The Life of Poet Sergei Yesenin

The poem above is by Sergei Yesenin, a renowned Russian lyrical poet. He was born to a peasant family in the village of Konstantinova. He began writing poetry at age 9, and published his first book of poems at age 20. He founded a publishing company with the resounding name " Moscow Labor Company of the Artists of the Written Word." A handsome young man with a romantic disposition, his liaisons included but were by no means limited to 5 marriages including one to dancer Isadora Duncan and one to Leo Tolstoy's granddaughter, Sophia  Tolstoya.

The last 2 years of Yeseni's life were marked by increasingly wild and erratic behavior fueled by drugs and alcohol. There were memorably explosive scenes in posh restaurants and the trashing of pricey hotel rooms in a manner worthy of any rock star. Interestingly, he also produced some of his best poetry during this period. Discharged after a month in a mental institution, he cut his wrists and wrote a suicide note in his own blood. He was found hanging from the heating pipes in his room in the Astoria Hotel, St.   Petersburg, December 28, 1925. He was barely thirty years old.

For all his shortcomings, Yesenin was and is was revered in Russia in a way that doesn't occur with poets in the United States. A white statue marks his grave. The village in which he was born was renamed Yesenino in his honor. One of his lovers during those final years, Galina Benislavskaya, was so undone by his death that she went to Moscow's Vagankovskoye Cemetery and hung herself above his grave. He was a deeply flawed human being, plagued by his personal demons, but what a poet!

John Guthrie