ESENIN, SERGIUS (1895-1925), Russian poet, was born Oct. 4, 1895, in Constantinovo, since his death officially renamed Esenino, in the Ryazan province. A peasant by birth, he lived in his native village until he was 17 when he moved to Moscow. His first poems (1915) met with immediate success. In 1919 he founded the Imagist group. Esenin travelled in Persia and also visited America and France. He was married first to the American dancer, Isadora Duncan, from whom he soon parted, and secondly to a grand-daughter of Count Leo Tolstoy. He died by his own hand on Dec. 28, 1925. Although he was a staunch supporter of the Soviets, his meditative and purely lyrical talent was tragically out of touch with the matter-of-fact post-Revolutionary Russia.
Esenin has been considered the finest Russian poet of his generation and second only to Blok. His poetry reflects the mysti cism of the old Russian peasantry with its ikons and its folklore, as in "Radunitza" (Day of the Dead), "Goluben" (Blueness) ; in "Inonia" he depicts a religious Utopia and proclaims the advent of a "peasant Christ." All his poems reflect the same love for peasant Russia, its fields, thatched cottages, its trees and animals. He called himself "the last peasant poet" and deplored the in vasion of the land by the town—"the iron guest." His town and tavern poems ("Moscow of the Taverns," "The Confessions of a Hooligan," etc.) describing the evil victory of the town and its allurements, are of a tragic and captivating sincerity. His poetic style is highly imaginative and his simple, transparent verse fol lows the classic Pushkin tradition.
See English translations in The Chapbook, No. 31 (Nov. 1922) and The Bermondsey Book (March 1926) ; articles by Trotsky, Pravda No. 15 (1926) and Z. Vengerova, The Bermondsey Book (March 1926) .