Sergei Yesenin

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Sergei Yesenin

Sergei Yesenin (Esenin)
Born 3 October 1895
Konstantinovo, Ryazan, Russia
Died 27 December 1925 (aged 30)
St. Petersburg, Russia
Occupation lyrical poet
Nationality Russian
Writing period 1915–1925

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (sometimes spelled as Esenin; Russian: Серге́й Алекса́ндрович Есе́нин; October 3 [O.S. September 21] 1895 – December 27, 1925) was a Russian lyrical poet.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early Life

Sergei Yesenin was born in Konstantinovo in the Ryazan region of the Russian Empire to a peasant family. He spent most of his childhood in his grandparents' home. He began to write poetry at the age of nine.

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 that 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.

[edit] Career

In 1915, Yesenin published his first book of poems, Radunitsa (Russian: Радуница), 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. 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 came to St Petersburg, where he met Klyuev. "For the next two years, they 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] 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, 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.

Yesenin and Duncan

In August 1917 Yesenin married for a second time to an actress, Zinaida Raikh (later wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold). They had two children, a daughter, Tatyana, and a son, Konstantin. Konstantin Yesenin would become a well-known soccer statistician.

In September 1918, he founded his own publishing house called "Трудовая Артель Художников Слова" (the "Labor Company of 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 18 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, his violent rages resulted in him destroying hotel rooms and causing disturbances in restaurants. This behavior received a great deal of publicity in the international press.[citation needed] His marriage to Duncan was brief and in May 1923 he returned to Moscow. He almost immediately became involved with actress Augusta Miklashevskaya and is rumoured to have married her in a civil ceremony, although he had not obtained a divorce from Isadora Duncan.

That 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 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.

[edit] Later Years and Death

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 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 Angleterre.[2] He was 30 years old.

Sergei Yesenin is interred in Moscow's Vagankovskoye Cemetery. His grave is marked by a white marble sculpture.

Burial of Sergei Yesenin

[edit] Cultural Impact

Sergei Yesenin basrelief. House at Petrovsky Lane Moscow

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. Nikolay Bukharin's criticism of Esenin contributed significantly to the banning. Only in 1966 were most of his works republished.

Sergei Yesenin's poems are taught to Russian schoolchildren and many have been set to music, recorded as popular songs. For example, extracts from his suicide note were featured in the song, "It Was Written In Blood" recorded by the popular British band, Bring Me The Horizon. 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.















[edit] Works


  • The Scarlet of the Dawn (1910)
  • The high waters have licked (1910)
  • The Birch Tree (1913)
  • Autumn (1914)
  • 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)
  • Land of Scoundrels (1923)
  • 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) - directly quoted in the Bring Me The Horizon song "It Was Written in Blood".
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

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye. My dear one, you are in my breast. A predestined parting Promises a reunion ahead.

Goodbye, my friend, without a touch of hand, without a word, Don't be sad and do not frown, Dying is nothing new in this life, And living, of course, isn't any newer.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Leyland, Winston (ed),Gay Roots:Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine. San Francisco. 1991
  2. ^ "On Esenin's death". http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/tut/F01/TUT100-04/esenin/Esenindeath.html. Retrieved on 12 April 2009. 

[edit] External links

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Collection of Sergey Yesenin's Poems in English:

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