Russian Poets Before and After Revolution

Sergei Esenin and Isadora Duncan III

13 May Esenin already had his first public appearance in Berlin in the House of Arts, the Russian Émigrés’ place. The first thing he demanded from the public was to sing the hymn “International.” The crowd refused, whistling and screaming. Esenin started singing, Duncan joined, and his friend, poet Kusikov, joined. Few people from the public supported the weak voices of the troika. Racket continued. Then, Esenin had leaped up on the table (in the other memories- on a chair) and began to read his poems. Silence fell, followed by tumultuous applause of those present. Esenin continued his triumphant reading. (Sergei Esenin, v.5, Moscow, 1967)

In Berlin, in Russian Publishing House, he published two collections of his poems.

But visiting other European countries became a problem for the couple, and they had to address Litvinov, the Soviet ambassador in Germany:

Dear c. Litvinov!

Would you please be so kind as to help us get out of Germany and to the Hague? Promise to be correct and not sing “International” in public places.

Yours sincerely,

                                                                                                                        Sergei Esenin

                                                                                                                     Isadora Duncan

Esenin indeed behaved provocatively, especially among the émigrés, scandalizing the public, as he wrote to his Moscow friends:

In Berlin, I, sure, made a lot of scandal. Everybody thinks that I came on the Bolshevik’s money as a Chekist or Agitator. In another letter, I was ready to break their throats for Russia. [I] Became like a watchdog and couldn’t stand any swear words over our Soviet country… I was a Bolshevik in there for a long time.

July and August they spent in Belgium and Italy. Esenin was becoming bored. Nobody knew him as a poet. Journalists, photographing couple, signed:

Famous Isadora Duncan and her young Russian husband. And that’s all.

In August, they came to Paris. However, on July 6, the White Emigrant newspaper The Last News published the gloating article by his former patron, Zinaida Guippius.

Merezhkovskys followed him as the tracker dogs. They couldn’t forgive him for his Soviet power’s acceptance and his poems, such as Soviet Rus’ (archaic – Russia), Ballad of 26, a poem about 26 commissars killed by the White Army.

Esenin perceived the European mode of life rather negatively: philistinism, which is close to idiotism: 

… beside foxtrot, here hardly something else exists; they only gobble and drink and after that again -- foxtrot. I haven’t yet met a human being and don’t know how he smells…  So be it! We are poverty-stricken, we are hungry and cold, … but we have a soul… (Sergei Esenin, v. 5)

At the end of September, on the ocean liner Paris they departed to the USA and October 2 arrived in New York.

In New York, they were not permitted to leave the liner with all the passengers because they were taken as Soviet agents. However, American journalists took a lot of photos of the couple on the board. The newspapers described Esenin as a boy, looking 17 years old, beautifully built, and capable of being an athlete or soccer player.

On October 7, Duncan gave her first performance at Carnegie Hall and, after that, addressed the public with a declaration of her love for Soviet Russia, for her husband, a poet of genius like American Walter Whitman. Scandals followed. She shocked the public with her speeches, her dances in transparent dresses, and especially her dance International in a red dress as a symbol of the Russian Revolution. She gave her performances in seven cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. As a result of her anti-American behavior and “red propaganda,” the American government deprived her of American citizenship, and they had to leave the country.

At the outset, Esenin was happily amazed by the unusual skyscrapers, bridges, and industrialization of the cities but soon felt crushed, without language, bored, and solitary. And began drinking. The country lived by the dry law, and all the wine Duncan tried to buy had been of poor quality. As she said, “It was possible to kill an elephant with that wine.” But they drank a lot of it, anyway. While drinking, he finds a black friend somewhere in a park. He said to his friend Vs. Rozhdestvensky, they talked “through five to ten” – mostly through gesticulation. Esenin had added:

When a man speaks from the heart, everything is understandable. He tells me about his village, and I tell him about my Konstantinovo (the village where he was born). Very good man. So, we passed not one evening. When I had to leave, I invited him to Moscow. Come, be my brother. In America, I liked only him.

Having lived in the hotels, Esenin couldn’t see or understand America, but his letters gave a negative impression of the country. About Chicago:

It’s only possible to pen pigs into Chicago’s one hundred streets. That is why the best slaughterhouse in the world is there. Or: Master in here is a dollar; as for the art, they sneeze on it!

He complains about New York that nobody needs a soul here: O, my god, better for my eyes to eat the smoke and weep from it, but only not here, not here…  There is only Moscow in my head, only Moscow. I even felt ashamed that it’s so like in Chekhov. (Three Sisters)

For four months in America, he wrote nothing, not even one poem.

February 3 1923 they left the country by ship George Washington in direction, France, Cherbourg.

For about six months, they lived in Europe, but Esenin felt so depressed that one day, suddenly, he left for Russia without Duncan. Later, he wrote her his last letter: I often remember you with all my gratitude. (Esenin’s Archive in Central State Archive)

Soon after returning to Russia, the poet published his essay about America's Iron Mirgorod, where “mir” is a world and “gorod” is a city in Russian, meaning New York is a symbol of America. But he uses the satirical title of Gogol’s Mirgorod because he has a meager opinion of America and the Americans, even if he couldn’t talk to them because of his absence of English:

The Americans- people are rather primitive from the point of the inner culture. Dominion of Dollar ate all their aspirations to any complicating questions. An American completely immerses himself in business and doesn’t want to know anything else. Art in America is at the lowest level of development. Until that time, they couldn’t decide whether it was moral or not to erect a monument to Edgar Poe.

The second topic of his essay is the technical might of America that struck him the most: a sea of electrical posters, “electrical newspapers, the lines of which run on the heights of 20 or 25 staircases, or the huge cranes as the powerful ships- all that real mode of industrial life.

1924. After America, he understood how romantically naive he had been, writing about his village Rus’. Now, he wants to write about the new, Soviet Rus’:

                                              With all my being of a poet

                                              I will hymn

                                              Sixth part of the earth

                                             With the short name of Rus.’

In that year, he wrote one of the best poems, trying to understand his position in life, Letter to a Woman:          

                                         You told me:

                                         It’s time to part,

                                        You are tired out

                                        By my wildlife.

                                          . . .

                                        My love!

                                       You didn’t love me,

                                       You didn’t know, in the people’s throng

                                       I was like an overdrive horse in the lather

                                       Spurred by the brave horseman.

                                       Face to face

                                      You can’t see the face.

                                      The big- you can see only in the distance.

                                      The earth – a ship!

                                      But someone suddenly

                                      Directed her majestically 

                                     To the new life, to the glory.

                                    But who of us, on this big deck

                                    Not fell, not puked, or cursed?

                                   There are few of us with experienced soul

                                   Who stayed as a strong sailor.

                                  My love!

                                 I tortured you,

                                Your tired eyes

                                Depressed by me,

                                My scandals were put for show.

                              My love!  

                               It’s pleasant to tell: 

                              I evaded falling from the precipice

                              Now, in the Soviets, I am a fierce fellow traveler.

Indeed, the poet found peace for his soul and earth under his feet. In 1924, he wrote more than from 1918 to 1923. The best is “Anna Snegina,” a whole novel in verses. But his best periods of sobriety and poetry were short.  Came to light the first signs of nervous breakdown. The medical conclusion of the psychiatric clinic of the First Moscow University on March 24 indicated that he “suffers heavy attacks of psychic disorder.” Poems at those periods were funereal characters:

                                                     The snowy plain, the white moon

                                                     The shroud covered our side.

                                                     And birches in white cry in the woods.

                                                     Who perished here? Isn’t it me?

But disorderly life continued, continued and alcohol in the inner courts of Moscow buildings with his drinking companions. Fortunately for him, there was one woman who loved him deeply and tried to help him in all his situations: after returning from Paris, he lived in her apartment (his two sisters also lived there), could have a hot meal, and wrote his poetry. She managed all his literary affairs, published his poems in different magazines, compiled his poems into books, and so on. She was his best friend, to whom he trusted boundlessly, accepting her unselfish love. Galina Benislavskaya (1897-1926) was her name; she worked in the Newspaper Bednota- Poor People.

But nobody could help him in his hopeless weakness: I am finished… I am very ill… And first of all, my faint-heartedness remembered his friend, poet-imagist V. Erlikh, Esenin’s words

Understanding that he is seriously sick for all the disorders of his life, and he must

regulate his life and survive, he decided to marry.

1925. 16 of June, Esenin writes to his sister Katia that he will marry Tolstoy, and they are going to Crimea. On 18 September, the marriage of Esenin and Sophia Tolstoy (1900-1957) was registered. She was the granddaughter of our famous Lev Tolstoy. From Remembering Sergey Esenin by U. Libedinsky:

It was easy to guess that in her evident love for Sergei, her noble intention to be a friend and an assistant, and her support for the poet were always present.

Nothing positive came out of this short marriage. Although, for a while, he writes:

I am alive again, and again I hope / As in my childhood, on the best destiny.

Despite Sophia’s efforts to help Esenin, she couldn’t separate him from his drinking friends; he couldn’t adapt to regular family life; even the heavy old furniture with many family portraits, especially Lev Tolstoy and the folios of his books, irritated him tremendously.  He didn’t love Tolstoy, couldn’t stand his philosophy, made fun of his description of muzhik (peasant), and very disrespectfully treated his portraits. (Sophia Vinogradsky, How S. Esenin Lived.)

But in the intervals of his unfortunate life, he worked on the best poem of all his artist’s life– Black Man. The conception of this tragic poem occurred to Esenin during

his life in Europe, and he worked on it during his two last years. Poem begins:

                                                      My friend, my friend,

                                                        I am very –very ill.

                                                        I don’t know from where this pain came.

.                                                                            ………

                                                         My head flaps by its ears,

                                                         As a bird by its wings

                                                         Black man,

                                                         Black man,

                                                         Black man

                                                         Sits on my bed,

                                                         Black man

                                                         Doesn’t let me sleep the whole night.

                                                                                    …….

                                                         Black man

                                                         Reads me about a life of  

                                                        Some rogue and lost

                                                        Compressing my soul with depression and fear.

Black man tells this sick man a story about him, this sick man, how

                                             [He] Has been graceful,

                                                       Besides, a poet.

                                                       And some woman,

                                                       Forty plus years

                                                       Called a bad girl

                                                        And his darling.

The end of this long night:

                                                     I am furious, enraged

                                                     And my cane flies

                                                     Straight to his mug,

                                                     Into the bridge of his nose…

                                                             ………

It is dawning. Our heroe arises from his bed:                         

                                                    I stand in my top hat.

                                                    I am alone…

                                                   And broken mirror…

Everything what happened in the poem happened in his life.

Marriage with Tolstoy was over in two months with his drunk beating her and his conclusion into psychiatric hospital. When he came to himself, he decided to go to Leningrad in the hope that this city has been so lucky for him, so triumphant. So, one night he had ran from the hospital and took a train to Leningrad.

25 December. He took a room in the hotel Engleter. First day he spent the evening drinking beer with his Moscow friends who came to the city for the official meeting. The next day, he wrote a poem in his blood because he couldn’t find the inkwell and a pen in the room, as he told his Leningrad friend V. Erlikh, asking him to give a poem later to his closest friend Mariengof. The last poem:

                                                  Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.

                                                   My dear, you are in my heart.

                                                   Preordained parting

                                                   Promises our meeting ahead.

                                                   Goodbye, my friend, without my hand and word,

                                                   Don’t long for me, and don’t grieve your brows

                                                   In that life, to die is nothing new,

                                                   But to live, of course, is not new either.

On the night between December 27 and 28, he hung himself in his room. With the rope around his neck, he tied himself to the radiator’s pipe in his room. He died of broken neck vertebrae. He was 30 years old.

Esenin and Duncan shared the exact cause of death from a broken neck, but for different reasons; her long scarf was caught in the wheel of her sports car while she was driving in Nice, France. She was 50 years old.

Ps. Galina Benislavskaya shot herself on the Esenin grave exactly on the same day of his suicide one year later.