...Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin was born on 21 September 1895 in the Russian village of Konstantinovo in Riazan' province. Four years earlier his father and mother, Aleksandr Nikitich Esenin and Tat'iana Fedorovna (Titova) Esenina, respectively, had been united in a marriage arranged by their parents. Esenin was the first of the couple's children to survive infancy. His father found work in a butcher shop in Moscow, but his mother could not get along with her mother-in-law, so she left for several years, entrusting her parents with Esenin's care and upbringing. During this period Tat'iana Fedorovna bore an illegitimate son, Aleksandr Ivanovich Razguliaev. As a child Esenin, who rarely saw his parents, was virtually an orphan. Raised in the spirit of Russian Orthodoxy by his well-to-do maternal grandparents, he was particularly influenced by his grandmother's storytelling and visits to monasteries; his grandfather's chanting of spiritual songs; and the passing minstrels, cripples, and wanderers (or stranniki, with whom he later associated the persona of his prerevolutionary verse). In 1904, after several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a divorce, Esenin's mother returned to her husband (by this time her mother-in-law had passed away), and the boy was forced to go back to his parents' household, where he felt like a stranger. Aleksandr Nikitich and Tat'iana Fedorovna subsequently had many more children, but only two survived: Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Esenina (born in 1905) and Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Esenina (born in 1911).

In 1904-1909 Esenin attended the four-year primary village school and graduated with honors. He then studied and boarded at a church-affiliated teachers' training school (connected with the church) at Spas-Klepiki. His first conscious efforts at writing poetry had taken place at this school, and he was given encouragement and constructive criticism by Evgenii Mikhailovich Khitrov, his literature teacher. In his native village Esenin participated in youth gatherings at the home of his priest and teacher Ivan Iakovlevich Smirnov (who had married his parents and baptized him), where the village intelligentsia also performed music and plays and recited poetry.

At the school in Spas-Klepiki, Esenin acquired an excellent grounding in the Church Slavonic language and graduated in 1912 with a pedagogical degree, specializing in language and literature. Instead of becoming a village teacher, however, he moved to Moscow in 1912. He first worked at a butcher shop with his father and later found a job as a proofreader at Sytin's Printing House (the largest one in Russia) and at the Printing House of Chernyshev-Kobelkov. During this period he participated actively in the Surikov literary-musical circle, a gathering of poets and writers of peasant and worker backgrounds, and grew marginally involved in underground political activities. In September 1913 he began attending evening classes at the historical-philological division of Shaniavsky University. He finished three semesters, intending to return and earn his degree, but he never did. Founded by Al'fons L'vovich Shaniavsky, an arts patron of Polish descent, the short-lived Shaniavsky People's University was established in 1905 for students from the peasantry; the university officially opened only in 1913. Many of its faculty were drawn from Moscow University, and its graduates included the noted philosopher Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. Above all at this time Esenin was interested in Russian literature, and among his professors were renowned figures such as Pavel Nikitich Sakulin and Iulii Aikhenval'd. In addition, he met Anna Romanovna Izriadnova--another student at the same university, as well as an employee at Sytin's--and she soon became his common-law wife. Their only son, Iurii, was born on 21 December 1914.

Esenin had started to write poetry at an early age; in one memoir he mentions writing verses at the age of nine. Folk and religious-spiritual songs were primary influences. In 1912 he prepared his first collection of verse. Bol'nye dumy (Sick Thoughts) was not published during his lifetime; it first appeared in V. G. Bazanov's Esenin i russkaia poeziia (Esenin and Russian Poetry, 1964). But not long after he wrote it, his literary career commenced. In January 1914 his first publication, the poem "Bereza" (The Birch Tree), appeared in the children's magazine Mirok (Small World) under the pseudonym Ariston. It was quickly followed by other publications.

Yet, Esenin was dissatisfied with his entry into literary life in Moscow, so he went to Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) and arrived there on 9 March 1915 with sixty original poems. Soon he met Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok , who noted of Esenin's lyrics that they were "fresh, pure, many-voiced." Blok introduced Esenin to Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky , who helped found the Acmeist literary movement. Esenin quickly became part of the literary scene in Petrograd, where he was acknowledged as a curious and refreshing peasant poet--a living and spontaneous voice of the people. He made frequent appearances at literary salons and recited his poetry in peasant costume; sometimes at these readings he also played the balalaika. Around this time he met Aleksei Mikhailovich Remizov and Nikolai Alekseevich Kliuev , the latter of whom became his mentor for several years. Esenin and Kliuev were mutually drawn toward the Russian peasantry, whose spiritual and artistic culture they had been experiencing firsthand since childhood. In one of his autobiographies Esenin claims that he learned lyricism from Blok, Kliuev, and Andrei Bely .

In April 1915 the weekly Golos zhizni (The Voice of Life) published four of Esenin's poems together with an initial review by the poet Zinaida Nikolaevna Hippius , who emphasized its verbal qualities, the unity between sound and meaning in his verse, and its down-to-earth simplicity and precision. This appearance in print was swiftly followed by many more publications. Between May and September he stayed in Konstantinovo, wrote many poems, started to assemble his first book, Radunitsa (Commemoration of the Dead, 1916), and wrote his prose piece "Iar" (The Steep Bank, published in the journal Severnye zapiski, 1916). He also undertook a collection of local folklore, but its publication was never realized. The folk roots of his poetics originated from both firsthand personal experience and the study of influential works such as Aleksandr Nikolaevich Afanas'ev's Poeticheskie vozzreniia slavian na prirodu (The Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature, 1865-1869). Esenin himself referred to his basic poetic outlook as dvoinoe zrenie (split vision) and dvoinoe chuvstvovanie (split sensation). In his words (from a 1921 letter to R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik [Razumnik Vasil'evich Ivanov], the literary critic and intellectual historian), such images "have created our Great Russian out of that double life when he lived an existence split between the church and everyday secular activities." Of special significance for Esenin are a range of folkloric genres: spiritual, historical, ritual, and lyrical songs, riddles, the chastushka (usually a two-line or four-line ditty), and the bylina (a Russian traditional heroic poem). He attenuated the influence of folklore on his work, however, by interweaving it with the influences of church writings and literature.

In the spring of 1915 Esenin joined "Krasa" (Beauty), a short-lived literary group that emphasized folk art and the glorious past of Russia. It included among its participants Remizov, Kliuev, Boris Alekseevich Verkhoustinsky, Aleksandr Vasil'evich Shiriaevets, and--to a lesser extent--Viacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov and Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh. Esenin was also a member of the literary-artistic society "Strada" (Toil), to which Remizov, Kliuev, Gorodetsky, Pimen Ivanovich Karpov, and Ieronim Ieronimovich Iasinsky also belonged. These organizations were the first whereby the so-called new peasant artists arrived at their artistic points of view.

In February 1916 the publisher Averianov put out Esenin's first book of poetry, Radunitsa , a meticulously selected volume--a chef d'oeuvre of poetry thematically tied together by his manifest love for the motherland. Radunitsa, as well as Esenin's subsequent mature and original poetry, makes apparent the trademark aesthetic view that he refers to as "the binding knot of nature with the essence of man" in his treatise Kliuchi Marii (Mary's Keys, 1920). Nature in the broad metaphorical sense encompasses both Esenin's native Russia and the internal world of his lyric hero. The spiritualized and anthropomorphized Russian nature reflects the primordial unity of man and nature under the life-giving presence of its Creator. Nature is perceived as a bright cathedral in which the divine liturgy takes place. In this setting a black wood grouse summons worshipers to vespers; sparrows read a psalter; birches stand like enormous candles; willows are likened to humble nuns clicking their rosaries; the wind is personified both as an adolescent and as a skhimnik (a monk). The poet himself participates in this liturgy as a humble monk in a skullcap; he prays before a haystack, or before the scarlet dawn, and takes communion by a stream. Man is born from nature, bears its likeness, and reaches toward the heavenly and the spiritual. Esenin's characters Mikola (a folk rendering of the name of St. Nicholas), Jesus Christ, and the Blessed Virgin act as intercessors. Even the imagery of his love lyrics originates in the nature of the Russian village. Feminine images have attributes of nature--the poet's beloved is likened to a birch tree, and her hair is a sheaf of oats whose concrete physical beauty grows into an abstract heavenly beauty.

Against this natural background Esenin paints a vivid picture of village life through references to everyday objects, costumes, traditions, and the spiritual realm. He reprises the peasant's worldview as it is preserved in the folk culture of the Russian village: the peasantry unites the official Russian Orthodox religion with the ancient Russian system of folk beliefs that had become incorporated into Christianity during the nearly one thousand years of Orthodoxy. Esenin's contemporary critics unanimously hailed him a true national talent. They likened his fresh approach to the stylized Russian tradition of icon painting. Accordingly, his poetic style embraced a mixture of dialectal and Church Slavonic elements. Some of the dialect was troublesome even for his Russian contemporaries, so in the second edition of Radunitsa he consciously edited out some of the most obscure words and left in only those that could be understood easily from context.

During World War I this intensely Russian poetry attracted the attention of the governing circles. By the end of 1916 Esenin had been introduced to various members of high society, including Colonel Dmitrii Nikolaevich Loman, who organized literary-artistic events with a patriotic, monarchist, and religious slant in the Fedorov Gorodok district in Tsarskoe Selo; these gatherings were sponsored by the "Obshchestvo dlia Vozrozhdeniia Khudozhestvennoi Rusi" (Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus' [the Old Russian name for "Russia"]). At these events Esenin and Kliuev dressed in old Russian costumes reminiscent of the clothing seen in the paintings of Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, a nineteenth-century Russian artist, and recited their own poetry and folktales. When Esenin was called up for military duty on 25 March 1916, his friends interceded, and he was posted as a reserve medical orderly, assigned to work variously on a field train and at a military infirmary.

From the time it began in April 1916 under Colonel Loman at Tsarskoe Selo, Esenin's military service was hardly burdensome. Therefore, he was able to perform his service yet remain active in the literary life of Petrograd. On 22 July he read some of his poetry at the Tsarskoe Selo hospital in honor of the name days of the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna and Grand Princess Maria Nikolaevna. Esenin gave the welcoming congratulation by reciting his poem "V bagrovom zareve zakat shipuch i penen" ("The sunset in a glow of crimson foams and hisses . . . ," first published in the newspaper Volzhskaia kommuna [Volga Commune], 1960) and the narrative poem "Rus'" (published in Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh [New Journal for All], 1915). The empress rewarded him with a gift of two books, and he also received an icon of his protector, St. Sergius of Radonezh. Esenin is believed to have dedicated his second collection of poetry, Goluben' (1918; translated as Azure, 1991), which carried on the patriarchal peasant tradition of Radunitsa, to the empress. Later in October he and Kliuev declined Colonel Loman's proposal that they write a book of poetry on the topic of Fedorov Gorodok, and Esenin was arrested and imprisoned for twenty days. In March he was transferred to military school and afterward joined Aleksandr Fedorovich Kerensky's army, from which he subsequently deserted.

When the February Revolution broke out, Esenin was exuberant and hopeful that their time had come. He dreamed of the establishment of a peasant paradise, a cosmic renewal of Russia based on her national characteristics. During 1917-1918 he wrote a set of ornamental narrative poems that reflected his immediate, spontaneous, and constantly changing perception of revolutionary events: "Tovarishch" (The Comrade, published in the Petrograd edition of the newspaper Delo naroda [The People's Cause], 29 May 1917); "Pevushchii zov" (The Singing Call, Delo naroda, Petrograd, 28 July 1917); "Otchar'" (Peasant Father of Rus', Delo naroda, Petrograd, 10 September 1917); "Prishestvie" (Advent, published in the Petrograd newspaper Znamia truda [The Banner of Labor], 24 February 1918); "Oktoikh" (Octoechos, Znamia truda, Petrograd, 7 April 1918); "Iordanskaia golubitsa" (The Dove of the Jordan, published in the newspaper Izvestiia riazanskogo gubernskogo soveta rabochikh i krest'ianskikh deputatov [News of the Riazan' Provincial Council of Worker and Peasant Deputies], 18 August 1918); "Pantokrator" (God the Almighty, published in the newspaper Sovetskaia strana [Soviet Land], 17 February 1919); and "Nebesnyi barabanshchik" (The Heavenly Drummer, published in Kiev in the journal Krasnyi ofitser [Red Officer], July 1919)...

In late July he traveled to the Russian North (particularly to the cities of Arkhangel'sk, Solovki, and Murmansk) in the company of the poet Aleksei Alekseevich Ganin and Zinaida Nikolaevna Raikh, a secretary and typist for the journal Delo naroda. During this trip, on 4 August 1917, Esenin's only church wedding took place. In the Vologda region, in the Church of Kirik and Ulita, he married Zinaida, with whom he had two children--Tat'iana (born 29 May 1918) and Konstantin (born 3 February 1920)--before the couple divorced on 5 October 1921. (Later, Zinaida became a famous actress and the wife of the celebrated theatrical producer Vsevolod Emil'evich Meierkhol'd. Her life came to a violent end in 1939.) The love-hate relationship between Esenin and Zinaida is best summarized in the 1924 poem "Pis'mo k zhenshchine" (Letter to a Woman, published in Zaria Vostoka [Dawn of the East], 1924): "Beloved! You did not love me, / Didn't know: in the milling crowd / I was like a horse driven to fury / By spurs, and foaming at the mouth." In September 1917 they settled in Petrograd--the only time Esenin had his own home--and he was finally experiencing a calm, though brief, period of domestic happiness, which spurred a tireless bout of creativity. The October Revolution ensued during this tranquil time in his personal life. He greeted this second revolution as enthusiastically as he did the first one--but, in his own words, with a "peasant bias." In a letter dated 7 February 1922 and written while sailing on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, he wrote to his friend Aleksandr Borisovich Kusikov, "I am ceasing to understand what revolution I belonged to. I can see only one thing--that it was neither the February nor the October, evidently. In us there was and is concealed a kind of November."

In February he met Bely (pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev ) and Konstantin Andreevich Somov. Esenin joined the writers of "Skify" (The Scythians), a diverse leftist group associated with the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The formation of the Scythians was inspired by the Christian Utopian Socialism of Ivanov-Razumnik; the group included not only Bely, Remizov, Kliuev, and Esenin but also Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin and Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin . Personally, Esenin was strongly influenced by Ivanov-Razumnik's mystical and Messianic socialist ideas. His poems that appeared in two almanacs produced by the group implemented a new theme: rebellion and curses against all aspects of the old patriarchal Russia--including religion. In these poems Esenin also proclaims himself the new prophet of a new faith. This theme culminated in the long, blasphemous poem "Inoniia" (1920), the title of which is a word made up by him, meaning a "different country." In "Inoniia" he bluntly rejects Christ, Holy Russia, and his search for a new God.

Esenin never became a permanent fixture of the Petrograd literary scene, and he returned to Moscow in the spring of 1918 to seek a fresh start in his literary career through new artistic alliances and affiliations. He had been publishing in a variety of newspapers, journals, and magazines, but his creative muse did not work in isolation. Thus, with Klychkov, Petr Vasil'evich Oreshin, and the journalist Lev Iosifovich Povitsky, Esenin established a short-lived cooperative publishing enterprise, "Moskovskii Trudovoi artel' khudozhnikov slova" (Moscow Artel of Artists of the Word), which the men also invited Bely to join. In 1918-1919 three volumes of Esenin's work were published by this artel: Preobrazhenie: Stikhotvoreniia (Transfiguration: Poems, 1918), Sel'skii chasoslov: Poemy (Village Book of Hours: Narrative Poems, 1918), and his literary treatise Kliuchi Marii. In the last work he attempts to sum up his poetic and philosophical outlook. For the first time he gives a complex and mystical account of what inspires his poetics, which reflect various influences--among them, his fascination with the image. He thus demonstrates himself to be a true Imagist, or imaginist. He distinguishes three types of images according to their complexity: zastavochnyi (embellishing), korabel'nyi (shipborn), and angelicheskii (angelic)...

On 14 October 1920 Esenin was arrested--along with two friends, Kusikov and his brother Ruben Borisovich Kusikov--by Cheka agents after being denounced by an anonymous informant. He was subsequently released after the intervention of Iakov Bliumkin, a secret-police official. On 4 November, Esenin participated in a literary evening called "The Judging of the Imagists," at which he met Galina Benislavskaia, who was to play a crucial role in the last years of his life...

By the early 1920s Esenin was involved with Isadora Duncan, the celebrated American dancer, who was approximately eighteen years his senior. They were living together at a mansion on the Prechistenka that the Bolshevik government had given her as a venue for her school of dance. On 2 May 1922 they married so that Isadora could take Esenin with her abroad. Eight days later, boarding a small airplane bound for Königsberg, Germany, they set out on a trip that lasted more than fourteen months. Esenin had been planning this trip abroad to get away from his life in Russia, to prove his poetic talent, and to become not only the best poet in Russia but to gain worldwide fame. Isadora had to fulfill contracts for dance performances in the United States. The first major city was Berlin, where Esenin encountered for the first time the émigré artistic world. Just as he did with the Imagists in Russia, in Berlin he recited his poetry, engaged in disputes, and wound up involved in a series of notorious scandals. From Germany he traveled with Isadora to Belgium, France, and Italy, where they passed a couple of happy months; Esenin tried to quit drinking and recover from his life of excess. A French translation of Ispoved' khuligana was published in Paris in September 1922, and in November the first volume of his collected works came out in Berlin.

At the end of September, Esenin and Isadora sailed from Le Havre onboard the SS Paris, bound for the United States. They arrived there on 1 October but encountered difficulty at first in gaining entry--they were suspected of being Bolsheviks. The couple spent four stressful months in the United States, visiting Boston, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Louisville, Kansas, St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. Ultimately, Isadora had to cut short her tour because of her repeated idealistic pro-Soviet outbursts during her performances; she also lost her American citizenship because of her suspected Communist sympathies.

Esenin felt much more isolated, homesick, and bored as the husband of a well-known dancer in the United States than he had in Europe, and he had little contact with Russian émigrés (apart from his involvement in a notorious scandal at the New York apartment of the Russian-Jewish poet Mani Leib). The "New World" made him much more disillusioned than western Europe, and his longing for Russia grew only stronger. His relationship with Isadora became more violent and abusive. Despite the restrictions of Prohibition, both of them were drinking again, and Esenin's mental and physical health were deteriorating rapidly. Emotionally and financially drained after the fiasco of the tour, they left the United States on 3 February 1923. His impressions of the trip are summed up in the essay "Zheleznyi Mirgorod" (Iron Mirgorod), which appeared that year in the newspaper Izvestiia (The News).

Esenin had worked little during Isadora's American tour, although he had produced a few poems that were published in Stikhi skandalista--including versions of the darkest poem in the collection, "Chernyi chelovek" (Man in Black), and of the play in verse Strana negodiaev (The Country of Scoundrels). Strana negodiaev, which remained essentially unfinished, marks Esenin's attempt (one of many) to come to terms with the revolution. This complicated and deliberately ambivalent work viciously condemned communism and caused serious problems for both Esenin and his readers. The extended narrative poem "Chernyi chelovek" is a most shocking encounter between the poet and his alter ego, Death personified in the haunting image of the man in black at the boundary between reality and hallucination. This image, influenced by Masonic associations, was deeply rooted in the innermost reaches of the poet's personality and foreshadowed the tragic end to his life. "Chernyi chelovek" culminates in a scene that shows the persona alone with a broken mirror as he returns to his senses; the moment harks back to Esenin's many drunken outbursts that occurred during his travels. He worked on this poem for many years, publishing a version of it in Stikhi skandalista; the final manuscript is dated 12-13 November 1925.

Eager to return to Soviet Russia after visiting the United States, Esenin traveled there via France and Germany, where all the problems that had surfaced on his trip with Isadora intensified. They arrived in Moscow on 3 August 1923 and separated a few days later (never officially divorcing). He moved back in with Mariengof, but the two men slowly grew apart. Esenin also distanced himself from the Imagist movement, which soon disbanded. During the autumn of 1923 he moved into Benislavskaia's apartment, and in time she stood by him as his guardian angel, both in his life and literary work. She was well situated in political circles and worked for the newspaper Bednota (Poverty). Furthermore, upon his return to the U.S.S.R. Esenin was considered one of the "fellow travelers," and his poetry was published regularly in Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky 's influential journal Krasnaia Nov' (Red Virgin Soil). He was looking forward to meeting with peasant poets and resumed his relationship with Kliuev. In addition, Esenin desperately wanted to start his own journal and even met with Leon Trotsky about the publication of an almanac of works by peasant writers. The invitation to take charge of such a publication was extended, but the political and financial responsibility would have been Esenin's, and so he declined.

Since the early 1920s Esenin's poetry had undergone more profound change. Revisiting the theme of the motherland, which had been the cornerstone of his poetic outlook, he could come to no comforting conclusions about its postrevolutionary state. He felt like an outcast in his native country, where he and his poetry were no longer needed, and he was consequently forced to admit that he did not want to be a part of the new Soviet state. In terms of his poetic development, the book Moskva kabatskaia (Moscow of the Taverns, 1924) closely conveys Esenin's internal descent toward deepest, darkest depression, with which he struggled until he died. The poems of Moskva kabatskaia, intimately and sincerely articulated, form a counterpoint to the emotional upheaval caused by the false hopes raised by the Bolshevik Revolution. They convey his psychological experiences--revulsion, disenchantment, and sadness--which found outward expression in alcoholism, vices, and debauchery; subconsciously, he was protesting against revolutionary events. By the time Moskva kabatskaia appeared, Esenin's life had fallen apart simultaneously on every level--politically, personally, and artistically...

On 20 November 1923 Esenin, Klychkov, Oreshin, and Ganin were arrested and charged with anti-Semitism; this event became known as "the Case of the Four Poets." On 10 December, after lengthy deliberations, the "Court of the Comrades" (a committee consisting of poets and writers headed by well-known Party poet and publicist Dem'ian Bedny in the publishing house Dom pechati) decided that the poets could continue their writing activities. The arrest and interrogations took their toll on Esenin's health, and on 17 December 1923 he entered a sanatorium for nervous disorders, spending more than six weeks there. He left only once--for the funeral of Vladimir Lenin on 23 January 1924. Between January and April of that year four separate criminal cases against him were proceeding. In February 1924 he was admitted to the Sheremet'ev Hospital and a month later was transferred to the Kremlin Hospital.

Fearful of the future at this time, Esenin made desperate attempts to write poetry that would please the new regime and fulfill the "social contract." As a result he wrote "Pesn' o velikom pokhode" (Song of the Great Campaign, 1925), "Poema o 36" (Poem of the 36, 1925), and "Ballada o dvadtsati shesti" (Ballad of the Twenty-Six, published in Bakinskii rabochii [The Baku Worker], 1924), a narrative poem that had been commissioned for the unveiling of a monument to the twenty-six commissars that were shot by British interventionists in 1918. He even tried to write about Lenin in "Guliai-pole" (Stroller in the Field, published in Al'manakh arteli pisatelei [Almanac of Writers' Artel], 1924) and "Kapitan zemli" (The Captain of the Earth, published in Zaria Vostoka, 1926). These verses lacked his original poetic voice, however, and he was dissatisfied with their aesthetic quality...

Suffering at this time from a severe persecution complex, Esenin fled Moscow after being released from the Kremlin hospital. He left the management of his literary publications in the hands of Benislavskaia, who had excellent party and publishing connections. During this time his two sisters, Ekaterina and Aleksandra, moved to Moscow and settled in Benislavskaia's apartment. From September 1924 through March 1925 he traveled in the south, stopping in Baku, Tbilisi, and Batumi and still cherishing his longtime dream of visiting Persia... After almost six months of travel Esenin was happily reunited with his sisters. His mother traveled to Moscow to visit them, and Ekaterina became engaged to the poet Vasilii Fedorovich Nasedkin. Esenin spent most of March 1925 in Moscow and became romantically involved with Sof'ia Andreevna Tolstaia, a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy . Despite his declining health--he had undergone hospitalization twice while traveling in Georgia--he returned to the Caucasus at the end of the month, around the time of Ganin's execution... In a final attempt to make his life normal and resolve his homelessness, Esenin decided to marry Tolstaia, who had a radically different personality, and their marriage was registered on 18 September 1925 (despite Esenin's never divorcing Isadora). He had been living in her apartment since June, however, and they took their "honeymoon" from late July to early September in a suburb of Baku. With great love Sof'ia made every effort to stabilize Esenin's life; she worked closely with him, wrote down his poetry, and prepared and corrected his manuscripts for publication. Her devoted attention to his poetic legacy continued until her death in 1958. In Moscow, Esenin and Sof'ia prepared his collected works for publication by Gosizdat (State Publishing House). The first volume appeared on 31 March 1926, three months after his death.

Esenin's mental and physical state deteriorated still further during his marriage to Tolstaia, and he essentially developed a split personality: either he was sober, or he was drunk and sick. Preoccupied with the notion that his death was imminent, he grew increasingly obsessed with the Man in Black in "Chernyi chelovek" and rewrote the eponymous poem in November. His marriage to Sof'ia ended after a couple of months--it was the shortest of his unions. For reasons of health and his fear of persecution by the police, Esenin was admitted to the psychiatric clinic of the First Moscow State University on 26 November for a two-month term of treatment. On 21 December he checked himself out, spent two days tidying up his affairs, and left Moscow by train on 23 December. He arrived in Leningrad the next morning with the intention of another fresh start. He moved into the Hotel Angleterre and met with his literary friends. On 27 December, finding no ink in his room, he wrote his famous farewell poem "Do svidaniia drug moi do svidaniia" (first published in Krasnaia gazeta [The Red Gazette], 1925) in his own blood and gave it to Vol'f Iosifovich Erlikh, who forgot about it. The next morning, on 28 December 1925, Esenin was found hanging from the heating pipe of his hotel room. His sudden and unwitnessed death left a lingering uncertainty as to whether he actually took his own life, and unproven theories of foul play have endured since. He was buried at the Vagan'kov Cemetery in Moscow. (In 1926 Benislavskaia, Esenin's devoted friend and sometime savior, committed suicide at his grave.)

The celebrity that Esenin acquired posthumously left an even greater influence on the Russian mind and culture than any fame he received during his lifetime. Transcending age, gender, and intellectual background, his poetry became part of the life of the Russian people. It has motivated the writing of both low and high poetry; many verse collections--as well as musical compositions--are dedicated to, or inspired by, Esenin. Although most of the works of literature derived from Esenin's work remain at the level of popular culture, his effect on a giant such as Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, a fellow writer from Riazan', was profound. Solzhenitsyn's set of prose poems titled "Krokhotki" (Crumbs, first published in the journal Grani [Facets], 1964) displays the influence of Esenin's nature lyrics; one poem from "Krokhotki" is even titled "Na rodine Esenina" (In Esenin's Motherland). Solzhenitsyn paid further tribute in 1995 by making an appearance at the unveiling of a new Esenin monument during the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Esenin's birth. The statue is located in Moscow on Tverskoi Boulevard, across from the well-known monument to Pushkin; in 1924, as part of the festivities celebrating the 125th anniversary of Pushkin's birth, Esenin had recited his poem "Pushkinu" (To Pushkin, 1924) there.

Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin's legacy is of interest not only to scholars. A new type of popular research related to his life and work has begun and is conducted by members of the association Radunitsa, a kind of Esenin folk studies. Just as Esenin's poetry united folk and high literary traditions, these works of popular and academic criticism complement each other. His work remains a distinctive personal testament to the tragic consequences that the overpowering spiritual and social turmoil of the Soviet Union held in its early years over the individual.
-- Pavlovszky, Maria, . "Sergei (Alexandrovich) Esenin." Russian Writers of the Silver Age, 1890-1925. Ed. Judith E. Kalb, J. Alexander Ogden, and I. G. Vishnevetsky. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 295. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Gale.