Sergei Yesenin

The last two years of Yesenin's life he created some of his most famous poems, but he also suffered from alcoholism, experienced a mental breakdown and was hospitalised for a month. Two days after his release, he cut his wrist, wrote a farewell poem in his own blood and hanged himself from the heating pipes on the ceiling of his room in the Hotel Angleterre. He was 30 years old.
Aleksander Wertyński sings Sergei Yesenin - Goodbye, My Friend, Goodbye Odeon 1929 (Polish) It had been inspired by a farewell note, left by Yesenin in his room in Hotel d'Angleterre in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in Russia, after his suicidal death on the 25th December, 1925:

Da svidanya drug moj, da svidanya...
(Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.

Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let's have no sadness — furrowed brow.
There's nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer....) -Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin.

Alexander Novikov
 My maple, all leafless, maple frozen over, Why are you bending down under the drifting snow. Maybe you saw  something? Maybe you heard something? Or you left your village just to go out. And as drunken watchman, stepping on a road, In the snow drowned with your foot being frozen. I , myself , somehow had  become unsteady. Couldn't find the road from the friendly kegger. Here I met a pine tree, there noticed a willow, And of summer I sang to them, joined by wind and snow. Seemed to me that I am like this maple lonely, Only not being frozen but still green all over. And by losing shyness, plastered as a sailor, I hugged birch with passion as  the wife of stranger.

Don Juan
It may be late for me or else too soon,
For so many years 't did not occur
That I bear resemblance to Don Juan,
Looking like a real fickle poet.

What's become of me then? What has happened?
Every day I'm at another's feet,
Daily, I refuse to spare myself and
Still defy the venom of deceit.

Never did I want my heart to hover
In the feeling, delicate and simple.
What do I seek in those women's eyes then,
Thoughtless, full of idleness and conceit?

Hold me down, control me, my disdain,
You have always noted me till now.
There is, in my heart, a chilly flame
And of lilacs bluish rustling sound,

In the heart, a sunset's hue of lemon,
But the same is heard like through a gloom:
For the rein of feeling, there's a payment,
Take you up the gauntlet then, Don Juan!

Whereas taking up the gauntlet calmly,
For my future, still the same I see --
To mistake the snows for blue May flowering,
To mistake for love a sensual thrill.

This is what's with me, this is what's happened,
Hence I'm always at so many feet,
And, in order to be lifelong happy,
I defy the venom of deceit.


Oleg Pogudin
A golden grove has ceased at last its chatter
In a merry accent of its birches' tongue.
Afar, a flight of cranes, dejected, flutter,
No more lamenting over anyone.

Who to lament for? In this world, we're strangers:
Go by, come in and leave the house anon.
The gone are summoned up by but a hemp-close
And a harvest moon above a bluish pond.

I'm all alone amid a barren flatland.
A gust of wind is carrying cranes away.
It is my joyful youth that I'm intent on,
But nothing in the gone do I bewail.

I don't feel sorry for the years being squandered,
Or for a lilac thriving of my soul.
A fire of rowan berries, in the courtyard,
Is burning red albeit unable to warm.

The rowan berry clusters will not scorch, and
The grass won't perish from the yellow dry.
Like trees are slowly shedding their foliage,
So am I shedding doleful words of mine.

And if the time, when sweeping with an airflow,
Should grab them all in one unwanted lump,
Then say as follows... that a golden birch grove
Has ceased its chatter in a lovely tongue.


The Retuses - Письмо к женщине (Live @ TV Rain)
Jeanne Aguzarova – Touching Yesenin   – Russian album
A. (Aleksandr) Demidov – Homecoming - Sergey Alexandrovich Yesenin  Modern Soviet Poetry and Humor: Read by Alexander Demidov
A. (Aleksandr) Demidov – Flowers - Sergey Alexandrovich Yesenin Modern Soviet Poetry and Humor: Read by Alexander Demidov
Maple Nikolai Massenkoff Sings With Balalaika Orchestra
His first marriage was in 1913 to Anna Izryadnova, a co-worker from the publishing house, with whom he had a son, Yuri.
Rachmaninoff, Sergei,1873-1943. Preludes and transcriptions. Capitol-EMI[1959]  Transcriptions: Scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Mendelssohn) Colin Horsley, piano.
From 1916 to 1917, Yesenin was drafted into military duty, but soon after the October Revolution of 1917, Russia exited World War I. Believing that the revolution would bring a better life, Yesenin briefly supported it, but soon became disillusioned. He sometimes criticised the Bolshevik rule in such poems as The Stern October Has Deceived Me. In August 1917 Yesenin married for a second time to Zinaida Raikh (later an actress and the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold). They had two children, a daughter Tatyana and a son Konstantin. The parents quarreled and lived separately for some time prior to their divorce in 1921. 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix,1809-1847.Die erste Walpurgisnacht. op. 60. Decca [1969] The 1st work sung in German; words by Goethe.  Lili Chookasian, contralto; Ernst Haefliger, tenor; Hermann Prey, baritone; Raymond Michalski, bass; Musica Aeterna Orchestra and Chorus; Frederic Waldman, conductor.

1. Overture, in A minor for orchestra
2. Es lacht der Mai!
3. Konnt ihr so ver
4. Opfer heut zu bringen
5. Vertheilt euch hier
6. Diese dumpfen Pfaffenchristen
7. Kommt mit Zacken und mit
8. So weit

In the fall of 1921, while visiting the studio of painter Georgi Yakulov, Yesenin met the Paris-based American dancer Isadora Duncan, a woman 18 years his senior. She knew only a dozen words in Russian, and he spoke no foreign languages. They married on 2 May 1922. Yesenin accompanied his celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States. His third marriage to Duncan was brief and in May 1923, he returned to Moscow.
Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich,1840-1893. Swan lake ballet (Suite) op. 20. Columbia,[1970]  New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor.
In 1923 Yesenin became romantically involved with the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya to whom he dedicated several poems. The same year he had a son by the poet Nadezhda Volpin. Their son, Alexander Esenin-Volpin grew up to become a poet and a prominent activist in the Soviet dissident movement of the 1960s. He lives in the United States, a famous mathematician and teacher.
In 1925 Yesenin met and married his fourth wife, Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya, a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy.
Ballet music from the operas Angel Records [1961]  Aïda: Ballet music, act 2, by Verdi.--Khovantschina: Dance of the Persian slaves, act 4, by Moussorgsky, orch. by Rimsky-Korsakov.--Prince Igor: Dances of the Polovtsian maidens, act 2, no. 8, and Polovtsian dances, act 2, no. 17, by Borodin, orch. Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazounov.--La Gioconda: Dance of the hours, act. 3, by Ponchielli.-- Tannhäuser: Venusberg music, act 1, by Wagner.  Philharmonia Orchestra; Herbert von Karajan, conductor.