Unknown Yesenin: a poet in the memories of a woman to whom the poem "A blue fire swept around "

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Their communication was very short-lived - they saw each other from August to December 1923. But this relationship inspired S. Yesenina to create a poem "A blue fire swept around …" and 6 more works from the "Bully's Love" cycle. A friend of the poet Anatoly Mariengof said: “Their love was pure, poetic, with bouquets of roses, with romance … invented for the sake of a new lyrical theme. This is Yesenin's paradox: fictional love, fictional biography, fictional life. One may ask why? There is only one answer: so that his poems are not fictional. Everything, everything - was done for the sake of poetry. " The actress about this period of her life Augusta Miklashevskaya wrote her memoirs, in which Yesenin appears in a new light.

“The actress of the Moscow Chamber Theater Anna Borisovna Nikritina, the wife of the famous imagist Anatoly Mariengof, introduced me to Yesenin. We met the poet on Gorky Street (then Tverskaya). He walked quickly, pale, concentrated … He said: "I am going to wash my hair. They are summoning me to the Kremlin." He hardly looked at me. It was in the late summer of 1923, shortly after his return from a trip abroad with Duncan."

“… We wandered around Moscow for a long time. He was happy to have returned home to Russia. I was happy about everything like a child. I touched houses and trees with my hands. He assured us that everything, even the sky and the moon, are different for us than there. He told me how difficult it was for him abroad. And so he "got away all the same"! "He's in Moscow!" For a whole month we met daily. We wandered around Moscow a lot, went out of town and walked there for a long time. It was August … early golden autumn … Dry yellow leaves underfoot. As if on a carpet they wandered along the paths and meadows. "I am with you as a schoolboy," Yesenin told me quietly, with surprise, and smiled."

“We often met in the café of poets on Tverskaya. We sat together. They spoke quietly. Yesenin was sober, even shy. They talked a lot about his rudeness with women. But I never felt a hint of rudeness. He could sit quietly next to me for hours. My room was like a grove of asters and chrysanthemums, which he constantly brought to me."

“The first poems written to me: A blue fire swept around, Forgotten my darlings, For the first time I sang about love, For the first time I renounce scandalous… Yesenin called me and waited with a magazine in a cafe. I was late for an hour. I was late at work. When I came, he was not sober for the first time in my presence and for the first time there was a scandal with me. He stood solemnly and handed me the magazine. We sat down. At the next table they said something loudly, Yesenin jumped up … A man in a leather jacket grabbed a revolver. To the delight of others, a scandal began. It seemed that with each shout Yesenin was getting drunk more and more. I was very scared for him. Suddenly, out of nowhere, his sister Katya appeared. We took him away and put him to bed. Yesenin fell asleep, and I sat next to him. Mariengof came in to convince me: “Oh, you, schoolgirl, imagined that you could remake it! From you he will run to the prostitute anyway."

“I understood that there was no need to redo it. You just need to help him be himself. I couldn't do it. I had to spend too much time to earn a living for my family. Yesenin knew nothing about my difficulties. I made money with concerts, occasional performances. We continued to meet, but not every day."

“Yesenin stood at the table and read his last poem, The Black Man. He always read his poetry very well, but this time it was even scary. He read as if we had no one and as if the Black Man was here. I saw how difficult it is for him, how lonely he is. I understood that we were to blame for him, and I, and many who appreciated and loved him. None of us really helped him. We often left him alone."

“I was informed on the phone about Yesenin’s death, I don’t even know who. All night long it seemed to me that he was sitting quietly in my armchair, as he did for the last time, and looking at my life."

Deserve no less attention zigzags of life and the mystery of the death of Zinaida Reich, Yesenin's first wife