Sergei Yesenin

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin, sometimes spelled Esenin (Russian: Сергей Александрович Есенин; September 21, 1895 (Old Style) – December 27, 1925) was a famous Russian lyrical poet.

Born in the village of Konstantinovo (today Yesinino), Ryazan region, Russia, Sergei Yesenin was early abandoned by his peasant parents and lived 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. While writing poetry based on Russian folklore, he became acquainted with fellow-poets Alexander Blok, Sergei Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Andrey Bely. 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 "Radumitsa," 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 poet 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 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 1918 Yesenin married for a second time to the actress Zinaida Raikh. With her he had a daughter, Tatyana, and a son, Konstantin. 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 spoke no Russian, while he spoke no English. They managed to communicate in French and 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 that 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 after obtaining his divorce from Isadora Duncan. Yesenin's affair with Galina Benislavskaya ended tragically: a year after his death she committed suicide at his grave.

Yesenin's behavior grew increasing 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 respected mathematician.

The last two years of Sergei Yesenin's life were filled with constant erratic and drunken behavior, but he continued to produce quality works of 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 cut his wrist and wrote a farewell poem in his own blood, then hanged himself from the heating pipes on the ceiling of his in St. Petersburg hotel room.

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, but in 1966 his complete works were all republished.

Today, Sergei Yesenin's poems are still being memorized by school children and some have been set to music, recorded as popular songs. The early death, unsympathetic views by contemporary 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.

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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooligan%27s_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)
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)

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye (1925) (His farewell poem)

Original in Russian

До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья.
Милый мой, ты у меня в груди.
Предназначенное расставанье
Обещает встречу впереди.

До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова,
Не грусти и не печаль бровей,-
В этой жизни умирать не ново,
Но и жить, конечно, не новей.

English Translation (from SovLit.com)

Good-bye, my friend, good-bye.
My dear one, you are in my breast.
This predestined parting
Promises a meeting ahead.

Good-bye, my friend, without hand, without word
No sorrow and no sadness in the brow.
In this life, dying is nothing new,
But living, of course, isn't novel either.