In the photograph Sergei Esenin is shown with poet Vasily Kazin. They got acquainted in 1919 and were on friendly terms till the death of Esenin in 1925. As Vadim Shershenevich wrote: “ Kazin, who was a beginner at that time, also borrowed many things from Esenin and we touted his verses about bricks and Presnya’. Both of them were members of the “Zveno” (Link) literary and artistic circle. Since 1923 he served as editor of the poetry department in the “Krug” publishing house. Fame was brought to him by collection of verses “Worker”s May” (1922).
In autumn of 1923, when this photograph was taken, Esenin took his divorce with Isadora Duncan hard. As Galina Benislavskaya, his sweetheart, recalled this period: “At the return from abroad Isadora Duncan soon went to the seaside (to the Caucasus and Crimea). I do not know whether Sergei Alexandrovich promised to come to her there. The fact is that he received telegrams from her and Shneider nearly every day. All the time she was waiting for him and calling him to come to her. These telegrams disturbed and irritated him to the last degree while reminding about inevitability of imminent complications, explanations, maybe tragedy”.
The poet came to Moscow in early August and moved in with Benislavskaya in late September. She wrote: “After return from abroad his money matters were in a tangle (no wonder it was money that he expected to get from the Council of People”s Commissars as an anniversary present). Sometimes it seemed that he would never climb out of the debt pit. When he came, he was sick and overstrained”.
The photograph with Kazin was taken in the editorial office of the Izvestiya newspaper. This photograph was kept in the archive of Alexandra Esenina, the poet’s younger sister, and was handed over to the Museum by Svetlana Mitrophanova, the niece of Esenin.
Esenin resorted to the help of Kazin at various times and the latter helped him to maintain business contacts with the magazines and publishing houses. ‘Dear Vasya! Thousand greetings and thousand best wishes to you. Do me a favor, dear! Arrange a fee of 10 chervonetses for this piece. It has 90 lines. I think about you a lot all this time’, — wrote Esenin about the ‘Soviet Rus’. Kazin was also among close friends invited to the wedding of Esenin and Sophia Tolstaya in June 1925. Upon the poet’s death Vasily Kazin published the “To the memory of Sergei Esenin” poem in the Krasnaya Nov’:
Oh! Sergei, you decided to complete
The earthly circle ahead of time …
Did you know, my now silent friend
That my song would be so lone!
In autumn of 1923, when this photograph was taken, Esenin took his divorce with Isadora Duncan hard. As Galina Benislavskaya, his sweetheart, recalled this period: “At the return from abroad Isadora Duncan soon went to the seaside (to the Caucasus and Crimea). I do not know whether Sergei Alexandrovich promised to come to her there. The fact is that he received telegrams from her and Shneider nearly every day. All the time she was waiting for him and calling him to come to her. These telegrams disturbed and irritated him to the last degree while reminding about inevitability of imminent complications, explanations, maybe tragedy”.
The poet came to Moscow in early August and moved in with Benislavskaya in late September. She wrote: “After return from abroad his money matters were in a tangle (no wonder it was money that he expected to get from the Council of People”s Commissars as an anniversary present). Sometimes it seemed that he would never climb out of the debt pit. When he came, he was sick and overstrained”.
The photograph with Kazin was taken in the editorial office of the Izvestiya newspaper. This photograph was kept in the archive of Alexandra Esenina, the poet’s younger sister, and was handed over to the Museum by Svetlana Mitrophanova, the niece of Esenin.
Esenin resorted to the help of Kazin at various times and the latter helped him to maintain business contacts with the magazines and publishing houses. ‘Dear Vasya! Thousand greetings and thousand best wishes to you. Do me a favor, dear! Arrange a fee of 10 chervonetses for this piece. It has 90 lines. I think about you a lot all this time’, — wrote Esenin about the ‘Soviet Rus’. Kazin was also among close friends invited to the wedding of Esenin and Sophia Tolstaya in June 1925. Upon the poet’s death Vasily Kazin published the “To the memory of Sergei Esenin” poem in the Krasnaya Nov’:
Oh! Sergei, you decided to complete
The earthly circle ahead of time …
Did you know, my now silent friend
That my song would be so lone!
