The excerpt from Esenin’s 1924 autobiographical article:
(Upon first joining the literary community) I became published in (the literary journals/magazines ): “Russaya misl” (“Russian Thought”), “Jhizn dlya vseh” (“Life for Everyone”), Mirolyubov’s “Ezhemesechniy jurnal” (“The Monthly Journal”), “Severniyi Zapiski” (“The Northern Notes”), and others. This took place in the spring of 1915. While in the autumn of that very same year Klyuev sent me a telegram when I was staying at the village and asked me to pay him a visit. He found me a publisher Mikhail Vasilyivich Averyanov, and after a few months came the release of my first book Radunitsa. It came out in November of 1915, though it was marked as 1916. During the time-span of my first stay in Petersburg I happened to frequently meet with Blok, with Ivanov-Razumnik. Later on with Andrey Bely. I reacted emphatically to the first period of the revolution, but more in a passionate, elemental way than consciously.
In 1917 I got married for the first time to Zinaida Reich. In 1918 she and I separated, and right after that began my life as a wanderer, just as it did for all Russians in the period between the years 1918 to 1921. In those years I visited Turkestan, the Caucasus, Persia, Crimea, Bessarabia, the steppes of Orenburg, the Murmansk shore, Arkhangelsk, and the Solovki (Solovki is a famous Russian prison camp, “the mother of GULAGS”, where Solzhenitsyn would become confined decades later. However, what Esenin is referring to here is more likely the Solovetsky islands, which are also sometimes referred to as “Solovki” for short. – Ed.) In 1921 I married Isadora Duncan and went away to America after first wheeling around the whole of Europe, except for Spain.
After being abroad I began looking at my country and its happenings in a new way. Our nomadic journey, which has still only barely cooled down, was not to my liking. I’m a fan of civilization. But I really dislike the Americas. America is the kind of stinkhole where vanish not only art, but all of humanity’s greatest impulses. If America is the day’s orienteur (Esenin means “the guiding force of our era” here), then I feel quite ready to state my preference for our gray sky and for our landscape: a hut, a bit sunken into the ground, a fence, from the fence sticks out a gigantic beanpole; in the distance an emaciated little horse waves its tale. It’s not so much just the skyscrapers, which have so far given us only McCormick and Rockefeller, but rather it’s the same thing (or the lack thereof) which has reared in our land a Tolstoy, a Dostoyevsky, a Pushkin, a Lermontov, and others.
Above all, I’m drawn towards the revelation of the organic. Art for me is not the intricacy of patterns, but manifestation of the most necessary word of that language with which I wish to express myself. And that’s why the literary current of Imaginism, founded in 1919, on one hand – by me, and on the other hand – by Shershenevich, though it formally shifted the flow of Russian poetry into a different riverbed, also refused anyone the right to claim talent (without backing it up). Nowadays, I deny all schools (of poetry). I believe that a poet is incapable of fitting into any single school. That may completely tie up his hands and his legs. Only a liberated artist can bring forth a liberated word.
Here is all that is short, schematic, and which touches upon my biography. Not everything has been said here. But I think that it’s still too early for me to draw any sort of conclusions about myself. My life and my creativity are still ahead of me.
A Few Further Notes from the Poet’s Hand:
(Brief Excerpts from Esenin’s 1922 and 1923 autobiographical articles)
“I am highly individualistic.
In matters of law I stand with the Soviet platform...”
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“In 1916 I was conscripted into the army service. Due to some level of patronage from Colonel Loman, the adjutant of the empress, I was given many benefits. I lived in the Tsarskoye Selo (A small town in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg which served as one of the summer-time retreat for the Russian royal family and the upper classes. Its name translates to “Royal Village”. Poetess Anna Akhmatova also lived there. - Ed.), not far from (the famous literary critic) Razumnik-Ivanov. Per Loman’s request once read poems to the Empress. After I finished reading she told me that my poems were beautiful, but very sad. I replied to her that such is the whole of Russia. Referenced poverty, climate, etc…”
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“The revolution engulfed me at the front in one of the disciplinary battalions where I wound up for refusing to write poetry in honor of the Tsar. I kept refusing, seeking advice and support from Ivanov-Razumnik.
During the revolution willfully left Kerensky’s army and, living as a deserter, worked with the Social Revolutionaries not as a party figure, but as a poet.”
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“My favorite author – Gogol…”
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“When there wasn’t any paper in all of Russia I used to type up my poems, along with Kusikov and Marienhof (fellow poets and friends of Esenin's), on the walls of the Strastniy monastery or simply read them out on some boulevard or another. The greatest fans of our poetry are prostitutes and bandits. We all maintain the greatest of friendships with them. Communists have no love for us because of a misunderstanding. Due to all this, I bow to my readers with the lowest “Hello” and a little attention to the sign: “All are asked not to shoot!”