Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin

Gordon McVay (University of Bristol)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

Born 3 Oct 1895
Died 28 Dec 1925
Activity 1914-1925

Places

Born in Russia
Active in Russia; United States

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Esenin's Works

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The Russian poet Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin (1895–1925) led a short and turbulent life, which quickly passed into legend and myth. From his meteoric literary debut in Petrograd in 1915 until his suicide in a Leningrad hotel in 1925, Esenin assumed in rapid succession a number of literary “masks” – pastoral angel (1915–16), peasant prophet (1917–18), last poet of the village, tender hooligan (1919–21), tavern rake (1922–23), ex-hooligan (late 1923), would-be bard of the new Soviet Russia (mid-1924 until March 1925), and, finally, elegiac foreteller of his own imminent death (1925).

Although Esenin’s poetry is highly autobiographical and even “confessional”, the connection between the private man and his poetic persona is not entirely straightforward. The blue-eyed,

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1901 words

Citation: McVay, Gordon. "Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 February 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5884, accessed 22 November 2024.]