstore he rented on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, which occupied almost all of the poet’s time. In the last years of his life, Yesenin traveled a lot around the country. He visited the Caucasus three times, went to Leningrad several times, and Konstantinovo seven times.

In 1924-1925, Yesenin visited Azerbaijan, published a collection of poems in the Krasny Vostok printing house, and was published in a local publishing house. There is a version that here, in May 1925, the poetic “Message to the “Evangelist” Demyan” was written. Lived in the village of Mardakan (a suburb of Baku). Currently, his house-museum and memorial plaque are located here.

In 1924, Sergei Yesenin decided to break with imagism due to disagreements with A. B. Mariengof. Yesenin and Ivan Gruzinov published an open letter about the dissolution of the group.

At the end of November 1925, Sofya Tolstaya agreed with the director of the paid psychoneurological clinic of Moscow University, Professor P. B. Gannushkin, about the poet’s hospitalization in his clinic. Only a few people close to the poet knew about this. On December 23, 1925, Yesenin left the clinic and went to Leningrad, where he stayed at No. 5 of the Angleterre Hotel.

Yesenin symbolism

From Yesenin's letters of 1911-1913, the complex life of the aspiring poet and his spiritual maturation emerge. All this was reflected in the poetic world of his lyrics of 1910-1913, when he wrote over 60 poems and poems. Here his love for all living things, for life, for his homeland is expressed. The surrounding nature especially sets the poet in this mood (“The scarlet light of dawn is woven on the lake...”, “Smoke-filled flood...”, “Birch,” “Spring Evening,” “Night,” “Sunrise,” “Winter Sings and Calls...” , “Stars”, “It’s dark at night, I can’t sleep...”, etc.).

From the very first verses, Yesenin’s poetry includes themes of homeland and revolution. Since January 1914, Yesenin’s poems have appeared in print (“Birch”, “Blacksmith”, etc.). “In December, he quits work and devotes himself entirely to poetry, writing all day long,” recalls Izryadnova. The poetic world becomes more complex, multidimensional, and biblical images and Christian motifs begin to occupy a significant place in it. In 1913, in a letter to Panfilov, he writes: “Grisha, I am currently reading the Gospel and am finding a lot that is new to me.” Later, the poet noted: “Religious doubts visited me early. As a child, I had very sharp transitions: sometimes a period of prayer, sometimes of extraordinary mischief, right up to blasphemy. And then there were such streaks in my work.”

In March 1915, Yesenin came to Petrograd, met with Blok, who highly appreciated the “fresh, pure, vociferous”, albeit “verbose” poems of the “talented peasant poet-nugget”, helped him, introduced him to writers and publishers. In a letter to Nikolai Klyuev, Yesenin said: “My poetry in St. Petersburg was successful. Out of 60, 51 were accepted.” In the same year, Yesenin joined the group of “peasant” poets “Krasa”.

Yesenin becomes famous, he is invited to poetry evenings and literary salons. M. Gorky wrote to R. Rolland: “The city greeted him with the same admiration as a glutton greets strawberries in January. His poems began to be praised, excessively and insincerely, as hypocrites and envious people can praise.”

At the beginning of 1916, Yesenin’s first book, “Radunitsa,” was published. In the title, the content of most of the poems (1910-1915) and in their selection, Yesenin’s dependence on the moods and tastes of the public is visible.

Yesenin’s work of 1914-1917 appears complex and contradictory (“Mikola”, “Egory”, “Rus”, “Martha Posadnitsa”, “Us”, “Baby Jesus”, “Dove” and other poems). These works present his poetic concept of the world and man. The basis of the Yesenin universe is the hut with all its attributes. In the book “The Keys of Mary” (1918), the poet wrote: “The hut of a commoner is a symbol of concepts and attitudes towards the world, developed even before him by his fathers and ancestors, who subjugated the intangible and distant world by comparing them to the things of their meek hearths.” The huts, surrounded by courtyards, fenced with fences and “connected” to each other by a road, form a village. And the village, limited by the outskirts, is Yesenin’s Rus', which is cut off from the big world by forests and swamps, “lost... in Mordva and Chud.” And further:

Yesenin later said: “I would ask readers to treat all my Jesuses, Mothers of God and Mykolas as fabulous in poetry.” The hero of the lyrics prays to the “smoking earth”, “On the bright dawns”, “on the haystacks and haystacks”, he worships his homeland: “My lyrics,” Yesenin later said, “are alive with one great love, love for the homeland. The feeling of homeland is the main thing in my work.”

In the pre-revolutionary poetic world of Yesenin, Rus' has many faces: “thoughtful and tender,” humble and violent, poor and cheerful, celebrating “victorious holidays.” In the poem “You Didn’t Believe in My God...” (1916), the poet calls Rus', the “sleepy princess” located “on the foggy shore,” to the “cheerful faith” to which he himself is now committed. In the poem “Clouds from the Fall…” (1916), the poet seems to predict a revolution - the “transformation” of Russia through “torment and the cross”, and a civil war.

Both on earth and in heaven, Yesenin contrasts only the good and the evil, the “clean” and the “impure.” Along with God and his servants, heavenly and earthly, in Yesenin in 1914-1918 possible “evil spirits” were active: forest, water and domestic. Evil fate, as the poet thought, also touched his homeland and left its mark on its image:

But even in these pre-revolutionary years, the poet believed that the vicious circle would be broken. He believed because he considered everyone “close relatives”: this means that the time must come when all people will become “brothers”.

The poet's desire for universal harmony, for the unity of all things on earth is the most important principle of Yesenin's artistic composition. Hence one of the basic laws of his world is universal metaphorism. People, animals, plants, elements and objects - all of them, according to Yesenin, are children of a single matter-nature. His pre-revolutionary work was marked by the search for his own concept of the world and man, which the revolution helped the poet to finally formulate. In his poetry we see both humanized nature and “naturalized” man, who is characterized by “vegetative”, “animal” and “cosmic” features.

Personal life

In 1913, Sergei Yesenin met Anna Romanovna Izryadnova, who worked as a proofreader in the printing house of the I. D. Sytin Partnership, where Yesenin went to work. In 1914 they entered into a civil marriage. On December 21, 1914, Anna Izryadnova gave birth to a son named Yuri (shot in 1937).

In 1917-1921, Yesenin was married to actress Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, later the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold. Sergei Yesenin organized his “bachelor party” before the wedding in Vologda, in a wooden house on Malaya Dukhovskaya Street (now Pushkinskaya Street, 50). The wedding of Sergei Yesenin and Zinaida Reich took place on July 30, 1917 in the Church of Kirik and Iulitta in the village of Tolstikovo, Vologda district. The groom's guarantors were Pavel Pavlovich Khitrov, a peasant from the village of Ivanovskaya, Spasskaya volost, and Sergei Mikhailovich Baraev, a peasant from the village of Ustya, Ustyanskaya volost, and the bride's guarantors were Alexey Alekseevich Ganin and Dmitry Dmitrievich Devyatkov, a merchant's son from the city of Vologda. And the wedding took place in the building of the Passage Hotel. From this marriage were born a daughter, Tatyana, and a son, Konstantin, who later became a football journalist.

In the fall of 1921, in the workshop of G. B. Yakulov, Yesenin met the dancer Isadora Duncan, whom he married on May 2, 1922. Immediately after the wedding, Yesenin accompanied Duncan on tours in Europe and the USA. Their marriage was short and in 1923 Yesenin returned to Moscow.

On May 12, 1924, Yesenin had a son, Alexander, from translator Nadezhda Volpin, who later became a famous mathematician and figure in the dissident movement.

In the fall of 1925, Yesenin married for the third (and last) time - to Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy, the granddaughter of L.N. Tolstoy.

Death

The Soviet government was worried about Yesenin's condition. Thus, in a letter from Kh. G. Rakovsky to F. E. Dzerzhinsky dated October 25, 1925, Rakovsky asks “to save the life of the famous poet Yesenin - undoubtedly the most talented in our Union,” suggesting: “Invite him to your place, sort him out well and send him together with him to the sanatorium of a comrade from the GPU, who would not let him get drunk...” On the letter is Dzerzhinsky’s resolution addressed to his close comrade, secretary, manager of the affairs of the GPU V.D. Gerson: “M. b., could you study?” Next to it is Gerson’s note: “I called repeatedly but could not find Yesenin.”

On December 28, 1925, Yesenin was found hanging from a steam heating pipe in the Leningrad Angleterre Hotel. His last poem - “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...” - was written in this hotel in blood, and according to the testimony of the poet’s friends, Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room, and he was forced to write in blood.

According to the version accepted by most of the poet’s biographers, Yesenin, in a state of depression (a month after treatment in a psychoneurological hospital), committed suicide (hanged himself). Neither contemporaries of the event, nor in the next few decades after the poet’s death, other versions of the event were expressed. In the 1970-1980s, mainly in nationalist circles, versions also arose about the murder of the poet followed by the staging of his suicide: motivated by jealousy, selfish motives, murder by OGPU officers.

In 1989, under the auspices of the Gorky IMLI, the Yesenin Commission was created under the chairmanship of Yu. L. Prokushev; at her request, a series of examinations were carried out, which led to the following conclusion: “... the now published “versions” of the murder of the poet with the subsequent staging of hanging, despite some discrepancies... are a vulgar, incompetent interpretation of special information, sometimes falsifying the results of the examination” (from the official response Professor in the Department of Forensic Medicine, Doctor of Medical Sciences B. S. Svadkovsky at the request of the chairman of the commission Yu. L. Prokushev).

Poetry

From his first collections of poetry (“Radunitsa”, 1916; “Rural Book of Hours”, 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Rus', an expert on the folk language and the folk soul. In 1919-1923 he was a member of the Imagist group. A tragic attitude and mental confusion are expressed in the cycles “Mare’s Ships” (1920), “Moscow Tavern” (1924), and the poem “The Black Man” (1925). In the poem “The Ballad of the Twenty-Six” (1924), dedicated to the Baku commissars, the collection “Soviet Rus'” (1925), and the poem “Anna Snegina” (1925), Yesenin sought to comprehend “the commune-raised Rus',” although he continued to feel like a poet of “Leaving Rus'” ", "golden log hut". Dramatic poem “Pugachev” (1921).

List of songs based on poems by Sergei Yesenin

Many songs have been written based on Yesenin’s poems:

In 2005, a collection of songs “In this world I am only a passerby...” based on the verses of Sergei Yesenin, performed by Honored Artist of Russia Anatoly Tukish, was published.

Memory

• Yesenin Park in the Nevsky district of St. Petersburg on the territory of the Vesyoly settlement next to the Ulitsa Dybenko metro station.
• Yesenin Museum in Spas-Klepiki
• Ryazan State University named after. S. A. Yesenina

• Socionic type (IEI)

Streets, boulevards

• Yesenina Street in the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg.
• Yesenina Street in Novomoskovsk
• Yesenina Street in Novosibirsk
• Yesenina street in Bryansk
• Yesenin street in Ryazan
• Yesenina Street in Naberezhnye Chelny
• Yesenina Street in Kharkov
• Yesenin Street in Nikolaev (Korabelny district)
• Yesenin Boulevard in Yekaterinburg
• Yesenin Boulevard in Lipetsk
• Yeseninsky Boulevard in Moscow, SEAD, Kuzminki
• Yeseninskaya street in Kursk
• Yesenina Street in Minsk
• Yesenin street in Syzran
• Yesenina Street in Krivoy Rog
• Yesenin Street in Nizhny Novgorod
• Yesenina Street in Stavropol
• Yesenina Street in Belgorod
• Yesenina street in Saransk
• Yesenina street in Perm
• Yesenina Street in Rossoshi
• Yesenina Street in Prokopyevsk
• Yesenina Street in Krasnodar
• Yesenin street in Baku
• Yesenina Street in Tyumen
• Yesenin street in Tashkent
• Yesenina Street in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
• Yesenina Street in Podgorodenka, a suburb of Vladivostok

Monuments

• Monument in Voronezh
• Monument on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow
• Bas-relief in Moscow
• Monument on Yeseninsky Boulevard in Moscow
• Monument in Ryazan
• Monument on Yesenin Street in St. Petersburg
• Monument in the Tauride Garden in St. Petersburg
• Monument in Krasnodar
• Monument in Irkutsk
• Monument in the village of Konstantinovo
• Monument in Tashkent
• Bust in Ivanovo
• Bust in Spas-Klepiki

Editions

Lifetime

• Yesenin S. A. Radunitsa. - Petrograd: Publication by M. V. Averyanov, 1916. - 62 p.

• Yesenin S. A. Baby Jesus. - M.: Today, 1918. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Goluben. - M.: Revolutionary socialism, 1918. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Radunitsa. - 2nd ed. - M.: Moscow Labor Artel of Word Artists, 1918. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Rural Book of Hours. - M.: Moscow Labor Artel of Word Artists, 1918. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Transfiguration. - M.: Moscow Labor Artel of Word Artists, 1918. - ??? With.

• Yesenin S. A. Goluben. - 2nd ed. - M.: Moscow labor artel of word artists, 1920. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Keys of Mary. - M.: Moscow labor artel of word artists, 1920. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Treryadnitsa (publisher, year and place of publication not indicated)
• Yesenin S. A. Triptych. Poems. - Berlin: Scythians, 1920. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Russia and Inonia. - Berlin: Scythians, 1920. - ??? With.

• Yesenin S.A. Confession of a hooligan. - 1921. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Transfiguration. - 2nd ed. - M.: Imagists, 1921. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Treyadnitsa. - 2nd ed. - M.: Imagists, 1921. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Radunitsa. - 3rd ed. - M.: Imagists, 1921. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Pugachev. - M.: Imagists, 1922. - ??? With. (the year of publication is indicated incorrectly)

• Yesenin S. A. Pugachev. - 2nd ed. - Petrograd: Elsevier, 1922. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Pugachev. - 3rd ed. - Berlin: Russian Universal Publishing House, 1922. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Favorites. - M.: Gosizdat, 1922. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Collection of poems and poems. - T. 1. - Berlin: Z. I. Grzhebin Publishing House, 1922. - ??? With. (The second volume was never published.)
• Esenin S. Confssion d’un voyou. - Paris, 1922. - ??? (translations into French by Franz Ellens and Maria Miloslavskaya)

• Yesenin S. A. Poems of a brawler. - Berlin: I. T. Blagov Publishing House, 1923. - ??? With.

• Yesenin S. A. Moscow tavern. - L., 1924. - ??? With. (publisher not indicated)
• Yesenin S. A. Poems (1920-24). - M.: Circle, 1924. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Soviet Rus'. - Baku: Baku worker, 1924. - ??? With.

• Yesenin S. A. Soviet country. - Tiflis: Soviet Caucasus, 1925. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S.A. Song of the Great March. - M.: Gosizdat, 1925. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S.A. About Russia and the revolution. - M.: Modern Russia, 1925. - S.
• Yesenin S. A. Birch chintz. - M.: Gosizdat, 1925. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Selected poems. - M.: Ogonyok, 1925. - ??? With. (Ogonyok Library No. 40)
• Yesenin S. A. Persian motifs. - M.: Modern Russia, 1925. - ??? With.

Basic

• Yesenin S. A. Collected poems in 3 volumes. - M.: Gosizdat, 1926.
• Yesenin S. A. Poems and prose / Compiled by I. V. Evdokimov, 1927. - ??? With.
• Yesenin S. A. Poems. - L.: Sov. writer, 1953. - 392 p. (Poet's Library. Small series. Third edition.)
• Yesenin S. A. Poems and poems. - L.: Sov. writer, 1956. - 438 p. (The Poet's Library. Large series. Second edition.)
• Yesenin S. A. Collected works in 5 volumes. - M.: GIHL, 1960-1962.
• Yesenin S. A. Collected works in 5 volumes. - 2nd ed. - M.: GIHL, 1966-1968.
• Yesenin S. A. Collected works in 6 volumes. - M.: Artist. lit., 1978.
• Yesenin S. A. Poems and poems / Comp. and preparation text by I. S. Eventov and I. V. Aleksakhina, note. I. V. Aleksakhina. - L.: Sov. writer, 1986. - 464 p. (The Poet's Library. Large series. Third edition.)
• Yesenin S. A. Complete works. In 7 volumes / Chief editor Yu. L. Prokushev. - M.: Science, Voice, 1995-2000. (Russian Academy of Sciences. A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature) (T. 1.: Poems; T. 2.: Poems (“little poems”); T. 3.: Poems; T. 4.: Poems , not included in the “Collected Poems”; T. 5.: Prose; T. 6.: Letters; T. 7.: Autobiographies, dedicatory inscriptions, folklore records, literary manifestos, etc., chronological outline of the life and work of S. A Yesenin, reference materials) ISBN 5-02-011245-3.

About the poet

• Belousov V. G. Sergei Yesenin. Literary chronicle. In 2 parts. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1969-1970.

• Petr Epifanov. Duel by moonlight. Once again about the spiritual world of Sergei Yesenin’s poetry.

Almanac “DOVE WINGS” issue 1/2007, pp. 50 - 79.

Addresses in Petrograd - Leningrad

• 1915 - apartment of S. M. Gorodetsky - Malaya Posadskaya street, 14, apt. 8;
• December 1915 - March 1916 - Apartment of K. A. Rasshepina in an apartment building - Fontanka River embankment, 149, apt. 9;
• 1917 - apartment building - Liteiny Prospekt, 49;
• 1917-1918 - apartment of P.V. Oreshin - 7th Sovetskaya Street, 40;
• early 1922 - Angleterre Hotel - Gogol Street, 24;
• April 1924 - European Hotel - Lasalya Street, 1;
• April - July 1924 - apartment of A. M. Zakharov - Gagarinskaya street, 1, apt. 12;
• December 24-28, 1925 - Angleterre Hotel - Gogol Street, 24.

Film incarnations

• Ivan Chenko “Isadora” (Great Britain - France, 1968)
• Sergei Nikonenko - “Sing a Song, Poet” (USSR, 1971)
• Dmitry Mulyar - “The Golden Head on the Block” (Russia, 2004)
• Sergey Bezrukov - “Yesenin” (Russia, 2005)

Sergey Yesenin. The name of the great Russian poet - an expert on the people's soul, the singer of peasant Rus', is familiar to every person, his poems have long become Russian classics, and on Sergei Yesenin's birthday, admirers of his work gather.

Oh you sleigh! What a sleigh!

The sounds of frozen aspen trees.

My father is a peasant,

Well, I am a peasant's son.

Sergei Yesenin: biography of the Russian poet

Ryazan Oblast. In 1895, a poet was born, whose works are still admired by fans of his work today. October 3 is the birthday of Sergei Yesenin. From childhood, the boy was raised by a wealthy and enterprising maternal grandfather, a great connoisseur of church literature. Therefore, among the child’s first impressions are spiritual poems sung by wandering blind men and fairy tales of his beloved grandmother, which prompted the future poet to create his own creativity, which began at the age of 9.

Sergei graduated from the 4th grade of the local zemstvo school, although he studied for 5 years: due to unsatisfactory behavior, he was retained for the 2nd year. He continued to gain knowledge at the Spas-Klepikovsky parochial school, which trained rural teachers.

The capital of Russian cities: the beginning of a new life

At the age of 17, he left for Moscow and got a job in a butcher shop, where his father served as a clerk. After a conflict with a parent, he changed jobs: he moved to book publishing, and then to a printing house as a proofreader. There he met Anna Izryadnova, who gave birth to his 19-year-old son Yuri in December 1914, who was shot in 1937 under a false verdict of an attempt on Stalin’s life.

While in the capital, the poet took part in the literary and musical circle named after. Surikov, joined the rebellious workers, for which he received police attention. In 1912, he began to attend classes at the A. Shanyavsky People's University in Moscow as a volunteer. There Yesenin received the basics liberal arts education, listening to lectures on Western European and Russian literature. Sergei Yesenin's birthday is known to many admirers of his work - October 3, 1895. His works have been translated into many languages ​​and are included in the compulsory school curriculum. To this day, many are interested in what kind of relationship the poet built with the fair sex, did women love Sergei Yesenin, did he reciprocate? What (or who) inspired him to create; to create in such a way that after a century his poems are relevant, interesting, and loved.

Life and work of Sergei Yesenin

The first publication took place in 1914 in metropolitan magazines, and the beginning of a successful debut was the poem “Birch”. Literally in a century, Sergei Yesenin’s birthday will be known to almost every schoolchild, but for now the poet set foot on his thorny road leading to fame and recognition.

In Petrograd, where Sergei moved in the spring of 1915, believing that all literary life was concentrated in this city, he read his works to Blok, whom he personally came to meet. The warm welcome by the famous poet’s entourage and their approval of the poems inspired the envoy of the Russian village and endless fields for further creativity.

Recognized, published, read

Sergei Yesenin’s talent was recognized by Gorodetsky S.M., Remizov A.M., Gumilev N.S., whose acquaintance the young man owed to Blok. Almost all the imported poems were published, and Sergei Yesenin, whose biography still arouses interest among fans of the poet’s work, became widely known. In joint poetic performances with Klyuev before the public, stylized in a folk, peasant manner, the young golden-haired poet appeared in morocco boots and an embroidered shirt. He became close to the society of “new peasant poets” and was himself interested in this trend. The key theme of Yesenin’s poetry was peasant Rus', the love for which permeates all his works.

In 1916, he was drafted into the army, but thanks to the concern and troubles of his friends, he was appointed as an orderly on the military hospital train of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, which allowed the poet to attend literary salons, perform at concerts, and attend receptions with patrons of the arts without interference.

Peasant Rus' in the poet’s work

He accepted the October Revolution joyfully in his own way and enthusiastically wrote a number of short poems “Heavenly Drummer”, “Inonia”, “Dove of Jordan”, imbued with a premonition of future changes; The life and work of Sergei Yesenin were at the beginning of a new, yet unknown path - the path of fame and recognition.

In 1916, Yesenin’s debut book “Radunitsa” was published, enthusiastically received by critics who discovered in it a fresh direction, the author’s natural taste and his youthful spontaneity. Further, from 1914 to 1917, “Dove”, “Rus”, “Marfa-Posadnitsa”, “Mikola” were published, marked by some special, Yesenin style with the humanization of animals, plants, natural phenomena, which together with man form , connected by roots with nature, a holistic, harmonious and beautiful world. Pictures of Yesenin's Rus' - reverent, evoking an almost religious feeling in the poet, are colored with a subtle understanding of nature with a heating stove, a dog's coop, uncut hayfields, swampy swamps, the snoring of a herd and the hubbub of mowers.

Second marriage of Sergei Yesenin

In 1917, the poet married Nikolaevna, from whose marriage Sergei Yesenin’s children were born: son Konstantin and daughter Tatyana.

At this time, real popularity came to Yesenin, the poet became in demand, he was invited to various In 1918 - 1921, he traveled a lot around the country: Crimea, the Caucasus, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Turkestan, Bessarabia. He worked on the dramatic poem “Pugachev”, and in the spring he traveled to the Orenburg steppes.

In 1918-1920, the poet became close to Mariengof A.B., Shershenevich V.G., and became interested in imagism - a post-revolutionary literary and artistic movement based on futurism, which claimed to build an “art of the future”, completely new, denying everything previous artistic experience. Yesenin became a frequent visitor to the literary cafe “Stable of Pegasus”, located in Moscow near the Nikitsky Gate. The poet, who sought to understand the “commune-raised Rus',” only partially shared the desire of the newly created direction, the goal of which was to cleanse the form from the “dust of content.” He still continued to perceive himself as a poet of “Departing Rus'.” In his poems there appeared motifs of everyday life “destroyed by a storm”, drunken prowess, which is replaced by hysterical melancholy. The poet appears as a brawler, a hooligan, a drunkard with a bloody soul, wandering from den to den, where he is surrounded by “alien and laughing rabble” (collections “Moscow tavern”, “Confession of a hooligan” and “Poems of a brawler”).

In 1920, her three-year marriage to Z. Reich broke up. Sergei Yesenin's children each followed their own path: Konstantin became a famous football statistician, and Tatyana became the director of her father's museum and a member of the Writers' Union.

Isadora Duncan and Sergei Yesenin

In 1921, Yesenin met the dancer Isadora Duncan. She did not speak Russian, the poet, who read a lot and was highly educated, did not know foreign languages, but from the first meeting, when he looked at the dance of this woman, Sergei Yesenin was irreversibly drawn to her. The couple, in which Isadora was 18 years older, was not stopped by the age difference. She most often called her beloved “angel,” and he called her “Isidora.” Isadora's spontaneity and her fiery dances drove Yesenin crazy. She perceived him as a weak and unprotected child, treated Sergei with reverent tenderness, and even over time learned a dozen Russian words. In Russia, Isadora’s career did not work out because the Soviet authorities did not provide the field of activity that she expected. The couple registered their marriage and took the common surname Duncan-Yesenin.

After the wedding, Yesenin and his wife traveled a lot around Europe, visiting France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Belgium, and the USA. Duncan tried in every possible way to create PR for her husband: she organized translations of his poems and their publication, organized poetry evenings, but abroad he was recognized exclusively as an addition to a famous dancer. The poet was sad, felt unclaimed, unwanted, and became depressed. Yesenin began to drink, and frequent heartbreaking quarrels with departures and subsequent reconciliations occurred between the spouses. Over time, Yesenin’s attitude towards his wife, in whom he no longer saw an ideal, but an ordinary aging woman, changed. He still got drunk, occasionally beat Isadora, and complained to his friends that she was stuck to him and wouldn’t leave. The couple broke up in 1923, Yesenin returned to Moscow.

The last years of Yesenin's work

In his subsequent work, the poet very critically denounces the Soviet regime (“Country of Scoundrels,” 1925). After this, the persecution of the poet begins, accusing him of fighting and drunkenness. The last two years of my life were spent in regular travel; Sergei Yesenin is a Russian poet, hiding from judicial persecution, traveling to the Caucasus three times, traveling to Leningrad and constantly visiting Konstantinovo, never breaking ties with him.

During this period, the works “Poem of 26”, “Persian Motifs”, “Anna Snegina”, “The Golden Grove Dissuaded” were published. In the poems, the main place is still occupied by the theme of the homeland, now acquiring shades of drama. This period of lyricism is increasingly marked by autumn landscapes, motifs of drawing conclusions and farewells.

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...

In the fall of 1925, the poet, trying to start his family life anew, married Sofia Andreevna, the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. But this union was not happy. Sergei Yesenin's life was going downhill: alcohol addiction, depression, pressure from leadership circles caused his wife to place the poet in a neuropsychiatric hospital. Only a narrow circle of people knew about this, but there were well-wishers who contributed to the establishment of round-the-clock surveillance of the clinic. The security officers began to demand from P.B. Gannushkin, a professor at this clinic, to extradite Yesenin. The latter refused, and Yesenin, having waited for an opportune moment, interrupted the course of treatment and, in a crowd of visitors, left the psychoneurological institution and left for Leningrad.

On December 14, I finished work on the poem “The Black Man,” which I spent 2 years on. The work was published after the poet’s death. On December 27, his final work “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye” was published from the pen of Sergei Yesenin. The life and work of Sergei Yesenin was coming to a terrible and incomprehensible end. The Russian poet died, whose body was found hanged in the Angleterre Hotel on the night of December 28, 1925.

On Sergei Yesenin’s birthday, people gather to honor his memory in all corners of Russia, but the most large-scale events take place in his native Konstantinov, where thousands of admirers of the poet’s work come from all over the world.

Despite all the ideological attitudes and persecutions, his name was not forgotten either in the dark era of totalitarianism, or in the short period of the “Khrushchev Thaw”, or in the troubled “perestroika” times. Even in our “non-reading” days, when interest in literature, and especially in Russian poetry, is considered by most compatriots as an undoubted eccentricity, Yesenin’s poems still find their readers.

An innumerable army of biographers and literary critics, who have painstakingly studied “Yesenin’s legacy,” have now published a lot of research on the life and work of the poet. Some, obeying the Soviet approach, largely based on the authoritative opinion of A.M. Gorky, are still inclined to label Yesenin as a “true folk singer” of pre-revolutionary peasant Rus', a provincial lost in a big city, who was ruined by unexpected fame and the capital’s elite. Others explain the national love for Yesenin solely by his tragic fate, trying to build an aura of a hero and fighter against the political regime around the poet-lyricist. Still others, on the contrary, propose to consider Yesenin as an unfortunate victim of the bloody Russian unrest of the 1920s: Russian people always tend to idolize martyrs and sufferers for great ideals.

In the “post-perestroika” years, the memoirs of Sergei Yesenin’s contemporaries, relatives, acquaintances, and friends were republished or published for the first time. The viewer and reader were literally bombarded with works of art, films and TV series related to personality and in recent years poet's life. Most of them, unfortunately, sin with too “free” interpretations of the available biographical material, and the director’s and acting work in the serial versions about Yesenin leaves a completely disgusting impression. Thanks to scandalous and revealing publications in the media, the mystery of the death of the great poet acquired the status of one of the most insoluble mysteries of the 20th century. To this day, it is actively exaggerated by the “yellow” press and near-historical television programs. More and more ridiculous, unsubstantiated and downright detective versions of the life and death of the people's favorite Yesenin are brought to the attention of the viewer and reader.

Unfortunately, none of the modern researchers have tried to answer the main question: what did this simple Ryazan guy manage to tell us in his poems? How was he able to reach the heart, stir the soul, become family and friends for every person born on Russian soil?..

Family and early years

Biography of S.A. Yesenina is still largely mythologized to this day. However, unlike other mythologized biographies, the authorship of the well-known legend about the peasant “nugget” Yesenin belongs to the poet himself. There are several autobiographies written by Yesenin for his lifetime publications. All of them are, to one degree or another, adapted by the author to the requirements of the era, or to his present, momentary perception of his own personality.

Everyone knows that the poet was born in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, into a peasant family. In one version of his autobiography, Yesenin calls his family “prosperous and Old Believers.” Meanwhile, the Yesenins were never Old Believers. The grandfather on my mother’s side was indeed a wealthy peasant, had a strong farm, workers, and even his own enterprise on the Oka River. However, by the time Sergei was born, he was already broke. His mother, Tatyana Fedorovna, was forced to work as a servant in Ryazan, leaving her son in the care of her parents, who lived in another part of the village of Konstantinovo - Myatlevo.

“My father is a peasant, and I am a peasant’s son,” - and this poetic statement by S.A. Yesenin can in no way be accepted as truth. The father of the future poet only belonged to the peasant class. He spent his whole life in Moscow, starting his career as a boy in a shop, and then worked as a clerk (saying modern language, sales floor manager) in a large store.

Sergei himself successfully graduated primary school in Konstantinov and was immediately assigned to a teacher’s school, which was located in the large village of Spas-Klepiki. The school included full board for its students. Sergei Yesenin visited his native Konstantinov only on vacations and holidays. And if in autobiographies and later poems the poet tries to imagine himself in childhood as a kind of street tomboy, brawler and bully (“there is always a hero among boys”), then, according to the memories of fellow villagers, he could rather be called a shy “quiet one.” Handsome and unlike other village boys, Yesenin was called Seryozha the Monk in the village. He knew how to fend for himself, but peasant life, housekeeping, as well as the usual life of his fellow villagers had little interest in him. As follows from the preserved and published correspondence of Yesenin with his classmate at the teacher’s school G. Panfilov, from an early age Sergei wrote poetry and felt that this was his main calling. Yesenin's poems during his student years were distinguished by pomposity and were exclusively imitative in nature. The lion's share of Yesenin's early poems (1911) that have come down to us is completely unaffected by the influence of folklore and pseudo-folklore texts, grandmother's fairy tales and nanny songs, the influence of which Yesenin himself spoke about in all his autobiographies and stories about himself. It is quite obvious that the aspiring poet was guided by a completely different tradition. Not very successfully, but diligently, he studied with the civil lyricists of the previous era, first of all, with Semyon Nadson, the idol of educated youth late XIX century. None of the early poems of 1911-12 were subsequently published by the author. Those works that were included in the collected works prepared by the poet during his lifetime and dated 1910 and earlier were written much later. This conclusion was made by researchers based on an analysis of the surviving manuscripts of S. Yesenin from 1924-25. Perhaps the poet wrote down what he remembered from his youthful work, or most likely, he deliberately stylized several poems in order to include them in the collection.

After graduating from the teacher's school, S. Yesenin had to enter the Moscow Teachers' Institute to receive a diploma for the right to teach. But he deliberately abandoned his teaching career. At the end of July 1912, sixteen-year-old Yesenin left Konstantinovo and moved to permanent residence in the ancient Russian capital. He spends almost three years in Moscow: first he tries to work as a bookkeeper or accountant in the store where his father worked, then he gets a job as a proofreader in Sytin’s printing house, meets Moscow writers, and listens to lectures at Shanyavsky People’s University.

In his later autobiographies, Yesenin wrote extremely sparingly and reluctantly about his Moscow youth, preferring to quickly move on to his first victories and successes - in Petrograd. “Straight from the Ryazan villages to St. Petersburg” - this is how Yesenin was inclined to depict the beginning of his poetic journey. Meanwhile, the Moscow years played almost a decisive role in his development as a poet. Having arrived in Moscow as a provincial imitator of Nadson, Sergei Yesenin quickly and successfully went through the school of followers of Nikitin and Drozhzhin, tried himself in the roles of a working-class poet and a humble Tolstoyan, deeply learned the lessons of Fet, and left for Petrograd already enriched (whoever wants to say, poisoned) the influence of modernism.

In Moscow, Yesenin became close to the Surikov circle of young “folk” poets, and was keenly interested in everything new in literature. According to philological researchers O. Lekmanov and M. Sverdlov (“Sergei Yesenin. Biography”), it was in Moscow that the young poet, having carefully studied the state of the contemporary poetic “market”, found the niche in which his work could be in demand by the reader, and also favorably received by already illustrious literary competitors. In the second half of his Moscow period (1914-1915), Yesenin began to consciously sculpt his own image, in his own way solving the task facing all modernists: “... To find an alloy of life and creativity, a kind of philosophical stone of art... To merge life and creativity into one” ( V. Khodasevich).

According to the recollections of Yesenin’s common-law wife, Muscovite A. Izryadnova, Sergei during this period was little like a village boy. On the contrary, he gave the impression of a very well-read, literate person with a broad outlook, wore suits and ties, and outwardly did not stand out in any way among the general mass of Moscow youth.

And he, like any extraordinary person, really wanted to stand out. Appearance, i.e. The literary “mask” played an important, even decisive role in the circles of modernist bohemia: Mayakovsky put on a yellow blouse, Voloshin put on a Greek chiton, Gumilyov climbed into the skin of a leopard, Vertinsky hid his face behind the mask of a sad Pierrot. Yesenin decided that the image of a village simpleton, either Ivanushka the Fool, or the pastoral shepherd Lelya, the “sower and guardian” of the Russian land, was most suitable for him.

In December 1914, the poet quit his job at the printing house and devoted himself entirely to creativity. The role of the peasant nugget, who intuitively spoke the language of the Young Symbolists, was already firmly preferred by Yesenin to all the other roles half-played in Moscow. On March 8, 1915, leaving his common-law wife with his young son, he left Shanyavsky University without graduating and left Moscow for Petrograd to conquer the capital.

First successes

The young poet developed his plan of action back in Moscow. Contrary to the legend he himself created, Yesenin was not a naive provincial youth. He knew perfectly well to whom need to apply to start your creative career. First on the list was the poet S. Gorodetsky, the author of the famous book of poems “Yar” (1907), a devout champion of “Old Slavic mythology and Old Russian beliefs,” and indeed everything Russian and rural. “... Yesenin told me that only after reading my “Yar”, he learned that it was possible So write poetry, that he is also a poet, that our then common language and imagery is already a literary art,” Gorodetsky wrote in the first version of his memoirs about Yesenin. The pathos of Gorodetsky’s book of poems “Rus” (1910), specially intended for public reading, corresponded even more to the aspirations of the young poet at that time.

Yesenin intended to pay a second visit to A. Blok, who had nothing in common with the stylized, pseudo-folk predilections of the “village people,” but at one time introduced another peasant “nugget” into literature - Nikolai Klyuev. The figure of Klyuev, with his peasant origins, religious quests and sophisticated poetic style, fit perfectly into the landscape of modernist literature of that time. “The peasantry is Christianity, and perhaps vice versa: Christianity is the peasantry.” This catchy formula of the recognized mentor of the younger generation of modernists, Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky (who did not like Klyuev), even though he polemically attributed it to Dostoevsky, concealed a charge of attractiveness for very, very many.

But Yesenin either forgot Gorodetsky’s address or lost it, and therefore immediately came to A. Blok from the station. There are several legendary stories by Yesenin about this meeting, later retold by Z. Gippius, as well as by numerous biographers of the poet. One of the options was played out very emotionally by actor S. Bezrukov in the famous TV series about Yesenin. However, the informational value of Yesenin’s oral memoirs and fantasies is finally negated by the text of a short note preserved by the pedantic Blok, which the unlucky visitor left him in the morning: "Alexander Alexandrovich! I'd like to talk to you. This is a very important matter for me. You don’t know me, but maybe you’ve seen my name in magazines somewhere. I would like to come in at 4 o’clock. With respect, S. Yesenin.”

After the meeting, Blok added a short comment to this note for his memory: “A peasant of the Ryazan province. 19 years. The poems are fresh, clean, vociferous, verbose. Language. Came to see me on March 9, 1915.” This benevolent, but rather dry assessment perfectly matches the general tone taken by Blok at his first meeting with Yesenin. With an obvious desire to distance himself from Yesenin, Blok wrote about the young poet to journalist and publisher Mikhail Pavlovich Murashev:

“Dear Mikhail Pavlovich!

I am sending you a talented peasant poet-nugget. As a peasant writer, he will be closer to you, and you will understand him better than anyone.

Yours A. Blok

P.S. I selected 6 poems and sent them to Sergei Mitrofanovich. Look and do the best you can."

That's all. In the near future, the Blok will completely break off the emerging tradition of fraternization with the “muzhiks.” It is known that he did not accept either A. Shiryaevets or S. Klychkov, who later joined the same company of “villagers” as Yesenin, “blessed” by him.

Yesenin received a more favorable reception from Murashev and Gorodetsky, to whom he presented his poems wrapped in a colorful village scarf. S. Gorodetsky was touched by this fact for the rest of his life, not even realizing that the technique with the scarf was thought out in advance by Yesenin, who strove at all costs to fit into the caricatured image of a “poet of the people” created by the intelligentsia itself. Yesenin appeared to Murashev already in a blue jacket and boots, and at the right moment “took out the poems from a bundle in newsprint.”

The main effect that Yesenin sought and achieved, stylizing his appearance as a village simpleton, was the bright contrast between this appearance and the confident professionalism of his poems. It was this professionalism that Z. Gippius (under the pseudonym R. Arensky) noted in the magazine preface to Yesenin’s poetic selection: “the skill seems to be given: there are no extra words, but simply those that exist.”

The main reason for the increased demand of the modernist environment for future poets from the people was caught by Yesenin not from the stylist Gorodetsky, but from the Merezhkovskys and Filosofov. After communicating with this “trinity”, which claimed to create a new church, naive religiosity, flowing into pantheism, quickly became perhaps the main distinguishing feature of Yesenin’s lyrics of 1915-1917.

Having letters of recommendation from Gorodetsky, Murashev and Merezhkovsky in hand, Yesenin undertook a swift raid on the editorial offices of Petrograd literary magazines and newspapers. Everywhere he behaved according to the already worked out scenario: he pretended to be a shy provincial, skillfully imitated the folk dialect and blinded everyone with his childishly charming smile. And everywhere he was received with open arms...

Natural artistry, charm, the ability to make one listen to oneself, despite the complete inability to coherently express one’s thoughts in prose, became the key to S. Yesenin’s success among the demanding literary community of the northern capital.

Gorodetsky smoothly transferred the talented “nugget” under the wing of N. Klyuev, and he happily took on the role of teacher and mentor of the “younger” poet. In the most unthinkable folk costumes, ordered from the best theater workshops, in the fall of 1915 the “villagers” began to tour the literary salons of Petrograd. According to many contemporaries who saw and heard Yesenin during this period, the appearance of the “gingerbread cherub,” the balalaika and the vulgar ditties he performed at literary evenings could not hide the main thing from the audience: this boy looked smarter and more talented than all his vulgar masquerade surroundings. There was a sense of extraordinary potential in him, which, like Mayakovsky, could not be assessed as “he’s from the choir, a balalaika player.”

“...The public, accustomed at that time to various extravagant antics of poets, soon got used to it, realizing that this was “advertising” in the modern spirit and they should listen not to the balalaika, but to the poetry of poets,” Zoya Yasinskaya wrote in her memoirs. M. Voloshin shared the same opinion, who later said about the performance of Klyuev and Yesenin at the evening of the group “Krasa” created by Gorodetsky: “The deliberately rollicking strumming of the balalaika, the playing of the harmonica and truly Russian exciting voices.”

In January 1916, Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin arrived in Moscow. The main purpose of their visit was to perform in front of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and her immediate circle. They performed within the walls of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, then read poetry to the Grand Duchess herself and she really liked it. “Engagement” with the royal house, unpopular in this period in the literary community, played a cruel joke on the “village” poets. They were subjected to literary ostracism, suspected of imitating Rasputin and striving to save an already obsolete monarchy.

Nevertheless, at the beginning of February 1916, Yesenin’s debut book of poems “Radunitsa” arrived in bookstores. “Everyone unanimously said that I was talented. “I knew this better than others,” - this is how Yesenin summed up the critical responses to “Radunitsa” in his 1923 autobiography. However, friendly reviews coexisted in the press with sharply negative and even devastating reviews. Yesenin and Klyuev were accused of deliberately and tastelessly stylizing their “native speech.” Yesenin’s recent friend Georgy Ivanov, in his response to the book, rightly recalled the author’s diligent apprenticeship with the Symbolists. According to Ivanov, in the poems of “Radunitsa,” the peasant poet took “a course of modernism, that superficial and uncomplicated course that begins by leafing through the “Reader-Reciter” and ends with diligent reading of “Scales” and “The Golden Fleece.” By reading, when everything delights, one takes it on faith and assimilates everything as an immutable truth.”

In the service of “the Tsar and the Fatherland”

Meanwhile, the First was walking World War, and Yesenin was subject to conscription into the army. Thanks to N. Klyuev’s acquaintance with Colonel D. Loman, the head of the Tsarskoye Selo ambulance train, Yesenin was able to get a job as a nurse on the train and keep him away from the front line. The train's service personnel were based in Tsarskoye Selo, in a village called Feodorovsky town. The poet served in the army for a little less than a year. During this time, he managed to read poetry several times before the empress and the crown princesses, received a gold watch as a gift from the emperor (according to another version, Loman appropriated the gift watch for himself, giving others to Yesenin) and created in his imagination a lot of myths about the favor of others. Grand Duchesses. During this period, the stage image of Yesenin - the village Ivanushka the Fool - is replaced by the image of the fabulous Ivan Tsarevich, a pop storyteller, dressed in a boyar costume.

The liberal public of that time did not forgive such “crimes” as monarchical feelings for the Russian writer. Yesenin could not help but understand this and, obviously, deliberately made a break. What were the plans and hopes that pushed him to take such a bold step? There are only timid assumptions about this by modern researchers. Yesenin and Klyuev were asked to write a book or poem about the activities of the persons of the reigning house, i.e. have finally acquired the status of “court” poets. Klyuev refused, citing insufficient awareness of this issue. In a letter to Colonel Loman, he hinted in every possible way that peasant poets were currently not so close to the court, but in exchange for super-loyalty and the obvious accompanying troubles, they wanted nothing more or less than to participate in solving state affairs. True, it is not entirely clear in what function and with what powers. It is unlikely that Klyuev would have decided to take on the role of the second Rasputin.

Poet and revolution

At the beginning of 1917, Yesenin continued his service in Tsarskoe Selo, participating in court festive events. Neither in letters nor in oral conversations recorded by memoirists, Yesenin did not show any displeasure or protest in connection with his role as a “nugget poet” favored by the Court. It took him, according to biographer Lekmanov, “a little more than two weeks” to come to his senses.

Later, as if answering the question of what he did in February 1917, Yesenin invents a lot of poetic and oral legends about his desertion. One of them is set out in the poem “Anna Snegina”:

In fact, the “first deserter in the country” in the war did not fire a single shot, and he was far from being the “first” deserter. He turned out to be one without any risk and in the most natural way. The only fact on which the poet could base his “exalting deception” was the order to appear in Mogilev, given to him by Colonel Loman. Yesenin was sent to Headquarters following the emperor, but with the beginning of the February events, the need for a business trip disappeared by itself. Due to staff reductions, “warrior” Yesenin was transferred to a school for warrant officers with an excellent certificate. He wisely chose not to study to become an ensign. During this period, Yesenin had every reason to hide only from the February Revolution itself. “I was afraid to return to St. Petersburg,” he later told Ivanov-Razumnik, “In Nevka, like Rasputin, they wouldn’t have drowned me, but with a hot hand, and in joy, there would have been people who would have liked to crush my face. I had to disappear into the bushes: I went to Konstantinovo. After waiting there for two weeks, I ventured to appear in St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. Nothing, everything turned out well, thank God.”

In Petrograd, the former “Tsarskoe Selo singer” immediately joined the ranks of ardent supporters of the revolution.

The revolution, which dictated the new needs of the poetic market, is associated with a whole series of changes in S. Yesenin’s “masks” and images. Shepherd Lel, Ivan the Fool and Ivan Tsarevich - all this was no longer any good. The time has come for riotous revelry, the overthrow of previous ideals, the time when “everything is permitted.” And the singer of Christian-humble Rus', with the artistry inherent in his nature, instantly transforms into a blasphemous hooligan, an innovator-revolutionary who seeks to jump on the revolution like a wild horse, subjugating its bloody element. Yesenin, in the shortest possible time, creates poetry and poems full of revolutionary pathos, actively speaks at rallies, strives to be in time everywhere, to comprehend everything, to be the first to say everything. Soon, the poem “Comrade”, written by him in March 1917, performed by the author or professional readers, will become an indispensable “highlight” of revolutionary concerts and poetry evenings, along with “The Twelve” by Blok and “Left March” by Mayakovsky. Yesenin tries on the role of a prophet, tribune, and leader of the revolution.

In contrast to the frightened Kadet and Socialist Revolutionary intelligentsia, the October events of 1917 only provoked Yesenin. In the first days after the coup, when most writers hid, Yesenin was in great demand - both on the stage and in the press. He tirelessly rushed around clubs and factories - giving speeches and poems. On November 22, the poet organizes an author's evening in the hall of the Tenishevsky School. On December 3, it was announced that he would speak at a matinee in favor of the Petrograd Organization of Socialist Revolutionaries, on December 14 - at an evening in memory of the Decembrists, on December 17 - at literary and musical evenings organized by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party; At the same time, in December, Yesenin participates in a concert-meeting at the Rechkin plant. Oral presentations were supposed to establish the “significance voices of the poet Yesenin in the thunder of events,” but the main emphasis was placed on appearances in the press. It was Yesenin who managed to write the first poem in honor of October - “Transfiguration” (November 1917). This was followed by “Inonia,” in which the poet sums up his revolutionary “quest,” singing in unison with Lenin’s first decrees, openly mocking religious symbols.

But can Yesenin of the 1917 period be definitely called a prudent and unprincipled opportunist?

Such assessments of his work in 1917 and especially 1918 were quite common, especially in the circles of metropolitan writers. Yesenin was accused of striving to “connect himself with the victorious” (E. Zamyatin), to become “an ode to the revolution and a panegyrist of “strong power”” (V. Khovin). But after the poet’s death, Vladislav Khodasevich unexpectedly became his most convincing lawyer. In his memoirs, he rightly noted that Yesenin was neither a shapeshifter nor a double-dealer and did not at all insure his personal career. On the contrary, in the evolution of his views, Yesenin is very consistent and honest: both his words and deeds were determined only by the peasant “truth.”

“...He simply did not care where the revolution would come from, from above or from below. He knew that at the last minute he would join those who would set fire Russia; I was waiting for a peasant woman to fly out of this flame like a phoenix, a firebird. Rus", notes Khodasevich. In any revolutionary ups and downs, Yesenin found himself precisely “where the extremes are,” with those who, as it seemed to him, had more combustible material in their hands. Program differences were not important to him, and, probably, little known. The revolution was for him only a prologue to much more significant events. The Social Revolutionaries (it makes no difference whether they are right or left), like the Bolsheviks later, were for him those who clear the path for the peasant and whom this peasant will equally sweep away in due time.”

In our opinion, this assessment of Yesenin’s actions is the most fair. He believed in his “peasant” truth, and when the Bolsheviks deceived all expectations and hopes, he was severely disappointed both in them and in any prospects for the social reforms they had started.

"Order of the Imagists"

In 1917-18, Yesenin took an active part in the work of the editors of the literary collection “Scythians”. The editor of "Scythians" Ivanov-Razumnik argued that after the revolution the main driving force of social development in Russia remained the nationality, which was the only one preserved from the triad of Orthodoxy-Autocracy-Nationalism. He criticized those who did not see behind the “foreign” (behind the external Marxist shell of the revolution) its “genuinely Russian” content. Russia is a young, full of strength people, “Scythians”, who will dictate their laws to the decrepit West (“Try, fight us! // Yes, we are the Scythians! Yes, we are the Asians, // With slanted and greedy eyes! ) The “Scythians” firmly believed that the Russian revolution would turn the whole world upside down.

Yesenin's contemporaries unanimously speak of Yesenin's joyful aspiration into the distance, of Yesenin's stormy inspiration in 1917–1918. However, this cannot be explained by the desire to “leap over and surpass” previous literary authorities alone; faith is also necessary. Yesenin believed not so much in the peasant kingdom (this was only a “pretext for creating a reception,” for he had never been a real peasant), but in the “resurrection of the word.” This made the poet Yesenin strive not only for primacy, but also for poetic perfection.

It was in the “Scythian” era that Yesenin, speaking with his poems, gained that power, that ability for “undivided submission” of listeners, which he would not lose until the end of his days. When reading poetry, the poet achieved maximum tension for the audience - he surprised the audience with unexpected intonation transitions, played with contrasts, either insulting the audience or touching them to tears. He methodically honed his artistry, taking full advantage of his attractive appearance and his inherent charm, but Yesenin did not emerge as a true poet-tribune. As theater directors say, the stage texture is not the same. Mayakovsky looked much more organic in this role.

Acquaintance with Andrei Bely, who also collaborated in “Scythians,” prompted Yesenin to new creative searches. He became interested in searching for the poetic “internal rhyme” of a word, and in 1919, together with V. Shershnevich and A. Mariengof, he signed the famous Declaration of Imagists, which proclaimed the death of futurism and the birth of a new movement in literature.

The aesthetic concept of imagism was based on fundamental anti-aestheticism with a focus on shocking, repulsive, provocative images, immoralism and cynicism (perceived as philosophical system). In fact, there was nothing new in this. The image as a method of artistic creativity was widely used in the past not only by futurism, but also by symbolism. Romantic amoralism was preached by Russian modernists of the older generation (Bryusov, Balmont), who, in turn, borrowed it from the “damned poets” and Nietzsche. What was actually new was that imagism became the last of the avant-garde literary movements that were influential in the Silver Age.

The creative activity of the Imagists, unlike most other literary groups, was based on a solid material foundation. In September 1919, Yesenin and Mariengof developed and registered with the Moscow Council the charter of the “Association of Freethinkers” - the official structure of the “Order of Imagists”. The charter was signed by other members of the group and several people close to imagism (among them the murderer of the German ambassador Mirbach, security officer Ya. Blyumkin and the caretaker of the Pegasus Stable A. Silin), and it was approved by the People's Commissar of Education A. Lunacharsky. On February 20, 1920, Yesenin was elected chairman of the Association. The creation of the Association made it possible to open several commercial enterprises under it. By the end of the year, the literary cafe “Stable of Pegasus” and two bookstores in which the poets themselves sold books began to operate - “Bookshop of Word Artists” and “Shop of Poets.” When the “Stable” ceased to exist in 1922, the cafe-dining room “Kalosha” appeared, and then the “Mouse Hole”. The Association also owned the Liliput cinema. The funds that these institutions gave to poets during the years of “war communism” and NEP went to the needs of the “Order,” primarily for the publication of books and the maintenance of the authors themselves.

The Imagists had a strong position in the All-Russian Union of Poets, in the creation of which Rurik Ivnev (Lunacharsky’s personal secretary) and V. Shershenevich played a significant role. Both then presided there, and Yesenin, Gruzinov and Roizman were on the presidium.

Experiencing difficulties with the publication of their own poetry collections in the State Publishing House, the Imagists opened their own publishing houses - “Chikhi-Pikhi” and “Sandro”, led by A. Kusikov, as well as “Pleiad”. But the publishing house “Imaginists” becomes the main one. Over the four years of its existence, it has published more than 40 books. In 1922, the Imagists founded their own magazine, Hotel for Travelers in Beauty, which existed for three years (only four issues were published).

The Imagists also propagated their ideas at numerous performances. In 1919, they entered the literary section of the Literary Train named after. A. Lunacharsky, which gave them the opportunity to travel and perform throughout the country. In Moscow, evenings with the participation of imagists took place in the “Pegasus Stable”, in the cafe of the Union of Poets “Domino”, the Polytechnic Museum and other halls.

Partly adopting the behavior of the Futurists, the Imagists constantly - especially in the first period - organized various group actions, such as painting the walls of the Strastnoy Monastery with blasphemous inscriptions, renaming Moscow streets, “trials” of literature, etc., with the goal not only self-promotion, but also protested against the increasing pressure from the authorities. Their criticism is related to this " statecraft" - Proletkult, the magazine "On Post", LEF, who sought contact with the state.

By the time the “Order of Imagists” was formed, Yesenin already had his own program, set out in the treatise “The Keys of Mary,” where the poet, based on personal experience thought about creativity in general and verbal art in particular. It expressed Yesenin’s desire to creatively master the “organic figurativeness” of the Russian language and contained a number of very interesting considerations about relying on national elements and folklore. Folk mythology was one of the main sources of Yesenin’s imagery, and the mythological parallel “nature - man” became fundamental to his poetic worldview. V. Shershenevich and A. Mariengof, who came from near-futurist circles, were openly irritated by Yesenin’s “nationalism,” but they needed his big name as the banner of a movement that was gaining strength.

However, Yesenin himself soon “got sick” of imagism. The ambitions of literary innovation had already dissipated by 1921, when the poet in print called the activities of his friends “antics for the sake of antics,” linking their senseless mockery addressed to others with the lack of “a sense of homeland.” However, Yesenin needed the mask of a shocking hooligan in order to say what others no longer dared to say. He continued to actively publish in Imagist publishing houses and enjoy all the benefits of the group’s “high” patrons: the authorities did not touch them. On the contrary, the Imagists were protected like foolish children or clowns, whose “antics” could be regarded as a manifestation of literary freedom - within certain limits, of course. Only in 1924 Yesenin officially announced his departure from imagism. The Order itself ceased to exist in 1927.

Love in the life of S.A. Yesenin

If you look at the bibliography of research-biographical and pseudo-scientific literature dedicated to S.A. Yesenin, one involuntarily catches the eye with the abundance of such titles as “Women in Yesenin’s life”, “Yesenin’s love and death”, “Muses of Russian literature”, “Women who loved Yesenin”, etc. etc. There are even studies in which the stages of Yesenin’s work are deliberately closely linked with the names of one or another of his lovers, women who, as it seems to biographers, played a certain role in the poet’s life. In our opinion, such an approach to understanding the work of the great Russian lyricist is completely unjustified. During his life, there were many people around Yesenin, including women, who, to one degree or another, sought to influence his fate. However, based on the statements of almost all of Sergei Alexandrovich’s contemporaries and contemporaries, he was not a loving and open person. On the contrary, Yesenin could truly open his soul, make another person involved in his feelings and experiences only in poetry. Hence the undoubted confessionality, the incorruptible sincerity of his lyrical lines, addressed to all of humanity, and not to any individual person.

“I am cold,” Yesenin himself often remarked in conversations with his friends. “Following the “chill,” again and again came the assurance that he was supposedly incapable of “truly” loving,” testifies one of Yesenin’s common-law wives, N. Volpin. Indeed, with regard to the poet’s personal life, contemporary memoirists show rare unanimity: “Yesenin did not love anyone, and everyone loved Yesenin” (A. Mariengof); “For the most part, Yesenin spoke somewhat disparagingly about women” (I. Rozanov); “he always had love in the background” (V. Shershenevich); “This sector was of little importance to him” (S. Gorodetsky). And yet, many wondered: was there anything in the best years of the poet in spite of this “chill” - well, at least a little bit, at least a semblance of love?

At one time, S. Yesenin rejected the homoerotic love of N. Klyuev, who was sincerely jealous of his women and even, according to some memoirists and Yesenin himself, staged hysterical scenes. The poet’s biographers are often inclined to explain this fact by the “healthy nature” of the Ryazan nugget: they say that all sexual deviations that were fashionable in the artistic environment of the early 20th century were alien to Yesenin. Most likely, it was not at all a matter of the young poet’s sexual preferences. Let us remember that Klyuev subsequently emphasized the similarity of Sergei Yesenin with Kitovras, the mythical centaur on whom King Solomon cunningly threw a magic bridle and forced him to serve himself (“The White Light of Seryozha is similar to Kitovras”). However, Yesenin was much more embarrassed by Klyuev’s claims to his soul than to his body. Life in someone else’s “fetter” did not suit him, and the fear of forever remaining a “younger” brother under an older and famous poet prompted him to fight for his creative and spiritual freedom. Like Kitovras, Yesenin did not know how to take roundabout paths - he always went straight to the intended goal. Therefore, he simply threw the cunning Klyuev away from him when he no longer needed him. So the legendary centaur threw King Solomon to the ends of the world, freeing himself from his magical rein. Klyuev took revenge on him for this for the rest of his life.

The poet’s other, most striking hobbies were Zinaida Reich and Lydia Kashina, the Konstantinovskaya landowner, to whom the poem “Anna Snegina” is dedicated. But the marriage to Reich gave Yesenin only a short-lived feeling of homeliness - for the rest of his life he was virtually homeless. The feeling of an established life could neither erase nor push into the background his own Being. The feeling of spiritual attachment to someone specific and real, as in the case of Klyuev, only infringed on his spiritual freedom.

Isadora Duncan, N. Volpin, G. Benislavskaya, S. Tolstaya - this is by no means a “Don Juan” list of a “repentant” hooligan. All these women, repeatedly called “muses”, “beloved”, “life friends” of the brilliant poet, lived on their own, he lived on his own. Isadora had her dance and European fame, Volpin had extensive literary interests and a desired child from her loved one, Reich became an actress, the wife of the Soviet “theater general” Meyerhold, Tolstoy still had her “great old man” and a lot of Yesenin’s handwritten autographs. Only faithful Galya, like a dog, could not survive the death of her beloved owner and left after him.

Yes, there were many women who loved Yesenin. But, in fact, there was so little love in his life that he had to constantly invent it, torture it, dress it in beautiful clothes, yearn and daydream about the unrealistic, unrealistic, impossible. Yesenin himself explained it this way: “No matter how much I swore mad love to anyone, no matter how much I assured myself of the same, all this is, in essence, a huge and fatal mistake. There is something that I love above all women, above any woman, and that I would not trade for any caresses or any love. This is art…"

Most likely, this was exactly the case.

Last years

S.A. Yesenin lived only thirty years. In 1925, he had the status, in modern terms, of perhaps the first “superstar” on the poetic horizon of Soviet Russia. His poems sold in huge quantities, they were snapped up instantly, as soon as the publications had time to come out of the printing press. Young people raved about the poetic lines of their idol, the official press began to bark curses, even the poet-tribune V. Mayakovsky, who was biased by the authorities, was haunted by the truly all-Russian love for the singer of the outdated “hut Rus'”.

And what about Yesenin himself? If you trace the officially coiffed, well-edited chronology of the last year of his life by posthumous biographers, there would be enough events for several lives, and contradictory, mutually exclusive plots for several novels, stories and plays. In 1925, Sergei Alexandrovich worked hard to prepare a collection of works: he edited and rewrote old things, perhaps putting other dates on already written but unpublished poems. Researchers are amazed by Yesenin’s unprecedented efficiency: more than sixty (!) poems included in the first collected works are dated 1925. In the same year, the poems “Anna Snegina” and “The Black Man” were finally completed. For comparison: in the “fruitful” 1917, when the poet inspired by the revolution strives to do everything, Yesenin wrote only about thirty works.

Editorial work requires no less time, effort and creative tension than poetic creativity. According to the recollections of the poet’s relatives, he could not work drunk: all the poems were copied by hand several times by the author himself (a lot of autographs and various versions of poems from 1925 have been preserved). At the same time, Yesenin manages to travel to the Caucasus, where, according to some versions, he finds himself an influential patron - S.M. Kirov. The poet actively communicates with the editors of literary magazines, attends literary debates, speaks to the public with new poems, visits relatives in Konstantinov, takes care of his sisters Katya and Shura, marries S.A. Tolstoy, quarrels with OGPU employees on the train, undergoes treatment in a psychiatric clinic, where he writes a lot of soulful lyrical poems - and all this, according to most memoirists, while being completely sick or constantly drunk. Paradox!

Through the memories of perhaps the person closest to Yesenin during this period - G.A. Benislavskaya – the words about the poet’s mysterious “illness” run through as a refrain. Yesenin, according to the memoirist, behaved and acted like a sick person throughout the entire time after his arrival from abroad. Moreover, it is completely impossible to understand: what exactly was sick with the poet, who was barely approaching the fatal thirty-year mark for him? Galina Arturovna either complains about Yesenin’s alcoholism, or mentions a nervous disorder with fits of violent rage, or considers the sudden onset of consumption to be the main danger to Sergei Alexandrovich’s health.

Following her, other memoirists claim that the poet suffered from seizures and chronic alcoholism, and was inexorably sliding towards his inglorious end. There are also those who, on the contrary, remember Yesenin of the same period as a disappointed, but, by and large, not resigned to his fate, attentive and tactful person. Even well-known facts contradict themselves: sometimes the unruly “star” starts drunken scandals with the involvement of the police, sometimes he willingly goes to a remote village to read poetry to his rural fans. Prudently and cynically, Yesenin arranges his “housing issue” - he marries L.N.’s granddaughter without love. Tolstoy, and a few days before his death - he answers in detail the letter of the aspiring working poet, disinterestedly dismantling his clumsy verses. Who to believe? We must believe both.

Having thrown off all his masks, which diligently hid him from prying eyes, Yesenin found himself defenseless before the impending reality of meeting himself. With yourself as you are, without self-aggrandizing deceptions, fantasies and external tinsel stuck to it. It can be very difficult for an actor who has played roles forced on him all his life to stop. By inertia, Yesenin continues to play: now into his impending death. Over the course of a year, he says goodbye to friends and relatives: not all memories of the poet’s “premonitions” are the invention of obsequious memoirists. Just look at the memories of G.A. Benislavskaya about a joint trip to Konstantinovo in the early summer of 1925! Playing in front of the villagers either as a “rich gentleman”, or as a “good guy”, or as a sick child who needs constant help and support... A game that gives way to drunken revelations and farewells: “I’ll die soon.”

That same summer in Moscow, Yesenin had the idea to spread rumors about his death, print an obituary in the newspapers, and arrange a magnificent funeral for himself. And then “resurrect” - about two weeks later - and see which of his friends really loved him, and which were just pretending. Everyone to whom he spoke about this treated this idea as just another crazy fantasy or delirium of a madman (remember the “staged” funeral of Ivan the Terrible).

Shortly before his death, Yesenin visits the long-forgotten Anna Izryadnova: “He said that he had come to say goodbye. To my question: "What? Why?" - says: “I’m washing away, leaving, feeling bad, probably going to die.” I asked him not to spoil him, to take care of his son.”

Just before leaving Moscow for Leningrad, where the last four days of his life passed, Yesenin visits all his friends and relatives: he sees Tanya and Kostya - children from Reich, his sister Katya and her husband, the poet Nasedkin. Benislavskaya also invites her to “say goodbye” to him at the station.

The version of the murder of S. Yesenin by OGPU officers on the night of December 27-28, 1925 has not found either confirmation or clear refutation today. In order to kill a person, even the “bloodthirsty OGEP fighters” needed an external, at least somehow explainable, real reason. But an explicable and anyone-proven reason for the poet’s murder has not yet been found. Everything that is proposed as this reason by current would-be novelists (V. Kuznetsov, V. Bezrukov, S. Kunyaev) looks like metaphysical nonsense and speculation of idle pensioners on a bench at the entrance. If Yesenin’s murder had been somehow connected with the struggle of intra-party groups at the XIV Congress of 1925, neither Trotsky, nor Stalin and his supporters would have missed the chance to use this tempting trump card in the subsequent struggle. Already in the 1930s, instead of defaming the name of the national poet and branding him “decadent” best works, it would be much more profitable for the authorities to place Yesenin on the pedestal of the victim of the “damned Trotskyists”, making him a martyr and a hero. And accusing the Jewish clique of murdering a Russian genius is a win-win move that could not be avoided during the trials of former political opponents. If Stalin’s entourage had a hand in eliminating the poet, Trotsky would not have missed the opportunity to mention this, diligently listing all the crimes of the “Kremlin highlander” in exile. The version of everyday, causeless murder (for example, in a drunken fight) is completely dismissed by modern lovers of sensations as unromantic.

On the other hand, Yesenin had no explainable “external” reasons for suicide either. Yes, he became disillusioned with the revolution and its consequences for the Russian people. But who then did not have these disappointments? Voloshin, A. Tolstoy, Babel, Leonov, Sholokhov - we can continue this list of “disappointed” talented people who lived a long or short life in Soviet Russia ad infinitum. “Discord with the era, with the potential mass reader - isn’t this a tragedy for a true artist of words?” - supporters of the suicide version cry out. But Yesenin had no trace of this “discord.” They listened to it, typed it, copied it by hand, learned it by heart; he was worshiped, he was tolerated, he was allowed to say things for which anyone else would have long ago been sent to their forefathers. The authorities demanded that the poet “fight and call for fight” - but this was never his element? Maybe. But, most likely, it was something else.

The poet, artist, and public favorite Sergei Yesenin always liked to play, and always play while standing “on the edge.” Lacking what is called an “inner core,” he did not know how to be alone and was drawn to people, while at the same time pushing them away. He tried to maintain his personal freedom, but was never able to get rid of the dependence of the public, its reaction to his created or being created “image”. If you believe the very dubious “memoirs” of Yesenin’s well-known friend-enemy G.F. Ustinov, then the poet began “playing” his suicide a long time ago and periodically returned to this game. In 1919, while living together with the Ustinovs at the Lux Hotel, Yesenin announced his desire to jump from the balcony and carefully monitored the reaction of the public: how would they perceive his next acting? Ustinov, according to him, removed the extra audience from the room, and then invited Yesenin to carry out his intention. Having lost his audience, the poet instantly changed his mind about taking his own life. (G.F. Ustinov “My memories of Yesenin”).

Let’s remember Yesenin’s last lifetime photograph from 1925: a three-quarter turn, a hat, a smile - it’s as if he’s posing for the cover of a glossy magazine. And the phrase from the letter addressed to G.A. Benislavskaya - “I comb my hair like on the last card” - belongs to the author of “Moscow Tavern” and “Land of Scoundrels”, and by no means the writer of glamorous salon romances.

The last note to V. Ehrlich, scrawled in blood, fits perfectly into this “image”. Who gives suicide notes to friends, seriously planning to commit suicide?.. Numerous graphological examinations claim that the poem is indeed written in the handwriting of Yesenin himself and, possibly, written in blood. And if you read Yesenin’s message literally, abstracting from the fact that it was the last, in it the poet invites Erlich to return:

After reading such lines, anyone normal person had to return to the hotel and thereby prevent the planned staging. Was it not for this purpose that Yesenin invited Klyuev to his place that day, but he came too late, when it was all over?..

The very possibility of imminent death elevates. Like a drug, it tickles the nerves, intoxicates, gives a feeling of happiness and food for inspiration. And most importantly, it leaves a person disappointed in everything with an interest in himself, as the arbiter of the fate of his own poetic Universe. Rehearsing the role of a suicide ended tragically for Yesenin. However, he might not have wanted such an ending for himself: they say he grabbed the pipe with his hand, tried to get out of the loop at the last moment... Who knows? After all, the boundaries beyond which Poetry ends and simply rhymed lines begin are known only to the Poet himself. Yesenin was a poseur in life, but acting in poetry turned out to be unthinkable for him...

Elena Shirokova

Materials used in preparing this article:

Kunyaev S., Kunyaev St. Sergey Yesenin. M.: Young Guard, 2007;

Lekmanov O. Sverdlov M. Sergey Yesenin. Biography. – St. Petersburg: Vita Nova, 2007. – 608 p.;

Yesenin - Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925), Russian poet. From his first collections (“Radunitsa”, 1916; “Rural Book of Hours”, 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Rus', an expert on the folk language and the folk soul. In 1919-23 he was a member of the Imagist group. A tragic attitude and mental confusion are expressed in the cycles “Mare’s Ships” (1920), “Moscow Tavern” (1924), and the poem “The Black Man” (1925). In the poem “The Ballad of Twenty-Six” (1924), dedicated to the Baku commissars, the collection “Soviet Rus'” (1925), and the poem “Anna Snegina” (1925), Yesenin sought to comprehend “the commune-raised Rus',” although he continued to feel like a poet of “Leaving Rus'” ", "golden log hut". Dramatic poem "Pugachev" (1921).

Childhood and youth

Born into a peasant family, he lived as a child in his grandfather's family. Among Yesenin’s first impressions are spiritual poems sung by wandering blind men and grandmother’s tales. Having graduated with honors from the Konstantinovsky four-year school (1909), he continued his studies at the Spas-Klepikovsky teacher's school (1909-12), from which he graduated as a “teacher of the literacy school.” In the summer of 1912, Yesenin moved to Moscow and for some time served in a butcher shop, where his father worked as a clerk. After a conflict with his father, he left the shop, worked in a book publishing house, then in the printing house of I. D. Sytin; during this period he joined the revolutionary-minded workers and found himself under police surveillance. At the same time, Yesenin studied at the historical and philosophical department of Shanyavsky University (1913-15).

Literary debut and success

Having composed poetry since childhood (mainly in imitation of A.V. Koltsov, I.S. Nikitin, S.D. Drozhzhin), Yesenin finds like-minded people in the Surikov Literary and Musical Circle, of which he became a member in 1912. He began publishing in 1914 in Moscow children's magazines (debut poem "Birch"). In the spring of 1915, Yesenin came to Petrograd, where he met A. A. Blok, S. M. Gorodetsky, A. M. Remizov, N. S. Gumilev and others, and became close to N. A. Klyuev, who had a significant influence on him . Their joint performances with poems and ditties, stylized in a “peasant”, “folk” manner (Yesenin appeared to the public as a golden-haired young man in an embroidered shirt and morocco boots), were a great success.

Military service

In the first half of 1916, Yesenin was drafted into the army, but thanks to the efforts of his friends, he received an appointment (“with the highest permission”) as an orderly on the Tsarskoye Selo military sanitary train No. 143 of Her Imperial Majesty Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, which allows him to freely attend literary salons and visit at receptions with patrons, performing at concerts. At one of the concerts in the infirmary to which he was assigned (the empress and princesses also served as nurses here), he meets the royal family. Then, together with N. Klyuev, they perform, dressed in ancient Russian costumes, sewn according to sketches by V. Vasnetsov, at the evenings of the “Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus'” at the Feodorovsky town in Tsarskoe Selo, and are also invited to Grand Duchess Elizabeth in Moscow. Together with the royal couple in May 1916, Yesenin visited Evpatoria as a train orderly. This was the last trip of Nicholas II to Crimea.

"Radunitsa"

Yesenin’s first collection of poems, “Radunitsa” (1916), was enthusiastically welcomed by critics, who discovered a fresh spirit in it, noting the author’s youthful spontaneity and natural taste. In the poems of “Radunitsa” and subsequent collections (“Dove”, “Transfiguration”, “Rural Book of Hours”, all 1918, etc.) a special Yesenin “anthropomorphism” develops: animals, plants, natural phenomena, etc. are humanized by the poet, forming together with people connected by roots and all their being with nature, a harmonious, holistic, beautiful world. At the intersection of Christian imagery, pagan symbolism and folklore stylistics, paintings of Yesenin’s Rus', colored by a subtle perception of nature, are born, where everything: a burning stove and a dog’s nook, an uncut hayfield and swamps, the hubbub of mowers and the snoring of a herd becomes the object of the poet’s reverent, almost religious feeling (“I I pray for the red dawns, I take communion by the stream”).

Revolution

At the beginning of 1918 Yesenin moved to Moscow. Having met the revolution with enthusiasm, he wrote several short poems (“The Jordan Dove,” “Inonia,” “Heavenly Drummer,” all 1918, etc.), imbued with a joyful anticipation of the “transformation” of life. They combine godless sentiments with biblical imagery to indicate the scale and significance of the events taking place. Yesenin, glorifying the new reality and its heroes, tried to correspond to the times (“Cantata”, 1919). In later years, he wrote “Song of the Great March”, 1924, “Captain of the Earth”, 1925, etc.). Reflecting on “where the fate of events is taking us,” the poet turns to history (dramatic poem “Pugachev”, 1921).

Imagism

Searches in the field of imagery bring Yesenin together with A. B. Mariengof, V. G. Shershenevich, R. Ivnev, at the beginning of 1919 they united in a group of imagists; Yesenin becomes a regular at the Pegasus Stable, a literary café of Imagists at the Nikitsky Gate in Moscow. However, the poet only partly shared their platform, the desire to cleanse the form of the “dust of content.” His aesthetic interests are directed to the patriarchal village way of life, folk art and the spiritual fundamental basis of the artistic image (treatise “The Keys of Mary”, 1919). Already in 1921, Yesenin appeared in print criticizing the “buffoonish antics for the sake of antics” of his “brothers” Imagists. Gradually, fanciful metaphors are leaving his lyrics.

"Moscow Tavern"

In the early 1920s. in Yesenin’s poems there appear motifs of “a life torn apart by a storm” (in 1920, a marriage that lasted about three years with Z.N. Reich broke up), drunken prowess, giving way to hysterical melancholy. The poet appears as a hooligan, a brawler, a drunkard with a bloody soul, hobbling “from den to den,” where he is surrounded by “alien and laughing rabble” (collections “Confession of a Hooligan,” 1921; “Moscow Tavern,” 1924).

Isadora

An event in Yesenin’s life was a meeting with the American dancer Isadora Duncan (autumn 1921), who six months later became his wife. A joint trip to Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy) and America (May 1922 August 1923), accompanied by noisy scandals, shocking antics of Isadora and Yesenin, revealed their “mutual misunderstanding”, aggravated by the literal lack of a common language (Yesenin did not speak foreign languages , Isadora learned several dozen Russian words). Upon returning to Russia they separated.

Poems of recent years

Yesenin returned to his homeland with joy, a feeling of renewal, and the desire “to be a singer and a citizen... in the great states of the USSR.” During this period (1923-25) his best lines were written: the poems “The Golden Grove Dissuaded...”, “Letter to Mother”, “We are now leaving little by little...”, the cycle “Persian Motifs”, the poem “Anna Snegina” etc. The main place in his poems still belongs to the theme of the homeland, which now acquires dramatic shades. The once single harmonious world of Yesenin’s Rus' bifurcates: “Soviet Rus'”, “Leaving Rus'”. The motif of the competition between old and new (“a red-maned foal” and “a train on cast-iron paws”), outlined in the poem “Sorokoust” (1920), is being developed in the poems of recent years: recording the signs of a new life, welcoming “stone and steel,” Yesenin increasingly feels like a singer of a “golden log hut”, whose poetry “is no longer needed here” (collections “Soviet Rus'”, “Soviet Country”, both 1925). The emotional dominant of the lyrics of this period are autumn landscapes, motives of summing up, and farewells.

Tragic ending

One of his last works was the poem “Land of Scoundrels” in which he denounced the Soviet regime. After this, he began to be persecuted in the newspapers, accusing him of drunkenness, fighting, etc. The last two years of Yesenin’s life were spent in constant travel: hiding from prosecution, he travels to the Caucasus three times, goes to Leningrad several times, and Konstantinovo seven times. At the same time, he is once again trying to start a family life, but his union with S.A. Tolstoy (granddaughter of L.N. Tolstoy) was not happy. At the end of November 1925, due to the threat of arrest, he had to go to a psychoneurological clinic. Sofya Tolstaya agreed with Professor P.B. Gannushkin about the poet’s hospitalization in a paid clinic at Moscow University. The professor promised to provide him with a separate room where Yesenin could do literary work. The GPU and police officers went crazy looking for the poet. Only a few people knew about his hospitalization in the clinic, but informants were found. On November 28, security officers rushed to the director of the clinic, Professor P.B. They demanded the extradition of Yesenin to Gannushkin, but he did not hand over his fellow countryman to death. The clinic is under surveillance. Having waited a moment, Yesenin interrupts the course of treatment (he left the clinic in a group of visitors) and on December 23 leaves for Leningrad. On the night of December 28, at the Angleterre Hotel, Sergei Yesenin is killed by staging suicide.

Yesenin's autobiography dated May 14, 1922

I am the son of a peasant. Born in 1895 on September 21 in the Ryazan province. Ryazan district. Kuzminskaya volost. From the age of two, due to the poverty of my father and the large size of my family, I was given up to be raised by a rather wealthy maternal grandfather, who had three adult unmarried sons, with whom I spent almost my entire childhood. My uncles were mischievous and desperate guys. When I was three and a half years old, they put me on a horse without a saddle and immediately set me off at a gallop. I remember that I went crazy and held my withers very tightly. Then I was taught to swim. One uncle (Uncle Sasha) took me into a boat, drove away from the shore, took off my underwear and threw me into the water like a puppy. I flapped my hands ineptly and frightenedly, and until I was choking, he kept shouting: “Eh, bitch! Well, where are you good for?” “Bitch” was a term of endearment. After about eight years, I often replaced another uncle’s hunting dog, swimming around the lakes after shot ducks. I was very good at climbing trees. None of the boys could compete with me. For many people who were disturbed by rooks at noon after plowing, I removed nests from birch trees, for a ten-kopeck piece. Once he fell, but very successfully, scratching only his face and stomach and breaking a jug of milk that he was carrying to his grandfather for mowing.

Among the boys, I was always a horse breeder and a big fighter and always walked around with scratches. Only my grandmother scolded me for my mischief, and my grandfather sometimes egged me on to fistfights and often said to my grandmother: “You’re a fool, don’t touch him. He will be stronger this way.” Grandmother loved me with all her might, and her tenderness knew no bounds. On Saturdays they washed me, cut my nails and crimped my hair with cooking oil, because not a single comb could handle curly hair. But the oil didn’t help much either. I always yelled obscenities and even now I have some kind of unpleasant feeling about Saturday. On Sundays I was always sent to mass and... to check that I was at mass, they gave me 4 kopecks. Two kopecks for the prosphora and two for the priest taking out the parts. I bought a prosphora and, instead of the priest, made three marks on it with a penknife, and with the other two kopecks I went to the cemetery to play piggyback with the guys.

This is how my childhood went. When I grew up, they really wanted to make me a rural teacher, and therefore they sent me to a closed church-teachers school, after graduating from which, at the age of sixteen, I had to enter the Moscow Teachers' Institute. Fortunately, this did not happen. I was so fed up with the methodology and didactics that I didn’t even want to listen. I started writing poetry early, at the age of nine, but I date my conscious creativity to the age of 16-17. Some poems from these years are included in “Radunitsa”.

At the age of eighteen, I was surprised, having sent out my poems to magazines, that they were not published, and unexpectedly came to St. Petersburg. I was received very cordially there. The first person I saw was Blok, the second was Gorodetsky. When I looked at Blok, sweat dripped from me, because for the first time I saw a living poet. Gorodetsky introduced me to Klyuev, about whom I had never heard a word. With Klyuev, despite all our internal strife, we began a great friendship, which continues to this day, despite the fact that we have not seen each other for six years. He now lives in Vytegra, writes to me that he eats bread with chaff, washes it down with empty boiling water and prays to God for a shameless death.

During the years of war and revolution, fate pushed me from side to side. I have traveled the length and breadth of Russia, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black and Caspian Seas, from the West to China, Persia and India. I consider 1919 to be the best time in my life. Then we lived the winter in room cold of 5 degrees. We didn't have a log of firewood. I have never been a member of the RCP, because I feel much to the left. My favorite writer is Gogol. Books of my poems: “Radunitsa”, “Dove”, “Transfiguration”, “Rural Book of Hours”, “Treryadnitsa”, “Confession of a Hooligan” and “Pugachev”. Now I’m working on a big thing called “Land of Scoundrels.” In Russia, when there was no paper, I printed my poems together with Kusikov and Mariengof on the walls of the Strastnoy Monastery or simply read them somewhere on the boulevard. The best fans of our poetry are prostitutes and bandits. We are all in great friendship with them. The communists don't like us because of a misunderstanding. For this, my deepest greetings to all my readers and a little attention to the sign: “They ask you not to shoot!”

Yesenin's autobiography from 1923

Born 1895, October 4. The son of a peasant in Ryazan province, Ryazan district, village of Konstantinov. My childhood was spent among fields and steppes.

He grew up under the supervision of his grandmother and grandfather. My grandmother was religious and took me to monasteries. At home I gathered all the crippled people who sing spiritual poems in Russian villages from “Lazarus” to “Mikola”. He grew up mischievous and naughty. He was a brawler. My grandfather sometimes forced me to fight so that I would be stronger.

He started composing poetry early. The grandmother gave the pushes. She told stories. I didn’t like some fairy tales with bad endings, and I remade them in my own way. He began to write poetry, imitating ditties. He had little faith in God. I didn't like going to church. At home they knew this and, in order to test me, they gave me 4 kopecks for a prosphora, which I had to take to the altar to the priest for the ritual of removing the parts. The priest made 3 cuts on the prosphora and charged 2 kopecks for it. Then I learned to do this procedure myself with a pocket knife, and 2 kopecks. He put it in his pocket and went to play in the cemetery with the boys, play grandmas. Once the grandfather guessed. There was a scandal. I ran away to another village to visit my aunt and didn’t show up until they forgave me.

He studied at a closed teachers' school. At home they wanted me to be a village teacher. When they took me to school, I missed my grandmother terribly and one day I ran home more than 100 miles on foot. At home they scolded me and took me back.

After school, from the age of 16 to 17, he lived in the village. At the age of 17 he left for Moscow and entered Shanyavsky University as a volunteer student. At the age of 19 I came to St. Petersburg on my way to Revel to visit my uncle. I went to Blok, Blok put him in touch with Gorodetsky, and Gorodetsky with Klyuev. My poems made a great impression. All the best magazines of that time (1915) began to publish me, and in the fall (1915) my first book “Radunitsa” appeared. Much has been written about her. Everyone unanimously said that I was talented. I knew this better than anyone. After “Radunitsa” I released “Dove”, “Transfiguration”, “Rural Book of Hours”, “Keys of Mary”, “Treryadnitsa”, “Confession of a Hooligan”, “Pugachev”. “Land of Scoundrels” and “Moscow Tavern” will soon be published.

Extremely individual. With all the foundations on the Soviet platform.

In 1916 he was called up for military service. With some patronage of Colonel Loman, the empress's adjutant, he was granted many benefits. He lived in Tsarskoe not far from Razumnik Ivanov. At Loman's request, he once read poetry to the Empress. After reading my poems, she said that my poems were beautiful, but very sad. I told her that all of Russia is like that. He referred to poverty, climate, etc. The revolution found me at the front in one of the disciplinary battalions, where I ended up because I refused to write poetry in honor of the Tsar. He refused, consulting and seeking support from Ivanov-Razumnik. During the revolution, he left Kerensky’s army without permission and, living as a deserter, worked with the Socialist Revolutionaries not as a party member, but as a poet.

When the party split, I went with the left group and in October was in their fighting squad. He left Petrograd together with the Soviet regime. In Moscow in 1818 he met with Mariengof, Shershenevich and Ivnev.

The urgent need to put into practice the power of the image prompted us to publish a manifesto of the Imagists. We were the pioneers of a new era in the era of art, and we had to fight for a long time. During our war, we renamed the streets after our names and painted the Strastnoy Monastery with the words of our poems.

1919-1921 traveled around Russia: Murman, Solovki, Arkhangelsk, Turkestan, Kyrgyz steppes, the Caucasus, Persia, Ukraine and Crimea. In '22 he flew on an airplane to Koenigsberg. Traveled all over Europe and North America. I am most pleased with the fact that I returned to Soviet Russia. What's next will be seen.

Yesenin's autobiography dated June 20, 1924

I was born in 1895 on September 21 in the village of Konstantinov, Kuzminsk volost, Ryazan province. and Ryazansky district. My father is a peasant Alexander Nikitich Yesenin, my mother is Tatyana Fedorovna.

He spent his childhood with his maternal grandparents in another part of the village, which is called. Matt. My first memories date back to when I was three or four years old. I remember the forest, the big ditch road. Grandmother goes to the Radovetsky Monastery, which is about 40 miles from us. I, grabbing her stick, can barely drag my legs from fatigue, and my grandmother keeps saying: “Go, go, little berry, God will give you happiness.” Often blind men, wandering through the villages, gathered at our house and sang spiritual poems about a beautiful paradise, about Lazar, about Mikol and about the groom, a bright guest from an unknown city. The nanny was an old woman who looked after me and told me fairy tales, all those fairy tales that all peasant children listen to and know. Grandfather sang me old songs, so drawn-out and mournful. On Saturdays and Sundays he told me the Bible and sacred history.

My street life was different from my home life. My peers were mischievous guys. I climbed with them through other people's gardens. He ran away for 2-3 days into the meadows and ate with the shepherds fish, which we caught in small lakes, first muddying the water with our hands, or broods of ducklings. Afterwards, when I returned, I often got into trouble.

In our family we had a seizure disordered uncle, in addition to my grandmother, grandfather and my nanny. He loved me very much, and we often went with him to the Oka River to water the horses. At night, in calm weather, the moon stands upright in the water. When the horses drank, it seemed to me that they were about to drink the moon, and I was happy when it floated away from their mouths along with the circles. When I was 12 years old, I was sent to study from a rural zemstvo school to a teacher's school. My family wanted me to become a village teacher. Their hopes extended to the institute, fortunately for me, which I did not get into.

I started writing poetry at the age of 9, and learned to read when I was 5. At the very beginning, village ditties had an influence on my creativity. The period of study did not leave any traces on me, except for a strong knowledge of the Church Slavonic language. That's all I took away. He did the rest himself under the guidance of a certain Klemenov. He introduced me to new literature and explained why you need to be afraid of the classics in some ways. Of the poets, I liked Lermontov and Koltsov the most. Later I moved on to Pushkin.

In 1913, I entered Shanyavsky University as a volunteer student. After staying there for 1.5 years, I had to go back to the village due to financial circumstances. At this time I wrote a book of poems “Radunitsa”. I sent some of them to St. Petersburg magazines and, not receiving a response, went there myself. I arrived and found Gorodetsky. He greeted me very cordially. Then almost all the poets gathered at his apartment. They started talking about me, and they started publishing me almost in great demand.

I published: “Russian Thought”, “Life for Everyone”, “Monthly Magazine” by Mirolyubov, “Northern Notes”, etc. This was in the spring of 1915. And in the fall of the same year, Klyuev sent me a telegram to the village and asked me to come to him. He found me the publisher M.V. Averyanov, and a few months later my first book “Radunitsa” was published. It was published in November 1915 with the note 1916. During the first period of my stay in St. Petersburg, I often had to meet with Blok, with Ivanov-Razumnik. Later with Andrei Bely.

The first period of the revolution was greeted with sympathy, but more spontaneously than consciously. In 1917 my first marriage took place to Z. N. Reich. In 1918 I broke up with her, and after that my wandering life began, like that of all Russians during the period 1918-21. Over the years I have been to Turkestan, the Caucasus, Persia, Crimea, Bessarabia, the Orenbur steppes, the Murmansk coast, Arkhangelsk and Solovki. 1921 I married A. Duncan and left for America, having previously traveled all over Europe, except Spain.

After going abroad, I looked at my country and events differently. I don’t like our barely cooled nomadic life. I like civilization. But I really don't like America. America is the stench where not only art is lost, but also the best impulses of humanity in general. If today they are heading for America, then I am ready to prefer our gray sky and our landscape: a hut, slightly grown into the ground, a spinning wheel, a huge pole sticking out of the spinning wheel, a skinny horse waving its tail in the wind in the distance. This is not like skyscrapers, which so far have only produced Rockefeller and McCormick, but this is the same thing that raised Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov and others in our country. First of all, I love identifying the organic. Art for me is not intricate patterns, but the most necessary word of the language with which I want to express myself. Therefore, the imagism movement founded in 1919, on the one hand by me, and on the other by Shershenevich, although it formally turned Russian poetry along a different channel of perception, did not give anyone the right to claim talent. Now I reject all schools. I believe that a poet cannot adhere to any particular school. This binds him hand and foot. Only a free artist can bring free speech. That's all, short, sketchy, regarding my biography. Not everything is said here. But I think it’s too early for me to draw any conclusions for myself. My life and my work are still ahead.

"About Me". October 1925

Born in 1895, September 21, in the Ryazan province, Ryazan district, Kuzminsk volost, in the village of Konstantinov. From the age of two I was raised by a rather wealthy maternal grandfather, who had three adult unmarried sons, with whom I spent almost my entire childhood. My uncles were mischievous and desperate guys. When I was three and a half years old, they put me on a horse without a saddle and immediately started galloping. I remember that I went crazy and held my withers very tightly. Then I was taught to swim. One uncle (Uncle Sasha) took me into a boat, drove away from the shore, took off my underwear and threw me into the water like a puppy. I flapped my hands ineptly and frightenedly, and until I choked, he kept shouting: “Eh! Bitch! Well, where are you good for?..” “Bitch” was a term of endearment. After about eight years, I often replaced another uncle’s hunting dog and swam around the lakes after shot ducks. He was very good at climbing trees. Among the boys he was always a horse breeder and a big fighter and always walked around with scratches. Only my grandmother scolded me for my mischief, and my grandfather sometimes encouraged me to fight with my fists and often said to my grandmother: “You’re a fool, don’t touch him, he’ll be stronger that way!” Grandmother loved me with all her might, and her tenderness knew no bounds. On Saturdays they washed me, cut my nails and crimped my hair with cooking oil, because not a single comb could handle curly hair. But the oil didn’t help much either. I always yelled obscenities and even now I have some kind of unpleasant feeling about Saturday.

This is how my childhood passed. When I grew up, they really wanted to make me a village teacher and therefore sent me to a church teachers' school, after graduating from which I was supposed to enter the Moscow Teachers' Institute. Fortunately, this did not happen.

I started writing poetry early, at the age of nine, but I date my conscious creativity to the age of 16-17. Some poems from these years are included in “Radunitsa”. At the age of eighteen, I was surprised when I sent my poems to magazines that they were not published, and I went to St. Petersburg. I was received very cordially there. The first person I saw was Blok, the second was Gorodetsky. When I looked at Blok, sweat dripped from me, because for the first time I saw a living poet. Gorodetsky introduced me to Klyuev, about whom I had never heard a word. Despite all our internal strife, we developed a great friendship with Klyuev. During these same years, I entered Shanyavsky University, where I stayed for only a year and a half, and again went to the village. At the University I met the poets Semenovsky, Nasedkin, Kolokolov and Filipchenko. Of the contemporary poets, I liked Blok, Bely and Klyuev the most. Bely gave me a lot in terms of form, and Blok and Klyuev taught me lyricism.

In 1919, with a number of comrades, I published a manifesto of Imagism. Imagism was the formal school that we wanted to establish. But this school had no basis and died by itself, leaving the truth behind the organic image. I would gladly give up many of my religious poems and poems, but they are of great importance as a poet’s path to the revolution.

From the age of eight, my grandmother dragged me to different monasteries; because of her, all sorts of wanderers and pilgrims were always living with us. Various spiritual poems were chanted. Grandfather is opposite. He was not a fool to drink. On his part, eternal unmarried weddings were arranged. Afterwards, when I left the village, I had to understand my way of life for a long time.

During the years of the revolution he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias. In terms of formal development, I am now drawn more and more towards Pushkin. As for the rest of the autobiographical information, it is in my poems.

Yesenin's life story

Some interesting facts from the life of Sergei Yesenin:

Sergei Yesenin graduated with honors from the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School in 1909, then from the Church Teachers' School, but after studying for a year and a half, he left it - the profession of a teacher had little attraction for him. Already in Moscow, in September 1913, Yesenin began to attend the Shanyavsky People's University. A year and a half of university gave Yesenin the foundation of education that he so lacked.

In the fall of 1913, he entered into a civil marriage with Anna Romanovna Izryadnova, who worked with Yesenin as a proofreader at Sytin’s printing house. On December 21, 1914, their son Yuri was born, but Yesenin soon left the family. In her memoirs, Izryadnova writes: “I saw him shortly before his death. He came, he said, to say goodbye. When I asked why, he said: “I’m washing away, I’m leaving, I feel bad, I’ll probably die.” I asked him not to spoil him, to take care of his son.” After Yesenin’s death, the People’s Court of the Khamovnichesky District of Moscow tried the case of recognizing Yuri as the poet’s child. On August 13, 1937, Yuri Yesenin was shot on charges of preparing to assassinate Stalin.

On July 30, 1917, Yesenin married the beautiful actress Zinaida Reich in the Church of Kirik and Ulita, Vologda district. On May 29, 1918, their daughter Tatyana was born. Yesenin loved his daughter, blond and blue-eyed, very much. On February 3, 1920, after Yesenin separated from Zinaida Reich, their son Konstantin was born. One day he accidentally found out at the station that Reich and his children were on the train. A friend persuaded Yesenin to at least look at the child. Sergei reluctantly agreed. When Reich unwrapped her son, Yesenin, barely looking at him, said: “Yesenins are never black...” But according to contemporaries, Yesenin always carried photographs of Tatyana and Konstantin in his jacket pocket, constantly took care of them, sent them money. On October 2, 1921, the people's court of Orel ruled to dissolve Yesenin's marriage to Reich. Sometimes he met with Zinaida Nikolaevna, at that time already the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold, which aroused Meyerhold’s jealousy. There is an opinion that of his wives, Yesenin loved Zinaida Reich most of all until the end of his days. Shortly before his death, in the late autumn of 1925, Yesenin visited Reich and the children. As if he were talking to an adult, Tanya was indignant at the mediocre children's books that his children were reading. Said: “You must know my poems.” The conversation with Reich ended in another scandal and tears. In the summer of 1939, after Meyerhold's death, Zinaida Reich was brutally murdered in her apartment. Many contemporaries did not believe that this was pure criminality. It was assumed (and now this assumption will increasingly develop into confidence) that she was killed by NKVD agents.

On November 4, 1920, at the literary evening “The Trial of the Imagists,” Yesenin met Galina Benislavskaya. Their relationship, with varying success, lasted until the spring of 1925. Returning from Konstantinov, Yesenin finally broke up with her. It was a tragedy for her. Insulted and humiliated, Galina wrote in her memoirs: “Because of the awkwardness and brokenness of my relationship with S.A. More than once I wanted to leave him as a woman, I wanted to be only a friend. But I realized that from S.A. I can’t leave, I can’t break this thread...” Shortly before his trip to Leningrad in November, before going to the hospital, Yesenin called Benislavskaya: “Come and say goodbye.” He said that Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya would come too. Galina replied: “I don’t like such wires.” Galina Benislavskaya shot herself at Yesenin’s grave. She left two notes on his grave. One is a simple postcard: “December 3, 1926. I committed suicide here, although I know that after this even more dogs will be blamed on Yesenin... But both he and I don’t care. This grave contains everything that is most dear to me...” She is buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery next to the poet’s grave.

Autumn 1921 - meeting the “sandalfoot” Isadora Duncan. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Isadora fell in love with Yesenin at first sight, and Yesenin was immediately carried away by her. On May 2, 1922, Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan decided to consolidate their marriage according to Soviet laws, since they were about to travel to America. They signed at the registry office of the Khamovnichesky Council. When they were asked what surname they would choose, both wanted to have a double surname - “Duncan-Yesenin”. This is what was written down on the marriage certificate and in their passports. “Now I am Duncan,” Yesenin shouted when they went outside. This page of Sergei Yesenin’s life is the most chaotic, with endless quarrels and scandals. They diverged and came back together many times. Hundreds of volumes have been written about Yesenin’s romance with Duncan. Numerous attempts have been made to unravel the mystery of the relationship between these two such dissimilar people. But was there a secret? All his life, Yesenin, deprived of a real friendly family as a child (his parents constantly quarreled, often lived apart, Sergei grew up with his maternal grandparents), dreamed of family comfort and peace. He constantly said that he would marry such an artist - everyone would open their mouths, and would have a son who would become more famous than him. It is clear that Duncan, who was 18 years older than Yesenin and was constantly on tour, could not create for him the family he dreamed of. In addition, Yesenin, as soon as he found himself married, sought to break the shackles that bound him.

In 1920, Yesenin met and became friends with the poetess and translator Nadezhda Volpin. On May 12, 1924, the illegitimate son of Sergei Yesenin and Nadezhda Davydovna Volpin was born in Leningrad - a prominent mathematician, a famous human rights activist, he periodically publishes poetry (only under the name Volpin). A. Yesenin-Volpin is one of the founders (together with Sakharov) of the Human Rights Committee. Now lives in the USA.

March 5, 1925 - acquaintance with Leo Tolstoy's granddaughter Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy. She was 5 years younger than Yesenin, and the blood of the world’s greatest writer flowed in her veins. Sofya Andreevna was in charge of the library of the Writers' Union. On October 18, 1925, the marriage with S.A. Tolstoy was registered. Sofya Tolstaya is another of Yesenin’s unfulfilled hopes of starting a family. Coming from an aristocratic family, according to the recollections of Yesenin’s friends, she was very arrogant and proud, she demanded adherence to etiquette and unquestioning obedience. These qualities of hers were in no way combined with Sergei’s simplicity, generosity, cheerfulness, and mischievous character. They soon separated. But after his death, Sofya Andreevna brushed aside various gossip about Yesenin; they said that he allegedly wrote in a state of drunken stupor. She, who repeatedly witnessed his work on poetry, argued that Yesenin took his work very seriously and never sat down at the table drunk.

On December 24, Sergei Yesenin arrived in Leningrad and stayed at the Angleterre Hotel. Late in the evening of December 27, the body of Sergei Yesenin was found in the room. Before the eyes of those who entered the room, a terrible picture appeared: Yesenin, already dead, leaning against a steam heating pipe, there were blood clots on the floor, things were scattered, on the table there was a note with Yesenin’s dying verses “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.. .” The exact date and time of death have not been established.

Yesenin's body was transported to Moscow for burial at the Vagankovskoye cemetery. The funeral was grandiose. According to contemporaries, not a single Russian poet was buried this way.

In 1912 he graduated from the Spas-Klepikovskaya teacher's school with a degree in literacy school teacher.

In the summer of 1912, Yesenin moved to Moscow and for some time served in a butcher shop, where his father worked as a clerk. After a conflict with his father, he left the shop and worked in book publishing, then in the printing house of Ivan Sytin in 1912-1914. During this period, the poet joined the revolutionary-minded workers and found himself under police surveillance.

In 1913-1915, Yesenin was a volunteer student at the historical and philosophical department of the Moscow City People's University named after A.L. Shanyavsky. In Moscow, he became close to writers from the Surikov literary and musical circle - an association of self-taught writers from the people.

Sergei Yesenin wrote poetry since childhood, mainly in imitation of Alexei Koltsov, Ivan Nikitin, Spiridon Drozhzhin. By 1912, he had already written the poem “The Legend of Evpatiy Kolovrat, of Khan Batu, the Flower of the Three Hands, of the Black Idol and Our Savior Jesus Christ,” and also prepared a book of poems “Sick Thoughts.” In 1913, the poet worked on the poem "Tosca" and the dramatic poem "The Prophet", the texts of which are unknown.

In January 1914, in the Moscow children's magazine "Mirok" under the pseudonym "Ariston", the poet's first publication took place - the poem "Birch". In February, the same magazine published the poems "Sparrows" ("Winter Sings and Calls...") and "Powder", later - "Village", "Easter Annunciation".

In the spring of 1915, Yesenin arrived in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), where he met the poets Alexander Blok, Sergei Gorodetsky, Alexei Remizov, and became close to Nikolai Klyuev, who had a significant influence on him. Their joint performances with poems and ditties, stylized in a “peasant”, “folk” style, were a great success.

In 1916, Yesenin’s first collection of poems, “Radunitsa,” was published, enthusiastically received by critics, who discovered in it a fresh spirit, youthful spontaneity and the author’s natural taste.

From March 1916 to March 1917, Yesenin served in military service - initially in a reserve battalion located in St. Petersburg, and then from April he served as an orderly on the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital train No. 143. After the February Revolution, he left the army without permission.

Yesenin moved to Moscow. Having greeted the revolution with enthusiasm, he wrote several short poems - “The Jordan Dove”, “Inonia”, “Heavenly Drummer” - imbued with a joyful anticipation of the “transformation” of life.

In 1919-1921 he was part of a group of imagists who stated that the purpose of creativity was to create an image.

In the early 1920s, Yesenin’s poems featured motifs of “storm-ravaged everyday life,” drunken prowess, giving way to hysterical melancholy, which was reflected in the collections “Confession of a Hooligan” (1921) and “Moscow Tavern” (1924).

An event in Yesenin’s life was a meeting in the fall of 1921 with the American dancer Isadora Duncan, who six months later became his wife.

From 1922 to 1923, they traveled around Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy) and America, but upon returning to Russia, Isadora and Yesenin separated almost immediately.

In the 1920s, Yesenin's most significant works were created, which brought him fame as one of the best Russian poets - poems

“The golden grove dissuaded me…”, “Letter to my mother”, “Now we are leaving little by little…”, the cycle “Persian Motifs”, the poem “Anna Snegina”, etc. The theme of the Motherland, which occupied one of the main places in his work, acquired during this period dramatic shades. The once single harmonious world of Yesenin’s Rus' split into two: “Soviet Rus'” - “Leaving Rus'.” In the collections "Soviet Rus'" and "Soviet Country" (both - 1925), Yesenin felt like a singer of a "golden log hut", whose poetry "is no longer needed here." The emotional dominant of the lyrics were autumn landscapes, motives for summing up, and farewells.

The last two years of the poet’s life were spent traveling: he traveled to the Caucasus three times, went to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) several times, and to Konstantinovo seven times.

At the end of November 1925, the poet was admitted to a psychoneurological clinic. One of Yesenin’s last works was the poem “The Black Man,” in which his past life appears as part of a nightmare. Having interrupted the course of treatment, Yesenin left for Leningrad on December 23.

On December 24, 1925, he stayed at the Angleterre Hotel, where on December 27 he wrote his last poem, “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...”.

On the night of December 28, 1925, according to the official version, Sergei Yesenin committed suicide. The poet was discovered on the morning of December 28. His body hung in a loop on a water pipe right at the ceiling, at a height of almost three meters.

No serious investigation was carried out, the city authorities from the local police officer.

A special commission created in 1993 did not confirm versions of other circumstances of the poet’s death, in addition to the official one.

Sergei Yesenin is buried in Moscow at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.

The poet was married several times. In 1917, he married Zinaida Reich (1897-1939), secretary-typist of the newspaper Delo Naroda. From this marriage a daughter, Tatyana (1918-1992), and a son, Konstantin (1920-1986), were born. In 1922, Yesenin married the American dancer Isadora Duncan. In 1925, the poet’s wife was Sofia Tolstaya (1900-1957), the granddaughter of the writer Leo Tolstoy. The poet had a son, Yuri (1914-1938), from a civil marriage with Anna Izryadnova. In 1924, Yesenin had a son, Alexander, from the poet and translator Nadezhda Volpin, a mathematician and activist in the dissident movement, who moved to the United States in 1972.

On October 2, 1965, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the poet’s birth, the State Museum-Reserve of S.A. was opened in the village of Konstantinovo in the house of his parents. Yesenin is one of the largest museum complexes in Russia.

On October 3, 1995, in Moscow, in house number 24 on Bolshoy Strochenovsky Lane, where Sergei Yesenin was registered in 1911-1918, the Moscow State Museum of S.A. was created. Yesenina.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources