Mayakovsky was gay. Top Ten Famous Gays

The "fancy" Kuzmin (1875-1936), whom Benoit mentions with hostile irony, is one of major poets 20th century “Raised in a strictly religious Old Believer spirit, it was not easy for the boy to understand and accept his unusual sexuality. But he had no choice.

He grew up as a lonely boy, was often sick, loved to play with dolls and his peers close to him "were all friends, not comrades." His first conscious erotic experiences are associated with sexual games in which his older brother involved him. At the gymnasium, Kuzmin did not study well, but for his comrades "he felt a kind of adoration and, finally, he fell in love with the 7th grade gymnasium student Valentin Zaitsev." The first connection was followed by others (his closest school friend, who shared his inclinations, was the future Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin). Kuzmin began to line his eyes and eyebrows, classmates laughed at him. Once he tried to commit suicide by drinking cherry laurel drops, but got scared, called his mother, he was pumped out, after which he confessed everything to his mother, and she accepted his confession. In 1893 more or less random connections with classmates was replaced by a serious relationship with an officer 4 years older than Kuzmin, which many knew about. This officer, a certain Prince George, even took Kuzmin to Egypt. His unexpected death moved Kuzmin towards mysticism and religion, which did not interfere with new hobbies for young men and teenage boys. While in Rome, Kuzmin took on the maintenance of the elevator boy Luigino, then in the summer at the dacha he fell in love with the boy Alyosha Bekhli; when their correspondence was discovered by the boy's father, the case almost went to court.

All the young men with whom Kuzmin fell in love (Pavel Maslov, Vsevolod Knyazev, Sergey Sudeikin, Lev Rakov, etc.) were bisexual and sooner or later began affairs with women, causing Kuzmin to suffer and be jealous. In the “Stop” cycle dedicated to Knyazev, there are amazing poems about threesome love (“I know you love another”):

My dear, I pray, for a moment

Imagine that I am her.

Kuzmin saw his beloved talents, helped them in every possible way and promoted them in print, while the imaginary image often obscured reality, the young man became, as it were, a shadow of the poet himself.

The biggest and longest love of Kuzmin (since 1913) was the poet Iosif Yurkunas (1895-1938), to whom Kuzmin came up with the pseudonym Yurkun. At the beginning of their romance, Kuzmin and Yurkun often posed in a circle of acquaintances like Verlaine and Rimbaud. Kuzmin sincerely admired the work of Yurkun and literally fashioned his literary image, but at the same time he unwittingly customized it for himself, making it difficult for the young man to realize himself as a writer. Over the years (and they lived together until the death of the poet), their relationship began to resemble the relationship of father and son: “Of course, I love him now much, incomparably more and in a different way ...”, “My gentle, smart, talented son. ..”

Kuzmin was his man in the house of Vyacheslav Ivanov, who, despite his deep love for his wife, the writer Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, was no stranger to homoerotic hobbies. In his collection "Cor ardens" (1911), the cycle "Eros" full of mystical passion was printed, inspired by unrequited love for the young poet Sergei Gorodetsky:

I follow you and I tell fortunes,

From you hiding and running away;

I look back at you,

I lower my eyes, overtaking ...

In addition to Kuzmin, Vyacheslav Ivanov and his wife, Bakst, Konstantin Somov, Sergei Gorodetsky, Walter Nouvel, and Kuzmin's young nephew Sergei Auslender were members of the St. Petersburg circle of Friends of Gafiz. All members of the circle had ancient or Arabic names. In the poem "To Friends of Hafiz", Kuzmin well expressed the sense of belonging that bound them:

We are seven, we are five, we are four, we are three,

While you are not alone, Hafiz still lives.

And if there is love, there are two in one smile.

The other is at the door, the other is already on his way.

For some members of the circle, same-sex love was not an organic need, but just a fashionable intellectual hobby, a game that artistic bohemia is greedy for. With others (for example, with Somov and Nouvel), Kuzmin was connected not only by friendly, but also love relationship. They spoke quite openly about their new novels and young lovers, sometimes being jealous of each other. In one of his diary entries, Kuzmin tells how one day, after a revelry in a country restaurant, he and Somov and two young people, including Kuzmin Pavlik, then lover, “all four of us went in a cab under the hood and everyone kissed, as if in Hafiz’s tent. Somov even kissed Pavlik himself, saying that they needed to get to know each other better and he would give him cosmetic advice. The popular poet was also visited by young high school students who had their own homoerotic circles.

The emergence of high homoerotic poetry in Russia is associated with the name of Kuzmin. For Kuzmin, love for a man is completely natural. Sometimes the gender of the addressee is visible only in address or intonation:

When I first met you

poor memory does not remember:

Was it in the morning, was it in the afternoon,

in the evening or late at night.

I only remember pale cheeks,

gray eyes under dark eyebrows

and a blue collar at a swarthy neck,

and it seems to me that I saw it in early childhood,

although I am much older than you.

In other poems, love becomes the subject of reflection:

There are moments

when you do not require the last caresses,

and happy to sit

hugging tightly,

hugging each other tightly.

And then it's all the same

What will happen,

what will come true

that won't work.

A heart

(not trashy, direct, native male heart)

beats close,

so soothing

so secure

like the ticking of a clock in the dark

and says:

"Everything is fine,

everything is quiet,

everything is in its place."

And in the playful poem "Ali" in an oriental way, the forbidden delights of the youthful body are frankly sung:

The nightingale spilled in the distance,

Flying golden birds!

Lie back up Ali

Discarding women's habits!

In terms of integrating homoerotica into high culture great importance had an autobiographical story by Kuzmin "Wings" (1906). Its hero, Vanya Smurov, an 18-year-old peasant boy, finds it difficult to understand the nature of his intellectual and emotional attraction to the educated half-Englishman Stroop. Stroop's sexual relationship with the footman Fyodor, discovered by him, caused Vanya a painful shock, where disgust is intertwined with jealousy. Stroop explained to the young man that the body was given to man not only for reproduction, that it is beautiful in itself, that “there are ligaments, muscles in human body, which it is impossible to see without awe”, that same-sex love was understood and appreciated by the ancient Greeks. At the end of the story, Vanya accepts his fate and travels abroad with Stroop.

“One more effort, and you will grow wings, I can already see them.

“Maybe it’s just very hard when they grow up,” Vanya said, grinning.

"Wings" caused a heated controversy. In most newspapers, they were regarded as preaching homosexuality. One feuilleton was entitled "In the alcove of the city of Kuzmin", the other - "Dissociate yourself from the vulgar." The well-known journalist and critic L. Vasilevsky (Abel) wrote: “Of course, the public does not care whether Mr. Kuzmin loves the boys from the bathhouse or not, but the author so voluptuously relishes the Sodom action that “to laugh, really, is not a sin , which seems ridiculous"... All these "Vacchants, prophets of the future", in other words, need Kraft-Ebing and cold souls, and the role of criticism comes down to this: to inject the preachers of sexual perversions cold water sarcasm." Social Democratic critics found the story "disgusting" and reflecting the degradation of high society. Andrei Bely was embarrassed by its theme, and he considered some scenes of the story "nauseous." Gippius recognized the topic as legitimate, but it was presented too tendentiously and with "pathological exposure." On the contrary, Alexander Blok, who was shy and did not like talking about sex, wrote in his diary: "... I read Kuzmin's Wings - wonderful." In a printed review, Blok wrote that although there are “places in the story in which the author paid tribute to gross barbarism and which the guardians of magazine morality seized with delight,” this “barbarism” “completely drowns in the transparent and crystal moisture of art.” “The name of Kuzmin, now surrounded by some kind of rough, barbaric-flat rumor, is a charming name for us.” Regarding Kuzmin’s first published collection of poems “Networks,” Blok wrote to him: “My God, what kind of poet are you, what kind of book are you wrote. I am in love with every line of it ... "Nikolai Gumilyov, who, together with his wife Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, was an omnivore and leader of the acmeist movement, published a review of Kuzmin's second collection of homosexual love poems" Autumn Lakes "(1912) in the most prestigious art magazine of the time "Apollo". The conclusion of the Gumilev review reflects the typically enlightened view of the leading heterosexual writers of that period on "gay" literature and its writers: "Mikhail Kuzmin occupies one of the most significant places in the forefront contemporary poets. Few other poets achieve such an amazing harmony of the whole, combined with the freedom of variation of its components. Moreover, being a spokesman for the views and emotions large group people united common culture and by right elevated on the crest of life, he is a poet of the soil."

In Kuzmin's story and his stories "Cardboard House" and "Love of this Summer", young people found a true description not only own feelings but also life. For them, a lot was recognizable. One of the poet’s young friends, schoolboy Pokrovsky, told him “about people like Stroop, that he has 4 such acquaintances that, as it happens, for a long time they lead, develop young men disinterestedly, fight, think to manage in this way, somehow, they are even ashamed after the 5th, 6th novel to confess; as he heard in the bathhouses on the 5th line, almost the same conversations as I have, that in the south, in Odessa, Sevastopol, they look at it very simply and even high school students just go to the boulevard to look for meetings, knowing that in addition to pleasure they can get cigarettes , theater ticket, pocket money.

The number of stunning publications that appeared in the press about Gippius, Klyuev, Kuzmin, Yesenin, Ivnev and Zinovieva-Annibal leaves no doubt that at the beginning of this century in Russia there was a genuine emancipation of homosexuals in literature and other forms of art.

Among the poets of the beginning of the century, one can also name Rurik Ivnev - a lover of sadomasochism, or rather, pyromasochism, with his insistent theme of being scorched or burned by a beloved man.

Among other important literary phenomena of the period between 1905 and 1910. was the appearance of the novel "33 Freaks" and the collection of stories "The Tragic Menagerie" by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal. These two books did for Russian lesbians what Kuzmin's Wings did for homosexual men: they showed the reading public that lesbian love can be serious, deep and touching.

Around 1910, a group of so-called peasant poets appeared in Russia, and this name corresponded not only to their origin, but also to the fact that the fate of the peasants and their way of life in the 20th century were main theme their creativity. The undisputed leader in this group was Nikolai Klyuev (1884-1937). Born into a peasant family, belonging to the Khlysty sect, Klyuev learned (and taught his followers) to combine folk village folklore with the modern style of Russian Simaolist poets. Two books of his poems, published in 1912, "Pine Chimes" and "Brotherly Songs", became a sensation and made Klyuev a celebrity. Klyuev's unconcealed homosexuality did not prevent most poets and critics, as well as many literate peasants, from considering him the most outstanding representative of all Russian peasantry in literature.

Klyuev had numerous love affairs with educated peasants, but greatest love in his life was Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925). For about two years (1915-1917), Klyuev and Yesenin lived together as lovers and spoke about their love in verse. Although Yesenin was once married and his wives were three famous women(except for the great ballerina Duncan, these were the famous actress and granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy), the most expressive love lyrics Yesenin managed to create only in those cases when it was addressed to another man. From Klyuev's side, this friendship was definitely homoerotic. Yesenin's friend Vladimir Chernavsky wrote that Klyuev "completely subjugated our Sergunka", "he ties his belt, strokes his hair, watches with his eyes." Yesenin complained to Chernavsky that Klyuev was jealous of the woman with whom he had his first urban romance: “As soon as I put my hat on, he sits on the floor, sits in the middle of the room and howls at the top of his voice like a woman: don’t go, don’t dare go to her!" Yesenin apparently did not share these feelings of Klyuev.

The new freedom to depict homosexual relationships in prose and poetry has not gone unnoticed. A number of writers and conservative critics were outraged by her. The reaction of the conservatives is described in the indignant book by GP Novopolin "The pornographic element in Russian culture" (1909). Preaching an openly racist approach, Novopolin wrote that, as far as he knew, homosexuality had previously existed only among "low-civilized" peoples - in the mountain tribes of the Caucasus or in Arab countries. The introduction of such topics into Russian literature by Zinovieva-Annibal and Kuzmin was considered by Novopolin as an attempt to corrupt Russian youth . In his book, the works of these two writers were condemned as a source of abomination, dirt, and depravity.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum from Novopolin was Maxim Gorky, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1905 and a close personal friend of Lenin. In the summer of 1907, he wrote to the playwright Leonid Andreev about the favorable portrayal of homosexuality in the work of Kuzmin and Ivanov: “These are old-fashioned slaves, people who cannot help but confuse freedom with homosexuality. in a special way confused with crawling from one cloaca to another, and sometimes it comes down to the release of the penis and nothing more.

But the Symbolists and Acmeists claimed that the writers touching on the topics of homosexuality and lesbianism were new great talents who had something to say. Among other writers of this period who wrote on these topics were Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), one of the greatest poets of our century, the author of a large number of stories Sergei Auslender (1886-1943), the poet Rurik Ivnev (1891-1981), Evdokia Nagrodskaya (1866-1930), the author of inferior bestsellers, in one of which a detective story is tied around the question of which of the three men - the main characters - could be a homosexual, the beautiful lesbian poet Sofya Parnok (1885-1933). Homosexual artists Konstantin Somov and the prominent Russian male nude painter Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin were also known, not to mention homosexual musicians, scientists, actors and directors. The overwhelmingly homosexual atmosphere around the various actions taken by Sergei Diaghilev since 1898 - whether it was art magazines, art exhibitions, opera productions, organizing concerts or a ballet company - was only the most obvious example of the admirable tolerance for homosexuality that was typical of that time. . Such figures as Diaghilev, Klyuev and Kuzmin were national celebrities, about whom the press wrote a lot. Their homosexuality was known to everyone and did not cause any problems in their social or professional activities.

Russian poet Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884-1937) was born into a family of Old Believers in the Olonets province. After graduating from a two-year school (1897), the poet began to wander around Old Believer sketes and monasteries. According to contemporaries, he visited Iran, China and India. Klyuev joins a huge storehouse of knowledge, including magic, he was credited with hypnotic power. The poet was a universal personality: he knew how to play on several musical instruments, sang beautifully, possessed remarkable acting abilities.

Klyuev's first publications in the St. Petersburg press date back to the 1900s. At this time, Klyuev adjoins the labor movement, participates in the political unrest of 1905-1907. The fame of the poet comes to him in the early 10s, he publishes several poetry collections. At that time, Alexander Blok was a close friend of the poet, but with the appearance of young Sergei Yesenin in St. Petersburg, the attention of the Olonets hero completely switches to a young man with straw hair. For two years from 1915 to 1917, Yesenin and Klyuev lived together and were practically inseparable. The love of the two poets was so strong that the eternal wanderer Klyuev, a cross-country Kalika, acquires a permanent apartment in St. Petersburg, using his connections, saves Yesenin from mobilization into the army.

The last years of Klyuev's life were associated with the seventeen-year-old graphic artist A.N. Yar-Kravchenko, to whom many of the poet's poems are dedicated. And although the actual homosexual topic was bypassed by him, in his poems to Yesenin and Kravchenko we find many wonderful images, frank declarations of love and friendship.

Klyuev's poetry is saturated with complex metaphorical images, everyday details, and ethnographic vocabulary.

In 1934, Klyuev was arrested on a denunciation, accused, as usual, of treason, in fact - for homosexuality ("molested" the poet P. Vasiliev, which did not please one party functionary, his relative). Shot in 1937.

Poems to Yesenin

That's why in my eyes blue,
That I am a son of the Great Lakes.
Sharpens gray vermilion autumn
To the native, White Sea expanse.

Seals splash at sunset
I looked into the lake of chum ...
Goldfish my deer -
Herds of tunes and thoughts.

Pulled the soul like a goose
To the blue, midday edge;
Tem Mykola and Light Jesus
Prepare a wheat paradise!

I'm coming. I see huts - mountains,
On the waters - steel whales ...
I sang about the blue forests,
About Pine Ringing and sketes.

to me learned people said:
"Why holy words?
Cut the hem down to the waist
And roll up her sleeves!"

I cried brotherly songs,
We decided: "I didn't dare to rhyme!"
I murmured lane streams
And Forest Were sang.

They gave me Igor as a lesson
Severyanina powdered volume.
The heart understood: they will burn out alive
Those who are touched by the wing of death.

hard times iron clock
They announced the fire of war,
And worldly thoughts are sick
I brought the fatherland as a gift.

Told how spruce dolls
They overshadow the soldier's mother,
And the paper woodpeckers hummed:
"He is not a poet, but a letter thief!

Russia exchanged Christ for Platovs.
Paradise peasant - childish nonsense ... "
But from the Ryazan fields of the Kolovratovs
Suddenly, hemp light shone.

They were waiting for a boor, an indecent fool,
In a spinjacket, with fists in a watermelon, -
Dal sent a youth of willow,
With a voice sweeter than girlish beads.

He told about the brown twilight,
About the haystacks, about the sheaf:
Newspapers hissed: "Tataria!
And Yesenin is a Judeophobe poet!

O soulless book chalk,
Raven you, I'm a tundra goose!
Overshadows the word tree
Beaten, dense Russia!

Singing color diamond frosted
Above me is an arboreal canopy,
And my country, White India,
Full of secrets and wonders!

Life is the foremother matins dewy
Serves the birds and the truth to the sons;
Corpse books, cigarette hearts -
Incense hated by the Creator!

The hut is the sanctuary of the earth,
With baking mystery and paradise;
In the spirit of dew hemp
We will know the secret.

On the bed of brooms, rows -
The soul of green-mouthed birches...
From the stars to the onion ridge -
All in a prophetic whisper and crunches.

Earth, like an old fisherman,
Weaves cloud networks
To catch the afterlife darkness
Deaf-mute millennia.

I foresee: as in the top of the catfish,
The fog will splash in the peasant's hand.
Golden log father's house
Sunshine in the meadow.
giant wheat ear
The yard will be overshadowed by a healing shadow...
Are you not my brother, fiance and son,
Will you show me the way to transformation?

In your eyes, the smoke from the huts,
Deep sleep of river silt,
Ryazan, poppy sunset -
Your melodious ink.

Izba - the feeder of words
I raised you not in vain:
For Russian villages and cities
You will become the Red Rainbow.

So don't forget the baking paradise
Where it's good to love and cry!
On your way, to eternal May,
I weave a verse - seasoned bast shoes.

1916 or 1917

In the steppe Chumatskaya ash -
Your verse is cooled by pride.
From a soap pot
You can't fish for pearls.

And the cargo of "Mare Ships" -
Fragments of rhymes, lame feet, -
Ns from Kolovratovy fields
In your wreath are heliotropes.

Mariengof watered them
Coffee grounds with nicotine...
From the slandered calvary
Path to Judas Aspens.

The Ryazan land mourns,
Grayed with millet and buckwheat,
What, nightingale garden rattling,
Yesenin's famously soars.

It's like a flock of crows
With impure gray, with a greedy goiter,
And the songs of the garden fall
Above the mother's strict coffin.

In the coffin, pure fingers,
Lapottsy with an iron staff,
Imagist flowers
They abhor the eyes of many sick people.

Word brother, listen, listen
Poems - birch bark deer:
Olonets cranes
Christened with Dove.

Treryadnitsa and Songwriter -
Sadko with green crowberry.
Do not count the singing pearls
On our brainchild - page.

We are spouses ... In the living centuries
Our seed will sprout
And the young tribe will remember us
At songwriting feasts.

Sergei Yesenin and Wolf Erlich with students of the Agricultural Institute at the monument to Alexander Pushkin. Tsarskoye Selo. Presumably 1924 oldsp.ru

Myth one: the last poet of the village

The image of a poet with a peasant origin was cultivated by Yesenin persistently and purposefully. However, this origin, as necessary, varied from a boy from a simple peasant family to the grandson of a wealthy Old Believer. The truth, as often happens, is in the middle: the Yesenin family was of average income, and there were no Old Believers in it.

Yesenin with his mother. Moscow, March 1925

Myth two: I came to literature on foot

Start creative way ordinary readers usually imagine the poet as follows: first, his native village of Konstantinovo, and then Petersburg. Yesenin appears as a kind of Lomonosov, in bast shoes and from a plow on foot who came to the capital.

However, between these points in his biography there were three more years spent in Moscow: years of work in the Sytin printing house, acquaintance with the literary environment and the work of the Symbolists, studying at Shanyavsky University - that is, the time of getting to know the world big city and great literature, the formation of the personality of the future poet.

Myth three: a pupil of a peasant poet

Eight years before Sergei Yesenin's high-profile career peasant poet in St. Petersburg began Nikolay Klyuev. Their similarity literary images and scandalous joint performances created the myth of Klyuev as the first teacher of Yesenin and his guide in a difficult literary life Petersburg. Yesenin himself contributed to the formation of this myth, according to the memoirs of Mariengof.

“- Let, I think, everyone thinks: I introduced him into Russian literature. They enjoy it, but I don't care. Gorodetsky introduced? Entered. Klyuev introduced? Entered. Sologub from Chebotarevskaya introduced? Entered. In a word, and Merezhkovsky with Gippiusikha, and Blok, and Rurik Ivnev ... "

Anatoly Mariengof."A Novel Without Lies" (1927)

However, if you follow the chronology, the first person Yesenin addressed in St. Petersburg was Alexander Blok. Then - Sergey Gorodetsky. It was they who, first of all, contributed to the expansion of his “useful” acquaintances.

Photograph of Nikolai Klyuev with a dedicatory inscription"Sergey Yesenin. To the most beautiful of the sons of the baptized kingdom, my red sun, a sign of great love - for memory and health of mind and body. 1916 N. Klyuev. Fundamental electronic library

Myth four: visit Blok

A peculiar myth was created by Yesenin and from his acquaintance with Blok. In his story, which came down in the transmission of Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Yesenin appears as an uncompromising, but in love with poetry, village nugget, who uninvitedly appeared to the venerable poet and patron of young talents.

“He was like an icon for me, and even while passing through Moscow I decided: I will get to Petrograd and I will definitely see him.<…>Well, I got off at the Nikolaevsky railway station with a chest on my back, I was standing on the square and did not know where to go next: the city was unfamiliar.<…>I stopped a passer-by and asked: “Where does Alexander Alexandrovich Blok live here?”<…>
Here is the door to his apartment.<…>The cook meets me. “What do you want, boy?” “I would like to see Alexander Alexandrovich,” I answer. And I myself am waiting for her to say “not at home”, and I will have to leave without salty slurping. She looked at me, wiped her hands on her apron and said: “Well, I’ll go and tell you. Only you, dear, go out on the stairs and stay there. I have here, you can see for yourself, pots, dishes, and you are an unknown person. Who knows you!” She left and slammed the door on the hook. I stand. I'm waiting. Finally the door is wide open again. “Come in,” he says, “just wipe your feet!” I went into the kitchen, put down the chest, took off my hat, and Alexander Alexandrovich himself came out of the room to meet me.
- Hello! Who are you?
I explain that I am such and such and brought him poems. Block smiles.
— I thought you were from Boblov. My countrymen sometimes come to me. Well, let's go! and took me with him."

Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky. Pages of Life. Memories "(1962)

However, the pedantic Blok retained other evidence of this meeting. First, the note that Yesenin sent in the morning with a request to receive him: “Alexander Alexandrovich! I'd like to talk to you. The matter is very important to me. You don't know me, and maybe you've seen my name in magazines somewhere. I would like to come in at 4 o'clock. With respect, S. Yesenin. And secondly, the comment of Blok himself to this note: “A peasant of the Ryazan province. 19 years. The poems are fresh, clean, vociferous, wordy. Language. Came to me on March 9, 1915.

Yesenin at the opening of the monument to Alexei Koltsov. Moscow, November 3, 1918 Fundamental electronic library

Myth five: naive and inexperienced

A lot of effort was spent by the poet on creating the image of a naive and ingenuous shirt-guy, so beloved by readers and fans of his work. However, naivety was by no means Yesenin's natural quality. On the contrary, prudence and thoughtfulness - that's what helped the aspiring poet to enlist the support of influential writers in the shortest possible time and start publishing in leading literary magazines.

“... In a good way, sincerely (and not with feigned sincerity, which the great master also had) said:
“You know, I’ve never worn such a red-haired boot in my life, and undershirts so tattered as I appeared before them. I told them that I was going to roll barrels in Riga. There is nothing to eat, they say. And in Petersburg for a day, for two, until my batch of loaders picks up. And what kind of barrels are there - I came to St. Petersburg for world fame, for a bronze monument ... "

Anatoly Mariengof."A Novel Without Lies" (1927)

Alexander Kusikov, Anatoly Mariengof, Sergei Yesenin. Moscow, summer 1919 Fundamental electronic library

Myth six: self-confident and indifferent to the opinions of others

A naive and ingenuous poet from God should be above the fuss of critics and the words of envious writers, hence the myth of Yesenin's indifference to other people's opinions about him. However, like any poet, Yesenin was very sensitive to criticism, collected clippings from various publications (two notebooks of clippings were preserved) and remembered by heart the most flattering and offensive reviews.

Myth seven: a drunken poet

A drunkard and a hooligan - these are the most frequent characteristics of the poet. Indeed, binges, drunken brawls and scandals were an integral part of Yesenin's life, but still he did not compose poems in a drunken stupor. “I never write drunk,” Yesenin himself said. This was also recalled by his acquaintances, for example, Ilya Schneider, who confirmed that in drunk Yesenin never wrote poetry.

Myth eight: the victim of a conspiracy

Vsevolod Meyerhold and Zinaida Reich at Yesenin's funeral Heritage Images/Hulton Archive/Fotobank

The murder of Yesenin is the most popular myth about the poet. Chekists, Jews, literary envious people - just who is not accused of committing this thoughtful and cruel massacre. The most fantastic version is that the poet was killed with a pistol shot, wrapped in a carpet and wanted to be taken out of the hotel room through the window, but the body did not go through the window opening, after which it was decided to stage suicide by hanging. No less original idea: Yesenin was killed somewhere else, and already dead brought to Angleterre. Or, in extreme cases, they were first beaten, and then the bleeding man was hung from a pipe. However, none of these theories stand up to scrutiny by the facts. And they are as follows: at the end of 1925 psychological condition Yesenin was extremely difficult, for about a month he was in a Moscow psychiatric clinic, from where he fled to Leningrad. Before leaving, he visited all his relatives and said goodbye to them.

“... I saw him shortly before his death. He said he came to say goodbye. To my question: “What? Why? ”- says:“ I’m washing off, I’m leaving, I feel bad, I’ll probably die. ” He asked not to spoil, to take care of his son.

Anna Izryadnova, Yesenin's first civil wife

Yesenin's poetry no less eloquently testifies to his desire for death: over the past two years, several hundred references to death have been found in his poems, and for the most part we are talking about suicide.

Myth nine: a forged will

An invariable part of the conspiracy versions of Yesenin's murder is the idea of falsification last poem the poet "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...". According to the idea of a conspiracy, the poet Wolf Ehrlich, to whom the poem is dedicated, was in fact an agent of the GPU assigned to the poet and directly involved in his murder. That is why he hid the autograph of the poem. According to another version, the poem was written by Chekist Yakov Blumkin after the murder of Yesenin. However, all this is just a fantasy of lovers of secrets: an examination conducted in the 1990s proved that the handwriting on the note belongs to Sergei Yesenin himself.

As you know, in the life of Sergei Yesenin there were a monstrous number of women. Here is a very brief, simply castrated list: the young landowner Lidia Kashina, the first wife Anna Izryadnova, the St. Petersburg poetess Lyubov Stolitsa, Mina Svirskaya. Second wife Zinaida Reich. Galina Benislavskaya. Zhenya Lifshits. Nadia Volpin, who gave birth to a son, Alexander. Third wife of Isadora Duncan. Actress Augusta Miklashevskaya. Baku friend Shagane Talyan. Last wife Sofia Fat...
But, in addition, in Yesenin's life there were a lot of male lovers. Which makes me personally happy.

xxx

I fell in love with a young man for the first time when I was ten years old. The young man was in a photo portrait that hung right above my bed. Blond bangs, clear blue eyes, some unbearable and indescribable tenderness. Luxurious golden frame. Falling asleep, I always looked at him for a long time and felt that something very strange was happening to me.
Well, yes: dear parents decorated the wall with a popular print of Yesenin worth a ruble and fifty kopecks, which were then stamped in bundles in the USSR. It would be better if Rubens' women were hanged, honestly...
After reading Yesenin, I immediately began to rhyme lines at night, exhausting tons of paper.
Recently re-read. As Alexander Sergeevich said, poetry should be stupid, but not to the same extent ...

xxx

In 1911, when Yesenin turned sixteen, he first went to Moscow. He began to read poetry in a literary and musical circle of writers. And then a resounding success!
Soon Yesenin becomes a favorite of fashion magazines and living rooms. Gorky recalled: "I saw Yesenin at the very beginning of his acquaintance with the city: short, gracefully built, with blond curls, dressed like Vanya from A Life for the Tsar, blue-eyed and clean, like Lohengrin - that's what he was. The city met him with the admiration as a glutton meets strawberries in January. His poems began to be praised excessively and insincerely, as hypocrites and envious people know how to praise.

Together with Klyuev

Gorodetsky and Klyuev, famous gay poets, immediately began to look after the lovely boy. But Yesenin at first rejected their proposals: both of them did not have the most attractive appearance, and he simply did not like them. Moreover: he still told everyone how they constantly pester him! And besides, young men from Kuzmin's circle, from the Gippius salon, from the "tower" of Vyacheslav Ivanov, are stuffed into Yesenin's lovers with varying success. Here is the same Rurik Ivnev left memoirs, where he hinted that Yesenin fell in love with him and was quite ready for intimacy. But something didn't work out at the last minute. Maybe they drank a little. Or, conversely, too much.
But then the young poet accepted Klyuev with all his heart, and it was a terrific romance that lasted Yesenin's entire short life. I must say, Klyuev loved him endlessly. For two years, from 1915 to 1917, Yesenin and Klyuev lived together and were practically inseparable. Klyuev even bought an apartment in St. Petersburg and helped Yesenin avoid mobilization for war.

xxx

Yesenin was always endlessly drawn to beautiful people- regardless of their gender, nationality, religion, and all other nonsense. The poet had a very close friend - Grisha Panfilov, a young man of fantastic beauty, but he died very early from consumption. And then Leonid Kanegiser appeared - the son of a famous shipbuilding engineer. In their hospitable house, bohemians were welcomed with pleasure, some readings, concerts, and performances were constantly taking place there. Tsvetaeva recalled two lovely boys, forever sitting in an embrace, Seryozha and Lenya. "Lenin's black head smooth surface, Yesenin's solid curl, curl." And then Tsvetaeva admires the beauty of both young men.
Yesenin and Kanegisser constantly corresponded, traveled together to Konstantinovo. Both were associated with the Socialist-Revolutionary movement. But Yesenin was close to the Left Social Revolutionaries, and his friend was close to the Right.
During the era of the Red Terror, Kanegisser shot one of the Bolshevik ministers, Moses Uritsky, and was immediately executed.

xxx

Together with Mariengof

And so new novel- with the handsome Mariengof, in Moscow. They live together, renting a room.
This entire period is known to many from a small and very talented story by Mariengof - "A Novel Without Lies."
Just listen with what tenderness and love Yesenin talks to Mariengof in his poems:

My beloved! give me hands -
I'm not used to it any other way
I want to wash them in the hour of separation
I have yellow head foam.

Young people live together. Time, to put it mildly, is in crisis, and they, eating God knows what, are engaged in creativity, creating imaginism. The word itself was invented by Mariengof, from the French "image" - an image.
And in 1924, the twenty-nine-year-old Yesenin organized the "Order of Militant Imagists" in St. Petersburg. Members of the order consider themselves Yesenin's disciples.
This is Yesenin's old acquaintance Ivan Pribludny, Vladimir Richiotti - by the way, former sailor from the Aurora, as well as very unimportant St. Petersburg poets Grigory Shmerelson, Semyon Polotsky and Wolf Erlich. Yesenin is trying to teach them to write good poetry - though without much success. But the boys are all charming, but even among them, Wolf Erlich still stands out for his stunning beauty.

xxx

"Vovochka" Erlich

Yesenin called Erlich affectionately - "Vovochka". And in romantic poems, Erlich called himself the Wolf, sometimes the Wolf cub.
Relations with Erlich continued until Yesenin's death. Moreover, he is one of the main witnesses in the Yesenin case, since it is considered the last man who saw the poet alive.
There is a detailed report on this in the investigative papers and, in addition, the memoirs of Erlich himself - "The Right to Song".
What then happened? Yesenin had just left the hospital - he was being treated for alcoholism. And suddenly decided to go to St. Petersburg. To see Klyuev and his young poets. And besides, Christmas is coming soon...
Yesenin sends a telegram to Erlich asking him to rent two or three rooms.
He is going to live with him, as he once lived with Mariengof. It is this young man of fantastic beauty who spends all the last and mysterious four days next to Yesenin.
On the afternoon of the 27th, Yesenin gives Erlich his dying poem.

Goodbye my friend, goodbye

Goodbye my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.

Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word,
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.

Written in blood - just ink was not at hand.
What happened between them when they were alone? What did they talk about, what did they do?
Erlich, I will tell you, was very mysterious and mysterious person. One of his poems "About the pig" is worth something:

When, having crossed all truths, all laws
And laying half a century under the cloth,
Your slow pantaloons
You will lead in front of my window,

And suddenly you smile pork snouts
A crimson scroll of uncooked miracles,
And you will bring in the graying back of the head
And fat on it under a canvas canopy,

And finally, when you enter the shop
And grunt yourself, without picking up saliva,
And a round knife hanging over the counter
You will cut a stack of ham,

Remember, friend: holy name days
Yours to celebrate - my poor age has lost the habit;
Think, friend: not only for pork,
And man was created for execution.

By the way, from the age of 18, Erlich was an informer of the GPU, which Yesenin knew very well. There were plenty of them around him, he didn’t pay any attention to it - it was just not interesting.
And many years later, Erlich tells his next young man that that night he and Yesenin agreed to commit a double suicide. But he never came...
Appeared not too long ago a new version: But wasn't Erlich the Wolf the killer of Yesenin?
But I do not want to throw a stone at the deceased - after all, it is already impossible to find out the truth anyway. And there was great love between them, that's for sure. Yesenin is thirty, Erlich is twenty-three. Everything seems to be ahead...

xxx

Imagine: Yesenin's portrait still hangs over my bed. I don’t remember how many young men have already visited it - languid and strong, rastamans and downshifters, hackers and culture experts, stupid and desperately talented, dyed blonds and notorious brunettes, and even one monstrously bearded deputy of a large bank.
And I, before falling asleep, still look at the young man with golden curls (the photo has faded, the frame is held on word of honor) and, as in childhood, I feel: something strange and unusual is happening to me ...

Gay people love to make various charts of the sexiest and most desirable men (and, why be embarrassed, women too) and choose a new icon every year. AT different years Russian homosexuals called Lolita, Alla Pugacheva, Philip Kirkorov, Dima Bilan, Sergey Lazarev, Zhanna Friske and even the scandalous Zhanna Aguzarova their icons. This year, the popular Russian portal of sexual minorities again published its list of recognized gays.

10th place: Mikhail Kuzmin

The outstanding poet, translator and composer Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (1872-1936) realized at the age of 13 that he was an "unusual" young man. sexual relations associated Kuzmin with many writers and artists silver age. The first of them is the artist Konstantin Somov, to whom Mikhail Kuzmin dedicated his work - "The Adventures of Aimé Lefeb". Then Kuzmin had an affair with the artist Sergei Sudeikin, but he found real happiness with the novelist Yuri Ivanovich Yurkun.

9th place: Sergey Romanov

The ninth place belongs to the Grand Duke, Governor-General of Moscow and the fifth son of Alexander II, Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov (1857-1905). Although Romanov was married to Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, however, led an open homosexual lifestyle: all the newspapers of his time wrote about his connection with Adjutant Martynov.

8th place: Roman Viktyuk

Theater director Roman Viktyuk devoted his entire life and work exclusively to love, including homosexual love. Currently, he is considered the main gay director of the domestic theater scene, Express newspaper writes.

7th place: Vladimir Veselkin

Vladimir Veselkin - the first officially recognized bisexual of the Russian scene Vladimir was the first artist who publicly Soviet time opposed the state terror of homosexuals and admitted in an interview to a Soviet newspaper that he was bisexual.

6th place: Alexey Apukhtin

Russian poet, "phenomenal young man" he was true friend and devoted lover of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was on the verses of Apukhtin that Tchaikovsky created romances that became late XIX century hits of their time: "No response, no word, no hello ...", "Forget so soon ..." and others.

5th place: Nikolai Gogol

The classic of Russian literature, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, never really advertised his penchant for homosexuality. "Nights at the Villa" is a little-known autobiographical short story by the writer, in which he describes his love for Count Joseph Mikhailovich Vielgorsky, who died in his arms. Another love of Gogol was the artist Alexander Andreevich Ivanov, known for his painting "The Appearance of Christ to the People."

4th place: Sergei Yesenin

wheat curls and Blue eyes the poet has always been aroused by the lust of Russian gays. Some "blue" admirers of his talent even claim that despite the fact that the poet had three amazingly beautiful and intelligent wives, his best poems are dedicated to men. And they recall that according to one of the legends, Yesenin's first love was the homosexual peasant poet Nikolai Klyuev, with whom Sergey Alexandrovich allegedly lived for a year and a half.

They say that eyewitnesses often saw this couple walking and holding hands. And the next men of Yesenin were allegedly the poet Mariengof and the literary secretary Erlich. The version is doubtful, and about Yesenin, we, perhaps, will not agree with representatives of sexual minorities. We already remember what a frenzied passion captured the poet and Isadora Duncan, as well as to whom he dedicated the unforgettable lines "Shagane, you are mine, Shagane" ...

3rd place: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Contemporaries wrote that Tchaikovsky adored funny homosexual games. Collective masturbation for a bun was one of his favorite pastimes. Whoever finished last had to eat it. Pyotr Ilyich cohabited with many of his school friends: Alexey Apukhtin, Vladimir Meshchersky and Vladimir Adamov.

2nd place: Rudolf Nureyev

Second place in the gay hit parade belongs to ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. He, like many other dancers, has never been seen in relationships with women. But in personal life he had many male partners: Eric Brun, Wallace Potts, Robert Tracy and others.

1st place: Boris Moiseev

Although Boris is recent times actively denies his orientation and even got himself a bride (whom he, however, is in no hurry to marry), domestic gays still revere him as one of their own.

He became the first singer in Russia to come out, that is, he openly admitted to the whole country that he belongs to a sexual minority. And even the current "cam-back" of Boris and his upcoming wedding still did not make homosexuals believe that the singer had betrayed his principles.