] "Sergei Yesenin is not so much a person as an organ created by nature exclusively for poetry."
A. M. bitter
Sergei Yesenin was born on October 3, 1895 in the village of Konstantinov, located in the Ryazan district of the Ryazan province. His mother, Tatyana Fedorovna Titova, married at sixteen, and his father, Alexander Nikitich, was one year older than her. He was rarely at home - as a teenager he was sent to a Moscow butcher shop and since then Yesenin Sr. lived and worked there. Tatyana Fyodorovna, on the other hand, huddled in the same hut with her mother-in-law, and when her husband's brother married, the two daughters-in-law became cramped in the house and quarrels began. Yesenin's mother tried to get a divorce, but nothing happened without her husband's permission. Then Tatyana Fedorovna returned to her parents' house and, in order not to be a burden, went to work, entrusting two-year-old Seryozha to her father, Fedor Andreyevich. He already had three adult unmarried sons, whom the little boy was in for fun. The mischievous uncles, teaching a three-year-old child to swim, threw from the boat into the wide Oka, then put on a horse, letting it gallop. Later, when Sergei grew up, his father, Alexander Nikitich, separated from his brother, his family moved out, and relations in the Yesenins' house began to improve. In the future, the great poet will write about his parents: “… Somewhere my father and mother live, / Who doesn’t give a damn about all my poems, / To whom I am dear, like a field and like flesh, / Like rain that loosens the green in spring. / They would have come to stab you with a pitchfork / For every your cry thrown at me."
The Yesenins were devout people, and often Tatyana Fedorovna, together with her mother-in-law and little Seryozha, went on pilgrims to monasteries. Wandering blind people often stayed in their house, among whom there were wonderful performers of spiritual verses. On Sundays, the boy attended church. In general, Yesenin's childhood strongly resembled the adventures of his overseas peer Tom Sawyer described by Mark Twain. The poet himself later said to himself: "Thin and short, / Among the boys, always a hero, / Often, often with a broken nose / I came to my home."
House where Sergei A. Yesenin was born. Konstantinovo
At the age of eight, Yesenin, imitating the dashing local ditties, first tried to compose poetry. And in September 1904, Sergei went to the zemstvo four-year school. He studied there, by the way, for five years, because due to bad behavior he was left for the second year in the third grade. But he graduated from the school with a certificate of merit, which was a great rarity for Konstantinovo. By that time, Yesenin had already read quite a lot, frightening his illiterate mother, who would say with a sigh: “You are flipping through emptiness again! The sexton in Fedyakin also loved to read. I’ve read it to the point that I’ve lost my mind.” In 1909 Yesenin, since he is such a scribe, was sent to study at a church school in the distant trading village of Spas-Klepiki. According to the teachers' stories, Sergei's distinctive character trait was "gaiety, cheerfulness, and even some kind of excessive giggle." By that time, he was already actively writing poetry, but the teachers did not find anything outstanding in them. Most of his comrades were diligent and diligent and, according to his memoirs, Yesenin "downright mocked" them. It often came to a fight, and in a scuffle he was often the victim. However, he never complained, while people often complained about him: “And towards the frightened mother / I was feeding through my bloody mouth: /“Nothing! I stumbled on a stone, / It will all heal by tomorrow."
At the age of sixteen (1911) Sergei Alexandrovich graduated from a church teacher's school. The next step was to enter the capital teacher's institute, but the poet did not do this: "Didactics and methodology were so sick of me that I didn't even want to listen." A year later, Yesenin, at the call of his father, left for Moscow. In the capital, they found a place for him on the farm of the butcher Krylov. But in the clerks (in the present "office workers") Sergei Alexandrovich did not last long, and in order to be closer to his favorite books, he got a job as a seller in a bookstore. Then he worked as a freight forwarder in the famous Sytin Association, and then there as an assistant to the proofreader. In those years, he read a lot, spending all the money he earned on new magazines and books. He also continued to compose poetry and offered them to various editions to no avail. At the same time, the father scolded his son: "You need to work, but you skate rhymes …".
In 1913 Yesenin entered the Shanyavsky People's University and in the evenings listened to lectures on literature there. And soon he met Anna Izryadnova, who was four years older than him and worked as a proofreader in Sytin's printing house. They began to live together in a modest room near the Serpukhovsky outpost. At this time, Sergei Alexandrovich got a job as a proofreader in the printing house of Chernyshev-Kobelkov, but the work took too much time and energy from him, and he soon quit. At the end of 1914, the poet's first child, Yuri, was born. Izryadnova said: "He looked at his son with curiosity and kept repeating:" Here I am and father. " Then he got used to it, rocked him, lulled him to sleep, sang songs over him. " And in January 1915 in the children's magazine "Mirok" was published the first work of Yesenin - now the textbook verse "Birch". But all this was just the threshold …
In one of his letters to a friend, Sergei Aleksandrovich reported: “Moscow is not an engine of literary development, it uses everything that is ready from St. Petersburg … There is not a single magazine here. And those that exist are suitable only for the trash. " Soon the young and unknown literary man "unexpectedly burst into St. Petersburg." With poems tied with a village scarf, Yesenin went straight from the station to Blok himself. By that time, the "cherub-like" village boy had more than sixty poems and poems ready, among which are the most famous lines: "If the holy army shouts: /" Throw Russia, live in paradise! "/ I will say:" No need for paradise / Give me my homeland. " After that Yesenin told how, having seen Blok "alive", immediately sweated from excitement. However, the poet could have thrown into the sweat for another reason - he came to Alexander Aleksandrovich in his grandfather's felt boots and a naked sheepskin coat, and at that time the spring of 1915 was seething in the yard. Bohemia. The village nugget made a splash in the Petersburg literary milieu. Everyone wanted to see him as a poet “only from the plow,” and Sergei Aleksandrovich played along with them. Yes, it was not difficult for him - yesterday's Moscow days were rather short compared to those in the countryside. Blok gave a guy from Ryazan a letter of recommendation to the writer Sergei Gorodetsky, who was fond of Pan-Slavism. The poet settled with Sergei Mitrofanovich. Later, Yesenin, touched by the attention of Alexander Alexandrovich, argued that "Blok would forgive everything." Gorodetsky also handed the poet a letter of recommendation to Mirolyubov, the publisher of the Monthly Magazine: “Caress this young talent. He has a ruble in his pocket, and wealth in his soul."
In the words of one critic, "the literary chronicle did not know an easier and quicker entry into literature." Gorodetsky noted "From the very first lines it became clear to me what joy came to Russian poetry."Gorky echoed him: “The city met Yesenin with the admiration with which a glutton meets strawberries in January. His poems began to be praised insincerely and excessively, as envious people and hypocrites can praise”. However, Yesenin was not only praised "insincerely and excessively" - at one prim reception the poetess Zinaida Gippius, pointing her lorgnette at Yesenin's boots, said loudly: "And what amusing leggings you are wearing!" All the snobs present roared with laughter. Chernyavsky recalled: “He wandered like in a forest, smiled, looked around, was not sure of anything yet, but he firmly believed in himself … This spring Seryozha passed among us … passed, finding a great many friends, and perhaps not a single friend ".
In just a couple of months, the "wonderful spring boy" conquered St. Petersburg and at the end of April 1915 departed back to the village. In the summer, the capital's magazines published collections of Yesenin's poems. In October of the same year, Sergei Alexandrovich returned to the northern capital and became close friends with the poet, a representative of the new peasant trend, Nikolai Klyuev. The influence of Nikolai Alekseevich on Yesenin in 1915-1916 was enormous. Gorodetsky wrote: "A wonderful poet and cunning clever man, charming with his creativity closely adjoining the spiritual verses and epics of the north, Klyuev undoubtedly mastered the young Yesenin …". It is curious that the periods of friendship between Sergei Alexandrovich and the "Olonets guslar" were replaced by periods of hatred - Yesenin rebelled against the authority of his comrade, defending and asserting his identity. Despite further discrepancies, until the last days Yesenin singled out Klyuev from the crowd of friends around him, and once admitted that this is the only person he truly loves: “Take away … Blok, Klyuev - what will remain with me? Horseradish and a pipe, like a Turkish saint."
Meanwhile, the World War I was going on in the world. In January 1916, with the help of Klyuev, Yesenin's book of poems "Radunitsa" was published, and in the same January he was called up for military service. He was enrolled as an orderly in the Tsarskoye Selo field military ambulance train, assigned to the infirmary, which was under the care of the empress. As part of this train, Sergei Alexandrovich visited the front line. Concerts were often held for the wounded in the infirmary, and at one of these performances in mid-1916 Yesenin read his works in the presence of the Empress and the Grand Duchesses. At the end of her speech, Alexandra Fedorovna said that the poems are very beautiful, but sad. The poet noted that such is the whole of Russia. This meeting had fatal consequences. In the salons of the "advanced" liberals, where Sergei Aleksandrovich had "shone" until recently, a storm of indignation arose. Poet Georgy Ivanov wrote: “The monstrous rumor was confirmed - Yesenin's vile act is not an invention or libel. Our Yesenin, "darling", "adorable boy" introduced himself to Alexandra Feodorovna, read poetry to her and received permission to devote a whole cycle to the Empress in a new book! " The rich liberal lady Sophia Chatskina, who financed the publication of the Severnye Zapiski magazine, tore up Yesenin's manuscripts at a lavish reception, shouting: “Warmed the snake. New Rasputin ". Yesenin's book "Dove" was published in 1917, but at the last moment the poet, who had been subjected to liberal hacking, withdrew the dedication to the empress.
After February 1917, Sergei Alexandrovich voluntarily left the army and joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries, working with them "as a poet, not as a party member." In the spring of the same year, he met the young secretary-typist of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda, Zinaida Reich. In the summer, he invited the girl to go with him on a steamer to the White Sea, and on the way back made her an offer. The marriage was hasty, and at first the newlyweds lived apart. But soon Yesenin rented two furnished rooms on Liteiny Prospekt and moved there with his young wife. At that time he published a lot and was paid well. Chernyavsky recalled that the young "despite the beginning of the hunger strike, knew how to be friendly hospitality" - Sergei Aleksandrovich always attached great importance to the home way of life.
The whirlwind of the revolution whirled the poet, like many others. Later Yesenin wrote: "During the war and revolution, fate pushed me from side to side." In 1918 he returned to Moscow, which had become the capital, finished his poem Inonia, and joined a group of proletkultist writers. At that moment, Sergei Alexandrovich tried to establish his own poetry school, but did not find a response from his comrades. The alliance with the proletarian poets did not last long, Yesenin, who became disillusioned with them, later (in 1923) wrote: “No matter how Trotsky recommends and praises various Bezymyanskikhs, proletarian art is worthless …”.
1919 Yesenin considered the most important year of his life. He reported: “We then lived in winter in five degrees of room cold. We didn't have a single log of firewood. " By that time, he, in fact, parted with Zinaida Reich, who went to her relatives in Oryol, and was stuck there - in May 1918 she gave birth to Yesenin's daughter Tatyana. Later, in Oryol, her marriage to Yesenin was officially terminated. The second child, the boy Kostya, was born after their divorce. According to the poet Mariengof, Sergei Alexandrovich, looking at the baby, immediately turned away: "Yesenins are never black." Nevertheless, he always kept a photograph of the grown children in his pocket.
Sergei Alexandrovich himself at that time did not leave thoughts of creating a new literary direction. He explained to a friend: “Words, like old coins, have worn off, having lost their original poetic power. We cannot create new words, but we have found a way to revive the dead, enclosing them in vivid poetic images. " In February 1919 Yesenin, together with the poets Anatoly Mariengof, Rurik Ivnev and Vadim Shershenevich, founded the "Order of the Imagists" (a literary movement whose representatives determined the creation of an image as the goal of creativity) and issued the famous Manifesto. Literary evenings of the Imagists were held in the literary cafe "Stall of Pegasus", where Sergei Aleksandrovich, despite the "dry law", was flawlessly served vodka. In addition, the poet and his associates published in a magazine under the interesting title "Hotel for travelers to the beautiful", and also had their own bookstore. In imagism, according to Gorodetsky, Yesenin found "an antidote against the village" - these frameworks became tight for him, now he did not want to be just a peasant poet and "deliberately went to become the first Russian poet." Critics rushed to declare him a "bully", and hooliganism for Sergei Aleksandrovich became not only a poetic image, but also a way of life. In the snowy Moscow of 1921, when everyone was wearing felt boots and earflaps, Yesenin and his friends walked around in a top hat, dress coat and lacquered boots. The poet could playfully wipe the wine that had spilled on the table, whistle like a boy in three fingers so that people scattered to the sides, and about the top hat he said: “I do not wear a top hat for women - / In stupid passion the heart cannot live - / It is more convenient in it, having reduced your sadness, / Give gold of oats to the mare. " At the beginning of the twenties, the Imagists traveled all over the country - one of Mariengof's gymnasium comrades became a major railway official and had a saloon car at his disposal, giving his friends permanent places in it. Often, Yesenin himself worked out the route of the next trip. During one of his travels, right on the train, Sergei Alexandrovich wrote the famous poem "Sorokoust".
At the end of 1920 in the cafe "Stable Pegasus" the poet met Galina Benislavskaya, who was working at that time in the Cheka at Krylenko. According to some reports, she was assigned to the poet as a secret employee. However, agents are capable of falling in love. Sergei Alexandrovich, who did not have his own corner, from time to time lived with Galina Arturovna, who unrequitedly loved him. She helped the poet in every possible way - she managed his affairs, ran around editions, signed contracts for the release of poetry. And in hungry 1921, the famous dancer Isadora Duncan arrived in the capital of Russia, delirious with the idea of a children's international - the guarantee of the future brotherhood of all peoples. In Moscow, she was going to found a children's dance school, gather hundreds of children in it and teach them the language of movements. A huge mansion on Prechistenka was allocated for the studio-school of the "great sandals", and she settled there in one of the gilded halls. With Sergei Alexandrovich, who was eighteen years younger than her, Isadora met in the studio of the artist Yakulov (also an imagist) and instantly got along with him. It is believed that Yesenin reminded her of her little son who died in a car accident. It is curious that the poet did not know a single foreign language, saying: “I don’t know and I don’t want to know - I’m afraid to stain my own.” Later he wrote from America: “I don’t recognize any other language besides the Russian language and I behave in such a way that if anyone is curious to talk to me, then let him learn in Russian”. When asked how he was talking to “Sidora”, Yesenin, actively moving his hands, showed: “But this is mine, yours, yours, mine … You can't fool her, she understands everything.” Rurik Ivnev also attested: “Isadora's sensitivity was amazing. She unmistakably captured all the shades of the interlocutor's mood, not only fleeting, but almost everything that was hidden in the soul.
Sergei Alexandrovich, who in the meantime had sent Pugachev and Confession of a Hooligan to the press, visited the dancer every day and, in the end, moved to her on Prechistenka. Of course, the young Imagists followed him. Perhaps, in order to take the poet away from them, Isadora Duncan invited Yesenin to go on a joint world tour with her, in which she would dance, and he would read poetry. On the eve of their departure, they got married, and both took a double surname. The poet was having fun: "From now on I am Duncan-Yesenin." In the spring of 1922, the newly-made spouses flew abroad. Gorky, with whom the poet met abroad, wrote about their relationship: "This famous woman, glorified by thousands of subtle connoisseurs of plastic arts, next to a short, amazing poet from Ryazan, was the complete embodiment of everything that he did not need." By the way, at their meeting, Sergei Alexandrovich read to Gorky one of the first versions of The Black Man. Alexey Maksimovich “cried… cried with tears”. Subsequently, the famous critic Svyatopolk-Mirsky defined the poem as "one of the highest points of Yesenin's poetry." The poet himself, according to the testimony of friends, believed that this was "the best thing he ever did."
Abroad, the aging Isadora began to roll wild scenes of jealousy to the poet, beat the dishes, and once arranged such a rout in the hotel, in which Sergei Alexandrovich, tired of her, disappeared that she had to mortgage the property in order to pay the presented bill. Yesenin at that time sent home desperate letters: “Paris is a green city, only the French have a boring tree. The fields outside the city are combed and tidied up, the farms are white. And I, by the way, took a lump of earth - and it doesn't smell like anything. " After returning home, he told his friends: “As soon as we arrived in Paris, I wanted to buy a cow - I decided to ride it through the streets. That would be laughter! " Meanwhile, Franz Ellens, a former translator of Yesenin's poems, noted: "This peasant was an impeccable aristocrat." Another curious line from Yesenin's letter to Mariengof: “Everything here is tidied up, ironed. At first, your eyes would like it, and then you would start clapping yourself on your knees and whining like a dog. A continuous cemetery - all these people who scurry about faster than lizards, and not people at all, but grave worms. Their homes are coffins, the mainland is a crypt. Who lived here died a long time ago, and only we remember him. For worms cannot remember."
Duncan and Yesenin sailed to America on the huge ocean liner Paris. The tour was accompanied by scandals - Isadora danced to the sounds of the International with a red flag in her hands, in Boston, the mounted police, dispersing the audience, drove right into the stalls, journalists did not allow the couple to pass, and the poet himself wrote: “In America, no one needs art … A soul that in Russia it is measured by poods, it is not needed here. In America, the soul is as unpleasant as unbuttoned trousers. " After spending more than a year abroad, in August 1923 Isadora Duncan and Yesenin returned to Russia, almost dispersed from the station platform in different directions. Returning home Sergei Aleksandrovich, according to his comrades, "like a child rejoiced at everything, touched the trees, houses with his hands …".
The time of the NEP came, and people in furs began to appear in literary cafes, who perceived the reading of poetry by poets as another dish on the menu. Yesenin at one of these performances, coming on stage last, exclaimed: “Do you think I went out to read poetry to you? No, I then went out to send you to … Charlatans and speculators!..”People jumped up from their seats, a fight broke out, the police were called. There were many similar scandals with drives for Sergei Alexandrovich, and the poet answered all questions about them: “Everything comes from anger at the philistine, raising its head. It is necessary to hit him in the face with a biting verse, stunning, in an unusual way, if you want, a scandal - let them know that poets are quarrelsome, restless people, enemies of swamp well-being. " One of the critics noted that the poet's "hooliganism" was "a purely superficial phenomenon, worn out of mischief and a thirst to be reputed to be original … Left to himself, he would have gone a quiet and quiet path … since in poetry he is Mozart."
In the fall of 1923, Yesenin had a new hobby - the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya. He was introduced to her by his wife Mariengofa, both performed at the Chamber Theater. The lovers walked around Moscow, sat in the cafe of the imagists. The actress was amazed at the strange manner of communication of the imagists. She wrote in her memoirs that the sober Sergei Alexandrovich and his poetry were not needed by the comrades, they were arranged by his famous scandals, which attracted the curious to the cafe. It must be said that at that time Yesenin half-jokingly, half-seriously tried on the role of the poetic heir of Alexander Pushkin and even wore (along with the notorious top hat) Pushkin's lionfish. There was a lot of play, masquerade and shocking in this. Rurik Ivnev, for example, argued that the poet “loved to joke around and joke, doing it so cleverly and subtly that he almost always managed to catch people“on the bait”. Very soon Yesenin and Miklashevskaya broke up.
From the end of 1923 to March 1924, Sergei Alexandrovich was in hospitals - now on Polyanka (with something like a mental disorder), then at the Sheremetyevo hospital (either by injuring his hand, or by cutting his veins), then at the Kremlin clinic. By the way, there are many curious stories of the poet's friends and acquaintances, testifying that Yesenin suffered from a persecution mania. For example, the poet Nikolai Aseev wrote that Yesenin "told him in a whisper that he was being watched, that he could not stay alone for a minute, that he, too, would not miss and would not be able to get his hands on him alive." However, Sergei Alexandrovich had reason to fear. In the fall of 1923 Yesenin, Klychkov, Oreshin and Ganin were drawn into the "Case of the Four Poets." The court ruled to issue them "public censure", the media accused the poets of "Black Hundred, hooligan and antisocial behavior, as well as idealism and mysticism", the term "Yeseninism" was circulated on the pages of magazines and newspapers. And in November 1924, the poet Alexei Ganin was arrested (among other things, Yesenin's witness at the wedding with Reich), who was declared the head of the Order of Russian Fascists. He was shot in March 1925, and in 1966 he was rehabilitated due to "lack of corpus delicti." In total, after returning from abroad, over a dozen cases were opened against Yesenin - and all the applicants were well versed in the criminal legislation, instantly pointing out to the police the articles of the criminal code according to which the poet should be involved. It is worth noting that in 1924 Yesenin broke off relations with Mariengof. The quarrel in the description of the witnesses was rather strange, but since then the paths of the two poets parted forever. And in April 1924 Sergei Alexandrovich refused to cooperate with the imagists. At that moment he conceived to found a new magazine called "Moskovityanin" and, according to his friends, again began "to look towards the" muzhiks ": Klyuev, Klychkov, Oreshin." However, nothing came of the magazine.
In 1924 Yesenin wrote an amazing cycle "Persian motives" and finished work on the poem "Anna Snegina". It is curious that when Sergei Alexandrovich was alive, not a single response appeared. It was also with other poems. Gorodetsky noted: “All his work was only a brilliant beginning. If Yesenin had heard a share of what is now said and written about him during his lifetime, perhaps this beginning had the same continuation. However, the stormy creativity did not find its own Belinsky."
It is worth noting that Yesenin treated children and animals with great tenderness. In the twenties, devastated Russia was full of homeless children. The poet could not calmly walk past them, approached the little tramps and gave them money. Once, in Tiflis, Sergei Alexandrovich climbed into a sewer, in which lice, covered with coal dust, were lying and sitting on bunks. The poet found a common language with the "Oliver Twists" (as Yesenin called the street children in "Homeless Russia") instantly, and a lively conversation, densely sprinkled with jargon, began. The smart outfit of Sergei Alexandrovich did not bother the homeless teenagers at all, they immediately recognized the poet as their own.
Family disorder and homelessness burdened Yesenin - for the last year he either toiled in hospitals, then traveled around the Caucasus, then lived in Bryusovsky Lane near Galina Benislavskaya. The poet's sisters, Katya and Shura, whom Sergei Alexandrovich brought to the capital, lived right there. In almost every letter, Yesenin gave Benislavskaya instructions to collect money for his poems in publishing houses and magazines and spend it on the maintenance of the sisters. When Yesenin was in the city, his numerous comrades came to Benislavskaya's house. The sisters recalled that Yesenin never drank alone, and after drinking, he quickly grew drunk and became unbridled. At the same time, one of his friends noted: “Somehow his slightly faded eyes began to look in a new way. Yesenin gave the impression of a man burnt by some kind of destructive internal fire … Once he said: "You know, I decided to marry, I am tired of this kind of life, I have no corner of my own."
In March 1925, Sergei Alexandrovich met the twenty-five-year-old granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy, whose name was Sofya Andreevna, just like the wife of the great writer. Yesenina's sister described her as follows: “The girl was very reminiscent of her grandfather - harsh and domineering in anger, sentimental and smiling sweetly in a good mood.” In the spring of 1925 Yesenin left for the Caucasus. This was not the poet's first trip to the eternal place of exile for Russian writers. For the first time, Sergei Alexandrovich visited there in the fall of 1924 and, moving from place to place, lived in the Caucasus for six months.
In May 1925 Yesenin arrived in Baku. It is curious that on the train Sergei Alexandrovich's outerwear was stolen, and, as a result, the writer caught a cold and fell ill. Diagnosed with catarrh of the right lung, he had to undergo treatment in a Baku hospital. And on Trinity the poet went home. It was not good at home - back in 1922, when Yesenin was abroad, there was a terrible fire in Konstantinov. Half of the village burned out, my father's house burned down completely. For insurance, Yesenin's parents bought a six-arshin hut, putting it in the garden, and they began to build only after their son returned from abroad. However, the most terrible thing for the poet was the disintegration of the peasant world, which had been established for centuries. Yesenin told his friends: “I visited the village. Everything collapses there … You have to be from there yourself in order to understand … Everything is over. " From the village, Sergei Alexandrovich brought new poems and immediately proposed to Sofya Tolstoy. In July, they went to rest in Baku, returned to Moscow in early September, and on the 18th, they were legally married. This event was celebrated in a narrow family circle. The young people settled in Tolstoy's apartment, located in Pomerantsev Lane. Almost in the first week after his marriage, Yesenin wrote to a friend that “everything that I hoped for and dreamed of is crumbling to dust. Family life is not going well and I want to run away. But where? " Friends visited Yesenin, and when asked how life is, the poet, pointing to dozens of portraits and photographs of Leo Tolstoy, said: “It's sad. I'm tired of the beard …”.
In the last month of the poet's life, events developed rapidly - on November 26, 1925, Yesenin went to the neuropsychiatric clinic of Professor Gannushkin and worked there fruitfully. On December 7, he sent a telegram to his friend, the poet Wolf Ehrlich: “Immediately find two or three rooms. I am moving to live in Leningrad. " On December 21, Sergei Aleksandrovich left the clinic, took all his money from the savings account, and on the 23rd of the evening went to the Northern capital by train. Upon arrival in Leningrad, Yesenin informed one of his friends that he would not return to his wife, he would move his sisters here, organize his own magazine here, and also write "a major prose thing - a novel or a story." December 28, 1925 Sergei Alexandrovich was found dead in the fifth room of the famous Angleterre hotel.
Shortly before his death, Yesenin said - enough autobiographies, let the legend remain. And so it happened - Sergei Alexandrovich is one of the most widespread myths of the twentieth century. According to the official version, the poet, in a state of black melancholy, hanged himself on a steam heating pipe using a rope from a suitcase given to him by Gorky. This version is confirmed by documentary evidence - an autopsy report, death certificates, a farewell letter from Yesenin himself, thrust on the eve of Ehrlich. According to another version, the Cheka was guilty of the poet's death. Countless attacks against the Bolsheviks (according to the writer Andrei Sobol, “no one could have thought of covering up the Bolsheviks like Yesenin publicly, everyone who said a tenth would have been shot long ago”), a quarrel in the Caucasus with the influential Yakov Blumkin (who even shot at the poet, as if Martynov, but missed), Trotsky, offended by the poem "The Country of Scoundrels" - all this could well force the Chekists to eliminate, in their opinion, the presumptuous poet. According to other assumptions, the murder was not included in their plans, they wanted to make Sergei Alexandrovich only an informant in exchange for getting rid of the litigation. And when the enraged Yesenin rushed at the provocateurs, he was killed. Hence the huge bruise over the poet's eye, attributed to a burn from a hot heating pipe, and the destruction in the room, and the disappeared shoes and jacket of the poet, and the raised hand, with which Yesenin was still alive, was trying to pull the rope from his throat. The young imagist Wolf Ehrlich, who allegedly found his dying letter, later turned out to be a secret employee of the Cheka. The classic thirty pieces of silver are attached to this watch - the money taken by Yesenin was not found with him.
The fate of some of Yesenin's women was also tragic. His first wife, Zinaida Reich, was brutally stabbed to death in her own apartment on the night of July 15, 1939. The poet's second wife, Isadora Duncan, survived him for a year and nine months. She died in an accident - a red shawl, slipping over the side of a racing car, wound on a wheel, the dancer died instantly. Galina Benislavskaya a year after the death of Sergei Alexandrovich shot herself at his grave. The revolver, by the way, gave five (!) Misfires.
In the Russian tradition, it is extremely important how a person died. A victim is seen behind the unsolved death of the poet, and this, throwing a shining ray on his fate, raises Yesenin to the heavenly heights. The critic Svyatopolk-Mirsky wrote in 1926: "For the Russian reader not to love Yesenin is now a sign of either blindness or some kind of moral defectiveness." No matter how aesthetes and snobs try to belittle and reduce the role of Sergei Alexandrovich in literature, sticking labels "poet for the crowd", "for simpletons", "for cattle", "for bandits" - in the popular mind Yesenin remains the first poet of the twentieth century.
