THE LIFE AND WORK OF SERGEI ESENIN (1895-1925)
NARRATIVE FINAL/11.4.2021
SLIDE 1 – title-page: picture of Esenin
Introduction
SLIDE 2 – David and Lyudmila Matthews
This evening we are celebrating the life and work of Sergei Esenin (1895-1925).
We are also holding this event in commemoration of Dr David Matthews and his wife, Dr Lyudmila Matthews, who were both great admirers of the verse of Sergei Esenin but sadly are no longer with us. Lyudmila died on 3 January 2020 and David on 5 March 2021.
David and Lyudmila translated many of Esenin’s poems and a selection of their translations will be read, along with the verse in the original. Lyudmila wrote an article in the Ukrainian press about the circumstances of Esenin's death. She also delivered a talk for the Great Britain-Russia Society on this subject in 2006. And Lyudmila and David jointly delivered a talk on Esenin to the Pushkin Club in 2015.
By holding this Evening in memory of David and Lyudmila, we are paying tribute to them both.
SLIDE 3 – Sergei Esenin (1895-1925)
In his Wholly Esenin, an anthology of translations with commentary, the Australian translator Roger Pulvers argues that in his homeland Sergei Alexandrovich Esenin is "the most popular modern Russian poet". Not everyone would agree with that, but there is no doubt that Esenin occupies a special place in the affections of all Russians. This is all the more noteworthy, given that for three decades after Esenin’s death his works were actually banned by Soviet cultural commissars.
And Esenin can lay claim to the title of the best peasant poet not only in Russia, but also in the world. His outstanding lyric poetry not only reflects the dramatic personal path he followed, which ended tragically - either in suicide or in murder, when he was only 30 – but also gives voice most poignantly to “the Russian soul”.
In his short life of just 30 years, Esenin managed to leave a wonderful poetic legacy in both quality and volume, which will live through the centuries.
Early life
Sergei Esenin was born on 3 October 1895 into a peasant family, in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province. [Ryazan = c. 200 kilometres south-east of Moscow.]
SLIDES 4 and 5 – views of the house where Esenin was born (exterior)
SLIDE 6 – view of interior
These are all reconstructions and part of the Esenin Museum at Konstantinovo.
His parents were of peasant stock, but were not farmers, and both earned their living by seeking employment in different places. Sergei's father, Alexander Nikitich, often worked in Moscow as an assistant in a butcher's shop.
His mother, Tatiana Fyodorovna, sought employment in Ryazan'.
SLIDE 7 – Esenin’s parents, with his sister, Alexandra
From the age of three, Sergei was mainly cared for by his maternal grandparents, rarely seeing his parents who lived apart. His grandparents were Old Believers and as such lived their lives according to strict religious and moral principles.
Sergei grew up in an atmosphere of devout Orthodoxy - his grandfather was an expert on Church literature. His grandmother had the same sort of influence on him that Arina Rodionovna had on Pushkin - she knew many songs, fairy tales and ditties, and, according to the poet himself, it was she who gave him the "impulse" to write his first poems.
SLIDE 8 – Esenin as a teenager
SLIDE 9 – Esenin with his sisters, Ekaterina and Alexandra
Ekaterina, the elder of Eenin’s two sisters, is on the left.
Sergey attended the Zemstvo [primary] School in Konstantinovo, then from 1909 to 1912 the Church Teachers' [secondary] School in the nearby large village [село] of Spas-Klepiki. In May 1912 he left it, with a primary school teacher’s diploma.
SLIDE 10 - Esenin in a birch copse (c.1912)
For some time in his youth, by his own admission, he composed "only spiritual poetry". It was only at the request of his schoolmates that he decided to "try his hand at poetry of a different kind.”
Moves to Moscow – August 1912
In August 1912 Esenin moved to Moscow, where he first got a job in the butcher's shop where his father was employed, and then in the Sytin printing-house. Here he became close to the Surikov literary and musical circle and was soon elected to the circle’s editorial committee.
Civil Marriage to Anna Izryadnova - Autumn 1913
SLIDE 11 – Anna Izryadnova
In the Autumn of 1913, the poet entered into a civil marriage with Anna Izryadnova (1891-1946), who worked with him as a proof-reader in Sytin's printing-house. In December 1914, their son Yuri was born. However, in 1915 Esenin left his family. [Note the tragic fate of his son,Yuri – who was shot by NKVD in 1937].
Anna Izryadnova understood that their relationship had no future. She didn't try to force Esenin to stay with her and devoted herself to raising their son. In 1916 she helped the poet with the printing of his first book. Esenin visited her often and helped her financially. He visited Anna and their son for the last time a short time before his death.
Soon after leaving Anna, Esenin quit his job and, according to Anna Izryadnova, now “surrender[ed] himself wholly to poetry, writing all day long."
His first publication was the poem 'The Birch Tree' («Берёза»), which appeared in January 1914 in the children's magazine 'Mirok' (Little World). This poem is still a part of the Russian school curriculum. Soon many of his poems were published in the Moscow newspapers and children's magazines.
Between 1913 and 1914, the poet attended lectures at the National Shanyavsky University in Moscow. There, for the first time he discovered, among others, the works of Belinsky, Nekrasov and Gogol.
However, Esenin was dying to go to St. Petersburg. In his opinion, all the main events of literary life took place there. He ended one of his letters to his friend, Grigoriy Panfilov, with the words: ‘Moscow is not the mover of literary development. It simply tries to prepare people to be ready for St Petersburg.'
Moves to St.Petersburg – 1915
SLIDE 12 – [Contemporary] St. Petersburg
So in 1915, he moved to what was now Petrograd.
SLIDE 13 – Alexander Blok
Immediately upon arrival, he visited the great Symbolist poet, Alexander Blok (1880-1921). A note has survived recording Blok’s comment: "His poems are fresh, pure and sonorous ...". He obtained from Blok letters of recommendation to the editors of two literary magazines.
Esenin made a favourable impression on other famous metropolitan poets – including Zinaida Gippius and Sergei Gorodetsky – and quickly established himself as a highly-regarded poet in Petrograd literary circles. Indeed, his ascent to fame in 1915 was meteoric and his poems appeared in many metropolitan journals and magazines.
SLIDE 14 – Esenin, with Nikolai Klyuev
In October 1915 Esenin met the most significant 'peasant' poet at that time, Nikolai Klyuev.
Their meeting was the beginning of a very fruitful cooperation between the two poets, which included joint public readings of their poetry.
In the Autumn of 1915, Esenin became a member of the literary group "Krasa" // «Краса» and of the literary and artistic society "Strada"// «Страда». Strada became the first symbolic expression of the identity of the so-called “new peasant” poets as a group.
In 1916, Esenin was drafted into the Russian Imperial Army, but thanks to the efforts of his friends, he was appointed - as an orderly in the Tsarskoye Selo Military Hospital Train No. 143, whose patron was Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna.
SLIDE 15 - Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna with her son, Alexei
This allowed Esenin to freely visit literary salons and to lead a full artistic life.
SLIDE 16 – the Tsarina as a nurse
At one of the concerts in the infirmary to which he was assigned, he met the Royal Family - the Empress and her daughters worked as nurses in this infirmary. The Empress is the figure on the left-hand side in this picture.
SLIDE 17 - Esenin, with Nikolai Klyuev
Together with Nikolai Klyuev - a scion of Old Believer peasants - Esenin read his poems in salons, to the accompaniment of an accordion. For these performances, Esenin and Klyuev wore costumes which had been made for them after sketches by the famous artist, Victor Vasnetsov: Morocco leather boots, and blue silk shirts, girded with a gold cord.
Esenin also spoke at the evenings of the Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus' at the FyOdorovsky Cathedral in Tsarskoe Selo. And he read his poems to the Empress's sister, the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna and to the Empress.
At a special concert attended by the Empress and her daughters, Esenin recited his poems "Rus" and "In Scarlet Fireglow". [В багровом зареве закат шипуч и пенен]
As he recalled later: "The Empress told me my poems were beautiful, but sad. I replied, the same could be said about Russia as a whole.,"
During his life, Esenin published a number of short collections of verse.
SLIDE 18 – facsimile of «Радуница»
Many of these were first published in his first anthology entitled «Радуница» // “Radunitsa”. The title refers to a particular Orthodox Church holiday in commemoration of the dead. This was published at the beginning of 1916, with the help of Anna Izryadnova.
His second collection was published in 1918 - "Goluben' ", in which the author appeared as a "pure" peasant poet.
In February 1917 the February Revolution ended 300 years of rule by the Romanov dynasty. The Provisional Government became the country’s Executive Power.
Marriage to Zinaida Reich – Summer 1917
SLIDE 19– Zinaida Reich [Raikh]
In August 1917, Esenin married the beautiful Zinaida Reich/Raikh (1894-1939) - later an actress and the wife of the theatre director VsEvolod Meyerhold.
SLIDE 20 – Zinaida Reich [Raich], with son and daughter
They had two children, a daughter Tatyana and a son Konstantin. The parents subsequently quarrelled and lived separately for some time before their divorce in 1921. Konstantin was born after the breakdown in their relationship.
Tatyana became a writer and journalist and Konstantin Esenin would become a well-known soccer statistician.
SLIDE 21 – the young poet
Development of his poetry in the wake of February and October 1917
From 1917 onwards, Esenin’s work underwent a distinct change. He began to write about social-historical themes rather than portraying an idealised vision of Mother Russia and the Russian countryside. A new motif [theme] appeared in his verse: that of a challenge to the old patriarchal Russia – as, for example, in the poem "InOnia", 1918. [InOnia means “иная страна].
Esenin supported the February Revolution. "If not for [it], I might have withered away on useless religious symbolism," he wrote later.
And, at any rate initially, he welcomed the rise of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution too.
As he recalled in his 1922 autobiography: "In the Revolution I was all on the side of the October [Revolution], even if perceiving everything in my own particular way, from a peasant's standpoint."
Later on, however, he criticised Bolshevik rule, in such poems as "Stern October Has Deceived Me".
In a letter he wrote in August 1920 to his friend Yevgeniya Livshits, he said: "I feel very sad now, for we are going through such a period in [our] history when human individuality is being destroyed, and the approaching socialism is totally different from the one I was dreaming of."
And, as he maintained in his 1922 autobiography: “I never joined the RKP [“Russian Communist Party”], being further to the left than them".
Artistically, though, the Revolutionary years were an exciting time for Yesenin. Among the important poems he wrote in 1917–1918 were "Prishestviye" (The Advent), "Preobrazheniye" (Transfiguration), which gave the title to the 1918 collection, and (as already mentioned) "Inоniya" (1918).
Founding of the Imaginists – September 1919
SLIDE 22 – Anatoly Mariengof
In September 1918, Esenin became friendly with Anatoly Mariengof (1897-1962). Together with him and other poets, Esenin founded the Russian literary movement of Imaginism.
In January 1919, Esenin and other poets signed the Imaginists' Manifesto. The following month he, Mariengof and Vadim Shershenevich, founded the Imaginists publishing-house.
SLIDE 23 - Vadim Shershenevich
As the name suggests, the term ‘Imaginism’ derives ultimately from the Latin word ‘imago’, meaning ‘image’. This avant-garde movement, which deliberately set out to shock, was introduced by Shershenevich with the slogan ‘The image and the image alone!’ Some of the Imaginists called for a "breaking" of grammar and the creation of poems as “strings” of unrelated images.
Unlike Mayakovsky and the Futurists, they adopted a strictly non-political stance.
It is open to question whether Esenin was ever fully committed to the proclaimed ideals of Imaginism. He was not by nature a person who could fit in within any constraints.
Even though he enjoyed the soirees at the Imaginists’ literary cafe, the Pegasus Stall [«Стойло Пегаса»], it is quite likely that he associated with his fellow Imaginists as much out of his friendship, particularly for Mariengof, as out of any sense of dedication to the aims of the group.
In 1922, Esenin described their group's general appeal in the following candid terms:
"Our fans are prostitutes and bandits. With them, we are good friends. The Bolsheviks do not like us, due to some kind of misunderstanding."
Following the death of Sherchenevich and many disagreements among its members, the group had disintegrated by 1924.
SLIDE 24 – Yakov Blumkin
Although the Imaginists didn’t appeal to the Bolsheviks, they attracted some support in Left SR (Socialist Revolutionary) circles). This included the notorious Yakov Blumkin (1898-1929), who - after the October Revolution in 1917 - became head of the Cheka's counter-espionage department, working for Felix Dzerzhinsky.
[One of Blumkin’s most notorious acts had been committed on behalf of the Left SRs, who were opposed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: on 6 July 1918 - carrying out the SR executive committee’s orders – Blumkin had assassinated Wilhelm von Mirbach, the German Ambassador to Russia, by shooting him at point-blank range at the German Embassy in Moscow!]
Blumkin was a lover of poetry and was often seen maundering about in Moscow with poets, He became very friendly with Esenin.
In October 1920, following an anonymous report or denunciation («донос»), the poet and two of his Imaginist friends, were arrested by the Cheka and interrogated at the Lubyanka Prison. However, they were lucky! A week later, they were released, at the specific direction of Yakov Blumkin, the lover of Esenin’s poetry.
SLIDE 25 - Galina Benislavskaya
In 1920 Esenin met the poet and translator, Nadezhda Vol'pina. They had an on-off relationship until their final break in Summer 1923. I will come back to Nadezhda fairly shortly.
Meanwhile, in November 1920, at a literary evening devoted to “The Trial of the Imaginists”, Esenin met Galina Benislavskaya, his future secretary and close friend.
[It is perhaps worth adding that ‘literary trials’ were very popular in Russian literary circles in the 1920s and 1930s. Russian people of letters would ‘try’ authors, dead or alive; books , classic or modern; and literary movements, past and present.]
However, as so often with his relationships with women, Esenin’s relationship with Galina Benislavskaya was punctuated by continuous quarrels and reconciliations until the spring of 1925, when it ended in a final break.
A year after the death of the poet, Benislavskaya shot herself at the site of Esenin’s grave - literally on his grave!
At the beginning of the 1920s, Esenin wrote and published a long poetic drama “Pugachev” (1921-1922). The poet lauded the spirit of the past and glorified Pugachev and the rebellious peasants of the 18th century.
“Confessions of a Hooligan” («Исповедь хулигана») , which he wrote in the same period (1921), revealed a new facet of his personality: the poems in this collection were provocative and even vulgar in tone, and gave vent to feelings of deep hurt and anguish.
Marriage to Isadora Duncan and visits to Europe and USA: 1921-23
SLIDE 26 – pictures of Isadora Duncan
In the autumn of 1921, the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan arrived in Moscow. She had come to Russia - in her own words - ‘to convert revolutionaries to the cult of Greek beauty!’
Esenin met her at some event on 3rd October (1921), and they immediately – and very publicly - fell in love. Isadora was almost 18 years’ older than Esenin. Esenin didn't speak any foreign languages, while she knew a total of 12 Russian words. They married on 2 May 1922.
SLIDE 27 – Esenin, with Isadora Duncan
The newly weds then went abroad for more than a year [(from 1922-1923)], to Europe, then to the United States.
SLIDE 28 - Esenin, with Isadora Duncan, during their trip to Europe and USA
At first, European impressions led the poet to the idea that he had stopped loving impoverished Russia, but very soon both Europe and industrial America began to strike him as kingdoms of philistinism and boredom.
Those thoughts found their expression in Esenin’s essay “Iron Mirgorod” // (Железный Миргород).
[Note: Mirgorod is a tiny provincial city in Ukraine featuring in Gogol's eponymous collection. To Russians it is a synonym for provincialism.]
And, in his 1922 autobiography, Esenin wrote as follows:
"Russia's recent nomadic past does not appeal to me, and I am all for civilization. But I dislike America intensely. America is a stinking place where not just art is being murdered, but with it, all the loftiest aspirations of humankind. If it's America that we are looking up to, as [a model for our] future, then I'd rather stay under our greyish skies... We do not have those skyscrapers that [have] so far managed to produce nothing but Rockefeller and McCormick, - but here Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Lermontov were born."
Esenin's public behaviour during their journey was, to put it mildly, rather extravagant. The yellow press of Berlin, Paris and New York reported extensively on Esenin's drinking bouts and rowdy behaviour. The young Russian poet became known as ‘the playboy of Europe and America'.
[To some of us, Esenin’s behaviour during his trip will call to mind that of the great Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, during his tours to the USA in the early 1950s, which were also beset by heavy drinking and unruly behaviour on the part of the poet.]
Upon returning to Moscow in 1923, Esenin divorced Isadora Duncan.
Return to Moscow and last years: 1923-25
As I mentioned earlier, Esenin had an on-off relationship with the poet, Nadezhda Vol'pina, who had joined the Imaginist Group of poets in 1920.
After breaking with Isadora Duncan, Esenin renewed his relationship with Nadezhda.
SLIDE 29 - Augusta Miklashevskaya
However, by this time, the poet had already met the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya, fallen in love and started writing poems to her.
These poems were eventually to form the cycle '[A] Hooligan’s Love' // «Любовь хулигана» (1923). In this collection, Esenin tried to distance himself from his earlier anarchism and praised the healing power of love.
We will read the first poem from this cycle: “When the blue fire burst into flame” // «Заметался пожар голубой...» (1923).
SLIDE 30 - Nadezhda Vol'pina, with her and Esenin's son
In the summer of 1923 Nadezhda Vol’pina told Esenin that she was pregnant.
Esenin tried to persuade Nadezhda Vol’pina to have an abortion. Deeply wounded and angered, Nadezhda broke with Esenin and left for Petrograd, where their son Alexander was born on May 12, 1924.
Alexander Esenin-Volpin grew up to become a poet, a renowned mathematician and a prominent activist in the Soviet dissident movement of the 1960s. From 1972, until his death in 2016, he lived in the United States.
So, in 1923, Esenin was back in Moscow, but he was not able to find a place for himself in the new Bolshevik Russia.
The last years of his life were marked by tragic contradictions. According to the testimony of contemporaries, during hard-drinking sessions Esenin was inclined to criticise the Bolshevik regime in rather strident terms – which of course was a dangerous thing to do, as he would inevitably be the subject of ‘denunciations’ to the secret police.
But his status as a popular, peasant poet served as a talisman for him: usually, after spending some time in police cells, Esenin would be released.
In 1924-1925, he composed such masterpieces as his collection of poems "Moscow taverns" (Москва кабацкая) and his long poem "The Dark Man" (Чёрный человек).
[Most of the verses in his collection “Moscow Taverns” (1924) dealt with his bohemian life in bars, where he consorted with prostitutes, crooks, and other social outcasts who would be seeking consolation for their miserable lives through alcohol and day-dreaming.]
[The striking poem 'The Dark Man', which was published posthumously, is considered Esenin's most ruthlessly honest analysis of his mental disturbances.]
Despite his difficult physical and moral condition, and a fragile nervous system which he had undermined through continuous heavy drinking, Esenin continued to write. Some of his most celebrated – and most powerful – lyrics were written during this period.
These include "The golden grove has lost its power of speaking”// (Отговорила роща золотая) – which we’ll be reading this evening – and "Letter to Mother" ("Are you still alive, my old lady?") // «Письмо матери» («Ты жива ещё, моя старушка»).
SLIDE 31 - Esenin, with his mother
Esenin would make regular visits every year to Konstantinovo, to see his mother.
The poem, "Letter to Mother" ("Are you still alive, my old lady?") expresses the deep love Esenin continued to feel for his mother throughout his life. This touching photograph shows mother and son together.
I would also like to mention the colourful and beautiful cycle 'Persian Motifs' // Персидские мотивы. We will read two poems from this cycle: Today I went to ask the money-changer // «Я спросил сегодня у менялы» and Shahane, you are my Shahane, // Шагане ты моя, Шагане.
Esenin wrote "Shahane, you are my Shahane”, on 20 December 1924, when he was living in Batum (in Georgia).
SLIDE 32 – Shahane Terteryan
The name of ‘Shahane’ appears to have been inspired by – and to be in honour of - the young Armenian woman he met in Batum, who had come there from Tiflis to work as a Russian teacher - Shahane Terteryan (1900-1976).
Marriage to Sofia Tolstaya - September 1925
SLIDE 33 – Esenin with Sofia Tolstaya
In March 1925 Esenin met Sofia Tolstaya, the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. When he decided to marry her and told Galina Benislavskaya of his intention to do this, the latter understandably objected in the strongest possible terms.
However, Esenin was unmoved. Benislavskaya immediately broke off all personal and business connections with him.
Sergei and Sofia were married on 18 September 1925. Sofia tried to get Esenin help with his depression, but he suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalised in a psychiatric clinic for a month.
On 21st December Esenin left the clinic and on 23rd December he took out his belongings from Sofia Tolstaya’s house in Moscow (where they had been living together) and left abruptly for what by now was known as Leningrad.
Circumstances surrounding Esenin’s death – 28 December 1925
SLIDE 34 – Hotel Angleterre
On 28 December, 1925, Esenin was found dead at the Hotel Angleterre in Leningrad by his friend, Georgyi Ustinov, and Ustinov’s wife.
Esenin’s civil funeral took place at the Poets' Union in Leningrad. His body was subsequently transported by train to Moscow for a State Funeral.
SLIDE 35 - State Funeral in Moscow
Sergei Esenin was buried on 31 December 1925 in Moscow. It was the first State Funeral for a man of letters in the history of Russia (now the Soviet Union). Around 200,000 people came to say farewell to their poet.
The coffin with Esenin's remains was taken to Pushkin Square, placed in front of the Pushkin Monument and allowed to remain there for some time, with silence strictly observed by all in the vicinity.
SLIDE 36 - Esenin’s monument on his grave in Vagankovo Cemetery
Esenin was buried at the Vagankovo [Vagankovskoye] Cemetery. His grave was eventually marked by a white marble sculpture: it was installed there [only[ in 2015.
SLIDE 37 - Monument to Esenin in Konstantinovo
This slide shows the monument to Esenin in Konstantinovo.
Historians still argue about the death of Sergei Esenin. According to the official version, the poet, who had been drinking heavily for a long time and who was notorious for his wild life-style, hanged himself from a heating-pipe in his room at the Hotel Angleterre on 28 December.
It was said that, on the previous day, instead of a suicide note, he had given his farewell poem, "Farewell, my dear friend, farewell …", written in his own blood, to the poet Wolf Ehrlich.
However, many people don’t accept the official version. It is said that Sergei Esenin could not have hanged himself, as he had no reason for doing this.
Contemporaries have commented note that on the eve of his death he was cheerful and gave no hint of any emotional anxieties and, moreover, that he was enthusiastically and impatiently awaiting publication of three volumes of his complete poetic works.
Some aspects of the official version simply don’t add up. After a great number of very thorough investigations, substantial evidence has been gathered suggesting that Esenin was murdered by the secret police.
For example, the central heating pipe from which the body was hanging was next to the ceiling at a height of 3.8 metres. It is impossible to explain how Esenin would have been able to reach such a height.
However, neither of these versions can be proven beyond a doubt. To this day it has not been possible to establish how Esenin really died.
It is perhaps not without significance that Government and NKVD Archives dealing with Esenin's death are still closed.
[The poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, was enraged by Esenin’s death, and dedicated a poem to him, with the title Сергею Есенину // To Sergei Yesenin.
Mayakovsky was tasked by the authorities in his poem to dissuade Esenin's fans from copy-cat suicides, and he tried to do.
Thus, in his poem, the resigned ending of Esenin's farewell to life is countered by these verses:
«В этой жизни
помереть
не трудно.
Сделать жизнь
значительно трудней.»
“In this life It is not hard to die, To make [mould] life Is much more difficult.”]
SLIDE 38 – Sergei Esenin (1895-1925)
The Communist authorities in the Soviet Union, who viewed Esenin's poetry with suspicion for its individualism and "hooliganism," were afraid that his works would undermine the doctrines of Socialist Realism.
They consequently banned his books and prosecuted people for reading and reciting his poetry. Esenin's works were banned until Stalin’s death in 1953.
Since then Esenin poetic works have been published and re-published countless numbers of times.
Conclusion/Closing observations
In conclusion, Esenin's work combined lyrical motifs/themes and love for the rural environment with tragic notes based on the poet's personal experiences: at first - idealistic hopes for socialist construction, and then - disappointment with the socialist dream and deep depression.
Esenin's works inspired a huge response in music, cinema, theatre, painting and sculpture.
Many of his poems were set to music and became truly popular . They have in effect become folk-songs.
We are now going to read a total of 11 of Esenin's poems will be read - in David and Lyudmila Matthews’ English translations and in the Russian original.
But first we are going to have a musical interlude. One of the poems will also be sung in Russian by Lila Moshtael, to her own guitar accompaniment and violin accompaniment by Julian Milone.
This will be “The golden grove has lost its power of speaking"// «Отговорила роща золотая».
THE END