Sergei Yesenin
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Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin, sometimes spelled Esenin (Russian: Серге́й Алекса́ндрович Есе́нин; October 3, 1895 [O.S. September 21] – December 28, 1925) was a famous Russian lyrical poet.
Born in the village of Konstantinovo (today Yesenino), Ryazan region, Russia in a peasant family, Sergei Yesenin was early sent to live with his grandparents. He began to write poetry at the age of nine. A literary prodigy, in 1912 he moved to Moscow where he supported himself working as a proofreader in a printing company. The following year he enrolled in Moscow State University as an external student and studied there for a year and a half. His early poetry was inspired by Russian folklore. In 1915, he moved to St Petersburg, where he became acquainted with fellow-poets Alexander Blok, Sergei Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Andrey Bely. It was in St Petersburg where he became well known in literature circles. Alexander Blok was especially helpful in promoting Yesenin's early career as a poet. Yesenin said that Bely gave him the meaning of form while Blok and Klyuev taught him lyricism.
In 1915, Sergei Yesenin published his first book of poems, titled "Radunitsa," soon followed by "Ritual for the Dead" (1916). Through his collections of poignant poetry about love and the simple life, he became one of the most popular poets of the day.
Blessed with good looks and a romantic personality, he fell in love frequently and over a very short period was married five times. His first marriage was in 1913 to a co-worker from the publishing house by the name of Anna Izryadnova with whom he had a son, Yuri. (During Stalinist purges, Yuri Yesenin was arrested and died in 1937 at a Gulag labor camp.)
In 1915 he came to St Petersburg where he met Klyuev. "For the next two years, were a team...living together most of the time.... Collections of his poetry, usually include his three love letters to Klyuev, without specifying to whom they were written."[1]. In 1916-1917, Sergei Yesenin was drafted into military duty, but soon after the October Revolution of 1917, Russia exited World War I. Believing that the revolution would bring a better life, he briefly supported it, but soon became disillusioned and sometimes even criticized the Bolshevik rule in such poems as "The Stern October Has Deceived Me."
In August 1917 Yesenin married for a second time to the actress Zinaida Raikh (later wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold). With her he had a daughter, Tatyana, and a son, Konstantin. Konstantin later became a well-known Football (soccer) statistician.
In September of 1918, he founded his own publishing house called "Трудовая Артель Художников Слова" (the "Moscow Labor Company of the Artists of Word.")
In the fall of 1921, while visiting the studio of painter Alexei Yakovlev, he met the Paris-based American dancer Isadora Duncan, a woman 17 years his senior who knew only a dozen words in Russian, while he spoke no foreign languages. They married on May 2, 1922. Yesenin accompanied his new celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States but at this point in his life, an addiction to alcohol had gotten out of control. Often drunk or on drugs, his violent rages resulted in Yesenin destroying hotel rooms or causing disturbances in restaurants. This behavior received a great deal of publicity in the world's press. The marriage to Duncan lasted only a short time and in May of 1923 he returned to Moscow. There, he immediately became involved with actress Augusta Miklashevskaya and is believed to have married her in a civil ceremony, although it's known he's never obtained a divorce from Isadora Duncan. Another lover of his during this time, Galina Benislavskaya, committed suicide at his grave a year after his death.
Yesenin's behavior grew increasingly reckless and that same year he had a son Alexandr by the poet Nadezhda Volpin. Sergei Yesenin never knew his son by Volpin, but Alexander Esenin-Volpin grew up to become a prominent poet and activist in the Soviet Union's dissident movement of the 1960s with Andrei Sakharov and others. After moving to the United States, Esenin-Volpin became a prominent mathematician.
The last two years of Sergei Yesenin's life were filled with constant erratic and drunken behavior, but he also created some of the most famous pieces of his poetry. In the Spring of 1925, a highly volatile Sergei Yesenin met and married his fifth wife, Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya, a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. She attempted to get him help but he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was hospitalized for a month. Two days after his release for Christmas, he allegedly cut his wrist and wrote a farewell poem in his own blood, then the following day hanged himself from the heating pipes on the ceiling of his room in the Hotel Anglettere at the age of 30. There is also a notion that the suicide was staged, and in actuality he was killed by GPU agents.
After accidentally meeting Yesenin in 1925, Vladimir Mayakovsky noted:
... With the greatest difficulty I recognized Yesenin. With difficulty, too, I rejected his persistent demands that we go for a drink, demands accompanied by the waving of a fat bunch of banknotes. All day long I had his depressing image before me, and in the evening, of course, I discussed with my colleagues what could be done about Yesenin. Unfortunately, in such a situation everyone always limits oneself to talk.
According to Ilya Ehrenburg's memoirs "People, Years, Life" (1961),
Yesenin was always surrounded by satellites. The saddest thing of all was to see, next to Yesenin, a random group of men who had nothing to do with literature, but simply liked (as they still do) to drink somebody else's vodka, bask in someone else's fame, and hide behind someone else's authority. It was not through this black swarm, however, that he perished, he drew them to himself. He knew what they were worth; but in his state he found it easier to be with people he despised.
Although he was one of Russia's most popular poets and had been given an elaborate funeral by the State, most of his writings were banned by the Kremlin during the reign of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Nikolay Bukharin's criticism of Esenin contributed significantly to the banning. Only in 1966 most of his works were republished.
Today, Sergei Yesenin's poems are still being memorized by school children and many have been set to music, recorded as popular songs. The early death, unsympathetic views by some of literary elite, adoration by ordinary people, sensational behavior, all contributed to the enduring and near mythical popular image of the Russian poet.
Sergei Yesenin is interred in Moscow's Vagankovskoye Cemetery. His grave is marked by a white marble sculpture.
[edit] Some of Sergei Yesenin's works
- The Scarlet of the Dawn (1910)
- The high waters have licked (1910)
- The Birch Tree (1913)
- Autumn (1914)
- The Bitch (1915)
- I'll glance in the field (1917)
- I left the native home (1918)
- Hooligan (1919)
- Hooligan's Confession (1920) (Italian translation sung by Angelo Branduardi)
- I am the last poet of the village (1920)
- Prayer for the First Forty Days of the Dead (1920)
- I don't pity, don't call, don't cry (1921)
- Pugachev (1921)
- One joy I have left (1923)
- A Letter to Mother (1924)
- Tavern Moscow (1924)
- Confessions of a Hooligan (1924),
- Desolate and Pale Moonlight (1925)
- The Black Man (1925)
- To Kachalov's Dog (1925)
- Goodbye, my friend, goodbye (1925) (His farewell poem)
| Original in Russian
До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья. До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова, |
English Translation
Good bye, my friend, good bye. Good bye, my friend, without a handshake, without a word, |
