Where did Sergei Yesenin die? How and why did S. A. Yesenin die? Sergei Yesenin - biography
“It’s so easy to leave this life,
Burn mindlessly and painlessly.
But not given to the Russian poet
Such a bright death to die.
Just lead lead to the winged soul
Heaven will open the frontiers,
Or hoarse horror with a shaggy paw
From the heart, like from a sponge, life will be squeezed out.
Anna Akhmatova's poem "In Memory of Sergei Yesenin"
Biography
The biography of Sergei Yesenin is a controversial life story of the great Russian poet. It is difficult to find another person who would write about Russia with such love and at the same time pain. The difficult nature of the poet, his rebelliousness, restlessness, propensity for outrageousness and conflicts created considerable difficulties in Yesenin's life. But even after his tragic departure, the “street rake”, “mischievous reveler” and “scandalist” Yesenin, as he called himself, could forever remain in the hearts of those who once heard his poetry and fell in love with it.
Sergei Yesenin was born in the Ryazan region in a simple peasant family. As a child, he loved to read, having special feelings for Russian folklore, fairy tales, epics, ditties and Russian poetry. Pushkin, Lermontov, Koltsov were Esenin's favorite writers. As a young man, he moved to Moscow, where he worked in a printing house, and was soon accepted into the literary and musical circles of the capital and began to publish his poems. First, Moscow, and then Petrograd met Yesenin with open arms, he was considered "the messenger of the Russian village." Yesenin's personality also played a big role - he read his poems with such ardor, with such expression and sincerity that everyone - from ordinary people to eminent writers - fell in love with the golden-haired peasant poet.
Yesenin met the coming of power of workers and peasants with enthusiasm. But over time, delight was replaced by disappointment, fear, indignation. Because of his directness, the poet often became the object of observation by the authorities, especially during the relationship of Sergei Yesenin with Isadora Duncan, an American dancer. When, finally, Yesenin openly expressed his sharp condemnation of the actions of the Soviet authorities in the poem "Country of Scoundrels", a real persecution of the poet began. The poet, already quick-tempered and addicted to alcohol, was often provoked. Each scandalous episode of his biography was described in the newspapers. Yesenin was forced to hide - he lived in the Caucasus, in Leningrad, in Konstantinovo, where he was born. Yesenin's last wife, Sofya Tolstaya, in an attempt to save her husband from alcohol addiction and persecution, hospitalized him in a neurological clinic. Which Yesenin secretly left, allegedly in an attempt to escape from the authorities, and went to Leningrad, where he stayed at the Angleterre Hotel. Five days later, his body was found in the room of the Angleterre. The cause of Yesenin's death was suicide - the poet committed suicide by hanging himself on a pipe. His last words there was a poem written in blood instead of ink:
"Goodbye, my friend, goodbye,
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.
Goodbye, my friend, without a hand and without a word,
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.
Yesenin's funeral took place on the last day of 1925 - December 31. Not a single Russian poet was seen off with such honors and scope - about two hundred thousand people came to Yesenin's funeral. Yesenin's death became for Russia huge loss and shock.
life line
October 3, 1895 Date of birth of Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin.
1904 Admission to the zemstvo school in Konstantinovo.
1909 Graduation from college, admission to the church teacher's school.
1912 Finishing school with a diploma of a literacy teacher, moving to Moscow.
1913 Marriage with Anna Izryadnova.
1914 The birth of the son of Sergei Yesenin, Yuri.
1915 Acquaintance with Alexander Blok, admission to the service in the hospital train.
1916 Release of the first collection of poems "Radunitsa".
1917 Marriage with Zinaida Reich.
1918 Birth of daughter Tatyana.
1920 Birth of son Constantine.
1921 Divorce from Zinaida Reich, acquaintance with Isadora Duncan, release of the collections "Treryadnitsa", "Confessions of a Hooligan".
May 2, 1922 Marriage to Isadora Duncan.
1923 Release of the collection "Poems of a Brawler".
1924 Divorce from Isadora Duncan, the release of the poem "Pugachev", the collection "Moscow Tavern", the birth of an illegitimate son from the translator and poetess Nadezhda Volpin.
September 18, 1925 Marriage with Sophia Tolstoy.
December 28, 1925 Date of Yesenin's death.
December 31, 1925 Yesenin's funeral.
Memorable places
1. The village of Konstantinovo, where Yesenin was born and where the Yesenin Museum-Reserve is located today.
2. Yesenin Museum (former church teacher's school, which Yesenin graduated from) in Spas-Klepiki.
3. Tsarskoye Selo, where Yesenin's regiment was quartered and where the poet spoke to Empress Alexandra.
4. Yesenin and Duncan's house in Moscow, where the couple lived and where Isadora's dance school was located.
5. Moscow State Museum of S. A. Yesenin.
6. Yesenin's house in Mardakan (now a memorial house-museum on the territory of the arboretum), where the poet lived in 1924-1925.
7. House-Museum of Sergei Yesenin in Tashkent, where he stayed in 1921.
8. Monument to Yesenin in Moscow on Yeseninsky Boulevard.
9. Monument to Yesenin in Moscow on Tverskoy Boulevard.
10. Angleterre Hotel, where Yesenin's body was found.
11. Vagankovsky cemetery, where Yesenin is buried.
Episodes of life
Despite the fact that the last years of his life Yesenin abused alcohol, he did not write poetry while drunk. The poet's memoirists also talk about this. Once Yesenin confessed to his friend: “The desperate fame of a drunkard and a bully follows me, but these are just words, and not such a terrible reality.”
Dancer Duncan fell in love with Yesenin almost at first sight. He, too, was very interested in her, despite the tangible difference in age. Isadora dreamed of glorifying her Russian husband and took him with her on a tour - through Europe and America. Yesenin explained his scandalous behavior during the trip in his usual manner: “Yes, I made a row. I needed them to know me, so they would remember me. What, I'm going to read poetry to them? Poems for Americans? I would only become ridiculous in their eyes. But to drag the tablecloth with all the dishes from the table, to whistle in the theater, to disturb the order traffic- it is clear to them. If I do this, I am a millionaire. I mean, I can. So respect is ready, and glory and honor! Oh, they remember me better than Duncan!” In fact, Yesenin quickly realized that abroad he was only "Duncan's husband" for everyone, broke off relations with the dancer and returned home.
Assumptions that the death of Sergei Yesenin was violent appeared many years after the death of the poet. The author of the version of the murder and its popularization was the Moscow investigator Eduard Khlystalov - his point of view on what happened to the poet is shown in the serial film Yesenin. Other researchers found it unconvincing.
Covenant
"In thunderstorms, in storms, in the coldness of life,
With heavy losses and when you are sad,
To seem smiling and simple -
The highest art in the world."
A plot from the cycle "Historical Chronicles" dedicated to Sergei Yesenin
condolences
“Let's not blame him alone. All of us - his contemporaries - are more or less to blame. This was a precious person. I should have fought harder for him. We should have helped him more brotherly.”
Anatoly Lunacharsky, revolutionary, statesman
“The end of Yesenin upset, upset usually, humanly. But immediately this end seemed completely natural and logical. I found out about this at night, grief, it must have remained grief, it must have dissipated by morning, but in the morning the newspapers brought dying lines: “In this life, dying is not new, but living, of course, is not newer” . After these lines, Yesenin's death became a literary fact.
Vladimir Mayakovsky, poet
"He lived terribly and died terribly."
Anna Akhmatova, poetess
Yesenin's death is described here. With the events of the last day of life, the cause, date, time and place of death are indicated. Posthumous photos, photos of funerals and graves are given. Therefore, all people with an unstable psyche, as well as persons under the age of 21, this information is categorically not recommended for viewing.
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin
21/09/1895 — 28/12/1925
Cause of death of Sergei Yesenin
According to the generally accepted, official version, Yesenin hanged himself at the age of 30. However, the scale of Yesenin's personality is so great, and the odious acts and habits of Sergei Alexandrovich, complex relations with the current government and the criminal code open up a wide field for disputes about the reasons for the death of the poet. Perhaps even fewer adherents of the alternative version of death. With the light hand of Eduard Khlystalov, a number of questions and conflicting facts regarding the death of Yesenin went to the masses. At the disposal of anyone who wishes are very high-quality posthumous photographs and death masks of Sergei Alexandrovich, documents of the criminal case, testimonies, which allows each person who has watched the series with Bezrukov to form their own “truly correct” idea of the picture of the tragedy.
Court. honey. Expert Gilyarevsky:
Based on the autopsy data, it should be concluded that Yesenin's death was due to asphyxia, produced by squeezing the airways through hanging.
The act of opening the body of Yesenin Date and place of death
Yesenin died on December 28, 1925, in Leningrad, at the Angleterre Hotel. The act of death occurred presumably at 5 o'clock in the morning.
A little about the place of the tragedy: from the French Hotel d'Angleterre is translated as the hotel "England" in our time is located in the very center of St. Petersburg, overlooking the Issakievsky Park and St. Isaac's Cathedral, st. Malaya Morskaya, 24, St. Isaac's Square.
In 1987, the hotel building was completely destroyed; accordingly, room No. 5, where Sergei Alexandrovich died, was not preserved. However, in 1991 the hotel was rebuilt. Now it is functioning, accepting guests. In Yesenin's time, room number 5 was something akin to a modern "suite". That is, not for everyone, but for party functionaries, prominent people, elites.
Room No. 5 of the Angleterre Hotel, after the death of Yesenin. Photo by Moses Solomonovich Nappelbaum.
Yesenin's death. Parting
The farewell ceremony for the poet took place on December 29 in Leningrad, and then in Moscow, where Yesenin's body was taken by train. It is known that Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was buried according to the Christian rite, contrary to the rule of the church, which forbids the funeral of suicides. The funeral took place on December 31, 1925.
The funeral of S. Yesenin. On the right is the mother and sister of Sergei Alexandrovich 
Burial place of Sergei Yesenin
Sergei Yesenin is buried at the 17th section of the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow. At the moment, his mother Yesenina Tatyana Fedorovna, who died in 1955, is buried next to Sergei Alexandrovich.
Grave of S. Yesenin, Moscow, Vagankovsky cemetery, today. Earlier, the grave of Sergei Alexandrovich looked different:
Yesenin's grave before the installation of the monument. The poet's mother at her son's grave. In the 80s, the grave looked like this:
The first monument on the grave of S. Yesenin Yesenin's death. Circumstances.
Yesenin's suicide act was compiled by the district warden of the 2nd department of the Leningrad police on December 28, 1925. By the hand of the district warden N. Gorbov.
On December 28, 1925, this act was drawn up by me, the district warden of the 2nd department. LGM N. Gorbov in the presence of the manager of the hotel "International" comrade. Nazarov and witnesses. According to a telephone message from the hotel manager, citizen Nazarov Vasily Mikhailovich, about a citizen hanging himself in a hotel room. Arriving at the place, I found a man hanging on the central heating pipe in the following form, his neck was not tightened with a dead loop, but only on one side of the neck, his face was turned to the pipe and grabbed the pipe with his right hand, the corpse hung under the very ceiling, and the feet were about 1.5 meters from the floor, near the place where the hanged man was found, there was an overturned pedestal, and the candelabra standing on it lay on the floor.
When removing the corpse from the rope and during its examination, a bruise was found on the right arm above the elbow, under the left eye, dressed in gray trousers, a white nightgown, black socks and black patent leather shoes. According to the submitted documents, the hanged man turned out to be Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, a writer who arrived from Moscow on December 24, 1925. Shopping center certificate No. 42-8516, and a power of attorney to receive 640 rubles in the name of Erlich.
Manager - Nazarov
Witnesses (signatures illegible)
Policeman (signature illegible)
District warden of the 2nd department. LGM - N. Gorbov
We leave you, our readers, to judge the reasons that caused Yesenin's death. Here are just the facts:
- At the time of his death, 13 criminal cases were opened against Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, including the "case of 4 poets."
- On December 21, 1925 (a week before his death), Yesenin left the Gannushkin psychiatric hospital. Whether Sergey Alexandrovich was hiding from the court there or was treating depression now no one will say for sure. But the fact remains: Yesenin was undergoing treatment in a psychiatric clinic.
- Nikolai Leopoldovich Brown refused to sign the protocol, where Yesenin's death was directly called suicide, claiming that the poet had been killed. And Boris Lavrenyov, who was also in Angleterre, published the article “Executed by degenerates” the next day.
- All eyewitnesses of those events note the depression, depression and fatalism of Sergei Alexandrovich before his death. The doctor who treated Sergei Aleksandrovich's drunkenness spoke directly to his relatives about the poet's suicidal intentions.
Yesenin's death. Details
To all apologists for the version of the murder, we recommend a rather curious book by Viktor Kuznetsov, which is called "The Secret of Yesenin's Death". This is a whole scientific study, the sources of which were the archival and documentary funds of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD.
Kuznetsov is a supporter of the murder version. In his book, he gives arguments convincingly proving this version.
Content
In one of the rooms of the Leningrad hotel Angleterre on the morning of December 28, 1925, the corpse of the proletarian poet Sergei Yesenin was found. Then the print media unanimously supported the version of suicide and called the cause - prolonged depression. Over time, a new version has appeared: the cause of death of Sergei Yesenin was called a staged suicide, organized by the OGPU.
We restore the events of the end of December 1925
Yesenin arrived in Leningrad on December 24. The motives behind his trip are still hotly debated. Someone is sure that questions about the publication of a new collection of poems were brought to the northern capital of the poet. Others claim that Sergei Alexandrovich was hiding from the metropolitan police. You can believe it - the poet did not widely advertise his arrival in the city on the Neva. The day before, he asked a friend to rent a three-room apartment for him. But he did not succeed and he stayed at the Angleterre Hotel, which became a fatal place.
He was given the fifth room, where party workers usually stayed, famous figures culture of the Land of the Soviets. These days the poet was visited by Wolf Ehrlich, the married couple of the Ustinovs. According to Wolf, he handed him the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...” written on a piece of paper and asked him to read it alone.
Wolf was returning to his room, forgetting his briefcase. The poet calmly wrote poetry, sitting at the table in a coat thrown over his shoulders. The next morning, Ustinova and Erlich came to the hotel, but could not get into the room - they had to call the commandant to open the door. Inside, in a loop, near the window, there was a dead Yesenin.
And now his biographers, researchers of creativity are sure that it was suicide. Suicidal tendencies, too thin nervous organization, melancholy and depressive states were characteristic of him. Everyone knew that in recent times began to actively progress alcoholism. The poet repeatedly spoke about the feeling of approaching death - this theme constantly takes place in his work. recent years. During this period, he divorced, suffered from a creative crisis.
The autopsy showed - cause of death of Sergei Yesenin was oxygen deprivation. At the same time, cuts were found on both hands, a huge dent was on the forehead. The medical examiner gave a conclusion - it is a consequence of the blow. It is known that the last request of Sergei was the desire not to let anyone in to him.
The Leningrad detectives worked in the hotel room for several days, but they did not find a single piece of evidence testifying to the crime. In an illiterate act of inspection, compiled by Nikolai Gorbov, a local policeman, it is indicated that the poet was holding on to the pipe with one hand, a candelabra and a low cabinet were overturned in the room. According to medical opinion death of Sergei Yesenin arrived at 5 am.
A poem written in blood
A few days later, Elrich found a poem given by the poet in his coat pocket. It was written in blood. Ustinova remembered - the poet complained that it was absolutely impossible to get ink in the hotel and therefore had to cut his hands and write with blood. This explains the cut marks on his arms. But it is difficult to call the poem dying - it was a dedication to a friend Alexei Ganin, who was shot in March 1925 by Lubyanka servicemen. He was charged with belonging to the Order of Russian Fascists.
But then no one conducted an examination of the sheet and he did not help in solving this case.
Staged or Murder?
Many still agree that it was a murder disguised as a suicide. The fact is that with a growth of 168 centimeters, Sergei Alexandrovich could not physically hang himself - the height of the ceilings in the room reached 4 meters. Nearby there was no object that could be previously climbed. The cabinet and suitcase were not suitable for these purposes.
There was no explanation of the origin of numerous abrasions on the body and hematomas, a depressed scar across the bridge of the nose, which is clearly visible in the photograph taken immediately after death of Sergei Yesenin. All this leaves room for speculation and versions.
The last refuge of the poet - Vagankovsky cemetery
The body of the poet was delivered to Moscow by train. The farewell took place at the Printing House. On December 31, 1925, Sergei Yesenin was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery. At the time of his death he was 30 years old. Per short life passionate and amorous, he managed to marry three times and start a bunch of love affairs. But there was one woman who could not live without Yesenin - Galina Benislavskaya. She was the personal secretary and friend of the poet, allowing him to live in her Moscow apartment. Galina often listened to the poet's confessions, gave advice on the publication of poems. Did she love him or did he become the meaning of her life? It's hard to say now. But on December 3, 1926, Benislavskaya came to the grave, smoked several cigarettes in a row and shot a pistol in the chest. In her suicide note, the woman indicated that she was dying of her own free will.
Revold BANCHUKOV (Germany)
MYTHS ABOUT THE DEATH OF SERGEY YESENIN
It is known that in recent years, the authors of numerous newspaper and magazine publications, designed for a noisy sensation and self-promotion, have rejected the official version of Sergei Yesenin's suicide: they say, the poet in recent months In 1925 he was absolutely healthy, he had no reason to commit suicide, he was killed by "enemies" - those in power and security officers.
The national-patriotic poet Ivan Lystsov (Molodaya Gvardiya magazine, 1990, #10) writes in his article "The Murder of a Poet" about "how important the physical elimination of Yesenin was for the anti-Russian apparatus at that time," and then follows a footnote about the overwhelming the number of people of Jewish nationality "standing at the top of the Soviet hierarchy in 1917-25." Now everything is clear: the Jews killed Yesenin, Trotsky was the mastermind behind the murder of the poet, and Yesenin's friend Wolf Erlich ("according to my personal assumption" - this is how I. Lystsov "arguments" his "version") in this criminal case was "a gunner".
The "starting point" for this and other publications was the article by the former colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Eduard Khlystalov "The Secret of the Angleterre Hotel" (Moscow magazine, 1989, # 7), included - in an already supplemented version - in the book "Love and Death of Sergei Yesenin" , released in Moscow in 1992 by the Defant publishing house.
It was Khlystalov's "materials" that formed the basis of all the articles - "versions" about the death of Yesenin, which, in the presence of their own fabrications and their conjectures, converge on the main thing: they say, Yesenin was first beaten (according to some "researchers" - killed), and then, bleeding, was hung from a pipe steam heating in the fifth room of the Leningrad hotel Angleterre.
Valentin Sorokin (Change magazine, 1993, #12) "specifies" that the killers planned (how does he know this?!) to take the body out of the room, lower it from the second floor into the back of a truck. Almost with the authenticity of an eyewitness, Sorokin continues: "But the window did not open as much as necessary, and the killers, in a hurry, played the option of hanging ..." The plans of the killers, the truck, the window - what a strong fantasy the weak poet V. Sorokin has!
And another frank invention of Sorokin: "The writer Ustinov, who promised to tell about Yesenin's death, was found dead the next morning." The writer and journalist G.F. Ustinov, therefore, died on December 29, 1925. No, Mr. Sorokin, all this could only happen in your inflamed imagination, for Ustinov tragically passed away (but of his own free will!) in 1932.
But the poetess and author of articles on poetry Natalya Sidorina (Slovo magazine: "In the World of Books", 1989, # 10), supporting E. Khlystalov's "version" about Yesenin's murder, said (compare with a quote from V. Sorokin's article!) that Ustinov was found in the noose the day after he promised in a private conversation (with whom?) to tell about Yesenin's last hours. N. Sidorina's article formed the basis of her script for the film about Yesenin ("They want to kill me") and the book "Golden-domed. Secrets of the life and death of Sergei Yesenin", published by the Moscow publishing house "Classic Plus" on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the poet's birth. As you can see, the theme of the poet's murder is put, as they say, "on stream".
In 1995, the tendentious and anti-Semitic book of the notorious Stanislav Kunyaev "Sergey Yesenin" was published, many of the "facts" of which do not stand up to the test for accuracy and objectivity. I will give a few examples.
Z.N. Reich, ex-wife Yesenin, later - the wife of V.Z. Meyerhold (remember, in the "Letter to a Woman": "You live / With a serious, intelligent husband ..."), were killed in 1939. With what two words does one of the fragments in Kunyaev's book begin: "There were rumors that shortly before that, in a nervous state, in public she promised to tell some truth about Yesenin's death."
It turns out that the poet's mother knew "something". What could she know, poor woman?
And here is a hint at another "version" of Yesenin's departure from life: the poet Lazar Berman, either working or collaborating with the Cheka, went to Yesenin on December 27. Did you come? I have not read anything about this, but I have been following the literature about Yesenin for more than forty years. But if he did, then what of it?
In the same spirit, the Doronin Moscow Art Theater staged the play "Version" Angleterre "- about how the Chekists killed Yesenin. The" version "about the murder of the poet is supported by V. Belov and V. Rasputin - writers, whose positions on a number of issues the democratic public strongly rejects Vladimir Soloukhin's unsubstantiated assertion that Yesenin "was killed" (Litgazeta, October 4, 1995) is also surprising. But this seemed to Soloukhin not enough: "The block was poisoned. Korolenko poisoned. "Some kind of mysticism!
A new comprehensive examination of the pathoanatomical report on Yesenin's death categorically refutes the possibility of a violent death. A special commission worked, whose members were given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with a number of documents of the former KGB.
I could cite dozens of quotes proving that in the last two years of the poet's life, the theme of death dominates Yesenin's poetry, but Galina Shipulina did it for me in the article "Myths about the death of S.A. Yesenin": "We noted about 400 cases of mentioning death in the works of S. Yesenin, of which more than a third falls on the last two years (respectively 296 and 101), and in half of these last verses the poet speaks of his death, of suicide "("Literary Azerbaijan" magazine, 1990, # 11) . However, I'll give you a few examples:
1924
Would you like to lie down
But you don't see the bed
A narrow coffin
And - that you are buried.
Himself Deceased
In the coffin I see...
.....................................
And I will go alone to unknown limits,
Rebellious soul forever subdued.
1925
Give me in the homeland of my beloved,
All loving, die in peace.
.................................................
Under a low mourning fence
I will have to lie down too.
....................................................
Favorite! Well! Well!
I saw you and I saw the earth
And this deathly trembling
How to accept a new kindness.
You don't have to be a psychiatrist to conclude that this is a disease. The poet had many manifestations of a mental disorder, several times he ended up in a psychiatric clinic. His famous lines:
Don't snore, belated trio!
Our lives have gone by without a trace.
Maybe tomorrow a hospital bed
Calm me down forever - were written at the end of 1923 in a hospital in Polyanka. By the end of 1925, Yesenin fell seriously ill and for almost a month (after that, without recovering, the poet would go from Moscow to Leningrad!) Was in a psychiatric clinic with the famous psychiatrist Gannushkin. On the eve of Yesenin's 100th birthday, 95-year-old Nadezhda Davydovna Volpin1, in an interview with Radio Liberty journalist Mark Deutsch, said that from Yesenin's behavior, actions, and conversations, she knew that he would commit suicide, but she did not know when it will happen.
In June 1925, he said to Sofya Tolstaya, still a bride: "But I will die anyway. And very soon." Anna Izryadnova, the first, unofficial, wife of the poet, the mother of his son Yuri, recalled: "... I saw him shortly before his death. He said that he had come to say goodbye. To my question:" What? Why?" - says: "I'm washing off, I'm leaving, I feel bad, I'll probably die." He asked me not to indulge, to take care of my son.
Heavy addiction to alcohol2, fear of loneliness, persecution mania3 completely exhausted the poet's strength. His consciousness was undermined by the feeling that he was losing his talent, his former metaphor, the brilliance of improvisation. The poet Sergei Gorodetsky, in his memoirs of Yesenin, agreed with the words of Anatoly Mariengof: "If Sergei decided to leave, it means that he somehow doubted his creative powers." Wolf Erlich testifies: "He looks at everyone with eyes full of hopeless grief, for there is no person who would understand better than him where poetry ends and where only poetry begins."
Joseph Utkin wrote about this in poems on the death of Yesenin:
Rebellious and naughty
You boiled to the bottom.
Who needs glasses
Glasses without wine?
Already somewhere in 1921, motifs of withering entered Esenin's poetry: "Oh, my lost freshness, / A riot of eyes and a flood of feelings!"; "My white linden has faded..."; "The golden grove dissuaded ..."; "Already you began to fade a little ..."; "Talyanka has lost her voice, / Has forgotten how to carry on a conversation," etc.
And in fact, many works of recent years were deprived of their former Yesenin power: the Song of the Great Campaign, and the Ballad of Twenty-Six, and the Poem of 36, and Leaving Russia, and even the poem Anna Snegina , in which the pictures of the revolution in the countryside left both readers and critics indifferent (for six months - not a single review!). The stanzas repeated twice (their beginning: "Once at that gate over there / I was sixteen years old ...") is a completely different matter. This is poetry.
And such verses as "I am full of thoughts about industrial power / I hear the voice of human strength", "I envy those / Who spent their lives in battle / Who defended a great idea", "For the banner of liberty / And bright labor / Ready go even as far as the Channel", only repelled discerning readers from the poet - the author of such masterpieces as "I do not regret, I do not call, I do not cry ...", "A blue fire swept ...", "A letter to mother", "The grove dissuaded golden...", "Shagane you are mine, Shagane!..", "Kachalov's dog" and others...
In addition, the poet was seized by horror from what he saw in his native land: "I was in the village. Everything is collapsing ... You have to be there yourself to understand ... The end of everything" (from the memoirs of M. Babenchikov). It is difficult with such a mood to vividly, artistically sing of socialist reality, the discord with which began in Sorokoust (1920):
Damn you, nasty guest!
Our song will not get along with you -
and continued, albeit not in whole texts, but in separate lines of different poems: "The calendar Lenin is on the wall. / Here is the life of the sisters, / Sisters, and not mine ..." ("Return to the Motherland"); "The language of fellow citizens has become like a stranger to me, / In my country I am like a foreigner" ("Soviet Russia"); "But still, oppressed by that new one..." ("Life is a deception with enchanting melancholy...").
True, about the persecution, the poet at least exaggerated. V. Kataev writes that Yesenin "was the favorite of the government"; I will quote from Vladislav Khodasevich's book "Necropolis", published in 1976 in Paris: "Anyone who said a tenth of what Yesenin said would have been shot long ago. Regarding Yesenin, the order was only given in 1924 to the police - to deliver to the police station to sober up and let go without giving the case a further move"; in Baku, Yesenin was surrounded with care and attention by the leaders of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan S.M. Kirov and P.I. Chagin. Kirov even instructed Chagin to settle Yesenin in one of the best former khan's dachas with a huge garden, fountains and all sorts of oriental intricacies, which would create "illusions of Persia in Baku": in the summer of 1925, the poet worked on "Persian motifs".
And Yesenin did not have any good, good poems about the present, except, perhaps, "Soviet Russia", because the poet "could not fully understand his time and was therefore tormented" (S.T. Konenkov). Remember the lines from "Letter to a Woman": "That's why I'm tormented that I don't understand - / Where the rock of events is taking us."
And although Yesenin wrote:
I will accept everything.
I accept everything as it is, -
his innermost sympathies were on the side of the village people, the village, on which the young proletarian state unleashed a storm of hatred and which the orthodox poet Bezymensky called for crushing "with a factory heel strike." That is why Yesenin's opposition of "hut Russia" to the "iron city" turned into a rejection of the "transformation" of the countryside in a socialist way. That is why Yesenin remained "the poet of the golden log hut." So the discord with reality is another reason for Yesenin's departure from life.
The poet was alien to this reality:
Are you reading Yesenin?
Get carried away with sadness
Life you scold bastard,
You yourself are a fool.
Such a ditty was composed by rural Komsomol members, who did not read Yesenin, did not sing - they had other idols:
From the mountain comes the peasant Komsomol,
And to the harmonica, playing zealously,
They sing ditties of Poor Demyan, 4
Cheerful cry announcing the dol.
That's the country!
What the hell am I
Shouted in verse that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here
And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.
Discord with the epoch, with the potential mass reader - is this not a tragedy for a real artist of the word?
But the main root of evil, the main reason for Yesenin's departure from life, is illness. Ilya Ilyich Schneider, a person close to Yesenin and Isadora Duncan, the author of the book "Meetings with Yesenin. Memoirs" (1974), who visited Kharkov in the late 70s, told me: "Yesenin was a very sick and deeply unhappy person."
Yesenin wanted to break out of the vicious circle of pain and doubt and start in Leningrad new life(he brought with him not only all his things, but also manuscripts, collections, records) - it didn’t work out ...
In conclusion, I would like to make the following assumption: Yesenin was fatally heading towards his inevitable death, but the reason for what happened on the night of December 27-28, 1925 was an absurd accident.
The poet Wolf Erlich lived in Leningrad, who, according to (there is no evidence!) The authors of some "versions", was a captain in the NKVD and was "assigned" to Yesenin to keep an eye on him. W. Erlich was born in 1902. In 1917 he was 15 years old. Until 1925 he lived in front of everyone in Leningrad, was in a group of Leningrad imagists, published, lived by literary work. When and where did the 23-year-old young man manage to become a captain in the NKVD?! Apparently, the writers of these rumors "heard the ringing": already in the 30s, V. Erlich served on the border, later became the commander of the reserve of the border troops. In the autumn of 1937 he was repressed, shot on November 24 of the same ill-fated year.
Yesenin and Erlich were bound by a kind and tender friendship, which Erlich will write about in his book The Right to Song, published in Leningrad in 1930, dedicated to his Moscow and Leningrad meetings with Sergei Yesenin. But Yesenin, apparently, wanted to check his friend, as he had previously checked Elizaveta Alekseevna Ustinova, who lived in Angleterre with her husband G.F. says that he will throw himself down, and watches how "aunt" reacts to this. After all, Yesenin had a kind of mania: he has no friends, there is no one to trust. A. Vronsky recalled how Yesenin in Baku sobbed on his knees: "There are no friends, no relatives ..."
For Erlich, I think Yesenin came up with another form of verification. At dawn on December 27, Yesenin could not sleep. The lines addressed to Erlich floated out of their foggy consciousness, but how to write them down: there was no ink in the issue.
Then Yesenin makes three shallow cuts on his left hand with a razor and writes eight farewell lines with blood:
Goodbye my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.
Goodbye, my friend, without a hand and a word,
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.
At about nine o'clock in the morning, Erlich came to Yesenin's room, where by that time E. Ustinova was already there, who in her memoirs "Four Days of Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin" will write:
"Soon the poet Erlich came. Sergei Alexandrovich went up to the table, tore out a poem written in blood in the morning from a notebook and thrust it into Erlich's inner pocket of his jacket.
Erlich reached for the sheet, but Yesenin stopped him: "You'll read it later, don't!"
After some time, Erlich left: apparently, he was busy with the housing affairs of Yesenin, who instructed him to find a large apartment for him and the Ustinovs. At home, Erlich changed his clothes, took off his jacket. He forgot about the leaf! He will remember him only the next day, when Yesenin will no longer be alive. In the book "The Right to a Song" there are such words of repentance: "And finally, let him forgive me my greatest guilt before him, which he did not know, but I know."
One can imagine Yesenin's train of thought: Erlich read poems on a piece of paper at home or somewhere, realized that his friend wanted to die6 and did not rush, did not rush here; so he's not my friend...
All these four days, several times a day, he reads his terrible poem "The Black Man", which could have been written by a great but sick poet:
My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick!
I don't know where this pain came from.
Is the wind whistling
Over an empty and deserted field,
Or, like a grove in September,
Showers brains with alcohol.
He read The Black Man even on the last day of his life. I imagine the outwardly inconspicuous confusion and torment of the poet, who does not understand why Erlich did not react in any way to the farewell eight lines, I feel how the poet's voice trembles when he reads these particular lines from The Black Man:
I'm alone at the window
I'm not expecting a guest or a friend
............................................
Nobody is with me.
I am alone.
"I am alone". Erlich and Ustinova left. It was not yet eight o'clock in the evening. At about ten o'clock, Yesenin went down to the porter with a request: do not let anyone into the room. What was the poet thinking about between eight and ten o'clock? And Erlich failed, and Klyuev is also good. On Friday I visited him, on Saturday, yesterday, I had him, the conversation at the last meeting turned into a quarrel, but we agreed that he, my friend and first teacher in poetry, would come today. Did not come. But Erlich, Erlich ... So, I wrote correctly: "Among the living, I have no friend." And also this: "And there is no wife or friend beyond the grave." What else could Sergei be thinking? Who knows...
1 N.D. Volpin - a poetess, translator, raised Yesenin's son Alexander Sergeevich Volpin-Yesenin - now a famous mathematician, one of the organizers of the human rights movement of the 60-70s. In 1972, under pressure from the authorities, he was forced to emigrate. Currently lives and works in Boston (USA). Published a book of poems abroad. Back
2 "In the last days of his tragic existence, Yesenin was a man no more than one hour a day. From the first, morning, glass, his consciousness was already darkening. And after the first, as an iron rule, followed - the second, third, fourth, fifth" (A. Mariengof). Back
3 "Undoubtedly, he suffered from persecution mania. He was afraid of loneliness. And it is also reported - and this is verified - that at the Angleterre Hotel, before his death, he was afraid to stay in the room. In the evenings and at night, before entering the room, he stayed for a long time and sat alone in the lobby" (A. Voronsky). Back
4 How much irony is in this inversion: not Demyan Poor, but Poor (poor!) Demyan. Yesenin's attitude to this herald of communist ideas in poetry was unambiguously negative:
I am not a canary!
I am a poet!
And not like some Demyan...
5 Remember Mayakovsky's lines from the poem "To Sergei Yesenin":
Maybe,
turn out
ink in Angleterre
veins
cut
there would be no reason.
6 In the book "Sergey Yesenin" S. Kunyaev sets rhetorical question: they say, these eight lines are "a warning about a possible parting with life"? And he replies: "No way!" Back
7 In the memoirs of Nina Garina (September issue of the Zvezda magazine for 1995) it is stated: they say, evening and night (?!) Yesenin and Ustinov were together, drinking, and between them, most likely, there was a quarrel that caused Yesenin's suicide. Another "version"!
And here is the latest "version" belonging to Viktor Kuznetsov (the newspaper "Sovershenno sekretno", 1998, 19, pp. 22-23): Yesenin did not stop at Angleterre, immediately upon arrival in Leningrad, the poet was arrested, taken to the investigation the isolation ward, where he is interrogated, beaten to death, his body is secretly transferred to the fifth issue of Angleterre, where the poet's suicide is simulated. And everyone who allegedly saw the poet in Angleterre - all without exception (?!) - are secret employees of the GPU.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to quote Vladimir Vysotsky: "I hate gossip in the form of versions..."
Share on social networks!
On December 28, 1925, Yesenin was found dead in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad by his friend G. F. Ustinov and his wife. 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 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.
Murder version
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). Proponents of this version argue that if we examine in detail the high-resolution posthumous photos of the poet, we can safely assume that the poet was severely beaten before his death. In their opinion, a well-known fact speaks in favor of this version: Sergei Yesenin, who was fond of fisticuffs from his youth, was, according to his contemporaries, a strong enough fighter who could actively resist the killers who attacked him.
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 his request, a number of examinations were carried out, which, in his opinion, led to the following conclusion: the published "versions" about the murder of the poet, followed by a staged 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 Yesenin’s murder are considered late fiction or unconvincing and other biographers of the poet.
