| Sergei Yesenin | |
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Sergei Yesenin |
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| Born | 3 October 1895 Konstantinovo, Ryazan, Russian Empire |
| Died | 27 December 1925 (aged 30) Leningrad, Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Lyrical poet |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Period | 1915–1925 |
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (sometimes spelled as Esenin; Russian: Серге́й Алекса́ндрович Есе́нин; 3 October [O.S. 21 September] 1895 – 27 December 1925) was a Russian lyrical poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century but committed suicide at the age of 30. He had married four times and had a total of four children by three different women (two of them wives at the time).
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Sergei Yesenin was born in Konstantinovo in the Ryazan Province (Губерния, Gubernia) of the Russian Empire to a peasant family. He spent most of his childhood with his grandparents, who essentially reared him. He began to write poetry at the age of nine.
In 1912, Yesenin 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, Sergey Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Andrei Bely. It was in St. Petersburg that he became well known in literature circles. 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 1916, Yesenin published his first book of poems, Ritual for the Dead (Radunitsa, Russian: Радуница). Through his collections of poignant poetry about love and the simple life, he became one of the most popular poets of the day. His first marriage was in 1913 to Anna Izryadnova, a co-worker from the publishing house, with whom he had a son, Yuri.
Later that year, he moved to St Petersburg, where he met Klyuev. For the next two years, they were close friends, living together most of the time. Some modern researchers suppose that Klyuev was the addressee of Yesenin's love letters.[1] From 1916 to 1917, 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, Yesenin briefly supported it, but soon became disillusioned. He sometimes criticised the Bolshevik rule in such poems as The Stern October Has Deceived Me.
In August 1917 Yesenin married for a second time to an actress, Zinaida Raikh (later the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold). They had two children, a daughter Tatyana and a son Konstantin. The parents quarreled and lived separately for some time prior to their divorce in 1921. Tatyana became a notable writer, and Konstantin Yesenin would become a well-known soccer statistician.
In September 1918, Yesenin founded his own publishing house called "Трудовая Артель Художников Слова" (the "Labor Company of the Artists of the Word")
In the fall of 1921, while visiting the studio of painter Georgi Yakulov, Yesenin met the Paris-based American dancer Isadora Duncan, a woman 18 years his senior. She knew only a dozen words in Russian, and he spoke no foreign languages. They married on May 2, 1922. Yesenin accompanied his celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States, but his alcoholism got out of control. Often drunk, Yesenin had violent rages in which he destroyed hotel rooms and caused disturbances in restaurants. This behavior received much publicity in the international press. His marriage to Duncan was brief and in May 1923, he returned to Moscow. He almost immediately became involved with the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya. He is rumoured to have married her in a civil ceremony, although he had not obtained a divorce from Duncan.
The same year he had a son by the poet Nadezhda Volpin. Sergei Yesenin never knew his son by Volpin, but Alexander Esenin-Volpin grew up to become a poet. He was also a prominent activist in the Soviet Union's dissident movement of the 1960s with Andrei Sakharov and others. After moving to the United States, Yesenin-Volpin became a mathematician.
The last two years of Yesenin's life were filled with constant erratic and drunken behavior, but he also created some of his most famous poems. In 1925 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 hospitalised for a month. Two days after his release, 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 Angleterre. He was 30 years old.
Sergei Yesenin is interred in Moscow's Vagankovskoye Cemetery. His grave is marked by a white marble sculpture.
The Ryazan State University is named in his honour.[2]
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 reigns of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Nikolai Bukharin's criticism of Yesenin contributed significantly to the banning. Only in 1966 were most of his works republished. Today Yesenin's poems are taught to Russian schoolchildren; many have been set to music and recorded as popular songs. The early death, unsympathetic views by some of the literary elite, adoration by ordinary people, and sensational behavior, all contributed to the enduring and near mythical popular image of the Russian poet.
In 2005 Russian studio Pro-Cinema Production produced a TV mini-series "Есенин" about the life of the poet. [1]
Sergei Yesenin's final poem was a major inspiration for the Bring Me the Horizon song "It Was Written In Blood" on their album Suicide Season.
Anna Snegina (Yesenin's poem translated into 12 languages; translated into English by Peter Tempest) ISBN 978-5-7380-0336-3
| Original in Russian
До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья. |
English Translation
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye |
Collection of Sergey Yesenin's Poems in English:
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