Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin ( 1895 – 28 December 1925) was a Russian lyric poet. He is one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century. One of his narratives was "lyrical evocations of and nostalgia for the village life of his childhoodno idyll, presented in all its rawness, with an implied curse on urbanisation and industrialisation".
Biography
Life and work
Sergei Yesenin was born in the village of Konstantinovo in Ryazan County, Ryazan Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Rybnovsky District, Ryazan Oblast) into a peasant family. His father was Alexander Nikitich Yesenin (1873–1931), his mother was Tatyana Fyodorovna Yesenina, née Titova, (1875–1955).S.A. Yesenin. Life and Work Chronology . Хронологическая канва жизни и творчества Сергея Александровича Есенина (1895–1925) // Есенин С. А. Полное собрание сочинений: В 7 т. – Moscow. Nauka, 1995–2002.
Both his parents spent most of their time looking for work, his father in Moscow, his mother in Ryazan, so at age two Sergei was moved to the nearby village of Matovo to join Fyodor Alexeyevich Titov and Natalya Yevtikhiyevna Titova, his relatively well-off maternal grandparents, who essentially raised him.1924 autobiography . The Works by Sergey Yesenin in Three Volumes. Moscow: Pravda Publishers. Vol. III, p 183// Сергей Есенин. Собрание сочинений в трех томах. Библиотека "Огонек". Moscow: Pravda Publishers. 1970
The Titovs had three grown-up sons, who were Yesenin's companions in his early life. "My uncles taught me horse riding and swimming, one of them... even employed me as a hunting dog when he went duck hunting in local ponds," he later remembered. He started to read at age five, and at nine began to write poetry, inspired originally by chastushkas and folklore,1922 Autobiography The Works by Sergey Yesenin in Three Volumes. Moscow. Pravda Publishers. Vol. III, pp 177-179// Сергей Есенин. Собрание сочинений в трех томах. Библиотека "Огонек". Издательство "Правда". Москва, 1970 provided mostly by his grandmother, whom he also remembered as a highly religious woman who used to take him to every single monastery she visited.1925 Autobiography . The Works by Sergey Yesenin in Three Volumes. Moscow. Pravda Publishers, vol. III, pp. 180–182 // Сергей Есенин. Собрание сочинений в трех томах. Библиотека "Огонек". Издательство "Правда". Москва, 1970 He had two younger sisters, Yekaterina (1905–1977), and Alexandra (1911–1981).
In 1904 Yesenin joined the Konstantinovo zemstvo school, where in 1909 he graduated with an honorary certificate. He then went on to study in the local secondary parish school in Spas-Klepiki. From 1910 onwards he started to write poetry systematically; eight poems dated that year were later included in his 1925 Collected Works. In all, Yesenin wrote around thirty poems during his school years. He compiled them into what was supposed to be his first book, which he entitled "Volnye Dumy" (Free Thoughts) and tried to publish it in 1912 in Ryazan, but failed.Zakharov, A.I. Sergey Yesenin's biography at the Russian Writes Biobibliographical dictionary, 1990 // А. И. Захаров. "Русские писатели". Биобиблиографический словарь. Том 1. А-Л. Под редакцией П. А. Николаева. М., "Просвещение", 1990
In 1912, with a teacher’s diploma, Yesenin moved to Moscow, where he supported himself working as a proofreader's assistant at Sytin's printing company. The following year he enrolled in Shanyavsky Moscow City People's University to study history and philology as an external student (вольнослушатель), but had to leave after eighteen months due to lack of funds. At the University he became friends with several aspiring poets, among them Dmitry Semyonovsky, Vasily Nasedkin, Nikolai Kolokolov and Ivan Filipchenko. Yesenin’s first marriage (which lasted three years) was in 1913 to Anna Izryadnova, a co-worker from the publishing house, with whom he had a son, Yuri.Sergey Yesenin Timeline. – www.e-reading.club // Основные даты жизни и творчества С. А. Есенина
1913 saw Yesenin becoming increasingly interested in Christianity, and biblical motives became frequent in his poems. "Grisha, what I am reading at the moment is the Gospel and I find a lot of things which for me are new,"Гриша, в настоящее время я читаю Евангелие и нахожу очень много для меня нового he wrote to his close childhood friend G. Panfilov. That was also the year when he became involved with Moscow revolutionary circles: for several months his flat was under secret police surveillance and in September 1913 it was raided and searched.
In January 1914 Yesenin's first published poem, "Beryoza" (The Birch Tree), appeared in the children's magazine Mirok (Small World). More appearances followed in minor magazines such as Protalinka and Mlechny Put. In December 1914 Yesenin left his job "and dedicated himself to poetry, writing continually," according to his wife.Anna Izryadnova's Memoirs, 1965 // Изряднова А. Р. // Воспоминания о Сергее Есенине.-- М., 1965.-- С. 101 Around this time he became a member of the Surikov Literary and Music circle.
In 1915, exasperated with the lack of interest in Moscow, Yesenin moved to Petrograd. He arrived in Petrograd on 8 March and the next day met Alexander Blok at his home, to read him poetry. He was quickly acquainted with fellow poets Sergey Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Andrei Bely, who were well known. Blok was especially helpful in promoting Yesenin's early literary career, describing him as "a gem of a peasant poet"Alexander Blok. Notebooks // Блок А. Записные книжки. 1901–1920. М., 1965. С. 567 and his verse as "fresh, pure and resounding", even if "wordy".Alexander Blok. Collected Works in 8 Volumes. Vol.8, p. 441 // Блок А. Собр. соч.: В 8 т. – М.; Л., 1963. – Т. 8. – С. 441
The same year he joined the Krasa (Beauty) group of peasant poets which included Klyuyev, Gorodetsky, Sergey Klychkov and Alexander Shiryayevets, among others. In his 1925 autobiography Yesenin said that Bely gave him the meaning of form while Blok and Klyuev taught him lyricism.1925 Autobiography . The Works by Sergey Yesenin in Three Volumes. Moscow. Pravda Publishers, vol. III, pp. 187–189 // Сергей Есенин. Собрание сочинений в трех томах. Библиотека "Огонек". Издательство "Правда". Москва, 1970 It was Klyuyev who introduced Yesenin to the publisher Averyanov, who in early 1916 released his debut poetry collection Radunitsa which featured many of his early spiritual-themed verse. "I would have eagerly relinquished some of my religious poems, large and small, but they make sense as an illustration of a poet's progress towards the revolution," he would later write. Yesenin and Klyuyev maintained close and intimate, Между Лениным и Есениным at Izvestia.ru a friendship that lasted several years,Prokhushev, Yuri Sergey Yesenin. Biography. Detskaya Literatura, 1971 // Юрий Прокушев. Сергей Есенин. Москва, "Детская литература", 1971 and indeed it is likely they became lovers.Simon Marlinsky, "Isadra had a taste for Russian love, 9 May 1976,New York Times
Later in 1915, Yesenin became a co-founder of the Krasa literary group and published numerous poems in the Petrograd magazines Russkaya Mysl, Ezhemesyachny Zhurnal, Novy Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, Golos Zhizni and Niva. Among the authors he met later in the year were Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova; he also visited the painter Ilya Repin in his Penaty. Yesenin's rise to fame was meteoric; by the end of the year he became the star of St Petersburg's literary circles and salons. "The city took to him with the delight a gourmet reserves for strawberries in winter. A barrage of praise hit him, excessive and often insincere," Maxim Gorky wrote to Romain Rolland.The Collected Works of Maxim Gorky in 30 volumes. Vol. 29, p. 459 // Собр. соч.: В 30 т. – М., 1955.- Т. 29. С. 459
On 25 March 1916 Yesenin was drafted for military duty and in April joined a medical train based in Tsarskoye Selo under the command of Colonel D.N. Loman. On 22 July 1916, at a special concert attended by the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (the train's patron) and her daughters, Yesenin recited his poems "Rus" and "In Scarlet Fireglow". "The Empress told me my poems were beautiful, but sad. I replied that the same could be said about Russia as a whole," he recalled later. His relationship with Loman soon deteriorated. In October Yesenin declined the colonel's offer to write (with Klyuyev) and have published a book of pro-monarchist verses, and spent twenty days under arrest as a consequence.
In March 1917, Yesenin was sent to the Warrant Officers School but soon deserted Kerensky's army. In August 1917 (having divorced Izryadnova a year earlier) Yesenin married for a second time, to Zinaida Raikh (later an actress and the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold). They had two children, a daughter Tatyana and a son Konstantin. The parents subsequently quarreled and lived separately for some time prior to their divorce in 1921. Tatyana became a writer and journalist and Konstantin Yesenin would become a well-known soccer statistician.
Yesenin supported the February Revolution. "If not for [it], I might have withered away on useless religious symbolism," he wrote later. He greeted the rise of the Bolsheviks too. "In the Revolution I was all on the side of October, even if I perceived everything in my own peculiar way, from a peasant's standpoint," he remembered in his 1925 autobiography. Later he criticized the Bolshevik rule, in such poems as "The Stern October Has Deceived Me". "I feel very sad now, for we are going through such a period in [our] history when human individuality is being destroyed, and the approaching socialism is totally different from the one I was dreaming of," he wrote in an August 1920 letter to his friend Yevgeniya Livshits.The Works of Sergey Yesenin in Three Volumes. Moscow. Pravda Publishers. Vol. III, p.242 "I never joined the RKP, being further to the left than them," he maintained in his 1922 autobiography.
Artistically, the revolutionary years were an exciting time for Yesenin. Among the important poems he wrote in 1917–1918 were "Prishestviye" (The Advent), "Preobrazheniye" (Transfiguration, which gave the title to the 1918 collection), and "Inoniya". In February 1918, after the Sovnarkom issued the "Socialist Homeland is in Danger!" decree-appeal, he joined the esers' military unit. He actively participated in the magazine Nash Put (Our Way), as well as the almanacs Skify (Скифы) and Krasny Zvon (in February his large poem "Marfa Posadnitsa" appeared in an issue of the latter). In September 1918 Yesenin co-founded (with Andrey Bely, Pyotr Oreshin, Lev Povitsky and Sergey Klychkov) the publishing house Трудовая Артель Художников Слова (the Labor Artel of the Artists of the Word) which reissued (in six books) all that he had written up until then.Лев Повицкий, друг Сергея Есенина / Lev Povitsky, the Friend of Sergey Yesenin. – www.esenin.ru / Memoirs
In September 1918 Yesenin became friends with Anatoly Marienhof, with whom he founded the Russian literary movement of imaginism. Describing their group's general appeal, he wrote in 1922: "Prostitutes and bandits are our fans. With them, we are pals. Bolsheviks do not like us due to some kind of misunderstanding." In January 1919, Yesenin signed the Imaginists' Manifesto. In February he, Marienhof and Vadim Shershenevich, founded the Imaginists' publishing house. Before that, Yesenin became a member of the Moscow Union of Professional Writers and several months later was elected a member of the All-Russian Union of Poets. Two of his books, Kobyli Korabli (Кобыльи корабли, Mare's Ships) and Klyuchi Marii (Ключи Марии, The Keys of Mary) came out later that year.