The Presidential Library features a new collection marking the 125th anniversary of Sergei Yesenin

October 3, 2020 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of the Great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925). The new electronic collection formed by the Presidential Library includes the works of the poet, memories of his friends, photographs, newspaper clippings, video lectures, scientific works about his work, sets of postcards depicting his small homeland and monuments created in honor of the poet. Among the materials are also letters from the poet's last wife, Sofya Yesenina-Tolstaya, addressed to the famous lawyer and public figure Anatoly Koni, where she talks about the wedding and family life with Sergei Yesenin, about the journey of the newlyweds to the Caucasus.

A young boy from a Ryazan village, having arrived to conquer literary Moscow, first worked in a butcher's shop, and then in a printing house. Already 2 years after arriving in the capital, Yesenin first published his poems.

In 1915, Yesenin arrived in Petrograd and went straight from the station to the Popovs 'bookstore (now the "Writers' Bookstore") right behind the Anichkov Bridge, where he was prompted to the address of the famous poet Alexander Blok. The acquaintance took place. Yesenin, embarrassed and blushing, read poetry to the master. Blok listened to him with ever-growing interest and understood what a difficult fate awaits this poet "from the earth", who has not yet fully felt the oppression of his enormous talent.

The poem "Prayer" was published in the February book of the journal "Chronicle. 1916, No. 2" next to poems by Ivan Bunin and Alexander Blok, prose by Maxim Gorky. Blok's letter of recommendation to Sergei Gorodetsky paved the way for the young poet in Petersburg magazines, where he was published along with Blok, Klyuev, Forsh, Gorodetsky, Mariengof.

Soon Yesenin personally met Anatoly Marienhof, who became a friend of the poet and left vivid memories of him. A boy from the Ryazan village, a representative of the "new peasant" trend in art and an esthete, a dandy, one of the pillars of Imagism - it would seem that what could bind them so to each other? Nevertheless, in the period 1918-1921, they were inseparable in their desire to loudly declare themselves to the world that united them: they performed together at creative evenings, published collections of poems and sold them in their own bookstore, opened the literary cafe "Pegasus Stall", performed extravagant acts, traveled.

Marienhof in his book "Memoirs of Yesenin" describes how a provincial, deliberately "lost" in luxurious living rooms, taught a friend to live: “It will be difficult for you, Tolya, in patent leather shoes and with a parting, hair to hair. How is it possible without poetic distraction? Are they hovering under the clouds in trousers from under the iron!"

Yesenin's Moscow neighbor, journalist Sofya Vinogradskaya, who worked for the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia VTsIK, notes in her memoirs “The Way Yesenin Lived” the most characteristic of the poet: “Days of continuous noise, din and songs were replaced by days of work on verse. And then there were days of melancholy, when all the colors faded in his eyes, and his blue eyes faded, turned gray". 

Usually, when the poet sat down to write, Vinogradskaya continues, “...he asked to put a hot samovar on the table, which was boiling all the time. He drank a lot of tea then. The wine disappeared from the room, he didn’t even allow Narzan to be put on the table ... It’s just disgusting to listen to “suggestions” that Yesenin wrote poetry being drunk. Never in his life he wrote a single line while intoxicated!"  

Each visit of the poet's mother to the capital is endless conversations about the village, about its new fate, Vinogradskaya recalled. “His mother conveyed greetings to him from the old peasants, who had heard that he was a 'poet', that the communists have a great post and good salary. Yesenin asks again, asks about life. Mother begins to grumble, complain: ... taxes are high, but the farm is poor, there is no horse. Imperceptibly the conversation takes on a political character and, accompanied by a strong Russian word, turns into a big argument.

Sergei Alexandrovich more than once traveled to his native Konstantinovo, returned from there with a heap of impressions and endless stories, one of them is given in his memoirs “The Way Yesenin Lived”: here is a poet “... begins to “figuratively ”depict the meeting of the village council ... immediately citing clumsy, unwashed words, like: "If someone is counter-ulcersiners, then these are the first - women, - they don't go to put out the fire."

Very little time passes - and all these impressions, conversations, memories are transformed into verses about the village.

Not everyone accepted and welcomed this. Not everyone understood how much more difficult it was to bear the burden of talent over the years, this is a "commission" from above. Inevitable fatigue, nervous exhaustion became constant companions of the still young, but already world famous poet. This was noted by readers, friends, and all the people around him. Yes, and Yesenin himself understood this more acutely than others when he wrote a farewell poem to Anatoly Marienhof.

Sergei Yesenin remained such a "golden maple" in Russian literature, embodying in poetry the image of deep, reserved Russia...