Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin

Gordon McVay (University of Bristol)
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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,

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 19 March 2024.]

5884 Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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