Brief biography of Sergei Yesenin for children and elementary grades (Yesenin S. A.)
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. Born September 21 (October 3), 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province - died December 28, 1925 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The great Russian poet, a representative of the new peasant poetry and lyrics, as well as Imagism.
Born in the village of Konstantinovo, Kuzminskaya volost, Ryazan district, Ryazan province, in a peasant family.
Father - Alexander Nikitich Yesenin (1873-1931).
Mother - Tatyana Fedorovna Titova (1875-1955).
Sisters - Catherine (1905-1977), Alexandra (1911-1981).
In 1904, Yesenin went to the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School, after which in 1909 he began his studies at the parochial second-class teacher's school (now the S. A. Yesenin Museum) in Spas-Klepiki. After graduating from school, in the fall of 1912, Yesenin left home, then arrived in Moscow, worked in a butcher's shop, and then - in the printing house of I. D. Sytin. In 1913, he entered the historical and philosophical department of the Moscow City People's University named after A. L. Shanyavsky as a volunteer. He worked in a printing house, was friendly with the poets of the Surikov Literary and Musical Circle.
In 1914, Yesenin's poems were first published in the children's magazine Mirok.
In 1915, Yesenin came from Moscow to Petrograd, read his poems to S. M. Gorodetsky and other poets. In January 1916, Yesenin was called to war and, thanks to the efforts of his friends, he was appointed ("with the highest permission") as an orderly in the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital train No. 143 of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. At this time, he became close to a group of "new peasant poets" and published the first collections ("Radunitsa" - 1916), which made him very famous. Together with Nikolai Klyuev, he often performed, including in front of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters in Tsarskoye Selo.
In 1915-1917, Yesenin maintained friendly relations with the poet Leonid Kannegiser, who later killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky.
By 1918 - the beginning of the 1920s, Yesenin's acquaintance with Anatoly Mariengof and his active participation in the Moscow group of Imagists dates back.
During the period of Yesenin's passion for imaginism, several collections of the poet's poems were published - "Treryadnitsa", "Confession of a Hooligan" (both - 1921), "Poems of a Brawler" (1923), "Moscow Tavern" (1924), the poem "Pugachev".
In 1921, the poet, together with his friend Yakov Blumkin, traveled to Central Asia, visited the Urals and the Orenburg region. From May 13 to June 3, he stayed in Tashkent with his friend and poet Alexander Shiryaevts. There, Yesenin spoke to the public several times, read poems at poetry evenings and in the homes of his Tashkent friends. According to eyewitnesses, Yesenin liked to visit the old city, the teahouses of the old city and Urda, listen to Uzbek poetry, music and songs, visit the picturesque surroundings of Tashkent with his friends. He also made a short trip to Samarkand.
In the autumn of 1921, in the workshop of G. B. Yakulov, Yesenin met a dancer, whom he married six months later. After the wedding, Yesenin and Duncan traveled to Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, Italy) and to the USA (4 months), where he stayed from May 1922 to August 1923. The newspaper "Izvestia" published Yesenin's notes about America "Iron Mirgorod". The marriage to Duncan broke up shortly after their return from abroad.
In the early 1920s, Yesenin was actively engaged in book publishing, as well as selling books in a bookstore he rented on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, which occupied almost all of the poet's time. In the last years of his life, Yesenin traveled a lot around the country. He visited the Caucasus three times, several times went to Leningrad, seven times to Konstantinovo.
In 1924-1925, Yesenin visited Azerbaijan, published a collection of poems at the Krasny Vostok printing house, and was printed at a local publishing house. There is a version that here, in May 1925, a poetic “Message to the Evangelist Demyan” was written. He lived in the village of Mardakan (a suburb of Baku). Currently, his house-museum and a memorial plaque are located here.
In 1924, Yesenin decided to break with Imagism because of disagreements with A. B. Mariengof. Yesenin and Ivan Gruzinov published an open letter disbanding the group.
Sharply critical articles about him began to appear in the newspapers, accusing him of drunkenness, brawls, fights and other anti-social acts, although the poet, by his behavior (especially in the last years of his life), sometimes gave grounds for this kind of criticism. Several criminal cases were opened against Yesenin, mainly on charges of hooliganism; the Case of the Four Poets is also known, connected with the accusation of Yesenin and his friends of anti-Semitic statements.
The Soviet government was worried about Yesenin's health. So, in Rakovsky’s letter to October 25, 1925, Rakovsky asks “to save the life of the famous poet Yesenin - undoubtedly the most talented in our Union”, suggesting: “invite him to your place, make it good and send with him to the sanatorium a comrade from the GPU, who I wouldn’t let him get drunk ... ”On the letter, Dzerzhinsky’s resolution, addressed to his close friend, secretary, head of the GPU V. D. Gerson: “M. b., can you do it? Next to it is Gerson's note: "I called repeatedly - I could not find Yesenin."
At the end of November 1925, Sofya Tolstaya agreed with the director of the paid psycho-neurological clinic of Moscow University, Professor P. B. Gannushkin, to hospitalize the poet in his clinic. Only a few people close to the poet knew about this. On December 21, 1925, Yesenin left the clinic, canceled all powers of attorney at the State Publishing House, withdrew almost all the money from the passbook, and a day later left for Leningrad, where he stayed at No. 5 of the Angleterre Hotel.
In Leningrad, the last days of Yesenin's life were marked by meetings with N. A. Klyuev, G. F. Ustinov, Ivan Pribludny, V. I. Erlikh, I. I. Sadofiev, N. N. Nikitin and other writers.
Personal life of Sergei Yesenin:
In 1913, Sergei Yesenin met Anna Romanovna Izryadnova, who worked as a proofreader in the printing house of the I.D. Sytin Partnership, where Yesenin went to work. In 1914 they entered into a civil marriage. On December 21, 1914, Anna Izryadnova gave birth to a son named Yuri (he was shot on false charges in 1937).
In 1917, he met and on July 30 of the same year got married in the village of Kiriki-Ulita, Vologda province, with a Russian actress, the future wife of director V. E. Meyerhold. The groom's guarantors were Pavel Pavlovich Khitrov, a peasant from the village of Ivanovskaya Spasskaya volost, and Sergei Mikhailovich Baraev, a peasant from the village of Ustya, Ustyanskaya volost, the bride's guarantors were Alexei Alekseevich Ganin and Dmitry Dmitrievich Devyatkov, a merchant's son from the city of Vologda. The wedding took place in the building of the Passage Hotel. From this marriage were born a daughter, Tatiana (1918-1992), a journalist and writer, and a son, Konstantin (1920-1986), a civil engineer, football statistician and journalist. At the end of 1919 (or at the beginning of 1920), Yesenin left the family, and in the arms of Zinaida Reich, who was pregnant with her son (Konstantin), one and a half year old daughter Tatyana remained. On February 19, 1921, the poet filed for divorce, in which he undertook to financially support them (the divorce was officially filed in October 1921). Subsequently, Yesenin repeatedly visited his children adopted by Meyerhold.
From the first collections of poetry ("Radunitsa", 1916; "Rural Book of Hours", 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of a deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Russia, an expert in the folk language and folk soul.
In 1919-1923 he was a member of a group of Imagists. The tragic attitude, mental confusion are expressed in the cycles "Mare's Ships" (1920), "Moscow Tavern" (1924), the poem "The Black Man" (1925). In the poem "The Ballad of Twenty-Six" (1924), dedicated to the Baku commissars, the collection "Soviet Russia" (1925), the poem "Anna Snegina" (1925), Yesenin sought to comprehend the "commune rearing Russia", although he continued to feel like a poet "Russia leaving ”, “golden log hut”. Dramatic poem "Pugachev" (1921).
In 1920 Yesenin lives with his literary secretary Galina Benislavskaya. Throughout his life, he repeatedly met with her, sometimes he lived at the Benislavskaya house, until his marriage to S. A. Tolstaya in the fall of 1925.
In 1921, from May 13 to June 3, the poet stayed in Tashkent with his friend, Tashkent poet Alexander Shiryaevts. At the invitation of the director of the Turkestan Public Library, on May 25, 1921, Yesenin spoke in the library at a literary evening hosted by his friends, in front of the audience of the Art Studio, which existed at the library. Yesenin arrived in Turkestan in the carriage of his friend Kolobov, a responsible employee of the NKPS. He lived on this train all the time of his stay in Tashkent, then on this train he traveled to Samarkand, Bukhara and Poltoratsk (current Ashgabat). On June 3, 1921, Sergei Yesenin left Tashkent and returned to Moscow on June 9, 1921. By coincidence, most of the life of the poet's daughter Tatyana was spent in Tashkent.
In the autumn of 1921, in the workshop of G. B. Yakulov, Yesenin met the dancer Isadora Duncan, whom he married on May 2, 1922. At the same time, Yesenin did not speak English, and Duncan barely spoke Russian. Immediately after the wedding, Yesenin accompanied Duncan on tours in Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy) and the USA. Usually, describing this union, the authors note its love-scandalous side, however, these two artists, undoubtedly, were brought together by the relationship of creativity. However, their marriage was brief, and in August 1923 Yesenin returned to Moscow.
In 1923, Yesenin struck up an acquaintance with the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya, to whom he dedicated seven heartfelt poems from the Love of a Hooligan cycle. In one of the lines, the name of the actress is obviously encrypted: “Why does your name ring like that, Like the August coolness?” It is noteworthy that in the fall of 1976, when the actress was already 85, in an interview with literary critics, Augusta Leonidovna admitted that the affair with Yesenin was platonic and she did not even kiss the poet.
On May 12, 1924, Yesenin's son Alexander was born after an affair with the poetess and translator Nadezhda Volpin - later a famous mathematician and figure in the dissident movement, Yesenin's only living child.
On September 18, 1925, Yesenin married for the third (and last) time - to Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya (1900-1957), the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy, at that time the head of the library of the Writers' Union. This marriage also did not bring happiness to the poet and soon broke up. Restless loneliness was one of the main reasons for Yesenin's tragic end. After the poet's death, Tolstaya devoted her life to collecting, preserving, describing and preparing Yesenin's works for publication, leaving memoirs about him.
According to the memoirs of N. Sardanovsky and the letters of the poet, Yesenin was a vegetarian for some time.
Death of Sergei Yesenin:
On December 28, 1925, Yesenin was found dead in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad. His last poem - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ..." - according to Wolf Erlich, was handed to him the day before: Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room, and he was forced to write with his own blood.
According to the version that is now generally accepted among academic researchers of Yesenin's life, the poet, in a state of depression (a week after the end of treatment in a psychoneurological hospital), committed suicide (hanged himself).
After a civil memorial service at the Union of Poets in Leningrad, Yesenin's body was taken by train to Moscow, where a farewell was also arranged at the Press House with the participation of relatives and friends of the deceased. He was buried on December 31, 1925 in Moscow at the Vagankovsky cemetery.
Neither immediately after the death of Yesenin, nor in the next few decades after the death of the poet, other versions of his death, except for suicide, were put forward.
In the 1970s and 1980s, versions arose about the murder of the poet, followed by a staged suicide of Yesenin (as a rule, members of the OGPU are accused of organizing the murder). A contribution to the development of this version was made by the investigator of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, retired colonel Eduard Khlystalov. The version of Yesenin's murder has penetrated into popular culture: in particular, it is presented in artistic form in the television series Yesenin (2005).
In 1989, under the auspices of the Gorky IMLI, the Yesenin Commission was established under the chairmanship of the Soviet and Russian Yesenin scholar Yu. L. Prokushev; at her request, a number of examinations were carried out, which led to the following conclusion: “the now published “versions” about the murder of the poet with subsequent staging of hanging, despite some discrepancies ... are a vulgar, incompetent interpretation of special information, sometimes falsifying the results of the examination” (from the official response of the professor at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Doctor of Medical Sciences B. S. Svadkovsky to the request of the chairman of the commission Yu. L. Prokushev). Versions of the murder of Yesenin are considered late fiction or "unconvincing" and other biographers of the poet.
Sergei Yesenin called himself a Ryazan guy, the last poet of the village. He was a ladies' man, incredibly gentle, desperately in love with women and not constant. Ruthlessly broke women's hearts, did not suffer long and plunged into a new whirlpool of passions.
During his short life he married three times, was a father four times, wrote four hundred poems and four dozen poems. He was reputed to be a hooligan, a brawler and a drunkard. He supported this image in every possible way: he walked widely, fought to the point of bloodshed, shocked the audience, dressing up in a woman's dress and dancing in heels. He wanted fame and was favored by the public. Those close to him know him as a sensitive, subtle and vulnerable person.
He accepted the revolution, and then he cheated on her just like his women. His life consisted of contradictions, however, as well as his strange death in the Leningrad hotel Angleterre.
Sergei Yesenin is known and read all over the world. He is the favorite poet of the Silver Age, who crossed out the fate of many great people with a black cross.
peasant son
The first-born of the Yesenins was born on September 21, 1895. The poet's parents were young: Alexander Nikitich was 22 years old, Tatyana Fedorovna - 20. The boy was baptized in the Konstantinovsky Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God and was given to be raised by his grandmother on his father's side. There was no prosperity in the family, I had to work hard, only occasionally visit my son.
After the three-year-old boy was assigned to Natalya Evtikhievna's grandmother from his mother's side, where he remained until her death.
Sergei Alexandrovich recalled his childhood with warmth, was grateful to his grandmother, who taught him to read, write and love fairy tales. Already at the age of 8-9 he began to compose quatrains, similar to ditties.
He studied at the zemstvo school in Konstantinov, where in the third grade he was left for the second year because of his behavior, but five years later he graduated from it with a commendable sheet.
At the age of 13, he entered the parochial school in the village of Spas-Klepiki, not far from Ryazan. The cost of education in it was low, so peasant children could get a good education here. He lived in a hostel, but he did not like it, and he often ran away to Konstantinovo. He was returned. But he wrote his first poems at this time. And the first critic was the teacher Yevgeny Mikhailovich Khitrov, who saw the boy as a great poet. “Winter sings, haunts, the shaggy forest cradles ...” - a poem from childhood. Graduated as a grammar teacher, but never thought of teaching children.
For three years of study, he almost did not see his parents, he spoke little with his sisters. At the age of 16, he returned to his parents' house without much joy.
Ekaterina was seven years younger than him, Alexandra was 16 years younger. But it was Shurochka who was his favorite - Shurenok. She left memories of her brother, wrote that instead of the burned-out parental house, Sergey built a new one. The guy was then only 20 years old, an age when it is not yet a shame to accept help from parents. But he was already actively publishing, speaking at evening parties, earning money by literary work and settled down well in Moscow. He always took care of the sisters, and after they came of age he took them to Moscow with him: he fed, clothed, taught and helped with housing.
He himself moved to the capital and began an independent life early: at the age of 17. He dreamed of poetry, dreamed of being published and receiving royalties. The novice poet was not immediately noticed. He published his first poems at the age of 15.
Firstborn and first compilation
He worked in a printing house to be closer to books. There he meets Anna Izryadnova, a young girl who really liked his long blond curls and cheerful disposition. She worked as a proofreader, he worked as a subreader. Parents did not approve of their daughter's choice, especially since she was four years older than her chosen one. I had to rent an apartment and live in a civil marriage.
At the age of 19, Yesenin became a father: the first-born was named Yura. They lived hard: there was not enough money, the salary was spent on books, but Anna did not complain, she ran the household and supported her beloved in everything. And he wrote a lot, worked and studied at the University. Shanyavsky at the Faculty of History and Philology. The courses were paid, so it was hard to make ends meet.
In the memoirs of Anna Romanovna, published 20 years after her death, there is not a single reproach against Yesenin, who left her with a one-year-old child. Officially, the marriage was not registered, and after the death of Yesenin, she had to prove his paternity.
Unfortunately, the poet's son saw little of his father. The guy was 11 years old when the news of Yesenin's suicide spread around the world. Kinship with the scandalous poet played a tragic role in his life: he fell under the rink of repression along with Yesenin's students, and was shot in 1937, and rehabilitated in 1956. Anna Izryadnova died in 1946, without knowing anything about the fate of her son.
By the way, Ekaterina Yesenina, who was her brother's personal secretary and assistant, also suffered from repression. She married a friend Yesenin, gave birth to two children, but they lived in harmony for ten years. The husband thundered into the dungeons on charges of underground activities and was shot. She was summoned for interrogation as the wife of an enemy of the people, she spent more than two months in Butyrka, and her children, Andrei and Natalya, in an orphanage. Due to severe asthma attacks, the woman was allowed to live in Konstantinovo, without the right to come to the capital. She took the children and left for Ryazan. She waited for her husband all the years, learned about his death only in the mid-50s. She did a lot to preserve the memory of her famous brother, wrote a book of memoirs, took part in the preparation of Yesenin's collected works and initiated the creation of the poet's museum in the village. Konstantinovo.
From Anna Izryadnova, the poet left for the Crimea. At the age of 19 he saw the sea for the first time. He did not stay there for long: in a letter to his father he wrote that he had published his poems in the Yalta newspaper for 35 kopecks a line, and spoke at the evening for 35 rubles, which secured his food and a ticket to Moscow.
He writes a lot and with pleasure. Motherland, nature, dales and rivers - he reads about what delights him and makes him feel the spirit of the folk, somewhere popular manifestation of life.
Petrograd
At the age of 20, he goes to Petrograd, where he meets Blok, Klyuev, Gumilyov, Gorodetsky. It is accepted and creativity is spoken of in superlatives. Magazines are printed, and the public comes to his performances. Yesenin releases his first collection, his fame is growing like a snowball. He rushes between Moscow and Petrograd, is in correspondence with Petrograd acquaintances, including Nikolai Klyuev.
Their relationship will soon develop into friendship, and will continue until the death of the poet. They are always together when Yesenin arrives in the northern capital. They often perform from the same stage, visit famous people: Klyuev, who is almost ten years older than Sergei, is fond of a talented guy and supervises him. Yesenin calls him his teacher.
In 1916 his first collection was published. They talk about Yesenin about a talented village poet.
Disappointment
I met the revolution with joy, hoping that it would bring freedom and prosperity. He called the collection of poems "Transfiguration", among his friends there are revolutionaries and those who will soon fall under execution articles. There are also changes in his personal life: a beautiful girl Zinaida Reich worked in the editorial office of the newspaper where he was published. They got married in the summer of 1917, and the very next year she went to Orel to give birth to her parents. The daughter was named Tatyana.
The life of the young was not calm: Yesenin often left, traveled around the country, performed and enjoyed life with his friends. Zinaida moved to her husband in Moscow, but she lived there with her daughter for no more than a year.
Yesenin earns decently, his books are included, he is a co-owner of a bookstore on B. Nikitskaya, sometimes he himself stands behind the counter in order to sign his collection to customers. He is at break: he writes, prepares poetry for publication, speaks, participates in debates about proletarian poetry, he is elected to the presidium of the All-Russian Union of Poets.
But due to quarrels with colleagues and the inability to conduct discussions without fists, he was soon expelled from the Union of Poets. Zinaida hardly sees her husband.
In 1918, four of his books were published in Moscow at once: “Child Jesus”, “Dove”, “Transfiguration”, “Country Book of Hours”.
A year later, he signs the declaration of the Imagists along with other poets, including Mariengof. Yesenin's dream to create his own poetic school did not come true, although he had students. The poet did not retain his devotion to ideas, he soon became disillusioned, published a devastating article, accusing his fellow writers of the lack of a sense of homeland.
It does not stick with him and with Zina Reich. To save the marriage, she decided on a second child. Konstantin was born in February 1920, immediately fell ill, she went with him to Kislovodsk for treatment. Yesenin goes to Rostov-on-Don, calls in to his own, and then - Baku, Tiflis, Moscow.
In 1921, the Imagist publishing house published his book Confessions of a Hooligan. Incredible success!
At this time, the Soviet government invites the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan to open a dance school in Moscow. Their relationship developed rapidly, the marriage with Reich was annulled, Yesenin gave his word to take care of the children.
Two lonely hearts
His marriage to Isadora might not have taken place, but she did not succeed with the school, she had to leave Russia, and Yesenin was not allowed out.
He had already gone to talks in Lubyanka several times, and he was under surveillance. I had to formalize the relationship in order to follow my beloved.
During the year he traveled with her dozens of countries: she danced, he read poetry and squandered money. It was said that she was his queen, but not for long. He could go out with friends, and she was looking for him and made scenes. He raised his hand to her. This "high" relationship ended in a divorce, which he informed her about by telegram, noting that he had another.
"Blue blood"
Leo Tolstov's granddaughter Sophia has just graduated from the State Institute of the Living Word. She was married to a man older than her, but her wife was paralyzed, he was undergoing treatment abroad. She was 25 years old, and at that time she met a poet whose poems she adored.
They had only known each other for six months when Yesenin proposed to her. He was proud that the blood of a famous writer flows in his wife. And a little later he was indignant that everything in this family was filled with a great old man, then it was hard to breathe.
The union was not happy: the poet developed depression, which he brought from abroad to the new Soviet country. His last poem "Country of Scoundrels" accurately and vividly describes his attitude towards the authorities, intransigence with the order, deceitfulness of hopes. By this time, his poems "The Black Man", "Pugachev", the collection "Moscow Tavern" had already been published. Representatives of the Cheka were introduced into his entourage: an interpreter, an assistant. He was detained more than once, accused of anti-Semitism, links with enemies of the people. Since 1924 he has been living in Moscow under house arrest. He drinks a lot, torments his wife, but Sofya endures and tries to save him, placing him in a psychiatric hospital, from which he fled to Petrograd.
His death will be a shock for Sophia, she will plunge headlong into the work of preserving the memory of the poet and Tolstoy, and will meet her second love only 22 years after that fateful day.
The poet has always had connections on the side. He did not hide his adventures, dedicating poems to ladies. His literary secretary and girlfriend Galina Benislavskaya shot herself at the poet's grave.
Mystery of death
In Leningrad at the end of 1925, Sergei fled from the inevitable arrest. In Moscow, 13 criminal cases were opened against him for a variety of reasons: drunkenness, hooliganism, anti-Semitism ...
Friends recalled that the poet considered Leningrad not as a place of residence, but as a transit point. He wrote to his Chekist friend Pyotr Chagin that he would then like to go abroad to get rid of some scandals.
Two weeks before the tragedy, he sent a telegram to his friend Wolf Erlich asking him to rent rooms for him in Leningrad. Historians claim that all the close circle of the poet knew that he took a suitcase of unpublished manuscripts with him from Moscow. Yesenin strove to live, not die in the northern capital. He had a lot of work, he wanted to publish not only a collection of his works, but also to start publishing his own literary magazine. He had many plans and suicide was not included in them.
But his friend did not answer the telegram, he did not rent a room for him. Yesenin, upon arrival from Moscow on December 24, 1925, came to Erlich's apartment. Togo was not at home and the poet left a suitcase with him, on a rope from which he would be found hanged in four days, and a note asking him to take his things to the Angleterre Hotel. The hotel was next to this house. A man from the Cheka was sitting at the entrance to the hotel, he carefully checked the future guests. It seems strange that Yesenin could live in it with his list of criminal cases. They said that Grigory Ustinov helped him get settled, he also lived there, and they had known the poet for almost seven years. The relations between them were friendly, which did not prevent him from calling the poet "an incorrigible psycho-bandit" and a "fake Bolshevik" in devastating newspaper articles.
There is a version that all this was rigged. Yesenin's contemporaries considered their acquaintance with Vova Erlich not accidental. They became friends on the basis of poetry: Yesenin gave him an autographed volume, a little-known poet offered to deal with his publishing business. But in fact, many believed that Erlich was assigned to the GPU (State Political Administration).
The institution followed not only Yesenin, but many of the cohort of the creative intelligentsia. The time was like this: the freemen of the NEP were replaced by Stalinist repressions - one dangerous word, and the informers with the Chekists were right there. Arrested, imprisoned and shot.
The body of the wife of Grigory Ustinov, Elizaveta and Erlich, was found on the morning of December 28. According to them, he was suspended high from the heating pipe: the ceilings in the room were 5 meters high. There is a bruise under the left eye, a cut on the right arm, and scratches on the left.
Yesenin's death certificate says: "suicide by hanging." The state convinced relatives, friends and the public of this through newspapers. The reputation of a hooligan and a drunkard played into the hands of the official point of view. Indeed, the poet was a rebel, often found himself in the police station. But having studied the case of Yesenin's death, which contains a doctor's examination, photographs of the body of the photographer Nappelbauman and an act describing the Angleterre hotel room of the inexperienced policeman Nikolai Gorbov, many questions arise. Although the investigation ruled out the version of the murder immediately, the case was quickly closed.
For example, in the photo of Yesenin lying on the sofa, there is no bruise, no trace of the noose, and experts say that the body was laid so that they saw as few details as possible. The state of affairs in the room is not described, it is not known whether the window was open or not. The witnesses who signed the protocol did not see the poet in the noose. According to experts, the poet himself could not hang himself on a heating pipe located under the very ceiling. And there were four witnesses who saw the body allegedly hanging there - this is Elizaveta Ustinova, Wolf Erlich, policeman Nikolai Gorbov and commandant Nazarov, who opened the door.
Nikolai Klyuev, a close friend and teacher, came to Yesenin on the eve of the tragic events - at 22 o'clock. But he was kicked out of the room by the so-called friends of the poet. He did not see Yesenin himself. These memoirs have been published.
There was another person at the scene of the tragedy - the artist Yevgeny Svarog, who made several pencil sketches of the body. They are stored in the Yesenin Museum in Moscow. Surprisingly, Yesenin's legs are crossed in the drawings, the arm has an unnatural bend, and in this position the hangman could not be in any way. A strange dent on the forehead, which is visible on the death mask, no one took into account. Connoisseurs believe that it is more likely from a blow. The act of autopsy was drawn up carelessly, there is not a word about the traces of a struggle, the act from the spot was drawn up with many violations.
It is also strange that out of 150 guests, including those who knew Yesenin, no one met him in four days. The lists of the hotel residents have not been preserved, and according to the accounts for December 1925, there are no names of Yesenin and Ustinov. Elizaveta Ustinova also remained an unknown lady in history. Some researchers argue that she is not Ustinova at all, but Anna Rubinstein, editor of the representative office of the party publishing house and Krasny Gazeta, an old Bolshevik in the service of the Cheka.
And in general, the authorities did not forgive the poet of the new play "Country of Scoundrels", where he stigmatizes the revolution. Even friendly relations with influential representatives of the government Kirov, Kalinin, Frunze would not prevent either the poet's arrest or his imprisonment. It was rumored that Dzerzhinsky himself called Yesenin for a conversation, made a suggestion.
There is evidence of Yesenin speaking negatively about Trotsky. By the way, in the obituary he wrote on the death of Yesenin, there is a hint that he was aware of the real events in Angleterre. Did he mix up the dates, or did he know that the poet was already dead on the evening of December 27?
The suicide note presented “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye, my dear, you are in my chest ...” with the blood of the poet, turned out to be not so dying. An examination for authenticity was not carried out. Whose blood is still unknown, and is it blood at all? By the way, the note ended up in the Yesenin Museum only in 1930. It was handed over here by a Chekist from the Political Directorate of the Leningrad Military District at the request of Erlich, who claimed that the poet himself gave it to him the day before his death. And he just forgot it in his pocket after all the unexpected events. So the version of suicide was already there, when there was no question of this note.
The poem itself was written by Yesenin during a trip to the Caucasus in 1925. French newspapers wrote about it in 1934. It was also written that it was dedicated to the poet's friend Alexei Ganin, who was arrested and shot in 1924 under a political article.
Many are inclined to the version that there was a fight in the room, Yesenin was strangled, and then a suicide was staged.
By the way, the younger sister Shura received the tragic news in the village. From there, the family went to Moscow, where the funeral took place. On December 31, 1925, there was a thaw, it was raining and there were puddles - the weather was crying.
Her life in the capital was successful, Alexandra Yesenina got married and raised three children. Helped Catherine to create a museum.
Immediately after the funeral, on the unspoken order of the leader of the peoples, Yesenin's poems were banned. The first monument at the Vagankovsky cemetery appeared 30 years after Yesenin's death - in 1955, two years after Stalin's death.
Everyone who was involved in this case ended badly: Grigory Ustinov was found in a noose, his wife was shot in 1937, like Erlich. Nazarov was promoted, but three months later he was stripped of his post and exiled to Solovki. Soon the policeman Gorbov was also arrested, he disappeared without a trace.
Onlookers still ask Angliter employees where the damned number five is. But it is not there, because the building was destroyed, only the appearance of the building was restored, but from the windows of the 5th room there is still the same view - of St. Isaac's Cathedral.
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin is a subtle lyric poet and dreamer, deeply in love with Russia. He was born on September 21, 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province. The peasant family of the poet was very poor, and when Seryozha was 2 years old, his father went to work. The mother could not stand the absence of her husband, and soon the family fell apart. Little Seryozha went to be raised by his maternal grandfather.
Yesenin wrote his first poem at the age of 9. His short life lasted only 30 years, but it was so eventful that it had a great influence on Russian history and the soul of every person. Hundreds of small poems and voluminous poems of the great poet echo throughout the vast country and beyond.
Young Yesenin
In the village where Seryozha was exiled, his grandfather had three unmarried sons. As Yesenin later wrote, the uncles were mischievous, and vehemently took up the male upbringing of their nephew: at 3.5 years old, they put the boy on a horse without a saddle and sent him galloping. They also taught him to swim: the delegation got into the boat, went to the middle of the lake and threw little Seryozha overboard. At the age of 8, the poet helped on the hunt - however, as a hunting dog. He swam on the water in search of shot ducks.
There were also pleasant moments in village life - the grandmother introduced her grandson to folk songs, poems, legends and tales. This became the foundation for the development of the poetic beginning of little Yesenin. He went to study in 1904 in a rural school, which after 5 years he successfully graduated with an excellent student. He entered the Spas-Klepikovskaya teacher's school, from where he graduated in 1912 as a "teacher of the literacy school." In the same year he moved to Moscow.
The birth of the creative path
In an unfamiliar city, the poet had to ask for help from his father, and he got him a job in a butcher's shop, where he himself served as a clerk. The many-sided capital captured the mind of the poet - he was determined to make himself known, and soon he got bored with work in the shop. In 1913, the rebel went to serve in the printing house of I.D. Sytin. At the same time, the poet joins the "Surikov Literary and Musical Circle", where he finds like-minded people. The first publication took place in 1914, when Yesenin's poem "Birch" appeared in the journal "Mirok". His works also appeared in the magazines "Niva", "Milky Way" and "Protalinka".
The passion for knowledge directs the poet to the People's University A.L. Shanyavsky. He enters the historical and philosophical department, but this is not enough, and Yesenin attends lectures on the history of Russian literature. They are led by Professor P.N. Sakkulin, to whom the young poet would later bring his works. The teacher will especially appreciate the poem “The scarlet light of dawn wove out on the lake ...”
Service in a printing house introduces Yesenin to his first love, Anna Izryadnova, and he enters into a civil marriage. From this union in 1914, a son, Yuri, was born. At the same time, work began on the poems "Tosca" and "Prophet", the texts of which were lost. However, despite the emerging creative success and family idyll, the poet is getting cramped in Moscow. It seems that his poetry will not be appreciated in the capital as we would like. Therefore, in 1915, Sergei gave up everything and moved to Petrograd.
Success in Petrograd
First of all, in a new place, he is looking for a meeting with A.A. Blok - a real poet, whose glory Yesenin could only dream of at that time. The meeting took place on March 15, 1915. They made an indelible impression on each other. Later, in his autobiography, Yesenin will write that at that moment sweat was pouring from him, because for the first time in his life he saw a living poet. Blok wrote about Yesenin's works as follows: "Poems are fresh, clean, vociferous." Their communication continued: Blok showed the young talent the literary life of Petrograd, introduced him to publishers and famous poets - Gorodetsky, Gippius, Gumilyov, Remizov, Klyuev.
The poet is very close to the latter - their performances with poems and ditties, stylized as the folk peasantry, are a great success. Yesenin's poems are published by many magazines in St. Petersburg "Chronicle", "Voice of Life", "Monthly Journal". The poet attends all literary meetings. A special event in the life of Sergei is the publication of the collection "Radonitsa" in 1916. A year later, the poet marries Z. Reich.
The poet meets the revolution of 1917 zealously, despite the contradictory attitude towards it. “With the oars of severed hands you are rowing into the country of the future,” Yesenin responds in the poem “Mare Ships” in 1917. The poet dedicates this and next year to work on the works "Inonia", "Transfiguration", "Father", "Coming".
Return to Moscow
At the beginning of 1918, the poet returned to the golden-domed. In search of imagery, he converges with A.B. Mariengof, R. Ivnev, A.B. Kusikov. In 1919, like-minded people create the literary movement of the Imagists (from the English image - image). The movement was aimed at discovering fresh metaphors and frilly imagery in the works of poets. However, Yesenin could not fully support his brethren - he believed that the meaning of poetry was much more important than vivid veiled images. For him, the harmony of works and the spirituality of folk art were paramount. Yesenin considered his most striking manifestation of Imagism to be the poem "Pugachev", written in 1920 - 1921.
(Imagists Sergei Yesenin and Anatoly Mariengof)
New love visited Yesenin in the autumn of 1921. He converges with Isadora Duncan - a dancer from America. The couple practically did not communicate - Sergei did not know foreign languages, and Isadora did not speak Russian. However, in May 1922 they got married and left to conquer Europe and America. Abroad, the poet worked on the Moscow Tavern cycle, the poems The Country of Scoundrels and The Black Man. In France, in 1922, the collection Confessions of a Hooligan was published, and in Germany in 1923, the book Poems of a Brawler. In August 1923, the scandalous marriage nevertheless broke up, and Yesenin returned to Moscow.
creative disclosure
In the period from 1923 to 1925, the poet's creative upsurge took place: he wrote the masterpiece cycle "Persian Motifs", the poem "Anna Snegina", the philosophical work "Flowers". The main witness of the creative flourishing was Yesenin's last wife Sofya Tolstaya. When she was published, "The Song of the Great Campaign", the book "Birch chintz", the collection "On Russia and the Revolution".
Yesenin's later works are distinguished by philosophical thoughts - he recalls his entire life path, talks about his fate and the fate of Russia, looking for the meaning of life and his place in the new empire. There was often talk of death. The death of the poet is still shrouded in mystery - he died on the night of December 28, 1925 at the Angleterre Hotel.
S.A. Yesenin is a name that is known far beyond the borders of the country where he was born. The talented poet has forever remained in the hearts and thoughts of people who appreciate and love his masterpieces. The style in which Yesenin wrote cannot be confused with anyone else. A simple and easy syllable is able to awaken the feelings of even the most callous reader.
Sergei was born on September 21, 1895 in the beautiful Ryazan village of Konstantinov. Although his parents were peasants, they did not live in poverty. Moreover, they Special attention devoted to the education of the child. That is why Sergey not only graduated from the local school, but also studied at the school at the church in the village, which was located nearby. After leaving school at the age of seventeen, Yesenin moved to the capital of Russia and got a job in a print publishing house. After some time, he enrolls in a circle for them. Surikov, which included both musical and literary figures of that time. At the same time, Sergei became a student at the People's University. Shanyavsky.
The poet began to write his first works at the age of nineteen, and even then he was noticed as a talented person. At the age of twenty, Yesenin travels to St. Petersburg and meets such famous people as Blok, Klyuev, Gorodetsky, and after some time publishes his own book of poems, Radunitsa.
Further, the life of the poet developed at a rather rapid pace. He returned to Moscow after the revolution, and despite the difficult situation in the country, he began to travel a lot. At first, these were trips around Russia, and after meeting and marrying an American dancer, Isadora Duncan, all over the world. Together they visited many countries, but after returning to Russia they disperse. This was a turning point in the life of the poet. His life style acquired a wild character, and this could not but affect the health and condition of Sergei. The decline in Yesenin's creative inspiration prompted his friends to think about changing the environment. They sent him to travel around Georgia and Azerbaijan. He spent 1924 and 1925 searching for inspiration. It would seem that he found it: he married Sofya Tolstaya, who was the granddaughter of a poet already known at that time. But not everything was so smooth. Yesenin did not like Soviet power and conveyed his dislike in verse. Naturally, the authorities did not like him in return, which they repeatedly hinted to him. As a result, either this long struggle, or the poet's inner experiences led to Yesenin's deep depression, which resulted in suicide. This happened on December 28, 1925 in one of the rooms of the Angleter Hotel.
A short biography of Sergei Yesenin is the most important thing.
Yesenin - Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925), Russian poet. From the first collections ("Radunitsa", 1916; "Rural Book of Hours", 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of a deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Russia, an expert in the folk language and folk soul. In 1919-23 he was a member of a group of Imagists. Tragic attitude, spiritual confusion are expressed in the cycles "Mare's Ships" (1920), "Moscow Tavern" (1924), the poem "The Black Man" (1925). In the poem "The Ballad of Twenty-Six" (1924), dedicated to the Baku commissars, the collection "Soviet Russia" (1925), the poem "Anna Snegina" (1925), Yesenin sought to comprehend the "commune rearing Russia", although he continued to feel like a poet "Russia leaving ”, “golden log hut”. Dramatic poem "Pugachev" (1921).
Childhood and youth
Born into a peasant family, as a child he lived in the family of his grandfather. Among Yesenin's first impressions are spiritual poems sung by wandering blind men and grandmother's tales. After graduating with honors from the Konstantinovsky four-year school (1909), he continued his studies at the Spas-Klepikovskaya teacher's school (1909-12), from which he emerged as a "teacher of the literacy school." In the summer of 1912, Yesenin moved to Moscow, for some time he served in a butcher's shop, where his father worked as a clerk. After a conflict with his father, he left the shop, worked in a book publishing house, then in the printing house of I. D. Sytin; during this period he joined the revolutionary workers and was under police surveillance. At the same time, Yesenin was studying at the historical and philosophical department of Shanyavsky University (1913-15).
Literary debut and success
Composing poetry from childhood (mainly in imitation of A. V. Koltsov, I. S. Nikitin, S. D. Drozhzhin), Yesenin finds like-minded people in the Surikov Literary and Musical Circle, of which he becomes a member in 1912. He begins to print in 1914 in Moscow children's magazines (the debut of the poem "Birch"). In the spring of 1915, Yesenin arrived in Petrograd, where he met A. A. Blok, S. M. Gorodetsky, A. M. Remizov, N. S. Gumilyov and others, became close to N. A. Klyuev, who had a significant influence on him . Their joint performances with poems and ditties, stylized as a "peasant", "folk" manner (Yesenin appeared to the public as a golden-haired young man in an embroidered shirt and morocco boots), were a great success.
Military service
In the first half of 1916, Yesenin was drafted into the army, but thanks to the efforts of his friends, he was appointed (“with the highest permission”) as an orderly to the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital train No. 143 of Her Imperial Majesty Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, which allows him to freely visit literary salons, visit at receptions with patrons, to perform at concerts. At one of the concerts in the infirmary, to which he was seconded (here the sisters of mercy, the empress and princesses served), he meets with the royal family. At the same time, together with N. Klyuev, they perform, dressed in ancient Russian costumes, sewn according to the sketches of V. Vasnetsov, at the evenings of the Society for the Revival of Artistic Russia at Feodorovsky Town in Tsarskoye Selo, and are also invited to Moscow to Grand Duchess Elizabeth. Together with the royal couple in May 1916, Yesenin visited Evpatoria as a train attendant. This was the last trip of Nicholas II to the Crimea.
"Radunitsa"
Yesenin's first collection of poems "Radunitsa" (1916) is enthusiastically welcomed by critics, who found a fresh stream in it, noting the author's youthful spontaneity and natural taste. In the poems of "Radunitsa" and subsequent collections ("Dove", "Transfiguration", "Country Book of Hours", all 1918, etc.), Yesenin's special "anthropomorphism" is formed: animals, plants, natural phenomena, etc. are humanized by the poet, forming together with people connected by roots and all their nature with nature, a harmonious, holistic, beautiful world. At the junction of Christian imagery, pagan symbolism and folklore stylistics, paintings of Yesenin's Russia, painted with a subtle perception of nature, are born, where everything: a heating stove and a dog's shelter, unmowed hayfields and marshy swamps, the hubbub of mowers and the snoring of a herd becomes the object of the poet's reverent, almost religious feeling ("I I pray for scarlet dawns, I take communion by the stream").
Revolution
In early 1918 Yesenin moved to Moscow. Encouraged by the revolution, he writes several short poems (The Jordanian Dove, Inonia, The Heavenly Drummer, all 1918, etc.), imbued with a joyful foreboding of the "transformation" of life. God-fighting moods are combined in them with biblical imagery to indicate the scale and significance of the events taking place. Yesenin, singing the new reality and its heroes, tried to match the time (Cantata, 1919). In later years, he wrote "Song of the Great Campaign", 1924, "Captain of the Earth", 1925, etc.). Reflecting on “where the fate of events is taking us,” the poet turns to history (dramatic poem Pugachev, 1921).
Imagism
Searches in the field of imagery bring Yesenin closer to A. B. Mariengof, V. G. Shershenevich, R. Ivnev, at the beginning of 1919 they united in a group of imagists; Yesenin becomes a regular at the Pegasus Stable, a literary cafe of the Imagists at the Nikitsky Gates in Moscow. However, the poet only partly shared their platform - the desire to clear the form from the "dust of content". His aesthetic interests are turned to the patriarchal rural way of life, folk art, the spiritual fundamental principle of the artistic image (treatise "Keys of Mary", 1919). Already in 1921, Yesenin appeared in the press criticizing the "clown's antics for the sake of the antics" of the "brothers"-Imagists. Gradually artsy metaphors leave his lyrics.
"Moscow tavern"
In the early 1920s in Yesenin's poems, motifs of “life torn apart by a storm” appear (in 1920, a marriage with Z.N. Reich, which lasted about three years, broke up), drunken prowess, replaced by anguished melancholy. The poet appears as a hooligan, a brawler, a drunkard with a bloodied soul, hobbling "from brothel to brothel", where he is surrounded by "alien and laughing rabble" (collections "Confessions of a Hooligan", 1921; "Moscow Tavern", 1924).
Isadora
An event in Yesenin's life was a meeting with the American dancer Isadora Duncan (autumn 1921), who six months later became his wife. A joint trip to Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy) and America (May 1922 August 1923), accompanied by noisy scandals, shocking antics of Isadora and Yesenin, exposed their "mutual misunderstanding", aggravated by the literal lack of a common language (Yesenin did not speak foreign languages , Isadora learned several dozen Russian words). Upon returning to Russia, they parted.
Poems of recent years
Yesenin returned to his homeland with joy, a sense of renewal, a desire "to be a singer and a citizen ... in the great states of the USSR." During this period (1923-25) his best lines are created: the poems “The golden grove dissuaded ...”, “Letter to mother”, “We are now leaving little by little ...”, the cycle “Persian motives”, the poem “Anna Snegina” and others. The main place in his poems still belongs to the theme of the motherland, which is now acquiring dramatic shades. The once united harmonious world of Yesenin's Russia splits into two: "Soviet Russia", "Russia leaving". The motif of the competition between the old and the new, outlined in the poem “Sorokoust” (1920) (“the red-maned foal” and “the cast-iron train on its paws”) is being developed in the poems of recent years: fixing the signs of a new life, welcoming “stone and steel”, Yesenin more and more feels like a singer of a “golden log hut”, whose poetry “is no longer needed here” (collections “Soviet Russia”, “Soviet Country”, both 1925). The emotional dominant of the lyrics of this period are autumn landscapes, motives for summing up, farewell.
tragic ending
One of his last works was the poem "Country of Scoundrels" in which he denounced the Soviet regime. After that, persecution began in the newspapers, accusing him of drunkenness, fights, etc. The last two years of Yesenin's life were spent in constant traveling: hiding from prosecution, he travels to the Caucasus three times, travels to Leningrad several times, seven times to Konstantinovo. At the same time, he is once again trying to start a family life, but his union with S.A. Tolstoy (the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy) was not happy. At the end of November 1925, due to the threat of arrest, he had to go to a neuropsychiatric clinic. Sofia Tolstaya agreed with Professor P.B. Gannushkin about the poet's hospitalization in a paid clinic at Moscow University. The professor promised to provide him with a separate ward where Yesenin could do literary work. Employees of the GPU and the police ran off their feet, looking for the poet. Only a few people knew about his hospitalization in the clinic, but there were informants. On November 28, security officers rushed to the director of the clinic, Professor P.B. Gannushkin and demanded the extradition of Yesenin, but he did not extradite his countryman for reprisal. The clinic is being monitored. After waiting for a moment, Yesenin interrupts the course of treatment (left the clinic in a group of visitors) and leaves for Leningrad on December 23. On the night of December 28, in the Angleterre Hotel, Sergei Yesenin is killed by staging suicide.
Yesenin's autobiography dated May 14, 1922
I am the son of a peasant. Born in 1895 on September 21 in the Ryazan province. Ryazan district. Kuzminskaya volost. From the age of two, due to the poverty of my father and the large number of my family, I was given up for education to a rather prosperous maternal grandfather, who had three adult unmarried sons, with whom almost all of my childhood passed. My uncles were mischievous and desperate guys. For three and a half years they put me on a horse without a saddle and immediately put me into a gallop. I remember that I was crazy and held on to the withers very tightly. Then I was taught to swim. One uncle (Uncle Sasha) took me to the boat, drove away from the shore, took off my clothes and, like a puppy, threw me into the water. I clumsily and frightenedly clapped my hands, and until I choked, he kept shouting: “Oh, bitch! Well, where are you fit? "Bitch" he had an affectionate word. After about eight years, I often replaced a hunting dog for another uncle, swimming in the lakes for shot ducks. Very well I was taught to climb trees. None of the boys could compete with me. For many who were disturbed by rooks at noon after plowing, I removed their nests from birch trees, a dime apiece. Once he broke loose, but very successfully, scratching only his face and stomach and breaking a jug of milk that he was carrying to his grandfather for mowing.
Among the boys, I have always been a horse-breeder and a big brawler, and I always walked around in scratches. For mischief, only one grandmother scolded me, and grandfather sometimes provoked me to fisticuffs and often told my grandmother: “Don’t touch him, you fool. He'll be stronger that way." Grandmother loved me with all her might, and her tenderness knew no bounds. On Saturdays I was washed, my nails were cut, and my head was shirred with garlic oil, because not a single comb took curly hair. But the oil did little to help. I always yelled with a good obscenity, and even now I have some kind of unpleasant feeling by Saturday. On Sundays I was always sent to mass and. to check that I was at mass, they gave 4 kopecks. Two kopecks for the prosphora and two for the removal of parts to the priest. I bought prosphora and instead of the priest made three marks on it with a penknife, and for the other two kopecks I went to the cemetery to play piggy with the guys.
This is how my childhood went. When I grew up, they really wanted to make a village teacher out of me, and therefore they sent me to a closed church teacher's school, after graduating from which, at the age of sixteen, I had to enter the Moscow Teachers' Institute. Fortunately, this did not happen. I was so fed up with the methodology and didactics that I didn’t even want to listen. I started writing poetry early, about nine years old, but I attribute conscious creativity to 16-17 years. Some of the poems of these years are placed in the "Radunitsa".
At the age of eighteen I was surprised, having sent my poems to magazines, by the fact that they were not being published, and suddenly burst into St. Petersburg. I was received very warmly there. The first one I saw was Blok, the second was Gorodetsky. When I looked at Blok, sweat dripped from me, because for the first time I saw a living poet. Gorodetsky introduced me to Klyuev, whom I had never heard a word about before. With Klyuev, for all our internal strife, a great friendship began, which continues to this day, despite the fact that we have not seen each other for six years. He now lives in Vytegra, writes to me that he eats bread with chaff, drinking empty boiling water and praying to God for a shameful death.
During the years of war and revolution, fate pushed me from side to side. I traveled far and wide across Russia, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black and Caspian Seas, from the West to China, Persia and India. The best time in my life I consider 1919. Then we spent the winter in 5 degrees of room cold. We didn't have any firewood. I have never been a member of the RCP, because I feel much more to the left. My favorite writer is Gogol. Books of my poems: "Radunitsa", "Dove", "Transfiguration", "Rural Book of Hours", "Treryadnitsa", "Confession of a Hooligan" and "Pugachev". Now I'm working on a big thing called "Country of Scoundrels." In Russia, when there was no paper, I printed my poems together with Kusikov and Mariengof on the walls of the Strastnoy Monastery or simply read it somewhere on the boulevard. The best admirers of our poetry are prostitutes and bandits. We are all in great friendship with them. The Communists do not like us because of a misunderstanding. Behind this, to all my readers, the lowest hello and a little attention to the sign: “Please do not shoot!”
Yesenin's autobiography from 1923
Born 1895 October 4th. The son of a peasant in the Ryazan province., Ryazan district, the village of Konstantinov. Childhood passed among the fields and steppes.
He grew up under the supervision of his grandmother and grandfather. Grandmother was religious, she dragged me around the monasteries. At home she gathered all the crippled who sing spiritual verses from “Lazar” to “Mikola” in Russian villages. Ros was mischievous and naughty. There was a brawler. Grandfather himself sometimes forced me to fight so that he would be stronger.
Poetry began to compose early. Grandma gave pushes. She told stories. I did not like some fairy tales with bad endings, and I remade them in my own way. Poetry began to write, imitating ditties. I had little faith in God. I did not like to go to church. At home they knew this and, in order to test me, they gave 4 kopecks for the prosphora, which I had to carry to the altar to the priest for the ritual of taking out the parts. The priest made 3 cuts on the prosphora and took 2 kopecks for it. Then I learned to do this procedure myself with a penknife, and 2 kopecks. he put it in his pocket and went to play in the cemetery with the boys, to play money. Once my grandfather figured it out. There was a scandal. I ran away to another village to my aunt and did not show up until they forgave me.
He studied at a closed teacher's school. At home they wanted me to be a village teacher. When they took me to school, I missed my grandmother terribly and one day I ran home for more than 100 miles on foot. They scolded the house and took it back.
After school, from the age of 16 to 17 he lived in the village. At the age of 17 he left for Moscow and entered the Shanyavsky University as a volunteer. At the age of 19 he came to St. Petersburg on his way to Revel to visit his uncle. I went to Blok, Blok brought Gorodetsky, and Gorodetsky with Klyuev. My poems made a big impression. All the best magazines of that time (1915) began to publish me, and in the fall (1915) my first book, Radunitsa, appeared. Much has been written about her. Everyone unanimously said that I was a talent. I knew it better than others. For "Radunitsa" I released "Dove", "Transfiguration", "Country Book of Hours", "Keys of Mary", "Treryadnitsa", "Confession of a hooligan", "Pugachev". The Country of Scoundrels and Moscow Tavern will soon be out of print.
Extremely individual. With all the foundations on the Soviet platform.
In 1916 he was called up for military service. With some patronage of Colonel Loman, adjutant of the Empress, he was presented with many benefits. He lived in Tsarskoye near Razumnik Ivanov. At the request of Loman, he once read poetry to the empress. After reading my poems, she said that my poems are beautiful, but very sad. I told her that all of Russia is like that. He referred to poverty, climate, and so on. The revolution found me at the front in one of the disciplinary battalions, where I landed because I refused to write poems in honor of the tsar. He refused, consulting and seeking support in Ivanov-Razumnik. During the revolution, he arbitrarily left Kerensky's army and, living as a deserter, worked with the Socialist-Revolutionaries not as a party member, but as a poet.
During the split of the party, he went with the left group and in October was in their fighting squad. He left Petrograd together with the Soviet authorities. In Moscow, in 18, he met with Mariengof, Shershenevich and Ivnev.
The urgent need to put into practice the power of the image prompted us to publish the manifesto of the Imagists. We were the initiators of a new era in the era of art, and we had to fight for a long time. During our war, we renamed the streets after ourselves and painted the Strastnoy Monastery with the words of our poems.
1919-1921 traveled around Russia: Murman, Solovki, Arkhangelsk, Turkestan, the Kyrgyz steppes, the Caucasus, Persia, Ukraine and Crimea. In 1922, he flew by airplane to Koenigsberg. Traveled throughout Europe and North America. I am most satisfied with the fact that I returned to Soviet Russia. What happens next remains to be seen.
Yesenin's autobiography dated June 20, 1924
I was born in 1895 on September 21 in the village of Konstantinov, Kuzminskaya volost, Ryazan province. and Ryazan district. My father is a peasant Alexander Nikitich Yesenin, my mother is Tatyana Fedorovna.
He spent his childhood with his maternal grandfather and grandmother in another part of the village, which is called. matt. My first memories date back to when I was three or four years old. I remember the forest, the big ditch road. Grandmother goes to the Radovetsky Monastery, which is 40 versts from us. I, grabbing her stick, can hardly drag my legs from fatigue, and my grandmother keeps saying: “Go, go, berry, God will give happiness.” Blind people often gathered at our house, wandering through the villages, singing spiritual verses about the beautiful paradise, about Lazar, about Mikol and about the groom, the bright guest from the city of the unknown. The nanny is an old woman who took care of me, told me fairy tales, all those fairy tales that all peasant children listen to and know. Grandfather sang old songs to me, so viscous, mournful. On Saturdays and Sundays he shared the Bible and sacred history with me.
My street life was different from my home life. My peers were mischievous guys. With them, I climbed together in other people's gardens. I ran away for 2-3 days to the meadows and ate, together with the shepherds, the fish that we caught in small lakes, first muddying the water with our hands, or broods of ducklings. After, when I returned, I often flew.
In the family we had a fit uncle, except for my grandmother, grandfather and my nanny. He loved me very much, and we often went with him to the Oka to water the horses. At night, when the weather is calm, the moon stands upright in the water. When the horses drank, it seemed to me that they were about to drink the moon, and I rejoiced when it, together with the circles, floated away from their mouths. When I was 12 years old, I was sent to study from a rural zemstvo school to a teacher's school. My relatives wanted me to become a rural teacher. Their hopes extended to the institute, fortunately for me, which I did not get into.
I started writing poetry at the age of 9, I learned to read at the age of 5. At the very beginning, rural ditties had an influence on my work. The period of study did not leave any traces on me, except for a strong knowledge of the Church Slavonic language. That's all I got. The rest he did himself under the guidance of a certain Klemenov. He introduced me to the new literature and explained why one should be afraid of the classics in some respects. Of the poets, I liked Lermontov and Koltsov the most. Later I switched to Pushkin.
In 1913 I entered Shanyavsky University as a volunteer. After staying there for 1.5 years, he had to go back to the village due to financial circumstances. At this time, I wrote a book of poems "Radunitsa". I sent some of them to the St. Petersburg magazines and, without receiving an answer, went off on my own. He came and found Gorodetsky. He received me very cordially. Then almost all the poets gathered at his apartment. They started talking about me, and they began to print me almost like hot cakes.
I published: "Russian Thought", "Life for All", "Monthly Journal" by Mirolyubov, "Northern Notes", etc. This was in the spring of 1915. And in the autumn of the same year, Klyuev sent me a telegram to the village and asked me to come to him. He found me a publisher, M.V. Averyanov, and a few months later my first book, Radunitsa, was published. It came out in November 1915 with the note 1916. During the first period of my stay in St. Petersburg, I often had to meet with Blok, with Ivanov-Razumnik. Later with Andrei Bely.
I met the first period of the revolution sympathetically, but more spontaneously than consciously. In 1917 my first marriage took place to 3. N. Reich. In 1918, I parted with her, and after that my wandering life began, like all Russians during the period 1918-21. During these years I have been in Turkestan, the Caucasus, Persia, the Crimea, Bessarabia, the Orenbur steppes, the Murmansk coast, Arkhangelsk and Solovki. In 1921, I married A. Duncan and left for America, having previously traveled all over Europe, except for Spain.
After going abroad, I looked at my country and events in a different way. I don't like our barely cooled camp. I like civilization. But I really don't like America. America is that stench where not only art disappears, but in general the best impulses of mankind. If today they are heading for America, then I am ready to prefer our gray sky and our landscape: a hut, a little rooted into the ground, a spinner, a huge pole sticking out of the spinner, a skinny horse waving its tail in the distance in the wind. It's not like the skyscrapers that have so far only given us Rockefeller and McCormick, but it's the very thing that raised Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, and others. First of all, I love bringing out the organic. Art for me is not the intricacy of patterns, but the most necessary word of the language in which I want to express myself. Therefore, the Imagism trend founded in 1919, on the one hand by me, and on the other by Shershenevich, although it formally turned Russian poetry along a different channel of perception, did not give anyone else the right to claim talent. Now I reject all schools. I think that a poet cannot adhere to any particular school. It binds him hand and foot. Only a free artist can bring free speech. That's all, short, schematic, with regard to my biography. Not everything is said here. But I think it's still too early for me to draw any conclusions for myself. My life and my work is still ahead.
"About myself". October 1925
Born in 1895, September 21, in the Ryazan province, Ryazan district, Kuzminskaya volost, in the village of Konstantinov. From the age of two, I was given to be raised by a rather prosperous maternal grandfather, who had three adult unmarried sons, with whom almost all of my childhood passed. My uncles were mischievous and desperate guys. For three and a half years they put me on a horse without a saddle and immediately put me into a gallop. I remember that I was crazy and held on to the withers very tightly. Then I was taught to swim. One uncle (Uncle Sasha) took me to the boat, drove away from the shore, took off my clothes and, like a puppy, threw me into the water. I clumsily and frightenedly clapped my hands, and until I choked, he kept shouting: “Eh! Bitch! Well, where are you fit? ..” “Bitch” he had an affectionate word. After about eight years, I often replaced a hunting dog for another uncle, swam on the lakes for shot ducks. He was very good at climbing trees. Among the boys he was always a horse-breeder and a big brawler, and he always walked in scratches. For mischief, only one grandmother scolded me, and grandfather sometimes provoked me to fisticuffs and often said to my grandmother: “Don’t touch him, you fool, he will be stronger like that!” Grandmother loved me with all her urine, and her tenderness knew no bounds. On Saturdays I was washed, my nails were cut, and my head was shirred with garlic oil, because not a single comb took curly hair. But the oil did little to help. I always yelled with a good obscenity, and even now I have some kind of unpleasant feeling by Saturday.
This is how my childhood passed. When I grew up, they really wanted to make a village teacher out of me, and therefore they sent me to a church teacher's school, after graduating from which I was supposed to enter the Moscow Teachers' Institute. Fortunately, this did not happen.
I started writing poetry early, about nine years old, but I attribute conscious creativity to the age of 16-17. Some of the poems of these years are placed in the "Radunitsa". At the age of eighteen, I was surprised, having sent my poems to magazines, that they were not being published, and I went to Petersburg. I was received very warmly there. The first one I saw was Blok, the second was Gorodetsky. When I looked at Blok, sweat dripped from me, because for the first time I saw a living poet. Gorodetsky introduced me to Klyuev, whom I had never heard a word about before. Despite all our internal strife, we struck up a great friendship with Klyuev. In the same years, I entered the Shanyavsky University, where I stayed for only a year and a half, and again went to the village. At the University I met the poets Semenovsky, Nasedkin, Kolokolov and Filipchenko. Of the contemporary poets, I liked Blok, Bely and Klyuev the most. Bely gave me a lot in terms of form, while Blok and Klyuev taught me lyricism.
In 1919, with a number of comrades, I published a manifesto of Imagism. Imagism was the formal school that we wanted to establish. But this school had no ground and died of itself, leaving the truth behind the organic image. I would gladly give up many of my religious verses and poems, but they are of great importance as a poet's path before the revolution.
From the age of eight, my grandmother dragged me to different monasteries, because of her, all sorts of wanderers and pilgrims always huddled with us. Various spiritual verses were sung. Grandfather opposite. Was not a fool to drink. From his side, eternal unmarried weddings were arranged. After, when I left the village, I had to figure out my way of life for a long time.
During the years of the revolution, he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias. In terms of formal development, I am now more and more drawn to Pushkin. As for the rest of the autobiographical information, they are in my poems.
Yesenin's life story
Some interesting facts from the life of Sergei Yesenin:
Sergei Yesenin graduated with honors from the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School in 1909, then the church teacher's school, but after studying for a year and a half, he left it - the profession of a teacher did not attract him much. Already in Moscow, in September 1913, Yesenin began to attend the Shanyavsky People's University. A year and a half of university gave Yesenin the foundation of education that he so lacked.
In the autumn of 1913, he entered into a civil marriage with Anna Romanovna Izryadnova, who worked together with Yesenin as a proofreader at Sytin's printing house. On December 21, 1914, their son Yuri was born, but Yesenin soon left the family. In her memoirs, Izryadnova writes: “I saw him shortly before his death. He came, he said, to say goodbye. When I asked why, he said: “I’m washing off, I’m leaving, I feel bad, I’ll probably die.” He asked not to spoil, to take care of his son. After the death of Yesenin, the people's court of the Khamovnichesky district of Moscow dealt with the case of recognizing Yuri as the child of the poet. On August 13, 1937, Yuri Yesenin was shot on charges of preparing an assassination attempt on Stalin.
On July 30, 1917, Yesenin married the beautiful actress Zinaida Reich in the Church of Kirik and Ulita in the Vologda district. On May 29, 1918, their daughter Tatyana was born. Daughter, blond and blue-eyed, Yesenin was very fond of. On February 3, 1920, after Yesenin divorced Zinaida Reich, their son Konstantin was born. One day, he accidentally found out at the station that Reich was on the train with his children. A friend persuaded Yesenin to at least look at the child. Sergei reluctantly agreed. When Reich swaddled her son, Yesenin, barely looking at him, said: “Yesenins are not black ...” But according to contemporaries, Yesenin always carried photographs of Tatyana and Konstantin in his jacket pocket, constantly took care of them, sent them money. On October 2, 1921, the Orel People's Court ruled to dissolve Yesenin's marriage to Reich. Sometimes he met with Zinaida Nikolaevna, at that time already the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold, which caused Meyerhold's jealousy. There is an opinion that of his wives, Yesenin, until the end of his days, loved Zinaida Reich the most. Shortly before his death, in the deep autumn of 1925, Yesenin visited Reich and the children. As an adult, he talked with Tanechka, he was indignant at the mediocre children's books that his children read. Said: "You must know my poems." The conversation with Reich ended in another scandal and tears. In the summer of 1939, after the death of Meyerhold, Zinaida Reich was brutally murdered in her apartment. Many contemporaries did not believe that this was pure criminality. It was assumed (and now this assumption will more and more develop into certainty) that she was killed by NKVD agents.
On November 4, 1920, at the literary evening "Trial of the Imagists", Yesenin met Galina Benislavskaya. Their relationship with varying success lasted until the spring of 1925. Returning from Konstantinov, Yesenin finally broke with her. It was a tragedy for her. Insulted and humiliated, Galina wrote in her memoirs: “Due to the awkwardness and brokenness of my relationship with S.A. more than once I wanted to leave him as a woman, I wanted to be only a friend. But I realized that from S.A. I can’t leave, I can’t break this thread ... ”Shortly before the trip to Leningrad in November, before going to the hospital, Yesenin called Benislavskaya:“ Come say goodbye. He said that Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya would come too. Galina replied: “I don’t like such wires.” Galina Benislavskaya shot herself at Yesenin's grave. She left two notes on his grave. One is a simple postcard: “December 3, 1926. I killed myself here, although I know that after that even more dogs will hang on Yesenin ... But it doesn’t matter to him or me. In this grave, everything is dearest to me ... ”She is buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery next to the grave of the poet.
Autumn 1921 - acquaintance with the "sandal" Isadora Duncan. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Isadora fell in love with Yesenin at first sight, and Yesenin was immediately carried away by her. On May 2, 1922, Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan decided to fix their marriage according to Soviet laws, as they had a trip to America. They signed at the registry office of the Khamovniki Council. When they were asked what surname they choose, both wished to have a double surname - Duncan-Yesenin. So they wrote down in the marriage certificate and in their passports. “Now I am Duncan,” Yesenin shouted when they went out into the street. This page of the life of Sergei Yesenin is the most chaotic, with endless quarrels and scandals. They broke up and got back together many times. Hundreds of volumes have been written about Yesenin's romance with Duncan. Numerous attempts have been made to unravel the mystery of the relationship between these two such dissimilar people. But was there a secret? Throughout his life, Yesenin, deprived of a real friendly family as a child (his parents constantly quarreled, often lived apart, Sergei grew up with his maternal grandparents), dreamed of family comfort and peace. He constantly said that he would marry such an artist - all his mouth was open, and that he would have a son who would become more famous than he was. It is clear that Duncan, who was 18 years older than Yesenin and constantly touring, could not create the family he dreamed of. In addition, Yesenin, as soon as he was married, sought to break the fetters that fettered him.
In 1920, Yesenin met and became friends with the poetess and translator Nadezhda Volpin. On May 12, 1924, the illegitimate son of Sergei Yesenin and Nadezhda Davydovna Volpin was born in Leningrad - a prominent mathematician, a well-known human rights activist, he periodically publishes poetry (only under the name Volpin). A. Yesenin-Volpin is one of the founders (together with Sakharov) of the Human Rights Committee. Now lives in the USA.
March 5, 1925 - acquaintance with the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya. She was 5 years younger than Yesenin, the blood of the world's greatest writer flowed in her veins. Sofya Andreevna was in charge of the library of the Writers' Union. On October 18, 1925, the marriage with S.A. Tolstaya was registered. Sofya Tolstaya is another failed Yesenin's hope to start a family. Coming from an aristocratic family, according to the recollections of Yesenin's friends, she was very arrogant, proud, she demanded respect for etiquette and unquestioning obedience. These qualities of hers were in no way combined with the simplicity, generosity, cheerfulness, and mischievous nature of Sergei. They soon separated. But after his death, Sofya Andreevna dismissed various gossip about Yesenin, they said that he allegedly wrote in a state of drunken stupor. She, who repeatedly witnessed his work on poetry, claimed that Yesenin took his work very seriously, never sat down at the table drunk.
On December 24, Sergei Yesenin arrived in Leningrad and stayed at the Angleterre Hotel. Late in the evening of December 27, the body of Sergei Yesenin was found in the room. Before the eyes of those who entered the room, a terrible picture appeared: Yesenin, already dead, leaning against a steam heating pipe, blood clots on the floor, things scattered, on the table lay a note with Yesenin’s dying verses “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye .. .” The exact date and time of death has not been established.
Yesenin's body was transported to Moscow for burial at the Vagankovsky cemetery. The funeral was grandiose. According to contemporaries, not a single Russian poet was buried like this.
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