Sergueï Essénine

Sergueï Alexandrovitch Essénine (in Cyrillic СергейАлександровичЕсенин, also transcribed in the form Essenine or Serge Essénine or even Esenin ) is a Poète marking Russia twentieth century. Born on September 21st 1895 (on October 3rd according to the Gregorian Calendar adopted in Russia as of February 1918), it put an end to its days the December 28th 1925 with Leningrad.

Biography

Sergueï Essénine, born in central Russia, in the borough of Konstantinovo, government of Riazan, was the third child of the Essénine couple whose two oldest daughters had died in low age. Alexandre Essénine, his father, working like butcher's assistant with Moscow, and his mother, Tatiana Titov, being occupied to Riazan, it passed the major part of its early childhood to Konstantinovo in the residence of his grandparents. Admitted at the elementary school in 1904, it leaves it in 1909, to be placed, in September of this year, as intern at the religious school of Spas-Kliopiki. Its first towards known go back to this period, written as of 1909. It was then 14 years old.

During the summer 1912, having completed its schooling at the religious school, it joined his/her father with Moscow, works one month in the same shop as him before being made engage in a publisher. It will remain there until spring 1913. Becoming aware of its gifts of poet, it also starts to attend the Muscovite artistic mediums. In spring 1913, it enters as corrector one of most important printing works of Moscow and valley its first contacts with the working social democrat revolutionary mediums of which it distributes the newspapers, which is worth to him to be card-indexed by the police force.

In September 1913, it is registered at the popular university Chaniavski to follow there courses of history and of literature and in January 1914, it is put as a household with one of his colleagues, correct like him, Anna Izriadvona, while its first poems start to appear in reviews and in the columns of " The Way of Vérité" , ancestor of the Pravda.

The declaration of war of the Germany in July 1914, surprises it in the Crimea. At the beginning of August, it returned to Moscow and resumes a work with the Tchernychev printing works, which it leaves very quickly to devote to the writing, also giving up his/her Izriadvona partner who has just given him its first child.

It passes most of the year 1915 to Pétrograd, which it regards as the center of the Russian cultural life, where Alexandre Blok, large poet of the moment, introduces it into the literary circles. It binds to it friendship with Nikolaï Kliouïev, meets Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Maïakovski, Nikolaï Goumiliov, Marina Tsvetaiéva, which appreciates its worms. Then begin for him long series of readings and recitals which will perdureront until its death.

The year 1916 sees appearing its first collection Radounitsa . It is also the year of its meeting with the poet Symbolist Andreï Biély, leader of the group of the Scythians, near of the Socialist-revolutionists, and that of his mobilization in the hospital train n°143, an assignment which it obtains thanks to his protections from the Féodorovna large-duchess or of the tsarina who heard her recitals. More inclined with poetry than with the war, it bails out 20 days in August of stop for delay at the time of a return of permission. He will desert in spring from 1917 from an army in perdition after release from the Revolution and abdication from the tsar Nicolas II. And it is overflowing of enthusiasm that it takes party for the revolution, taking an active part in meetings, writing in the newspapers. In July, he marries Zinaïda Raïkh, secretary with the Cause of the People , which will give him two children, a boy (Konstantin, born in 1920) and a girl before their divorce in 1921. They pass the end of the year together to travel in the North of Russia. At the time of the Revolution Bolshevik of October, they are in Pétrograd and in the months which follow, the poet will write two long poems: Transfiguration and Inonia where its mystical and revolutionary dream of another Russia is expressed.

In spring 1918, the poet settles in Moscow, where Golouben appears, its second collection, and it takes again service in a publisher. At the end of 1918, it expresses its design of poetry through a test: the Keys of Marie , founds the Ordre of Imaginistes with the poets Anatoli Mariengof, Vadim Cherchénévitch and Ivnov, and they organize specific events in cities (in particular Moscow), such as for example covering poems the walls of the Monastère of Passion. He applies to accede to the Communist party Bolshevik, but he is refused for his lack of discipline and his individualism.

The year 1919 is marked many recitals, demonstrations and publications imaginists, the opening of their bookstore, but also by the political competitions with the report heading, the appearance of food shortages in a saving in war, a spectacle of desolation which inspires its poem to him the mare-wrecks . It is the awakening for Essénine which the Revolution will not be able to answer waitings of its dreams.

Essénine and Anatoli Mariengof travel together through Russia a good part of the year 1920, giving recitals in Ukraine, in Moscow and in several cities of the the Caucasus. Their passage is also marked very often of scandals and brawls related to the drinking bouts of Essénine which is excluded from the Union panrusse of the poets in May following a brawl with the poet Ivan Sokolov, and is imprisoned one week in Moscow mid-September. Three collections appear this year: Treridnitsa , Triptych , Transfiguration , a fourth Confession of a hooligan in January 1921, and its great dramatic poem Pougatchev in December. In spring 1921, Essénine travels to the Turkestan and meets the country poet Alexandre Chariaïvets in May with Tachkent. It spends the summer to Moscow always so agitated by the political competitions: Maxime Gorki leaves Russia; the poet Nikolaï Goumiliov is shot. At the beginning of October, it meets Isadora Duncan, eighteen years its elder, invited by the Soviet government. He will marry it on May 2nd 1922, before leaving with her for the Europe and the America where the business manager of Isadora Duncan arranged a round to him.

He publishes two new collections and especially the “Confession of a hooligan” in 1921. Although it has a very intense social life, it feels a certain loneliness and writes that, generally, a lyric poet should not live very a long time. Duncan and Essénine travel both to Europe and it is during this period that Essénine knows a serious nervous breakdown. Its physical and mental health declines and it starts to speak about suicide. At the time of its stay in Paris, it is prone to an serious attack due to alcohol. It is allowed in a psychiatric hospital. In 1923, it goes back to Moscow and leaves Isadora. Nauseated of all and very depressed, suffering of hallucinations and mined by alcoholism, it cannot find any help in the religion, on the other hand, when it writes, it is sober. Unfortunately it feels more and more an incapacity to write like a true poet: “ I do not write any more poetry, I make only worms ”. In 1923, it publishes “Poems of a maker of scandals”. It enters in private clinic in 1925, leaves it later one month and starts again with drinking then sets out again for Leningrad. It is in this city that it hung with a pipe in its hotel room “England” the December 28th 1925. It left a poem written with its own blood:

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye,

My tender friend whom I keep in my heart.
This separation predestined
Is promise one to re-examine next.

Goodbye, my friend, without gesture, without word,

would be neither sad, nor sorrow.
Mourir in this life is not new,
But to live, of course is not newer.

This version - official - death of Essénine however was put at evil by several its close relations and cannot be taken as the expression of the plain truth. Publication, the shortly after its death, of the two stanzas written by Essénine with its blood Marie perfectly with the image which one wants to then give of the madness and the premeditated suicide of the poet, but it should be known that this practice curious to use its blood to write was not an innovation at his place and that it found convenient to proceed thus when he did not have any more ink. The assumption of the assassination was advanced by his/her friends and of the researchers producing a certain number of at the very least disconcerting indices: a bâclées investigation and an medical expertise concluding too quickly with the suicide, one hour of death not established, one fixed the 27 at the end of the evening, another contradictory, in the small hour of the 28, the traces of blows on the face of the poet, the presence of government officials this night to the Hotel of England, the disappearance of the witnesses having attested his suicide, the assassination of one of its wives, Zinaïda Raïkh, in 1939 whereas she claimed all to say to Stalin on the death of Essénine and others still like the fact that the famous ones towards writings of the blood of the victim were not in the room of committed suicide but had been given to his/her friend poet Wolf Erlich in the morning of the 27. The mystery of died of the poet remains whole. In these disturbed times where the artists who were not any more in agreement with the mode committed suicide a little too easily, when they were not shot or were not sent in concentration camps, Essénine it really gave itself death or one assassinated it, we will probably never know it. What on the other hand is well shown, it is the wave of suicides which the advertisement of its death caused in its admirors who were already numerous at the time.

In the books of years 1990 devoted to this mysterious death, other facts come to disturb the assumption of the suicide: first of all, the pipe on which Essénine was hung was vertical, which was not at all practical for commetre the suicide and then, the most disconcerting element resulting from its file: the hands of the poet carried the apparent marks, as if it were bound…

Principal works

  • Radounitsa (1916).

  • Golouben (1918).
  • Inonia (1918).
  • Keys of Marie (1919).
  • the mare-wrecks (1919).
  • Treriadnitsa (1920).
  • Triptych (1920).
  • Tranfiguration (1920).
  • Confession of a hooligan (1921).
  • Pougatchev (1921).
  • Moscow of the cabarets (1924).
  • the black man (1925).

External bond

  • Biography
  • perso Page on Essenine

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