Yesenin in Baku

Author: Kirill Popov, exclusive to VK

We can wonder at the whimsical fate that linked the "last poet of the Russian village" with Azerbaijan. However, one of the last stages of the creative way Sergei Yesenin is marked by his major works and small cycle of poems, the famous "Persian motifs", is connected with this country and its capital.

A journey to Azerbaijan and life in Baku became for Yesenin what the North Caucasus was for the poets of the first half of the XIX century - a fresh, exotic impression, inspiring and pushing to creativity. However, the South Caucasus was much more friendly, landscaped and understandable for Yesenin than the North Caucasus, let’s say, for Lermontov. Yesenin arrived in Baku after the first oil boom, with mansions, restaurants, university and people dressed in European style; that was Eastern exoticism in the frame of European facilities.

In addition, in Baku friends and acquaintances, such as Peter Chagin, Second Secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan and the editor of "Baku Worker", were waiting for the poet. There were even those people with whom Yesenin did not expect and hardly welcomed meeting, in particular, Vladimir Holtsshmit who was a director (and co-director) of the Moscow "Poets Cafe", a mighty man, a drug addict, hypnotizer, a man with the makings of either an adventurer or a rascal.

Yesenin get no chance to reach more mysterious and desirable, but strange and, in addition, less quiet places (Persia and even India). But Azerbaijan has saturated the poet with experiences. On the one hand, he caught the delicate flavor of the East spilled in the air and alluring the Europeans. It can still be caught by anyone who falls for the first time in the amphitheater of Baku over the Caspian Sea. We must be grateful to this feeling for the "Persian motifs". On the other hand, it was the first decade of Soviet rule, the time of dreams, hopes and revolutionary romanticism. Yesenin keenly felt and sincerely tried to convey these feelings on paper. Naturally, he was attracted to the story of the Baku commissars confabulated from the start and turned into a revolutionary legend. Poetic images embodied by Yesenin in his "Ballad of the Twenty-six" continued and deepened this process. In defense of the author from modern audiences, among which the story on the commissars is, to put it mildly, not fancy, it can be said that the main role in this story for Yesenin was played by exciting plot, the story of the death for the high (as it seemed) ideal, and not politics. Perhaps the poet's penchant for disruptive, half criminal entourage was due to the same reason. Dim twilight world lived more sincere, more complete and real life than salon metropolitan audience which only depicted their life. As for the subject of revolution, Yesenin was initially attracted by emancipation, liberation of life. But the lyrics of the revolution soon mingled with the horrific practice. And by the mid-1920s the new Soviet bureaucracy blossomed, distorting and killing off everything that could attract the "national poet".

The conflict with the surrounding reality inherent to many major poets, acquired more tragic features in the works by Yesenin around 1920. Therefore, his stay in Baku in the 1924th and 1925 was not bright. South, the sea, and the exotic beauty of the surrounding area drowned breakdown in the poet's soul, but they could not cure him. Not surprisingly, Yesenin himself once compared himself with the old, rotten garden pipe, through which clear, pure and sonorous, like his poetry, water poured into the pool at the former summer residence of the millionaire Murtuza Mukhtarov. This was not the most optimistic self-perceptions, and it was worsened by his entourage, sometimes touching a nerve. The most painful thing was, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, "discussions" that people were trying to impose on Yesenin in his public speeches. Usually, they were reduced to provocative attacks on the brink of what is now referred to as trolling, addressed to the poet by the proponents of the new, working, proletarian poetry. Their one-sided conviction, lack of manners and bigotry irritated the poet. In addition, we must be aware that Yesenin, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, was a proud man, not doubting the greatness of his talent. Because of this the attacks of the proponents of the new poetry were doubly painful for him.

Several times Yesenin experiences nervous collapses. Sometimes in a fit of melancholy he suddenly smashed the table laid by the hostess with great zeal or, being drunk, was trying to jump out of the window. Nevertheless, every time his sorrow went away, the next day again Yesenin became bright and cheerful man and came to apologize for the damage and anxiety ... The dark thoughts can be taken away by the warm wind from the Caspian Sea! Who knows how many more poems would have been written by the Russian poet with the soul from fabulous Persia, if he had the strength to survive the winter of 1925-1926 and to return to his favorite shore, to Baku waterfront, in the summer.