The crazy mysterious story of Yesenin and Isadora. "A cantankerous woman with empty eyes"

😉 Greetings my dear readers! The article “Yesenin and Isadora Duncan: love story and facts” contains interesting information about the life of this famous couple.

This love story with a gorgeous beginning and a sad ending would not be so attractive if He were not a famous poet, and She was not a famous dancer. In addition, the eighteen-year age difference between the lovers adds fuel to the fire.

Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan

According to witnesses, on the first day they met, they communicated with signs, gestures, and smiles. The poet spoke only Russian, the dancer only English. But they seemed to understand each other perfectly. The romance broke out immediately and violently. Nothing bothered the lovers: neither the language barrier nor the age difference.

This relationship had everything: passion, jealousy, showdown, each in its own language, stormy reconciliations and sweet calms. Later they created an alliance in which it was boring without each other, but it was also difficult together.

This love seems to have stepped out of the pages of a novel, interfering with the traits of sadism, masochism, and some kind of transcendental sensuality. Sergei was fascinated by Isadora, and probably in love not only with her, but also with her fame, and the ghost of his world fame. He fell in love with her, as if it were some kind of project, like a lever leading from all-Russian fame to world fame.

The dancer often conducted lessons not in the hall, but in the garden or on the seashore. I saw the essence of dance in merging with nature. This is what she wrote: “I was inspired by the movement of trees, waves, clouds, the connection that exists between passion and thunder, between a light breeze and tenderness, rain and the thirst for renewal.”

Sergei did not stop admiring his wife, a wonderful dancer, asked her to perform in front of his friends, and in fact, was her main fan.

A trip to the hated America finally put everything in its place. Irritation appeared, and then open dissatisfaction on the part of Sergei. She lost the image of a beautiful lady and became a bargaining chip in the hands of the poet.

Nevertheless, after heated quarrels, Sergei lay at the feet of his beloved and asked for forgiveness. And she forgave him everything. The tense relationship broke down after returning to Russia. Isadora left the poet’s homeland a month later and they never saw each other again. Their official marriage (1922-1924) broke up.

Age difference

• she was born May 27, 1877, in America;
• he was born on October 3, 1895 in the Russian Empire;
• the age difference between Yesenin and Duncan was 18 years;
• when they met, she was 44 years old, he was 26;
• the poet died at 30, two years later the dancer died, she was 50.

There are different ways to approach this relationship where passion and creativity are intertwined. They will arouse interest not only among fans of the talent of the dancer and poet. Love, bright as a flash, will be attractive to everyone who is open to high, real, albeit short-lived, feelings.

Yesenin and Isadora Duncan: a love story

Both critics and readers often idealize their idols: poets and writers. But these are ordinary people with their passions, sins, weaknesses and vices, which are reflected in their work. In obscene poems, for example. Today, when icons are made from classics, forgetting about their earthly essence, they try not to remember these poems either in school or university classrooms. In addition, profanity is prohibited by law. If things continue like this, and the State Duma continues to ban everything, then we will soon forget that in Russian literature there were such popularly beloved authors as V. Erofeev, V. Vysotsky, V. Sorokin, V. Pelevin and many others. Mayakovsky, Lermontov, Pushkin, and, of course, Sergei Yesenin, who himself called himself a hooligan, brawler and obscenity, have poems with profanity.

There's only one thing left for me to do

There's only one thing left for me to do:

Fingers in the mouth and a cheerful whistle.

Notoriety has spread

That I am a bawdy and a brawler.

Oh! what a funny loss!

There are many funny losses in life.

I'm ashamed that I believed in God.

It’s sad for me that I don’t believe it now.

Golden, distant distances!

Everyday death burns everything.

And I was rude and scandalous

To burn brighter.

The poet's gift is to caress and scribble,

There is a fatal stamp on it.

White rose with black toad

I wanted to get married on earth.

Let them not come true, let them not come true

These thoughts of rosy days.

But if the devils were nesting in the soul -

This means that angels lived in it.

It's for this fun that it's muddy,

Going with her to another land,

I want at the last minute

Ask those who will be with me -

So that for all my grave sins,

For disbelief in grace

They put me in a Russian shirt

To die under icons.

Why are you looking at those blue splashes like that?

The favorite of women, in a drunken stupor, more than once recited poems of very dubious content in public. Although I rarely wrote it down. They were born spontaneously and did not linger in the poet’s memory. However, there were still a few poems left in the drafts, where the author expressed his thoughts and emotions, resorting to taboo vocabulary.

Yesenin was seriously mentally ill, and it was to this period that almost all of his frivolous verses date back. The poet lost faith in love, in social justice, in the new system. He was confused, lost the meaning of existence, and became disillusioned with his creativity. The world around him appeared in gray tones.

This is clearly seen in the poem, full of drunken bravado and deep despair.

Harmonica rash. Boredom... Boredom

Rash, harmonica. Boredom... Boredom...

The accordionist's fingers flow like a wave.

Drink with me, you lousy bitch.

Drink with me.

They loved you, they abused you -

Unbearable.

Why are you looking at those blue splashes like that?

Or do you want a punch in the face?

I'd like to have you stuffed in the garden,

Scare the crows.

Tormented me to the bone

From all sides.

Rash, harmonica. Rash, my frequent one.

Drink, otter, drink.

I’d rather have that busty one over there -

She's dumber.

I’m not the first among women...

Quite a few of you

But with someone like you and a bitch

Only for the first time.

The more painful it is, the louder it is,

Here and there.

I won't commit suicide

Go to hell.

To your pack of dogs

It's time to catch a cold.

Darling, I'm crying

Sorry Sorry…

Here the Ryazan rake seeks to prove to everyone, and first of all, to himself, that his chaotic life was not in vain. And although the motives for suicide are increasingly breaking through into him, Yesenin still has hope that he will be able to escape from the deep and vicious whirlpool of drunkenness and riotous life. He exclaims: “I won’t commit suicide, go to hell.”

The favorite of women in a drunken stupor has repeatedly recited poems of very dubious content in public

The wind blows from the south

The poet wrote the poem “The Wind Blows from the South” after he invited a girl to visit, who refused to continue the acquaintance, knowing about the difficult character and far from secular manners of her gentleman.

The wind blows from the south,

And the moon rose

What the fuck are you doing?

Didn't come at night?

The poem is presented in an aggressive and harsh form, and its meaning is that the lyrical hero can easily find a replacement for the intractable young lady, and will be able to drag any other beauty into bed.

Sing, sing. On the damn guitar

A similar leitmotif is contained in the stanzas of the work “Sing, sing. On the damned guitar”, where the poet again returns to the theme of death.

Sing, sing. On the damn guitar

Your fingers dance in a semicircle.

I would choke in this frenzy,

My last, only friend.

Don't look at her wrists

And silk flowing from her shoulders.

I was looking for happiness in this woman,

And I accidentally found death.

I didn't know that love is an infection

I didn't know love was a plague.

Came up with a narrowed eye

The bully was driven crazy.

Sing, my friend. Remind me again

Our former violent early.

Let her kiss each other,

Young, beautiful trash.

Oh, wait. I don't scold her.

Oh, wait. I don't curse her.

Let me play about myself

To this bass string.

The pink dome of my days is flowing.

In the heart of dreams there are golden sums.

I touched a lot of girls

He pressed a lot of women in the corner.

Yes! there is a bitter truth of the earth,

I spied with a childish eye:

Males lick in line

Bitch leaking juice.

So why should I be jealous of her?

So why should I be sick like that?

Our life is a sheet and a bed.

Our life is a kiss and a whirlwind.

Sing, sing! On a fatal scale

These hands are a fatal disaster.

You just know, fuck them

Alas, the poet’s prophecy regarding himself did not come true. The last day of December 1925 turned out to be a holiday with tears in our eyes.

The poet lost faith in love, in social justice, in the new system

On this day, Muscovites and numerous guests of the capital buried Sergei Yesenin. An hour before the solemn striking of the chimes, his best friend, poet Anatoly Mariengof, was crying in his room on Tverskoy Boulevard.

He could not understand how people who had recently walked with a mournful look behind the poet’s coffin were now preening themselves, twirling in front of the mirror, and tying their ties. And at midnight they will congratulate each other on the New Year and clink glasses of champagne.

He shared these sorrowful thoughts with his wife. His wife then said to him philosophically:

This is life, Tolya!

Live hot water bottle

All night they sat on the ottoman, looking through photographs in which there was a young, perky, mocking Sergei. They recited his magical ones by heart. Anatoly Borisovich also recalled how, before his marriage, he and Yesenin lived in Moscow, without having their own roof over their heads.

By the way, the great poet never received an apartment in the capital, despite his crazy fame. “After all, he’s spending the night somewhere now, so let him live there,” an official of the Krasnopresnensky district administration threw up his hands with irresistible logic, where, after passing through five bureaucratic authorities, a paper was received from Trotsky’s office with a proposal to provide living space to Yesenin. “How much do we have in Moscow, and why should we give everyone an apartment?”

Yesenin was saved from “homelessness” by his friends. But mostly - friends. At first, Yesenin lived with Anatoly Mariengof, huddling with friends or renting a corner for a while. Brothers in the literary workshop were separated so rarely that they gave the whole of Moscow reason to talk about intimacy with each other.

The great poet never received an apartment in the capital, despite his crazy fame

And in fact, they even had to sleep in the same bed! What are you going to do if there is nothing to heat the apartment with, and you can only write down poems while wearing warm gloves!

One day, a little-known Moscow poetess asked Sergei to help her get a job. The girl was pink-cheeked, steep-hipped, with thick, soft shoulders. The poet offered to pay her the salary of a good typist. To do this, she had to come to her friends at night, undress, lie down under the covers and leave when the bed was warm. Yesenin promised that during the procedure of undressing and dressing they would not look at the girl.

For three days the already famous poets of that time went to a warm bed. On the fourth, the young writer could not stand it and indignantly refused the easy but strange service. To the perplexed question of true gentlemen: “What’s the matter?”, she angrily exclaimed:

I didn’t hire myself to warm the sheets of the saints!

They say that Mariengof, out of friendly motives, incited Yesenin against Zinaida Reich, arousing in him unreasonable jealousy. As a result, Sergei divorced the woman he loved. Since then, his family life has not worked out.

Although Zinaida and Reich and their children are a poet. However, it is difficult to imagine Sergei Yesenin, the owner of a light walk and a lover of noisy feasts, as a respectable father of a family and a faithful husband.

Mariengof, out of friendly motives, incited Yesenin against Zinaida Reich

He walked forward through life with long strides, as if he was in a hurry to get through it as quickly as possible. Isadora Duncan even gave the poet a gold watch, but he still remained at odds with time.

Dancer Isadora Duncan

Marriage to the famous French dancer Duncan was perceived by those around the poet as his desire to finally solve the housing problem. Then a caustic ditty immediately began to sound on the Moscow streets:

Tolya walks around unwashed,

And Seryozha is clean.

That's why Seryozha is sleeping

With Dunya on Prechistenka.

Meanwhile, Yesenin’s feeling, which flared up sharply before everyone’s eyes, cannot be called anything other than love.

But that heavy love in which passion prevails. Yesenin gave himself to her without hesitation, without controlling his words and actions. However, there were few words - he did not know either English or French, and Isadora did not speak Russian well. But one of her first sayings about Yesenin was “”. And when he roughly pushed her away, she joyfully exclaimed: “Russian love!”

The seductress of many European celebrities with refined tastes and manners, the behavior of the explosive Russian poet with a golden-haired head was to her heart. And he, yesterday’s provincial peasant, the conqueror of the capital’s beauties, apparently wanted to reduce this refined woman, caressed by salon life, to the level of a village girl.

It was no coincidence that he called her “Dunka” behind her back among his friends. Isadora knelt before him, but he preferred the restless life between heaven and earth to her sweet captivity.

Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan - a love story

In the Duncan mansion they practically did not know what water was - they quenched their thirst with French wines, cognac and champagne. The trip with “Dunka” abroad made a grave impression on Yesenin. The complacency of the well-fed, vulgar bourgeois, and against their background, the dancer, noticeably heavier from drunkenness, before our eyes - all this depressed Yesenin. After another scandal in Paris, Isadora imprisoned her “prince” in a private madhouse. The poet spent three days with the “schizos,” fearing for his sanity every second.

He develops persecution mania. In Russia, this disease will intensify and weaken the already overly sensitive nervous psyche. Alas, even close people treated the poet’s illness as a manifestation of suspiciousness, another eccentricity.

Yes, Yesenin was, in fact, suspicious, afraid of syphilis, the scourge of troubled times, and every now and then he had his blood tested. But he was really being watched - he was surrounded by secret agents of the Cheka, he was often provoked into scandals and dragged to the police. Suffice it to say that in five years five criminal cases were opened against Yesenin, and recently he was wanted!

Diagnosis: persecution mania

Dzerzhinsky’s favorite, the adventurer and murderer Blumkin, was waving a revolver in front of his nose, some people in black overtook him in the dark and demanded huge money in return for peace of mind, they stole his manuscripts, beat him and robbed him repeatedly. What about friends? It was they who pushed Yesenin to. They ate and drank at his expense, being jealous, they could not forgive Yesenin for what they themselves were deprived of - genius and beauty, just that. The fact that he scattered handfuls of gold from his sonorous soul.

He will plow the earth, write poetry

Yesenin's lifestyle and creativity were completely alien to the Soviet regime. She was afraid of his colossal influence on an agitated society, on young people. All her attempts to reason with and tame the poet were unsuccessful.

Then the persecution began in magazines and at public debates, humiliation with the issuance of cut fees to him. The poet, aware of the uniqueness and power of his gift, could not bear this. His psyche was completely shaken; in the last year Yesenin experienced visual hallucinations.

What did he think shortly before his death, hiding in a Moscow clinic for the mentally ill from Themis, blinded by the Bolsheviks?

He was surrounded by secret agents of the Cheka, he was often provoked into scandals and dragged to the police

Even there he was besieged by countless creditors. And what lies ahead - poverty, because Yesenin still sent money to the village, supported his sisters, but where to lay his head? Not on prison bunks! Return to the village? Did Mayakovsky write: “he will plow the land, write poetry”?

No, Yesenin was poisoned by both fame and metropolitan life, and the poverty and greed of the peasants led him to despair. Although in Moscow he was gnawed by a terrible loneliness, aggravated by the close and idle attention of the public, greedy for sensations. From this loneliness such painful forebodings were born:

I'm scared - because the soul is passing,

Like youth and like love.

He has already said goodbye to love and youth, is it really still necessary to part with his soul forever? Perhaps one of the main tragedies of Yesenin’s life is the loss of faith. He had no outside support, and he was losing confidence in his own abilities, being both mentally and physically ill by the age of 30.

Galina Benislavskaya - death

And yet there was support from the outside, but in December 1925 it also gave way. For five years, Galina Benislavskaya relentlessly followed Yesenin. His executor, keeper of the poet's manuscripts and cherished thoughts, she forgave him all his infidelities. And she always allowed the homeless poet to come to her, moreover, she looked for him all over Moscow when he disappeared from time to time. She pulled him out of the whirlpool of tavern life, for which Yesenin’s “friends” once almost killed her.

But Benislavskaya could not forgive him for his marriage - already the fourth! - to Sophia, the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy (this marriage also ended in failure). That’s why Galina didn’t want to come to the sick poet in the clinic for a very important conversation. Perhaps she would have been able to protect her beloved Seryozha from a terrible act in the cold winter of 1925.

He has already said goodbye to love and youth; is he really yet to part with his soul?

After Yesenin’s death, a wave of suicides swept across Russia. But Galya wanted to live - in order to write the truth about her relationship with the great poet, in order to collect and prepare for publication all of Yesenin’s vast creative heritage. A year later this work was completed.

Then Benislavskaya came to Vagankovo, smoked a pack of cigarettes, wrote a farewell note on it and... She had to play Russian roulette to the bitter end, since there was only one bullet in the cylinder of her revolver. Near the Yesenin hill there are now two graves of the people closest to him: his mother and Galina.

VIDEO: Sergey Yesenin reads. Confession of a hooligan

Born May 27, 1877 Isadora Duncan. The first and probably the only association with this name among our compatriots is this: “Wife Sergei Yesenin" And although she spent only 4% of her life in this capacity - 2 out of 50 years, from 1922 to 1924. - the memory of her in Russia is alive only for this reason.

True, at the moment they met, everything was exactly the opposite. The stunning world fame of an innovative dancer, the founder of free dance. Big money, brilliant status, dubious past, which only adds to the charm. All in all. "scandals, intrigues, investigations". Isadora's fame was so loud that in Soviet Russia Duncan became a kind of absolute in everything that stunned the imagination. Remember how in "Heart of a Dog" Bulgakov does the house committee come to denounce Professor Preobrazhensky? “No one in Moscow has canteens,” the woman shouted loudly. - Even Isadora Duncan!

Cow eyes

And what about Yesenin? Local fame of the Russian poet, who has not yet completely gotten rid of the somewhat humiliating status of a “peasant nugget”.

The poet spoke roughly about this evil, but in his own way Sergey Gorodetsky, Friend Nikolai Gumilyov and once the patron of Sergei Yesenin: “This was a way out of his shepherding, from a peasant, from a jacket with an accordion. This was his revolution, his liberation. With this mischief, Yesenin raised himself above Klyuev and over other poets of the village."

In general, there was a lot of gossip about this alliance and not always favorably. Everything was amazing. And the 18-year age gap - that’s exactly how much older Duncan was than Yesenin. And the fact that the American left the stage of the leading theaters of the world for the impoverished, but so free and attractive Soviet Russia. And, of course, in all this there was a poorly hidden interest: “What did she find in our Ryazan boy?”

The opposite question - “What did he find in her?” - are asked less often. It is all the more interesting to look at a world celebrity through the eyes of a provincial. Fortunately, there are enough witnesses - the romance and family life of the couple, who after registering at the Khamovnichesky registry office in Moscow took the double surname “Duncan-Yesenin,” took place in plain sight. And there were plenty of people eager to convey details about the scandalous couple to the public.

Sometimes it sounds poignantly touching. Like Irina Odoevtseva, who met them in Berlin. This is what Yesenin says: “When I was ten years old, I had never kissed a single girl. I didn’t know what love was, but when I kissed the cows on the face, I simply trembled with tenderness and excitement. And now, when I like a woman, it seems to me that she has cow eyes. So big, thoughtless, sad... Just like Isadora’s.” Backhanded compliment. Comparing a woman to a cow is borderline foul. But it’s very our way, and, most importantly, effective. Which is confirmed literally a minute later: “We often quarrel with her. A cantankerous woman, and a foreign one at that. She doesn’t understand me, she doesn’t give me a damn... If she gets stiff and turns her face up, give her a more generous compliment on the feminine side. She loves it. It will melt immediately. She’s, in essence, not bad and even very sweet sometimes.”

Mother or witch?

Sometimes assertive and very tough. Under the drunken hand of Yesenin, it seems that Duncan is almost a witch, a spawn of Satan, a devilish obsession. Another woman witness, poet Elizabeth Styrskaya gives an excellent transcript of Yesenin’s not entirely sober revelations: "Don't know. Nothing like what has happened in my life so far. Isadora has a devilish power over me. When I leave, I think that I will never return, but the next day or the day after I return. I often feel like I hate her. She is a stranger! You see, completely alien. What do I need it for? What am I to her? My poems... My name... After all, I am Yesenin... I love Russia, cows, peasants, the village... And she loves Greek vases... ha... ha... ha... My milk will turn sour in Greek vases... She has such empty eyes... Someone else's face... gestures, voice, words - everything is alien!.. All this offends me. I'm cold to everyone! She’s old... well, if you ask me... But I’m interested in living with her, and I like it... You know, she’s sometimes very young, very young. She satisfies me and loves and lives in a young way. After her, young people seem boring to me - you won’t believe it. And how tender she was with me, like a mother. She said that I looked like her dead son. There is generally a lot of tenderness in her. Obsession. She bewitched me...”

Don't understand anything. Either she is Russian at heart, or she is completely alien. Either crazy passion, or barely disguised cynicism with “cow” compliments... Either a witch, or your own mother. And yet, one thing cannot be ignored. Duncan was important to Yesenin. If only for the reason that he saw in her a figure at least equal in size to himself.

Victory of the poet

Imagist poet Nadezhda Volpin, who, to put it mildly, did not like Isadora, still recognized an important thing: “Yes, there was a strong sexual attraction there. But you can't call it love. They often say that he was in love with her surroundings - fading but ready to be resurrected fame, imaginary enormous wealth... That’s all true, but I’ll add - not the least of which was that Yesenin valued Duncan’s bright, strong personality. I can’t help but remember his words: “Where there is no personality, art is impossible.”

It was with this person that Yesenin waged a brutal war. The glory should have gone only to him, to him alone. Translator Lola Kinel left a transcript of the dialogue between Yesenin and Duncan. And, getting to know him, you can’t even imagine that this is what a husband and wife are saying. Rather, they are irreconcilable opponents.

Here is Yesenin:

- Dancers are like actors: one generation remembers them, the next reads about them, the third knows nothing. You are just a dancer. People can come and admire you, even cry. But when you die, no one will remember you. In a few years your great glory will fade away. And - no Isadora! But poets continue to live. And I, Yesenin, will leave behind poems. Poems also continue to live. Poems like mine will live forever.

And here is Isadora's answer:

- Tell him he's wrong, tell him he's wrong. I gave people beauty. I gave them my soul when I danced. And this beauty does not die. She exists somewhere... - Tears suddenly appeared in her eyes, and she said in her pitiful Russian: - Beauty never die!

It may be cruel, but in a family dispute you will have to admit that your husband is right. And go back to the very beginning. If it weren’t for Yesenin, people in Russia would hardly remember who Isadora Duncan was.

The story of Isadora Duncan and Sergei Yesenin is probably familiar to many. But do you know how their romance began? When Yesenin saw his future muse dancing the famous dance with a scarf, he was captivated by her plasticity, he wanted to shout that he was in love, but Sergei did not know English... He expressed himself with gestures, made faces, cursed in Russian, but Duncan did not understood what the poet wanted to say.

Then Yesenin said: “Go away, everyone,” took off his shoes and began to dance a wild dance around the goddess, at the end of which he simply fell on his face and hugged her knees. Smiling, Isadora stroked the poet’s flaxen curls and tenderly uttered one of the few Russian words she knew: “Angel,” but after a second, looking into his eyes, she added: “Chiort.” Their crazy, unpredictable, mysterious, full of passion, happy and at the same time tragic story will never cease to interest those who seek to understand the incredible secrets of love.

Chapter 1 - Faithful Galya 1

Chapter 2 - Golden Head 2

Chapter 3 - Isadora 3

Chapter 4 - Taming 4

Chapter 5 - Nadya 5

Chapter 6 - Moving 6

Chapter 7 - Adio, Isadora! 7

Chapter 8 - Jealousy 8

Chapter 9 - Wedding 9

Chapter 10 - Berlin 10

Chapter 11 - Escape 11

Chapter 12 - Longing 12

Chapter 13 - Walk 13

Chapter 14 - America 14

Chapter 15 - Paris 16

Chapter 16 - Love is a Plague 17

Chapter 17 - Funny Couple 18

Chapter 18 - Maison de santé 19

Chapter 19 - And again Moscow 20

Chapter 20 - "My dears! Good!" 21

Chapter 21 - Sergun 22

Chapter 22 - Russian love 24

Chapter 23 - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye!" 26

Chapter 24 - Towards love... 27

Olga Ter-Ghazaryan
Yesenin and Isadora Duncan
One soul for two

Chapter 1
Vernaya Galya

Someone's decisive steps creaked crisply along the snow-cleared paths of the Vagankovskoe cemetery. Blackened and frost-covered crosses, monuments and tombstones dusted with white caps floated past. Near the gloomy cast-iron fence, the steps suddenly stopped. A young woman in a dark, shabby coat and a checkered cap, from under which heavy fluffy black hair spilled out, froze in front of a carved hedge. She stood motionless, with her eyes widened in horror, and only by the steam coming out of her nostrils could one understand that this was not a stone statue, but a living person. Slowly, as if in a fog, she approached the cross and froze again. Her huge gray-green eyes gazed motionlessly at the grave from under her fused sable eyebrows.

The frosty silence was broken by a hysterically cawing crow. Suddenly aroused, the woman nervously pulled her hands out of the cuffs of her coat and reached into her pocket. With trembling fingers, she pulled out a cigarette from a gray-brown patterned box with the inscription “Mosaic” and took a drag. At the tombstone there were still fresh flowers, apparently brought recently by one of the fans. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Not a soul around.

Having smoked one cigarette, the woman immediately began to smoke another. She exhaled the smoke noisily and took a drag. She seemed to be somewhere far away, in her thoughts. One after another, visions flashed before her inner gaze.

Here she is in the Great Hall of the Conservatory. It's cold and they don't heat it. There is clamor, swearing and laughter all around. Shershenevich appears on the stage, followed by the long and important Mariengof in ridiculous top hats with some young, handsome boy of short stature. The "Trial of the Imagists" begins. Speakers come from different groups: neoclassicists, acmeists, symbolists. Then a boy appears, wearing a short, open deerskin jacket, and begins to read poetry, with his hands in his trouser pockets:

Spit, wind, with armfuls of leaves, -
I'm just like you, hooligan...

His impetuous voice flows, captivating listeners with a melodic and clear rhythm. Every sound reverberates with unbridled prowess and pressure. A sheaf of golden hair sways around the thrown back head. Yes, that’s how she saw him for the first time. After reading the poem, the boy fell silent for a moment, and immediately enthusiastic spectators began to ask him to read it again and again. He smiled. Galya had never seen such a smile on anyone else. It seemed as if the lights in the hall had been turned on - it suddenly became light all around. She looked in amazement at the stage from where this radiance was pouring.

Waking up from her thoughts, the woman looked around. It was getting dark. With fingers blue from the cold, she opened the pack of Mosaics and counted the remaining cigarettes. Five. Five more. So she still has time. She nervously lit another cigarette.

Yes, from the moment they met, her whole life turned out to be subordinate to Him. She became his friend, guardian angel, nanny. Her love grew stronger day by day and all his many vicissitudes with women did not affect her in any way. Yes, of course, she suffered painfully, biting her lips and lying for hours in melancholy oblivion when he was with others. However, only she knew what it would take for her to appear before him again as if nothing had happened. Sometimes she wrote him long, hysterical letters, begging him to pay attention to her and not to throw himself away with her love. It seemed to her that such devotion should be appreciated, but he, so frivolous, always had someone more important than her.

“Dear Galya! You are close to me as a friend, but I don’t love you at all as a woman,” he answered her one day. Then she often heard these words from him: “Galya, you are very good, you are my closest, best friend, but I don’t love you. You should have been born a man. You have a masculine character and a masculine mindset.” She listened to him silently with a smile and calmly answered: “Sergei Alexandrovich, I am not encroaching on your freedom, and you have nothing to worry about.”

“So. The last one left,” Galya frantically tapped the paper cigarette holder on the box and put it in her mouth. The December evening darkness enveloped her from all sides. "What time is it? Five? Six? How long has she been here already?" She stared incessantly at the round sign on a black cross, blurring before her eyes, where his name was inscribed in white lifeless letters. Her heart suddenly ached terribly - Galya remembered how he left with his old woman, Duncan, "Dunka", to Berlin, and she, in a fit of cowardice and her painful melancholy, thought that if he died now, his death would be a relief for her. Then she could be free in her actions. Oh, how could she, even for a second, wish for his death?! Her breath caught in her throat and a burning lump rose in her throat. With unseeing eyes she now looked at the marble slab near the cross.

With difficulty opening her clenched teeth, the woman took a pencil out of her pocket, tore open the pack of Mosaics and wrote on the back with an unsteady hand:

“I committed suicide here, although I know that after this even more dogs will be blamed on Yesenin. But both he and I will not care. Everything that is most precious to me is in this grave, so in the end I don’t give a damn about Sosnovsky and the public opinion that Sosnovsky on occasion."

For some time she stood motionless, clutching a piece of gray cardboard in her numb fingers. Then she decided to add: “December 3, 1926,” in case they didn’t find her right away.

Galya took out a revolver and a knife from her coat, with which she had often walked recently along the troubled streets of Moscow. In the darkness, the metal of the weapon gleamed dully. She closed her eyes tightly, painfully, and large tears rolled down from under her long eyelashes. Putting the pistol in her pocket, she hastily wrote on the packet: “If the Finn is stuck in the grave after the shot, it means that even then I didn’t regret it. If it’s a pity, I’ll throw it far away.” She looked at the thin blade of the knife for a few more seconds, and then resolutely grasped it in her left hand. Not knowing where to put the cardboard box with the suicide note, the woman put it in her pocket, which for some reason was now unbearably heavy and pulling her to the ground. The right hand slid for the revolver. The little “bulldog” burned his palm with icy cold. Galya took a deep breath and put the gun to her chest. Without a second's hesitation, she pulled the trigger. Only a few moments later did a slight click reach her consciousness. Misfire! Everything went cold inside. Her breathing stole, and the woman helplessly gasped at the frosty air. A strong trembling ran through her body. Galya pulled out a piece of paper and for some reason scrawled almost by touch: “1 misfire.”

The marriage of Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan lasted two years according to documents and half as long in reality. The language barrier (he didn’t really know foreign languages, she spoke in broken Russian), the age difference (she was almost 20 years older than him), the violent temperament of both - the poet and the dancer classically “did not get along.” Their entire family life consisted of a long honeymoon, a honeymoon lasting almost a year, to which Duncan took her poet with a “golden head” after registering at the registry office of the Khamovnichesky district of Moscow. In the USA and Europe they were photographed a lot for the local press - thanks to the trip, many photographs remained..

Yesenin and Duncan in Dusseldorf, 1922. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

Isadora Duncan came to the USSR for the dream of freedom. The dancer toured here many times before the revolution, and when in 1921, People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky invited her to open his own dance school in Soviet Russia, she agreed with delight. The People's Commissariat of Education, of course, kept silent about the fact that she would have to raise a significant amount of money to create a school on her own, as well as the fact that she would live from hand to mouth and in a poorly heated room. “From now on, I will only be a comrade among comrades, I will develop an extensive plan of work for this generation of humanity. Farewell to inequality, injustice and the animal rudeness of the old world, which made my school unrealizable!” – Duncan wrote enthusiastically, setting off on her journey.

– The new dance revived by Duncan and its propaganda were for her the main meaning of life, a consolation after the tragic loss of both children. Isadora Duncan was a truly extraordinary creative person. She abandoned the classical canons of dance, the sham conventions, she revived the ancient spirit, the connection between man and nature and with the divine. She was surrounded by a special train when she even just walked across the stage. You didn't have to be a dance expert to understand this. You had to be a Poet - like Sergei Yesenin! He felt it all, and it was close to him.

Isadora Duncan in 1919. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

The meeting took place on the poet’s birthday, October 3, 1921, with the avant-garde artist Georges Yakulov. As Duncan’s press secretary at the time, Ilya Schneider, recalls, Yesenin burst into the workshop shouting: “Where is Duncan?” And within a matter of minutes he was on his knees in front of her, reclining on the sofa. She stroked his head, he looked at her - that’s how they talked all evening. “He read his poems to me, I didn’t understand anything, but I hear that this is music and that these poems were written by a genius!” Duncan later told Schneider.

Svetlana Shetrakova, director of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin:

– Sometimes they say about Yesenin that in his feelings for Duncan there was more love for her fame than for herself. This is certainly not the case. He was imbued with the secret harmony of her dance, which he expressed in his work. In terms of skill and talent, they were on the same wavelength, forming a union of “flying stars of grace...”. Yesenin, in his own way, could not help but be worried about Duncan’s fame; it excited his creativity. They had a lot in common - they were both people of the future and great artists.

Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

Quite quickly, Yesenin and Duncan began to live together, but they registered the relationship only before traveling to the USA in order to avoid problems with the morality police. The marriage was registered in the registry office of the Khamovnichesky district of Moscow. Ilya Shneider recalled that before the wedding, Duncan asked him to falsify the date of birth in her passport to hide the age difference - she was 18 years older than Yesenin. “This is for Ezenin. He and I don’t feel these fifteen years of difference, but it’s written here... And tomorrow we’ll give our passports into the wrong hands... It might be unpleasant for him,” she said. In the registry office, the age difference has actually decreased - to 10 years.

Isadora Duncan (center) with Sergei Yesenin and adopted daughter Irma Duncan on their wedding day. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

Their relationship was strange to those around them. Yesenin was often rude to Duncan, but she seemed to like it. A typical episode is recalled in his “Novel Without Lies” by poet Anatoly Mariengof, a contemporary of both: “When Yesenin somehow rudely in his heart pushed away Isidora Duncan, who was clinging to him, she exclaimed enthusiastically:

– Ruska lubow!

She treated him with maternal tenderness - as he himself later formulated in a conversation with journalist Galina Benislavskaya, whom he left in 1921 for Isadora. “And how tender she was with me, like a mother. She said that I looked like her dead son. In general, there was a lot of tenderness in her,” Yesenina Benislavskaya cites these words in her memoirs. However, he did not even allow the thought of returning to his wife, and cut off any attempts by Benislavskaya to lead the conversation in this direction: “It’s the end for me. Completely the end.”

Svetlana Shetrakova, director of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin:

– They like to savor the details of Yesenin’s personal life, especially to discuss which of his women he loved more. There is absolutely no point in doing this. He was a poet, so every new meeting was a lift-off for him, an upsurge of spirit, expressed in creativity. These feelings, like heavenly fire, were very strong, so they could not last long. Yesenin and Duncan needed each other - albeit for a short time, but so necessary for two truly extraordinary personalities.

On their American-European journey, they lived a whole life in which there was everything - scandals, jealousy, Yesenin’s attempts to escape from his mother’s care into a brothel, swearing, assault, breaking mirrors in hotel rooms.

Berlin, 1922. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

The journey for which they got married simply could not help but take them in different directions. In the USSR, Isadora was a great dancer, but abroad no one was in a hurry to recognize Yesenin as a great poet. From America he writes a letter to Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, full of resentment. Once in New York, Yesenin went for a walk. His attention was attracted by the window of a newsstand, or more precisely, by his own photograph on the front page of one of the newspapers. “I bought a good dozen newspapers from him, I’m rushing home, I’m thinking - I need to send it to this one, to the other one. And I ask someone to translate the signature under the portrait. They translate it for me: “Sergei Yesenin, a Russian man, the husband of the famous, incomparable, charming dancer Isadora Duncan , whose immortal talent..." etc. etc. I was so angry that I tore this newspaper into small pieces and for a long time afterwards I could not calm down. So much for the glory! That evening I went down to the restaurant and, I remember, I started drinking heavily. I drink and cry. I really want to go back home."

Svetlana Shetrakova, director of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin:

– It seems that under that photo the American journalist also noted Yesenin’s athletic build and suggested that he was a good athlete. Of course, this was painful for a creative person who was loved by his country and believed that the whole world would be imbued with love for his boundless poetry.

Lido, 1922. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

Maxim Gorky describes one of his meetings with the couple almost with horror, calling the dancer “elderly, heavy, with a red, ugly face, wrapped in a brick-colored dress, she was spinning, squirming in a cramped room, clutching a bouquet of crumpled, withered flowers to her chest, and on a thick a smile that said nothing was frozen on her face. This famous woman, glorified by thousands of European aesthetes, subtle connoisseurs of plastic arts, next to the amazing little Ryazan poet, like a teenager, was the most perfect personification of everything that he did not need. There is nothing preconceived here, invented just now ; no, I’m talking about the impression of that difficult day when, looking at this woman, I thought: how can she feel the meaning of such poet’s sighs: “It would be nice, smiling at the haystack, to chew hay with the muzzle of the moon!”

Svetlana Shetrakova, director of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin:

– Gorky and other compatriots of Yesenin one way or another expressed their opinion on the relationship between Yesenin and Duncan. This is interesting, but not entirely important. The main thing is that there is poetry and creativity that outgrow the framework of personal perceptions. In different forms and types of art, these individuals equally felt and expressed the spiritual strength and attraction of man to the Universe. It seems to me that everyone who in one way or another recalled meetings with Yesenin and Duncan was convinced of this.

Ellis Island, USA, 1922. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

Yesenin returned from his trip to Moscow alone in August 1923. More precisely, they returned together, but Isadora immediately left for Paris, telling Ilya Schneider: “I brought this child home, but I have nothing more in common with him.” In October, Yesenin sends her a telegram: “I love someone else. Married and happy.” The “other” was Galina Benislavskaya, whom Yesenin actually did not marry. His last wife was Sophia Tolstaya. The wedding took place in 1925.

Paris, 1922. Photo courtesy of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin

At the end of the same year, Yesenin was found dead in the Leningrad Angleterre Hotel. Isadora Duncan, who survived her ex-husband by two years, reacted almost coldly to the news of his death. “I cried so much that I have no more tears,” she telegrammed to Ilya Schneider.

Svetlana Shetrakova, director of the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Yesenin:

– “My Confession,” Duncan’s autobiography, stops at the meeting with Yesenin. One can only guess what this queen of gestures could write... I think, based on many statements, only the joy of meeting Russia, which, in the words of Duncan herself, may be the birthplace of “art not bought with gold,” and most importantly, a bright talent capable understand her boundless creativity.