Decidedly Grim

Today’s Poetic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (sometimes spelled as Esenin) was a Russian lyrical poet. Through his collections of poignant poetry about love and the simple life, he became one of the most popular poets of the day. In the fall of 1921, while visiting the studio of painter Alexei Yakovlev, he met the Paris-based American dancer Isadora Duncan, a woman 18 years his senior who knew only a dozen words in Russian, while he spoke no foreign languages. They married (Sergei’s third marriage) on May 2, 1922. Yesenin accompanied his new celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States but at this point in his life, an addiction to alcohol had gotten out of control. Often drunk, his violent rages resulted in him destroying hotel rooms and causing disturbances in restaurants. This behavior received a great deal of publicity in the international press. His marriage to Duncan was brief and in May 1923 he returned to Moscow. The last two years of Yesenin’s life were filled with constant erratic and drunken behavior, but he also created some of his most famous poems. In 1925 Yesenin met and married his fifth wife, Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya, a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. She attempted to get him help but he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was hospitalized for a month. Two days after his release for Christmas, he cut his wrist and wrote a farewell poem in his own blood, then the following day hanged himself from the heating pipes on the ceiling of his room in the Hotel Angleterre. He was 30 years old.

Sergei’s farewell poem:

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye. My dear one, you are in my breast. A predestined parting Promises a reunion ahead.

Goodbye, my friend, without a touch of hand, without a word, Don’t be sad and do not frown, Dying is nothing new in this life, And living, of course, isn’t any newer.

Culled from: Wikipedia

Confession: When I was 16, I wrote a poem in my own blood too… but it wasn’t even as good as Sergei’s. Such a waste of hemoglobin…

Facts