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

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 …

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1901 words

Citation: McVay, Gordon. "Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 February 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5884, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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