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Sergei Yesenin aka Esenin / Russian Imagist poet
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Will Dockery
Apr 17, 2014, 12:59:27 AM4/17/14
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'''Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin''' (sometimes spelled as '''Esenin'''; (3
October 1895 or 21 September - 28 December 1925) was a [[Russia]]n lyrical
poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the
20th century.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Sergey Esenin was born in [[Rybnovsky District|Konstantinovo]] in the
[[Ryazan]] Province (????????, ''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, Esenin moved to Moscow, where he supported himself working as a
[[proofreader]] in a printing company. The following year he enrolled in
[[Moscow Shanyavsky 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 [[Petrograd]], where he became acquainted
with fellow-poets [[Alexander Blok]], [[Sergey Gorodetsky]], [[Nikolai
Klyuev]] and [[Andrei Bely]] and became well known in literary 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.
===Life and career===
In 1916, Yesenin published his first book of poems, ''Radunitsa''
({{lang-ru|????????}}). 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.
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 [[Zinaida Raikh]] (later
an actress and the wife of [[Vsevolod Meyerhold]]). They had two children, a
daughter [[Tatyana Yesenina|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 [[association football|soccer statistician]].
In September 1918, Yesenin founded his own publishing house called "????????
?????? ?????????? ?????" (the "Labor Company of the Artists of the Word").
Together with [[Anatoly Marienhof]], they founded the Russian literary
movement of [[imaginism]].
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 2 May 1922. Yesenin accompanied his
celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States. His marriage to
Duncan was brief and in May 1923, he returned to Moscow.
In 1923 Yesenin became romantically involved with the actress Augusta
Miklashevskaya to whom he dedicated several poems. The same year he had a
son by the poet Nadezhda Volpin. Their son, [[Alexander Esenin-Volpin]]
grew up to become a poet and a prominent activist in the [[Soviet
dissident]] movement of the 1960s. He lives in the United States, a famous
mathematician and teacher.
In 1925 Yesenin met and married his fourth wife, Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya,
a granddaughter of [[Leo Tolstoy]].
===Death===
On 28 December 1925 Yesenin was found dead in his room in the [[Hotel
Angleterre]]. His last poem ''Goodbye my friend, goodbye''
([http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/??%20????????,%20????%20???,%20??%20????????%20(??????)
?? ????????, ???? ???, ?? ????????)] according to Wolf Ehrlich was given to
him the day before. Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room,
and he was forced to write with his blood.
[[File:Esenin1925ondeathbed.jpg|thumb|190px|Sergei Yesenin (1925)]]
According to the version that is now common among academic researchers of
Yesenin's life, the poet was in a state of [[Depression (mood)|depression]]
a week after the end of treatment in a mental hospital and committed suicide
by hanging.
After the funeral in the Union in Leningrad, poet Yesenin's body was
transported by train to Moscow, where a farewell for relatives and friends
of the deceased was also arranged. He was buried December 31, 1925, in
Moscow's [[Vagankovskoye Cemetery]]. His grave is marked by a white marble
sculpture.
A theory exists that Yesenin's death was actually a murder by [[NKVD]]
agents who staged it to look like suicide. Novel "Yesenin"<ref>{{cite
book|last=Bezrukov|first=Vitali|title=??????|year=2005|publisher=Amfora|location=Moscow|isbn=5-94278-924-X|url=http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/7231240/}}</ref>
published by [[Vitali Bezrukov]] is devoted to this version of Yesenin's
death. In 2005 TV serial "Sergey Yesenin" based on this novel (with [[Sergey
Bezrukov]] playing Yesenin) was shown on [[Channel One Russia]]. The film
was criticized by forensic experts who found its arguments
unconvincing.<ref>{{cite web|last=Romanova|first=Natalia|title=??????
??????. ???????? ??????? - ???????? ??????? ???????? ?????? ????????????????
???????|url=http://www.epochtimes.ru/content/view/43187/9/|publisher=The
Epoch Times}}</ref><ref>{{cite
news|last=Vorsobin|first=Vladimir|title=?????? ???????: ???????? ???
?????????????|url=http://www.kp.ru/daily/23609.3/46548/|newspaper=[[Komsomolskaya
Pravda]]|date=10 November 2005}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |
url=http://www.ogoniok.com/4925/33/ | title=??????? ?? ??????? | date=25
December 2005 | last=Romashenkova | first=Tatiana |
newspaper=[[Ogoniok]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite
web|last=Vetrov|first=Vladimir|title=????? ?????? ??????
???????|url=http://www.abc-people.com/phenomenons/death/doc-4.htm}}</ref>
The [[Ryazan State University]] is named in his honour.<ref>{{Cite
journal|url=http://www.rsu.edu.ru/index.php?section=457|publisher=Ryazan
State University|accessdate=2009-09-08|title=?????? ??
????????????|postscript=.}}</ref>
===Cultural impact===
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. His early death, coupled with 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 popular culture==
In 2005 Russian studio Pro-Cinema Production produced a TV mini-series
"Yesenin" about the life of the poet [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456776/].
The movie described the version of his death according to which he was
murdered by [[NKVD]] agents who staged his suicide.
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]]''.
== Multilanguage editions ==
''Anna Snegina'' (Yesenin's poem translated into 12 languages; translated
into English by Peter Tempest) ISBN 978-5-7380-0336-3
==Works==
*''The Scarlet of the Dawn'' (1910)
*''The high waters have licked'' (1910)
*''The Birch Tree'' (1913)
*''Autumn'' (1914)
*''Russia'' (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 (poem)|Land of Scoundrels]]'' (1923)
*''One joy I have left'' (1923)
*''A Letter to Mother'' (1924)
*''Tavern Moscow'' (1924)
*''Confessions of a Hooligan'' (1924),
*''A Letter to a Woman'' (1924),
*''Desolate and Pale Moonlight'' (1925)
*''The Black Man'' (1925)
*''To [[Kachalov]]'s Dog'' (1925)
*''Goodbye, my friend, goodbye'' (1925) (His farewell poem)
{| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" align="center"
| width="50%" style="background:#f6f6f6;" |<small>''Original in
Russian''</small>
<poem>
?? ????????, ???? ???, ?? ????????.
????? ???, ?? ? ???? ? ?????.
??????????????? ???????????
??????? ??????? ???????.
?? ????????, ???? ???, ??? ????, ??? ?????,
?? ?????? ? ?? ?????? ??????,-
? ???? ????? ??????? ?? ????,
?? ? ????, ???????, ?? ?????.
</poem>
| width="50%" style="background:#f6f6f6;" | <small>''English
Translation''</small>
<poem>
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let's have no sadness - furrowed brow.
There's nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer.
</poem>
|}
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
{{Commons|Sergei Yesenin|Sergei Yesenin}}
Collection of Sergey Yesenin's Poems in English:
*[http://sergey-esenin-in-english.comlu.com/ Sergey Yesenin. Selected Poems
in English with parallel Russian texts ] Alternative Bilingual
(Russian-English) Version.
*{{YouTube|xayLSd_Lc5Q|Sergei Yesenin - Oh, how many cats in the world
Reading in English}}
*[http://vagalecs.narod.ru/yes-chron-eng.htm <!-- bot-generated title -->]
Yesenin poems in English @ vagalecs.narod.ru
*[http://samlib.ru/a/as_w/yesen.shtml Yesenin Sergey. Sergey Yesenin.
Collection of Poems. Bilingual Version (Russian-English)<!-- bot-generated
title -->] http://samlib.ru/a/as_w/yesen.shtml
*[http://jhstotts.blogspot.com/2008/06/esenin-footnotes-for-triptych.html
The Fugue Aesthetics of J.H. Stotts: Esenin, Footnotes for a Triptych<!--
bot-generated title -->] at blogspot.com (Bio and English translation)
* [http://samlib.ru/editors/w/wagapow_a_s/yesenin-bio.shtml Sergey Yesenin's
Autobiography.(English translation)]
*[http://www.spinfrog.com/YP.html Poetry (English translation)]
*[http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/esenin.html Biography, photos and poetry]
(Russian)
*[http://az.lib.ru/e/esenin_s_a/ Yesenin's poetry] (Russian)
*[http://www.litnet.ru/event/esenin/esenin.htm Yesenin's museum in Viazma]
(Russian)
*[http://www.a-novikov.ru/work/cd/sergej-esenin/ Alexander Novikov sings
songs based on Yesenin's poetry (10 songs in WMA format]
*[http://leoyankevich.com/archives/202 Translation of "The Birch" by Leo
Yankevich]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngQplID937g The Black Man (the animation
film on a poem) by Alexander Popugaev]
*[http://stihi.ru/2003/04/01-311 The Dark Man (English translation)]
October 1895 or 21 September - 28 December 1925) was a [[Russia]]n lyrical
poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the
20th century.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Sergey Esenin was born in [[Rybnovsky District|Konstantinovo]] in the
[[Ryazan]] Province (????????, ''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, Esenin moved to Moscow, where he supported himself working as a
[[proofreader]] in a printing company. The following year he enrolled in
[[Moscow Shanyavsky 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 [[Petrograd]], where he became acquainted
with fellow-poets [[Alexander Blok]], [[Sergey Gorodetsky]], [[Nikolai
Klyuev]] and [[Andrei Bely]] and became well known in literary 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.
===Life and career===
In 1916, Yesenin published his first book of poems, ''Radunitsa''
({{lang-ru|????????}}). 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.
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 [[Zinaida Raikh]] (later
an actress and the wife of [[Vsevolod Meyerhold]]). They had two children, a
daughter [[Tatyana Yesenina|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 [[association football|soccer statistician]].
In September 1918, Yesenin founded his own publishing house called "????????
?????? ?????????? ?????" (the "Labor Company of the Artists of the Word").
Together with [[Anatoly Marienhof]], they founded the Russian literary
movement of [[imaginism]].
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 2 May 1922. Yesenin accompanied his
celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States. His marriage to
Duncan was brief and in May 1923, he returned to Moscow.
In 1923 Yesenin became romantically involved with the actress Augusta
Miklashevskaya to whom he dedicated several poems. The same year he had a
son by the poet Nadezhda Volpin. Their son, [[Alexander Esenin-Volpin]]
grew up to become a poet and a prominent activist in the [[Soviet
dissident]] movement of the 1960s. He lives in the United States, a famous
mathematician and teacher.
In 1925 Yesenin met and married his fourth wife, Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya,
a granddaughter of [[Leo Tolstoy]].
===Death===
On 28 December 1925 Yesenin was found dead in his room in the [[Hotel
Angleterre]]. His last poem ''Goodbye my friend, goodbye''
([http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/??%20????????,%20????%20???,%20??%20????????%20(??????)
?? ????????, ???? ???, ?? ????????)] according to Wolf Ehrlich was given to
him the day before. Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room,
and he was forced to write with his blood.
[[File:Esenin1925ondeathbed.jpg|thumb|190px|Sergei Yesenin (1925)]]
According to the version that is now common among academic researchers of
Yesenin's life, the poet was in a state of [[Depression (mood)|depression]]
a week after the end of treatment in a mental hospital and committed suicide
by hanging.
After the funeral in the Union in Leningrad, poet Yesenin's body was
transported by train to Moscow, where a farewell for relatives and friends
of the deceased was also arranged. He was buried December 31, 1925, in
Moscow's [[Vagankovskoye Cemetery]]. His grave is marked by a white marble
sculpture.
A theory exists that Yesenin's death was actually a murder by [[NKVD]]
agents who staged it to look like suicide. Novel "Yesenin"<ref>{{cite
book|last=Bezrukov|first=Vitali|title=??????|year=2005|publisher=Amfora|location=Moscow|isbn=5-94278-924-X|url=http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/7231240/}}</ref>
published by [[Vitali Bezrukov]] is devoted to this version of Yesenin's
death. In 2005 TV serial "Sergey Yesenin" based on this novel (with [[Sergey
Bezrukov]] playing Yesenin) was shown on [[Channel One Russia]]. The film
was criticized by forensic experts who found its arguments
unconvincing.<ref>{{cite web|last=Romanova|first=Natalia|title=??????
??????. ???????? ??????? - ???????? ??????? ???????? ?????? ????????????????
???????|url=http://www.epochtimes.ru/content/view/43187/9/|publisher=The
Epoch Times}}</ref><ref>{{cite
news|last=Vorsobin|first=Vladimir|title=?????? ???????: ???????? ???
?????????????|url=http://www.kp.ru/daily/23609.3/46548/|newspaper=[[Komsomolskaya
Pravda]]|date=10 November 2005}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |
url=http://www.ogoniok.com/4925/33/ | title=??????? ?? ??????? | date=25
December 2005 | last=Romashenkova | first=Tatiana |
newspaper=[[Ogoniok]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite
web|last=Vetrov|first=Vladimir|title=????? ?????? ??????
???????|url=http://www.abc-people.com/phenomenons/death/doc-4.htm}}</ref>
The [[Ryazan State University]] is named in his honour.<ref>{{Cite
journal|url=http://www.rsu.edu.ru/index.php?section=457|publisher=Ryazan
State University|accessdate=2009-09-08|title=?????? ??
????????????|postscript=.}}</ref>
===Cultural impact===
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. His early death, coupled with 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 popular culture==
In 2005 Russian studio Pro-Cinema Production produced a TV mini-series
"Yesenin" about the life of the poet [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456776/].
The movie described the version of his death according to which he was
murdered by [[NKVD]] agents who staged his suicide.
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]]''.
== Multilanguage editions ==
''Anna Snegina'' (Yesenin's poem translated into 12 languages; translated
into English by Peter Tempest) ISBN 978-5-7380-0336-3
==Works==
*''The Scarlet of the Dawn'' (1910)
*''The high waters have licked'' (1910)
*''The Birch Tree'' (1913)
*''Autumn'' (1914)
*''Russia'' (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 (poem)|Land of Scoundrels]]'' (1923)
*''One joy I have left'' (1923)
*''A Letter to Mother'' (1924)
*''Tavern Moscow'' (1924)
*''Confessions of a Hooligan'' (1924),
*''A Letter to a Woman'' (1924),
*''Desolate and Pale Moonlight'' (1925)
*''The Black Man'' (1925)
*''To [[Kachalov]]'s Dog'' (1925)
*''Goodbye, my friend, goodbye'' (1925) (His farewell poem)
{| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" align="center"
| width="50%" style="background:#f6f6f6;" |<small>''Original in
Russian''</small>
<poem>
?? ????????, ???? ???, ?? ????????.
????? ???, ?? ? ???? ? ?????.
??????????????? ???????????
??????? ??????? ???????.
?? ????????, ???? ???, ??? ????, ??? ?????,
?? ?????? ? ?? ?????? ??????,-
? ???? ????? ??????? ?? ????,
?? ? ????, ???????, ?? ?????.
</poem>
| width="50%" style="background:#f6f6f6;" | <small>''English
Translation''</small>
<poem>
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let's have no sadness - furrowed brow.
There's nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer.
</poem>
|}
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
{{Commons|Sergei Yesenin|Sergei Yesenin}}
Collection of Sergey Yesenin's Poems in English:
*[http://sergey-esenin-in-english.comlu.com/ Sergey Yesenin. Selected Poems
in English with parallel Russian texts ] Alternative Bilingual
(Russian-English) Version.
*{{YouTube|xayLSd_Lc5Q|Sergei Yesenin - Oh, how many cats in the world
Reading in English}}
*[http://vagalecs.narod.ru/yes-chron-eng.htm <!-- bot-generated title -->]
Yesenin poems in English @ vagalecs.narod.ru
*[http://samlib.ru/a/as_w/yesen.shtml Yesenin Sergey. Sergey Yesenin.
Collection of Poems. Bilingual Version (Russian-English)<!-- bot-generated
title -->] http://samlib.ru/a/as_w/yesen.shtml
*[http://jhstotts.blogspot.com/2008/06/esenin-footnotes-for-triptych.html
The Fugue Aesthetics of J.H. Stotts: Esenin, Footnotes for a Triptych<!--
bot-generated title -->] at blogspot.com (Bio and English translation)
* [http://samlib.ru/editors/w/wagapow_a_s/yesenin-bio.shtml Sergey Yesenin's
Autobiography.(English translation)]
*[http://www.spinfrog.com/YP.html Poetry (English translation)]
*[http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/esenin.html Biography, photos and poetry]
(Russian)
*[http://az.lib.ru/e/esenin_s_a/ Yesenin's poetry] (Russian)
*[http://www.litnet.ru/event/esenin/esenin.htm Yesenin's museum in Viazma]
(Russian)
*[http://www.a-novikov.ru/work/cd/sergej-esenin/ Alexander Novikov sings
songs based on Yesenin's poetry (10 songs in WMA format]
*[http://leoyankevich.com/archives/202 Translation of "The Birch" by Leo
Yankevich]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngQplID937g The Black Man (the animation
film on a poem) by Alexander Popugaev]
*[http://stihi.ru/2003/04/01-311 The Dark Man (English translation)]
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