Badly Fine

Ryabchinskaya T. A.

TWO LIVES - TWO DEATH
(Sergey Yesenin and Galina Benislavskaya)

Memories over a newly filled grave, not yet realized as something immutable in the world - about a person who is still painful to call dead, can hardly be impartial and objective, free from purely individual interpretations of the words of the deeds and experiences of the deceased, although the words and facts themselves can be told quite truthfully.
If you are going to tell about a complete stranger from other people's words, you cannot avoid certain mistakes and inaccuracies. Moreover, so much good and bad has already been written about Yesenin and the people surrounding the poet that finding the truth somewhere seems to be a very difficult task. And let everyone in the many-voiced stream of memories of S. Yesenin's contemporaries find his own truth, prompted to him by his own heart.
As G. Ivanov said 1 “A magical oddity happened to the fate of Yesenin: everything connected with him seems to be turned off from the general law of dying, and continues to live. The chemical composition of the spring air can be studied and determined, but how much more natural it is to simply breathe it in deeply…”. Yesenin's poetry - this is the air we need.
Yesenin believed that only those who are in pain, who know how to feel pain, have the right to write poetry, that a person becomes a true poet only in those moments when he is in pain ”(E. Sokol 2 ). And how it always hurt him! Poet Andrey Bely 3 believed that in Yesenin some highest degree of human humanity was offended.
As Anatole France said, “a poet cannot be approached with the same standards with which they approach prudent people. The impressionability of the poet - his weapon - often turns against him. Yesenin's poems are always in tune with what he felt. And there was not yet in Russia a poet of such penetrating lyricism and sorcerous mastery of the word, who achieved such a picturesque embodiment of beauty and sadness, strength and gentleness, good nature and severity of the Russian character. Throughout his short life, Yesenin aroused stormy conflicting passions in those around him, and he himself was torn apart by equally stormy and conflicting passions.
Sincere love for the poet inevitably causes a desire to understand what was going on in his soul, what caused the birth of bright pearls of his work, who was next to him at that moment?
S. Yesenin and G. Benislavskaya - everyone who was next to them has their own and ambiguous look at them from the outside. Diary entries are now available to all 4 and memories of Galina Benislavskaya herself 5 , by which one can judge what thoughts guided her actions and determined the relationship with S. Yesenin and his entourage. Let's try to recreate the pages of their life from the words of relatives, friends and enemies.
What was she like, this mysterious and contradictory woman, who did not want to live anymore in a world where her Poet was not, where there was no longer any reason to exist, who left it prudently and cold-bloodedly? Is she strong or weak? Who knows? Mayakovsky also believed that “it’s not new to die in this life, to make life much more difficult” and more necessary, and left it after Yesenin (although there are attempts to question his unauthorized departure). Let's leave this question unanswered.
Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya was born in Petersburg in 1897. Her father, Arthur Career (French by birth), was a student at the time. When the girl was five years old, they separated from her mother. For about a year she lived with her father's relatives, and then her mother, who was Georgian by birth, took her to the Caucasus. Soon the mother fell ill with a severe mental disorder. The child was taken up by her maternal aunt N.P. Zubova and her husband Arthur Kazimirovich Benislavsky, who, having adopted Galya, left for Latvia. Galya studied at a boarding school in Vilna, then at the Preobrazhenskaya eight-year female gymnasium in Petrograd. The teachers of the gymnasium were distinguished by progressive views, instilled in students curiosity and independent thinking skills. Among the students, the predominant position was occupied by children of the advanced intelligentsia. Galya studied history, literature, natural sciences with special enthusiasm. In 1917 she graduated from high school with a gold medal.
A. K. Benislavsky was more than a wealthy man. Not far from the town of Rezhitsa, he had an estate where Galya spent her summer holidays. She was not constrained by anything financially. But as the political situation in the country became more and more tense, as Gali's independent views developed, disputes and conflicts began in the family, which ultimately had political overtones.
Yana Kozlovskaya, who knew G. Benislavskaya closely, her friend from the gymnasium (and from later life), testifies: “Under my influence and the influence of my parents (they are old Bolsheviks), Galya joined the party in May 1917.” Counting on an independent life and independence, Benislavskaya leaves for Kharkov, where she enters the university in the natural department 6 .
During the Civil War, when the Whites cut off Kharkov, she decided to cross the front line in order to get over to the Soviet side. With a false certificate of the sister of mercy of the Volunteer Army, she succeeds. However, she is detained at the location of the front-line Soviet unit, fearing that she arrived with espionage missions. In search of an excuse, G. Benislavskaya refers to her friend's father, M. Yu. Kozlovsky (Lenin's accomplice in secret financial transactions), who, in response to a request, confirms his acquaintance with G. Benislavskaya by telegram and vouches for her. Suspicion is removed from Benislavskaya, and soon she ends up in Moscow. With the assistance of the same M. Yu. Kozlovsky, she goes to work in the economic department of the Cheka as a secretary and, fanatically devoted to the ideas of the revolution, works with the most famous political executioner at that time, N. V. Krylenko, who at that time was her boss. For some time, Benislavskaya lived in the Kremlin next to communist leaders, including Leiba Sosnovsky (let's remember this name). She was proud of her profession and did not hide it.
After recovering from a nervous breakdown as a result of the upheavals and experiences that befell the girl, she leaves the Cheka in 1922 and goes to work at the editorial office of the newspaper Bednota as an assistant secretary.
Many who knew Galina admired her inner strength and spiritual beauty (A. Miklashevskaya 7 , S. Vinogradskaya 8 ).
At the time of her acquaintance with Yesenin (1919-1920), she looked like a girl in whom, when she argued with enthusiasm or laughed passionately, something boyish was visible. “Her eyes were wonderful! Large brown (so it seemed to the author of the memoirs) with golden sparks, almost fused, pretentiously curved eyebrows under a straight narrow nose that gave her narrow face a special significance. Luxurious curled lashes. The ironic mouth and high forehead testified to the mind and willpower. There is a motley cap on her head, shading her clearly oriental head, framed by magnificent hair (E. Styrskaya) 9 . She looked like a Georgian woman, distinguished by her peculiar beauty and attractiveness. She combed her short hair in a straight parting, like a young man. When talking, she liked to put her hands in the cuffs of her sleeves. In the presence of Sergei Yesenin, Galina blossomed, a gentle blush appeared on her cheeks, her movements became light. Her green eyes, falling into the sun's rays, lit up like two emeralds (M. Roizman 10 )). Yesenin's sister Katya wrote that Gali's eye color was grayish-green. Many jokingly said that she was from a breed of cats. Galya walked, rearranging her legs in a straight line and raising her knees, a little higher than required, as if she was riding a bicycle, which Yesenin was the first to notice. She rarely parted with her bicycle, for which she was called the Yesenin cyclist behind her back.
Where did the paths of the steadfast Bolshevik Galia Benislavskaya and the famous poet S. Yesenin cross?
The first meeting with the poet in 1916 was at one of his public performances, but Galina's memory practically left no trace of her 6 . This is how she describes her second and fateful meeting with the poet in 1919 (in her diary she writes - in 1920): “I saw Yesenin for the first time in my life in August or September at the Polytechnic Museum at an evening of all literary groups trial of the Imagists). Someone was reading poetry, and at that time Mariengof and Yesenin appeared in top hats. Yesenin's cylinder is exactly like a cow's saddle. Himself of small stature, a high top hat on his head - a comical cinematic figure 5 ).
Judgment begins. They speak from different groups: neoclassicals, acmeists, symbolists ... The defendants are talking, chewing something, laughing ... (I said in Yana's ear that they were chewing cocaine; I didn’t know then that they sniffed or chewed it.) In their group, Shershenevich, Mariengof, Gruzinov, Yesenin and their "defender" - Fedor Zhits. The word is given to the defendants. I don't remember who said what, I even got bored. Suddenly the same boy comes out: a short, unbuttoned reindeer jacket, hands in the pockets of his trousers, completely golden hair, as if alive. Slightly throwing back his head and camp, he begins to read:

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

"I love my motherland
I love my country very much…”

He professed this love of his even in the guise of a bully.

If the holy army clicks:
"Throw you Russia, live in paradise!"
I will say: there is no need for paradise,
Give me my country.

However, loving his women, Yesenin somewhere, in modern terms, at the genetic level, retained some kind of masculine attitude towards a woman. This is mine ... So, I am the owner and I can even hit ..., beat ... to put in my rightful place. And it escaped from him in outbursts of anger from a consciousness clouded with wine. He could raise his hand to Z. Reich, Isadora, who, however, silently endured everything and continued to love him, but did not consider it necessary to keep her body for him ... Could the “man” dozing in him endure this? In many ways, this explained his rough treatment of Duncan.
Yesenin's relationship with the mother of his fourth child, Nadezhda Volpin, is completely different. 19 ). She is proud and free, loves him, but does not want to bind herself with family ties, realizing that they cannot bind Yesenin who does not love her. She accepted the child from him as a gift. Sergei Alexandrovich never offended Nadezhda. With his characteristic sensitivity, he worried about Nadezhda, reassured her and helped. Who knew Nadezhda in her youth could not help but marvel at how similar she was to Shagane! It is known that men are attracted to a woman who looks like the one he once loved. Was it not this feeling that drew Yesenin to Shagane? It remains unknown who this Northern woman he was thinking about in "Persian Motifs". Maybe Galina Benislavskaya, as the well-known Yesenin scholar E. Naumov believes6, or maybe - N. Volpin (Roizman 10 ).
Galina Benislavskaya and her love went with the flow next to Yesenin's life. Before her eyes, a break with Zinaida Reich passed, an ardent, explosive and double-edged life with Isadora Duncan, and finally Yesenin left her for his last wife Sofya Tolstaya. What threads entwined the lives of these two people?
After the death of Galina Benislavskaya, an archive was found in her apartment with letters and numerous manuscripts of S. Yesenin, notes, a diary and “Memories of Yesenin”. These documents undoubtedly fell into unscrupulous hands. Benislavskaya's diary was sold abroad, as was the rope on which the poet's life ended a year earlier. Recently it became known that enterprising people secretly took this rope to the USA, cut it into pieces and sold it at auction. (E. Khlystalov 20 ). Where Galina got this rope from is unknown.
G. Benislavskaya, having passed away quite consciously, did not destroy her personal records, perhaps because she well understood the greatness and significance of the poet, the value of everything that would be of interest to posterity in the future. She did not spare her feminine vanity either, saving letters with the most bitter words for herself, as well as for any other woman, the words of the poet. The diary notes of Benislavskaya are a typewritten copy, made approximately in the 50s of the last century.
From the remaining documentary heritage of the great poet and his girlfriend, one can form some, perhaps not entirely objective, idea of ​​their relationship. Naturally, the interpretation of all the evidence at our disposal can be ambiguous, especially since the entries in the diary were made chaotically, and are not always amenable to precise logical understanding. But, nevertheless, we will try to do it.
Entries relating to the relationship between G. Benislavskaya and S. Yesenin begin in the diary from 1921 (and there are very few of them). At first, she thinks about Yesenin still timidly, carefully, she pulls herself up: you have to be smart (“he is so big”, but who am I?). It is unlikely that then a serious smart girl could have high hopes that such a famous person would pay attention to her. Many girls were in love with Yesenin, which is quite natural: a beautiful appearance, a charming, amazing smile, a magnificent reader of his poems and the very title of a poet. By the way, Galina's friend Yana Kozlovskaya, comrade and literary publisher Anna Arkadyevna Berzin 21 , and many others from his entourage were also in love with the poet, but in a different way. As Galina later put it, “Yana loved Yesenin less than herself,” and Galina more. But, nevertheless, he noticed her, and the relationship between them began to develop. She later recalls one meeting with Yesenin in 1921 with emotion. Somewhere in the summer of 1921, Galina feels unusually happy next to him. "Yes, March-August 1921 - what a good time." Yesenin was close to her, he could not help but respond to the feelings of a devoted and passionately loving person. There is a mention of this in her diary, dated March 1922. “There is no humiliation that I would not go to, just to make him stop only for a short time near me, but not only physically, I need more from him: I need that warmth from him , which was in the summer, and that's it !!! 4 . The recording was made at the beginning of Yesenin's already established relationship with Duncan.
Knowing that Yesenin had a wife and children, Galina did not even think about winning his heart, although her heart was already beating in a high love rhythm. Then Yesenin seemed to her already "available." “As he“ saw off ”then at night, the spiders crawled, quietly, gently, warmly. Spent, forgot, but I do not want to forget. After all, Yesenin is alone. After Yesenin left his wife, the poet was literally on the street, the search for a roof not only for work, but even for an overnight stay was his constant headache. Where did he live! Most often, I had to seek refuge in the apartments of various friends and acquaintances, and a crowd of adherents and freeloaders always followed it. By nature, a great esthete with a delicate taste, incredibly clean, he could not work in these conditions. Galina understood that his talent was on the verge of death. From that time on, his life was continuously connected with G. Benislavskaya, who more and more often provided him with a place in a communal apartment in Bryusovsky Lane. She understood how important a normal home environment, family comfort is for Yesenin.
The issue of the lack of normal conditions for life and work constantly worried Yesenin. Shortly before his death, answering the questionnaire “How do our writers live”, Yesenin wrote: “I would like the writers to use at least the benefits provided to Soviet employees. It is necessary to reduce the cost of rent for writers. The room is preferably wider, otherwise the poet learns to see the world through only one window.
Further, the relationship between Benislavskaya and Yesenin developed according to the usual life scenario, when people live together. But…
October 3, 1921 S. Yesenin meets Duncan. A strong feeling of it flares up literally like an explosion. Benislavskaya is no longer needed. She reflects, comparing herself as a woman and Isadora: “And no matter what they tell me about old age, flabbiness, etc., I know that it was she, and not the other, who should have taken, just take him. (You can take him, but you can’t give yourself to him - he really doesn’t know how to take, he can only give himself). If externally E<сенин>and will be around, then after A<йседоры>- all pygmies, and despite my endless devotion, I am nothing after her ... I could be after L<идии>To<ашиной> 3<инаиды>H<иколаевны>, but not after A<йседоры>. This is where I lose." Bitterly, she concludes: "I am" not a horse oats "- that says it all about me as a figure." But she is not going to “grab him by the legs” and not because “pride would not allow it, but because it is pointless!” 4 .
In a fit of desperate jealousy for Isadora, Galina writes: “You can superbly own, manage yourself, you can not show it, more than that - you can play happy when you really feel that you are the second; finally, you can even deceive yourself, but still, if you love so truly, you can’t be calm when your loved one sees, feels another. Otherwise, it means - little love. You cannot calmly know that he prefers someone to you, and not feel pain from this consciousness. It's like you're drowning in this feeling. I know one thing - I won’t do stupid things and tricks, but that I’m drowning and, choking, I want to get out, it’s completely clear to me ” 4 .
Further in the diary are reflections - chaotic, abrupt, veiled about whether it is worth loving Yesenin so much to remain physically faithful to him? “And the violation of this “fidelity”, on the one hand, can eliminate involuntary demands on E , and on the other hand, it can give good warm relations with others, if only you can create them in such a way that is not binding, free and, although caused by<охотью?>, but not based solely on it. But here we must not retreat and not make mistakes, so that there are no complications in the sense of the relationship. And if I want to be a woman, then no one dares to forbid me or reproach me for this! (His words) ... And if someday E<Сенина>a different attitude will appear, then after all, to lose "nev<инность>” does not mean getting sick with a bad disease. And now I can better control myself, protect myself from stupid situations, behave with dignity, and this again will give me strength, and at the same time<он>feel better with me" 4 .
She definitely believes that "that his soul will always be." “Love Yesenin always, always be ready to respond to his call - that's all, and nothing more. I will spend everything else in me for myself ... And with all this, I will be more faithful and my love will be stronger, and thanks to everything that at first seemed to me monstrous in its cynicism, thanks to this it will be wiser, therefore, stronger. She tries to convince herself that the main thing is not to change Yesenin's soul.
In the records of 1922, the mysterious L. already appears, who is somehow connected with Anya Kozlovskaya. Perhaps she introduced Galina to L., and persuaded her friend to break her “vow of allegiance”. “These few minutes made me almost happy, in any case, there is no bitterness, no resentment. This will give me the opportunity to be quiet, meek and faithful again (inwardly, spiritually, of course), and this is the most important thing. And once again there is a mention of L. Among the arguments about friendship with Anya. And by a strange discrepancy among them appears the phrase “If only L. remained a bright joyful streak” (for whom: for Gali or Anya?). She is very grateful to Anya for something.
Later, already in 1925, Benislavskaya admits that L. is the only betrayal ... Mentions about him again appear in the diary in the winter of 1924-1925. (in relation to Galina, it can be assumed that we are talking about the same person): “This winter I realized that if I love Sergey more than anything, more than myself, then nevertheless I have not only a passion for L.,” which means that there was to some extent a spiritual betrayal, which for Galina was more terrible ... And one more mention: "... both winter (L.) and slander did their job." Apparently, she had some reason to hide the name of this person.
Relations between Benislavskaya and L. were not easy either. “There was everything for which he could only treat me badly, and he still didn’t offend me in any way. Where I least expected it, I found it. After all, with L. I could be myself, real. Without breaking himself ... "Thank you, thank you" - I wanted to say to him then, at the last meeting. In addition to the joy of physical intimacy, he gave her warmth and understanding. Did they meet between 1922-1925? - unknown.
This betrayal of Yesenin tormented Galina, she tries to muffle the pain from the consciousness of this with excuses. “Terrible, very scary, very scary! That's enough, no passion, no blindness, no. And he (Yesenin) knows how to love, they rarely love. In the meantime, I will live, I will take everything I can from life, I will take care of myself, I am always ready, if necessary, to come at his first call; at his first desire to cross out everything lived and everything that is expected ahead, to cross out in one sweep without hesitation, without regret ... So I realized that there is more than one Yesenin in life, that he can and should be loved, as the main thing, but to love it disinterestedly, not greedy love , demanding something from him, but the way you love this forest, not demanding that the forest live in accordance with me, or that it has always been where I am. Without leaving it, perhaps I will rejoice in it less, I will feel it differently ... Sometimes you feel like you do not demand anything, joyful endless devotion, meek humility - if I can, I will be around, and in winter, when the sun hides, I will remember what happened and that even now it is behind the clouds, I involuntarily admire it, and my consciousness, wise and calm, says that if this is also love, then this is better and more beautiful. 4 ).
These are the feelings that overwhelmed this ordinary loving woman, who in 1923-1925. was the most faithful and disinterested friend of Sergei Yesenin. And in the heart there always lived a love that was not accepted by him. “So love, so selflessly and unrestrainedly love. Does it happen? But I love, and I can not do otherwise; it is stronger than me, my life. If it were necessary for him to die - without hesitation, and if at the same time he knew that he would at least smile affectionately when he learned about me, death would become a joy. Today - my God, just a few minutes, a few heartfelt, no, not even heartfelt, but sincere phrases, a few minutes of patient attention - and I already see nothing, no one but him. I can myself - the first one, leave, move away, but I won’t leave internally ... It often seems to settle down, subside, but it’s worth beckoning me, and I’m here at the first call. It's funny, some kind of doom. And to think - I am not my own, but in the power of another, not my will, which does not even notice me. 4 .
Yesenin abroad with Duncan. Galina is torn between jealousy and love. “After all, she (Isadora) will not be able to save? Fire cannot protect wood. Perhaps we have already seen him off forever, failed to save him? .. How dear he is to me. I feel it again and again. And everything that is dear to him is dear ... I thought about him again. Do not drive away thoughts. I remembered that everything was a "game". We, as children, were sincerely interested in the game (both: me and him), but his mother called him, he quit the game, and I was alone and there was no one to call to finish the game. But still, I started the game, not him. True, this is what children do - I liked it, so instead of meeting, I’ll come up and say. "Let's play together!" 4 . She admits that she nevertheless started the game and has no right to demand something from Yesenin.
A decision comes, no matter what, to be always there for him, to be necessary, to be a friend and not to demand more.
After returning from abroad and leaving Duncan, Yesenin finally settled in a large house in Bryusovsky Lane, the so-called "Pravda House", where employees of the Pravda and Bednota newspapers lived, in a communal apartment on the 7th floor, where Galina owned two small rooms. From the window of the room there was a view of the Kremlin.
Galina, like Sergei, also loved cleanliness and comfort. The room had light wallpaper, elegant engravings. There is order on the desk. There is a dark tablecloth on the dining table in the middle of the room. One of the walls has a couch with beautiful pillows. To create comfort in the apartment, Yesenin draped the doors, covered the bed and the couch with oriental fabrics, covered the windows with dark cloth, and hung a lamp hanging without a lampshade with a bright shawl. In this brightly decorated room, sheltered from the gray, dank misty sky, he felt warmer. He sometimes tied a colored shawl around his head and walked around the room. Yesenin's sister Shura, who lived at that time with Katya, Galina and Sergey, said: “During work, we left the room so as not to disturb him. For hours he sat at the card table or the dining table. Tired of sitting, he slowly paced the room from end to end, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets or putting one of them around his neck. 22 . Sofia Vinogradskaya8, a friend of Benislavskaya, who lived in the same house with Galina, said: “More, of course, cornflowers approached this head. And once he, sleepy, was showered with cornflowers. On the pillow, flooded with sunbeams, drowning in cornflowers, lay a wonderful golden head! .. He woke up, blue cornflowers looked out of his eyes, the sun and cornflowers amused him, made him happy. And he restlessly walked around the apartment, talked, joked, laughed, was unusually affectionate and gentle with everyone.
Sergey was very fond of joking and playing tricks on everyone and was not offended when they played him. He explained it in verse:

Because without these eccentricities
I can't live on earth.

His close friend and fellow publisher A. Berzin 21 she said that when Sergei Alexandrovich laughed, those around him wanted to smile softly and tenderly, as if looking at the pranks of a sweet and happy child. He himself rejoiced most of all at the most varied tricks and unpretentious anecdotes, which he widely shared with everyone, but he was not annoying, but simply cheerful, and generous in his cheerfulness.
... It was possible to talk with Yesenin endlessly. He was inexhaustible, lively, interesting in his conversations, words, political disputes, sometimes full of childish naivete, surprising, but sweet misunderstanding of the most elementary things in politics.
Yesenin was a real songwriter. His poems are songs. They are not only read, but sung. At home, they constantly came up with motives for his poems and sang them to his sisters, mother, friends. The poem "There is one good song at the nightingale" was written by him in the Caucasus and someone there set it to music. Upon arrival in Moscow, he often sang it. But most of all he loved Russian songs. Behind them he spent whole evenings, and sometimes days. He made everyone who came to him sing. With a song it was possible to keep him at home when he, with a cold, was about to go out in the rain and slush, with a song it was possible to drive away his bad mood, and with a song it was possible to put him in any mood. He knew the song, as rarely anyone knows now, and loved it - sad, perky, old, modern. He understood the song, felt it somehow in a special way, in his own way. It was a great joy for him to incite his mother to a song; she sings, and he says: “This is a song! Sisters don't know how, it's an old song." And his sister, who came from the village, with a face and voice like a mother, he asked:

You sing me that song that before
Our old mother sang to us.
No regrets for the lost hope
I can sing along to you.

He loved the accordion and dancing no less ... He danced wonderfully - either wildly, squatting, with stamping, then lightly, moving slightly, moving only his toes, barely moving his shoulders, smoothly moving his hands, with a handkerchief between his fingers, then violently, non-stop circling, then without restraint finishing the trepak to the accompaniment of the invariable harmonica. In general, the accordion occupied a large and honorable place with him, almost the same as it occupied in his poems. And he managed in Moscow to provide himself with playing the harmonica. In his apartment, the best harmonists of Moscow played more than once, and just harmonists, and very bad harmonists ” 8 …
“Yesenin lived noisily, restlessly. Around him a crowd of people was constantly clamoring, among which he was the noisiest, the most noisy. Those apartments where Yesenin lived knew everything except peace. And it’s not that he filled the whole apartment with his noise, he set the apartment and its inhabitants in motion, forced them to lead a common life with him. Wherever he was, everything lived for him. Yesenin did not feel the difference between day and night. The most important things he was going to do at night. At night he called on the phone, got out of bed at night and went to friends, without looking at his watch. When asked why he comes or calls several times on the phone at night, he answered in surprise, with an invariably distracted smile:
- Is it? I didn't even know it was already night. I didn't even think.
He succeeded in all this suddenly, unexpectedly, as unexpectedly as his departures and arrivals ”(Vinogradskaya 8 ).
Galina always had a calming and calming effect on him. “In my presence for two years there was only one scandal. He was comforted by my calmness and my evenness towards him; soon studied to the subtlety of all his moods. With regard to his mood and condition, I was completely unusually sensitive for me. Some kind of maternal sensitivity and attentiveness to him grew out of constant anxiety for him. Drunk, he picked on everyone. Sometimes he tried to me, but the fact that I didn’t react to nit-picking in any way calmed him down and subsequently he never touched me. ” 5 .
On Sundays, when Yesenin often worked, Galina left him alone and went out of town. When a wave of inspiration rolled up to Yesenin's heart, he dressed in a festive way, put flowers on the table. Often asked to put on the table and a small hot samovar, which was boiling all the time. He drank a lot of tea then. The wine disappeared from the room, he did not even allow the narzan to be put on the table and threw away the empty bottles. Never in his life did he write a single line while intoxicated.
“I love poetry,” he often said, putting into this phrase a special meaning full of great significance. Poems really were his element, without which he could not live. He wrote them with blood, heart and mind. He said: “If I don’t write four lines of good poetry in a whole day, I won’t be able to sleep. It was true. He worked tirelessly (Poletaev 23 ).
His poems before they were printed, sometimes unfinished, and sometimes in the process of creation, he usually read to his close friends. Read and consult with them. Often, following their instructions, I corrected what was written. He valued advice very much, treated them with attention and gratitude; on one poem he gave to a friend, he inscribed: "To the corrector of the irregularities of this poem."
Reading his poems before they were published was his need. He himself often volunteered to read them. S. Vinogradskaya8 says: “He loved his poems, cherished them while writing. When a poem had already been written and printed, it was “such good poetry” for him.
- It's not mine, it's someone else's when it's written.
When they told him that he must be the happiest person in the world, since he writes the most beautiful poetry in the world, he answered:
- But what is it to me? What is left for me? I’ll tear it out of myself, I’ll write, it left me, and I was left with nothing. After all, I have nothing left.
He spoke this evil, with some frenzy.
He felt like a martyr to his own poetry.

"I am condemned to penal servitude of feelings
Turn the millstones of poems "...

... He was angry that he poured out all his thoughts, all his feelings in verse, thus leaving nothing for himself. He could not write. And in the intervals between writing, he fell ill, drank ...
After poetry, he sought oblivion from boredom and longing. He said that he envies those who serve, work, study. He does not know what to do with himself and his time when he does not write poetry. Poems filled it all, in verses there was all life, nothing remained outside of verses ...
He liked to read his poems only to those who "know how to understand" them. He recognized this ability to understand his poems by whether they know how to “listen” to him.
“You know how to listen, you listen well,” he said. And to whom it applied, he already trusted. He was especially disposed, bribed by that listener who discovered acquaintance with some image borrowed from antiquity, from legend, from the lost wilderness, from a long-forgotten song, who guessed the unspoken thought, who indicated the unspoken thought, who indicated the source of the birth of the image, face , verse" (Vinogradskaya 8 ). This is how the creative part of Yesenin's life proceeded in the apartment of G. Benislavskaya.
In recent years, Galina was most often the first listener of his poems. She had a delicate literary taste, and Yesenin always listened to her assessments, which did not always coincide with his own, to soft advice. When Yesenin left, she used the unlimited powers presented to her by the poet, but she never made a single important decision without consulting him. In her letters to Yesenin in the Caucasus, she wrote: “Russia is leaving” very much. I like “Stans” (P. Chagin), but I can’t come to terms with “I’m not a canary for you”, etc. No need to put it in poetry. And no one is interested in this, except for you and Sosnovsky. But then you somehow stopped finishing your poems. I had such a feeling, and, besides, others told me about it ”and also:“ A letter to a woman ”- I went crazy about him. And I still rave about it - how good it is!
Galina devotes herself entirely to Yesenin, forgetting about herself. As if fulfilling her duty, she carries a heavy burden of worries about the poet.
Officially married to A. Duncan, Yesenin was very burdened by the bonds that bound him. Galina helps Yesenin to free himself from the destructive attraction for him A. Duncan, who soon after returning from abroad left for the Crimea. "I don't know if he promised<ергей>BUT<лександрович приехать к ней туда. Факт то, что почти ежедневно он получал от нее и Шнейдера телеграммы. Она все время ждала и звала его к себе. Телеграммы эти его дергали и нервировали до последней степени, напоминая о неизбежности предстоящих осложнений, объяснений, быть может, трагедии. Все придумывал, как бы это кончить сразу. В одно утро проснулся, сел на кровати и написал телеграмму: «Я говорил еще в Париже что в России я уйду ты меня очень озлобила люблю тебя но жить с тобой не буду сейчас я женат и счастлив тебе желаю того же Есенин». Дал прочесть мне. Я заметила - если кончать, то лучше не упоминать о любви и т.п. Переделал: «Я люблю другую женат и счастлив Есенин». И послал.
Since telegrams addressed to Bogoslovsky Lane (S.A. already lived on Bryusovsky) did not stop, I decided to send a telegram on my own behalf, hoping to touch purely female strings and thereby stop the flow of telegrams from Crimea: “Do not send telegrams to Yesenin he will never return to you with me, Benislavskaya must be considered. We laughed with S.A. over this telegram all morning - still, such a defiant tone is not in my spirit, and if Duncan knew me a little, then, of course, she would understand that this was a scare, and nothing more. But, fortunately, she never saw me and did not know anything about my existence. Therefore, the telegram, according to the stories, caused a whole storm and a devastating answer: “I received a telegram, it must be your servant Benislavskaya writes so that I don’t send letters and telegrams to Bogoslovsky anymore, unless I changed the address, please explain by telegram I love Isador very much.”
With<ергей>BUT<лександрович>at first I laughed and was pleased that my telegram had such an effect and completely pissed off Duncan so much that she began to swear. He calculated correctly, this is the last telegram from her. But then I was suddenly afraid that, upon arrival in Moscow, she would burst into our place on Nikitskaya (the apartment was located on the corner of Bryusovsky Lane and Nikitskaya Street, so in letters and memoirs she is mentioned under different addresses), make a scandal and insult me. “You don’t know her, she will do anything,” he repeated. And, despite the assurances that in this case a good half depends on my tact and, moreover, in the apartment on Nikitskaya, if she even shows the intention to touch me, then she will get from our entire apartment, etc., he I've been afraid of this for a long time" 5 .
But Yesenin's relationship with Isadora did not immediately break off - it was not easy. Galina tells what kind of situation he often found himself in. “As soon as they arrived at Duncan's, he was delicately left alone with her. Scenes, blandishments, etc. Wine all the time. And in the end, Klyuev forced him to smoke hashish. “This scoundrel, I alone know what a scoundrel is,” Klyuev gave me hashish. Do you think Klyuev can't poison him? Galya, you still know very little, you don't know everything. Oh, he can do anything. He loves no one, and nothing is dear to him. He felt bad, failed - and he will not regret anyone. Save me, don't let me in there." He himself trembles all the time and is pale as chalk. Suddenly he takes something out of his pocket, with fear and apprehension. As if a broken cigarette is a cartridge case mouthpiece. He bends over and in the ear, with despair - everything, they say, is over, - he says. “Axelrod gave it, you know - cocaine, I already sniffed it once, but I didn’t feel anything, it doesn’t work.” I screamed in horror: “Now quit! What is that!” And that there is strength hit him on the arm. And he, bewildered, like a boy who realized that he was indulging in something bad and dangerous, spread his fingers with fear and dropped it. He looked like this: got rid, they say, of danger. I walked through it for half an hour, and S.A., trembling, frightened, listened and gave his word that not only would he never take cocaine in his hands, but he would also give it to the face of anyone who presented it to him. Galina had a beneficial effect on him. “I remember how he said that he was embarrassed to swear in front of me, “but I will teach myself not to be embarrassed by you.” He sincerely resented submission even in this form. 5 .
Who knows, if Galina Benislavskaya had not met S. Yesenin on the way, whether he had left us even earlier, having died in a drunken street fight, where his life hung in the balance so many times.
She did not bother him with her love, meekly stepping aside when Yesenin was overwhelmed by another craving for some woman. One can imagine what was going on in her soul, looking back at the pages of her diary (1922), when he lived with Duncan. But it was the sun, the rest shone much dimmer against her (in relation to Yesenin to Miklashevskaya, Galina almost did not feel jealousy). Only in letters written in the winter of 1924 and in the spring of 1925, when Yesenin is in the Caucasus, does Galina's love break through in tender words and lines of appeals: “Charyonok dear; kiss beloved, dear; kiss hard, hard, as I love; always yours, always love, my sun. The letters also constantly slip words expressing anxiety and concern for him: “... your heart aches, don’t you understand how hard it is to know nothing about what’s wrong with you? “My sun, dear Sergey Alexandrovich. What are you? Are you hiding again? From January 1 to 21 - not a word. Why? Mood, weather or something worse? Decided to torment? To worry about you? Yes? No need. And so sad. Write, at least 2 lines, but write. "I think about you all the time, I'm with you all the time." "Your silence is also very disturbing." But she did not think of tying him to her. Before leaving the sanatorium, she said to Sergei Alexandrovich: “You don’t owe me anything. If for some reason you don't want to come back to me on Nikitskaya, don't be afraid, just say it straight. Remember that you are free, and I will in no way and never encroach on your freedom. 5 .
In addition to poetry, Yesenin had no other income, he could not do anything else in his life. The bookstore "Artists of the Word" on Nikitskaya Street, which they owned for two with A. Mariengof, practically did not bring any income. Yesenin was rather a sign, a bait. The book business was run by other people. The poets were constantly visited by their acquaintances, mostly also poets, and the shop turned into a literary club. 5 .
Creativity was for Yesenin not only a spiritual need, but also a source of existence. The money that came to him went away at a rapid pace. Due to heavy financial situation after the parental house burned down in the village, his relatives were constantly dependent on Sergei Alexandrovich. Later, realizing that only in the city they can get an education and arrange their lives, he takes his cousin Ilya, his sister Katya, and then the younger one, Shura, to Moscow. Ilya, although he was registered in a hostel, practically lived with them.
Galina reproached Yesenin's relatives. She believed that real He didn't really have any relatives. “The blood feeling of all Yesenins is very strong, because S<ергей>BUT<лександрович>always gravitated toward his own. Offending old people or sisters meant declaring oneself his enemy. And the stronger it pulled C<ергея>BUT<лександровича>to his own, the more he resented their attitude. Loving C<ергея>BUT<лександровича>Respecting him and a little surprised at the position he had achieved, both the old people, and behind them Katya, first of all saw in him a golden bag. First of all, there were thoughts and conversations about money. From their point of view, they are right. Compared to the villagers, he was rich, very rich. And therefore, regardless of the state of his affairs, they turned to him for money all the time,<в>already difficult times. With<ергей>. BUT<лександрович>he was furious that they did not want to reckon with him, and was indignant that these people see the highest good and happiness of life in money. 5 .
“The expenses for the maintenance of relatives were high, and Sergei Alexandrovich was in a state of eternal earning money, which he did very clumsily. “He knew and understood one thing: he should receive money for poetry. It was very difficult for him to study accountants and editors - with whom and how to talk, so that they would not be led by the nose, but gave out money when it was supposed to - it was very difficult for him, it took a lot of strength. And who knows who will calculate - how many poems could be born due to the energy spent on this extraction. After all, when he achieved something in this regard, then, probably, he alone knew to the end what it cost him, what nervous tension, especially since in obtaining this he saw something humiliating for himself, for his independence ... » 5 .
Here she took on the editorial and publishing chores - this is a heavy burden - a true friend Galya. How difficult and ungrateful this work is can be seen from her memoirs: “Their fee is issued almost like a favor, because, with a chronic lack of money, the courtesy of an accountant and editor is to issue them today, and not in a week. Here, if you come and shed a tear, you will soon get it. But neither I nor Katya knew how to come with a plaintive look, and even if one of us could, I imagine how S<ергей>BUT<лександрович>, with his pride, would be furious. And when you come with an independent look, then oh, how difficult it is sometimes to scratch out this fee. The editors here, of course, cannot be blamed - there are too many more needy in their care, And it is difficult to satisfy them all. Never in my life before and after did I know the value of money and did not appreciate all the charm of receiving a certain salary, when, in essence, you depend only on the calendar " 5 .
Yesenin said: “Thank you, Galya! You always help out! But I would not have been able to, and, of course, I would have given him for six hundred<рублей>. You see for yourself - I'm not good, I can't speak. Do you think you didn't cheat on me? That's it, when it's impossible - I'm confused. It is very difficult for me, especially now. I can't think about it. That's why I'm dumping everything on you, and now Katya has grown up, let her do it! I will write, and you and Katya will talk to the editors, to the publishers!” 5 .
“Sometimes it happened that S<ергея>BUT<лександровича>. patience burst, he went himself to some editorial office, but it ended in failure. Nervous from the endless waiting for money or getting into the company of "lovers of someone else's account", he directly from the editorial office got into a pub or restaurant. In the end, he came at night drunk and without money. At the same time, it was also scary to leave and leave him alone at home: one of these bastards would come in or pull him out by phone, and you don’t know which pub or where else to look. Galina actually becomes his financial director, she receives the money and distributes it. From Baku, he sends her "telegrams to spur her on": "Do you think or not, I'm sitting without money."
Galya becomes the "keeper" not only of Yesenin himself, but also of his literary heritage. When he moved to her apartment, he gave the keys to the box where his things and manuscripts were kept to Galya. Galina constantly took care of the safety of his papers. She writes to him in letters: “How are your drafts and letters doing in general? Is everything safe and in order?”, “… be careful, put and do not confuse the dates under the verses.”
In general, Yesenin was careless about both his things and manuscripts, forgetting to whom he gave what, and what he did not distribute - they dragged him from him. He kept his business papers, documents and belongings from friends and acquaintances. Yesenin distributed his manuscripts to friends and left them all over Russia, wherever he went. Much therefore remained irretrievably lost. His acquaintance in literary circles, the poetess E. Eiges 24 she told how Yesenin gave her many of his papers: “Here,” said Yesenin, “I give you a third of my manuscripts; the other two - to mother and sister Katya. With these words, he took out a whole pile of handwritten sheets and, having separated the third part, gave it to me. I hid the sheets, there were about fifty of them. Unfortunately, only three sheets have been preserved, filled out on both sides, on sheets of forms from the Commune of Proletarian Writers. A lot has gone missing. Galina alone carefully kept every piece of paper where the letters were written by his hand.
Even my mother, a simple illiterate peasant woman who did not realize the value of her son's manuscripts as a great poet, failed to save them. In Zhutaev's story 25 , written down from the words of the mother of the poet Tatyana Fedorovna, there are such lines: “She showed them to the old chest where Serezhin's manuscripts lay. One of them said: "Something is written here" - Tatyana Fedorovna told them: "Take it, take it, no one needs his poems now, but you at least smoke." The children also ran into the house, also asked for leaves and made kites from them, with which they ran along hillocks and slopes.
Why did she do this, Tatyana Fedorovna explained that when in 1943 she tried to take the manuscripts to the regional newspaper so that something would be printed, but there she was received very cautiously. "Tatyana Fedorovna Yesenina". “Yesenin?” he asked again and looked at me in a special way. "Well, well, what did you bring us for the paper?" I give him some verses. He read it, smiled somehow unnaturally, then handed the verses to Mikhail Ivanovich. He read it and, silently handing the verses to the editor, quietly and calmly said: “Tatiana Fedorovna, we don’t publish such verses.” “Maybe we’ll give you a “Letter to Mother”? - said Mikhail Ivanovich. “What, you wanted to go to the front line?” the editor raised his voice. It was very sad for me to hear such words. I don’t remember how I got out of this terrible building and back on the road.”
In Galina's small apartment it became more and more crowded. “We had to live together (me, Katya and S<ергей А<лександрович>) in one small room, and in the autumn of 1924 a fourth was added - Shurka. And spending the night in our apartment is generally something indescribable. In my room - me, S<ергей А<лександрович>, Klyuev, Ganin and someone else, in a nearby small cold room on a broken camp bed - someone else from S's companions<ергея>BUT<лександровича>or Katya. Later, in 1925, the picture changed somewhat: in one room - C<ергей А<лександрович>, Sakharov, Muran and Boldovkin, next to each other in the same room in which her mistress lived by this time - the owner of the room herself was on the bed, and her sister was on the floor, by the window, all the space between the wall and the bed was given to us - me, Shura and Katya, and the last of us slept half under the bed. 5 .
The poet's faithful friends, Galina and Anya Nazarova, repeatedly tried to get an apartment for Yesenin in various instances. Grandov, editor-in-chief of Bednota, was also involved in this. With his help, they turned to the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, sending copies to L. D. Trotsky and A. K. Voronsky. But all their attempts ended in vain. At best, they received an answer: “We are now first of all satisfying the workers, then the responsible workers, and private individuals last. Therefore, we cannot promise you anything. Come back in a month!" (A. Nazarova 26 ).
And Yesenin so needed a homely, family environment. With what anguish he read the lines of Galina's letters to him in the Caucasus: “With the return of Shurka, everything is again in a family way, well and amicably. Again, we go to bed on time, etc. Olya (Katya, it seems, wrote to you - our servants) took us into her hands, in general, she and Shurka are 2 black gloves for me and Katya. We now have a whole family: Shura, Katya, Olya and me, and also our neighbor.
Sergey Alexandrovich also had a dream to organize the release of his own magazine (almanac) of the group of peasant writers "Russians". For this purpose, his visit to the Kremlin to Trotsky took place in mid-August 1923 for permission to publish it, which was organized by Ya. G. Blumkin, who then worked in Trotsky’s secretariat (A. Mariengof 27 ). In Yesenin's letter to Duncan dated August 20, 1923, we read: “I was with Trotsky. He treated me amazingly. Thanks to his help, they now give me large funds for the publishing house. However, none of those who had the opportunity to support him truly became interested in him, and this dream never came true, which plunged the poet into a deep depression.
“In the last years of his life, Sergei Alexandrovich no longer knew how to cling to opportunities, did not know how to break through. Either he needs to open the doors, or he won't go himself. It was from this that his anger was taken: “they don’t let their own people go home.” More than once he said, “Understand, I’m not the master in my house, I have to knock on my house, and they won’t open it for me ... He was very hurt ... The boundaries of someone else’s and his own guilt mixed up ... He needed help to figure it out, and there would be a way out out of a dead end and there would be something to live ...
... In moments of anger, despair, in moments when he felt himself left out of the public life of his homeland, when he realized that he was not to blame for this cut off, that he wanted to be with the Soviet government, that he was going to her, up to an attempt to join into the party, and it is not his fault if they failed to use his desire, failed to involve him in social work, if, as it sometimes seemed to him and as, perhaps, in fact it was, he was rejected and rejected. After all, after all, the entire peasantry of the USSR is ideologically alien to the communist world outlook, but we are drawing it into new construction. We involve because it is a force, a large value. With<ергею>BUT<лександровичу>it was very hard that he was ignored in this regard, ignored both as a person and as a social figure. The situation was created like this: either come to us with a ready-made, well-formed worldview, or we don’t need you, you are a harmful poisonous flower that can only poison the psyche of our youth. 5 .
Abroad, Yesenin takes a fresh look at the abandoned Motherland. He already sees what used to pass him by. In his poem “The Country of Scoundrels”, although from the lips of the bandit Nomakh (the prototype of Makhno), offensive, but terribly truthful words sound:

Empty fun, just talk.
Well, well, well, what did you take in return?
The same crooks came, the same thieves
And by the law of the revolution everyone was taken prisoner ...

The authorities did everything to “legitimately” trample on the poet. The persecution of Yesenin begins. His provocations to scandals became more frequent, unknown persons began to grab the poet, drag him to the police or the OGPU. Some miracle saved the poet from a bandit's knife or a bullet in the back of the head. His nerves are on edge, he is armed with a metal stick for self-defense, P. Chagin gives him a gun as a gift. By order of Sosnovsky, daily articles are published in Moscow newspapers on behalf of the workers who demanded reprisals against the "kulak" poet. Yesenin runs away from Moscow to the Caucasus, to Leningrad.
In her memoirs, G. Benislavskaya tries to accuse the Soviet government of ignoring the poet. She is bitterly indignant that “it had no right not to understand what value is in its care, and which, nevertheless, not only did not contribute to the possibility of growing further talent E<сенина>, but even failed to save it; even if not to preserve, but at least to some extent provide everyday opportunities. Ah, Sobinov, Geltser, Nezhdanova are provided with these opportunities, although their contributions to spiritual culture are immeasurably smaller, if only because their work will die with them, and what was created by Yesenin will survive many generations. 5 .
Yesenin “became embittered and became unceremonious, he didn’t care where and how to receive money, he felt his right to them: since this right is not recognized, since injustice reigns in this area, then there is nothing to play nobility. Very sensitive to any injustice, impulsive both in enthusiasm and in disappointment, here too he quickly went to the extreme. Since they offend, deceive, it means that we must fight and defend ourselves. And it was not by chance that he expressed this philosophy in The Land of Scoundrels:

...So, according to this version
Meanness is sometimes not a vice?

No no no! I don't want to die at all!
These birds hover over us in vain.
I want to be a lad again, shaking copper from the aspen tree,
Extend your palms like white slippery saucers.
How about death?
Can this thought fit in the heart,
When do I have my own house in the Penza province?
I feel sorry for the sun, I feel sorry for the month,
Pity the poplar over the low window.
Only for the living are blessed
Groves, streams, steppes and greenery.
Listen, I don't care about the whole universe,
If tomorrow I'm not here.
I want to live, live, live
Live in fear and pain
Though a pickpocket, even a gold miner,
Just to see how mice jump for joy in the field,
Just to hear the frogs sing with delight in the well,
Apple blossom splashes my white soul,
In the blue flame, the wind blew my eyes.
For God's sake, teach me
Teach me and I'll do anything
I will do anything to ring in the human garden.

Benislavskaya was not at Yesenin's funeral. M. Roizman 10 said: “A short time after the death of Yesenin, I saw Benislavskaya at a table in the telegraph building. Before her lay a blank form for a telegram, she sat in thought, with a pen in her hand. I greeted her and saw that she had lost weight, even aged. I asked if she was sick?
"No, I'm fine," she answered quietly. - But every minute I think that Sergei Alexandrovich is gone!
After the death of Sergei Alexandrovich, Galina writes in her diary that this “tiny little hope has come true, but it is irreparable ... Death is better than a sad life or a constantly ongoing illness. Six months in all conditions ... " 4 . Disappointment with Yesenin was gone, a terrible hopelessness and irrevocable loss came. “And I have the same mortal longing for him. Everything and everything is nonsense, for those who truly saw him - no one to see, no one to love. And life is one-sided, too, is nonsense. She tries to live somehow, pour wine into her soul, rushes from side to side. There is no relief. And Galina decides to die. The last entry in the diary with clumsy inept verses: “Now I don’t give a damn. And you don’t need anything, you even want to write, but not really. It seems to me that there is no month, not even a week, and it will pass, even pity will pass.

Leave you too. Enough.
You endured, unfortunate friend,
From his involuntary longing,
From his involuntary torments.
What was, is gone
Your destiny is like everything
The heart really broke
But the lie broke him.

Better is death than a miserable life or a continuing illness. It's clear? Understandably? "Very simple!" Means? Ay, wah! Six months in all states - you think, and all the same conclusion? Well, so ... gop, as they say, and the sanatorium - "his nonsense." Well, she postponed it for a month, a month and a half, but they read that death is better than. Well, here it is, here it is...
Sergei, I don’t love you, but it’s a pity “That’s for the time being, until the time ...” (wrote drunk) 4 .
This happened on December 3, 1926 at the Vagankovsky cemetery next to Yesenin's grave. The woman nervously smoked cigarette after cigarette. She is so young, and life, despite the difficulties and misfortunes, is so beautiful ... Finally, she made up her mind. She took out a piece of paper, quickly, so as not to think, sketched a few lines: “I committed suicide here, although I know that after that even more dogs will hang on Yesenin. But for him, and for me, it doesn't matter. In this grave, everything is most dear to me, so in the end I don’t give a damn about Sosnovsky and public opinion, which Sosnovsky is on about. (In her suicide note, Benislavskaya for the first time named one of the main stranglers of Yesenin, the ideological leader of the Bolsheviks of those years, but for decades his name was deliberately withdrawn during the publication of this note). For a while she stood motionless. Then she wrote on a box of cigarettes: “If the finca is stuck after a shot in the grave, it means that even then I did not regret it. If it’s a pity, I’ll throw it far ... ".
The woman took out a gun, for some reason she believed that after a shot in the heart area she would be conscious and would be able at the last minute of death to once again prove her unearthly love for Sergei Yesenin. After some time, she was able to somehow add on a box of cigarettes: “1 misfire.” In Moscow, they will later say that there were several misfires. But the subsequent shot was accurate. The woman fell unconscious. The gun and the finca fell out of her hands ...
The shot was heard at the gatehouse. To the scene, timidly hiding behind monuments and fences, the cemetery watchman was the first to arrive in time. A mortally wounded woman in a checkered cap and a dark shabby coat lay in the snow and groaned inaudibly. The watchman ran to the church to sound the alarm. Soon the police came, the ambulance arrived. The dying woman was sent to the Botkin hospital, but she was no longer breathing. The cart turned around and took the body of the deceased to Pirogovka, to the anatomical theater. So tragically ended the life of 29-year-old Galina Benislavskaya, whose love and devotion to the poet was boundless. This is how her death is described by Eduard Khlystalov20.

The suicide of Galina Benislavskaya shocked the public. It was decided to bury her next to Yesenin. The funeral took place on December 7th. The words "Vernaya Galya" were inscribed on the monument. Now the inscription on the grave is more official.
The secret of the life and death of Yesenin and Benislavskaya left with them, and whether they will ever be revealed is unknown.
A disappointed, offended, and offended woman is capable of much and even meanness. "There is only one step from love to hate." She made it. And what happened next? Recently, information has appeared (letters-notes by G. Benislavskaya to V. Erlich were found), with whom she kept in touch after the death of Yesenin. Did she know about his secret service in the GPU, about his possible dirty role in the death of the poet? (although his KGB dossier has not been made public, now there is practically no doubt about this, based on an analysis of his behavior and poetic opuses and other facts) (V. Kuznetsov 36 , V. Meshkov 37 ). The content of her letters-notes testifies to her extremely unbalanced state, which is quite understandable, knowing everything about her relationship with Yesenin.
Now many are asking the question: could G. Benislavskaya have any secret tasks of the GPU associated with Yesenin? There is no evidence for this, nor for the opposite. If there were any, it is unlikely that she performed them to a complete break with the poet. Her love for him was too great for even the great cause of the revolution to defeat her. No, then she could not betray him. But later, being in such a nervous breakdown - who can vouch that she was clean before Yesenin in this sense. Perhaps she was also oppressed by some kind of guilt (although in her concept, the Cheka was not so much a punitive as a re-educating body). This could also be one of the reasons for her suicide. Although, if you think about it, why then leave these angry lines of hatred in the diary for posterity? It's not logical. Still, I want to believe that this pain of the gap passed without detrimental consequences for Yesenin. And what was the need for even more careful supervision of the poet? Voluntary and forced spies did not let him take a step anyway. He lived too unprotected, as F. E. Dzerzhinsky himself told him when they met (Schneider 38 ). All his scandals and drunken, "anti-Semitic" antics with political overtones - everything was in sight. But still, the poet was afraid of something, and the matter was not only in the development of persecution mania suspected in him. He was afraid of something more meaningful. Not without reason did he burn many documents in the apartment of his first common-law wife A. Izryadnova39 before his last departure to Leningrad, it was not for nothing that they turned everything over in the hotel room of the Angleterre Hotel and took away the manuscripts, which disappeared without a trace. Galina's "help" against this background would not have been so great. In a letter from Benislavskaya to Erlich in 1926, facts are mentioned related to Yesenin’s violent reaction to an attempt by “friends” to assure him of the unseemly role of Benislavskaya as an agent of the GPU (V. Kuznetsov 36 ). These experiences still do not let her go, they worry, a few months after Yesenin's death. What kind of relationship was it if she knew the truth about Erlich? Too many unanswerable questions. Time is running out, witnesses are leaving, evidence is hiding deeper and deeper.
The persecution of the GPU in the mid-twenties became more severe and wider. In June 1926, the writer A. Sobol, an acquaintance of Yesenin, who shot himself on Tverskoy Boulevard, near the monument to Pushkin, committed suicide. Before his death, he sends lengthy letters to his friends by mail, and one to People's Commissar A.V. Lunacharsky, where he writes: “Now I am convinced that we are all in a more terrible trap. Disgusting, sticky, black. I do not know, maybe you are already an employee of the GPU, where I was invited the other day and whose agent was offered to become. If they pulled me yesterday, they will pull you tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. There is already a provocateur in our midst, they know too much about us.” It was in such an environment that the great people of our era, who left an indelible mark on the history, literature and art of Russia, had to survive or die prematurely.
As the great Goethe said: "If the world splits into two parts, the crack passes through the poet's heart." In a troubled and terrible time, a person with such a crystal clear poetic gift had to be born. His heart was torn apart by this crack. And everyone who was close to Yesenin during these fiery years was unlikely to be able to save him from inevitable death. “Someone said that everyone carries within himself the spring of his destiny, and life unfolds this spring to the end. This is only part of the truth. Yesenin's creative spring, unfolding, ran into the verge of an era and - broke (L. Trotsky 40 ).
There is no need to judge or justify anyone. You just need to understand and accept everything. There is the great poet Yesenin, and there is an earthly person with his mistakes, which he did not hide, but spilled into his poems (“how many mistakes were made”), sins (“for my grave sins”), insults, desires. And I would not like to be smoothed and combed, as was done for some time in most publications about the poet of the Soviet era. He was a lump of passions and contradictions: low and sublime, light and dark, remaining a great Poet. And no matter what standards literary critics measure the degree of his greatness, they will not be right to the end, because the true significance of the Poet is in the power of people's love for him, for his poetry.
"WITH. A. Yesenin in the memoirs of contemporaries "in 2 vols., M., "Fiction", 1986. Compiled by I. L. Povitsky. M.: APART, 2006. 40. L. D. Trotsky. On the death of a poet. Newspaper "Pravda" No. 15. 1926. from the book. "Life, Personality, Creativity" ed. E. F. Nikitina. Ed. "Educator", 1926.

Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya (1897-1926) - journalist, literary worker, friend and literary secretary of Sergei Yesenin. Author of memoirs about Yesenin.

The Lord sent immeasurably more
for the daughter of a Georgian and a Frenchman -
great unrequited love
(the more fiery it is, the bitterer the heart),
but it's hard to be a servant - not a Muse,
when you bleed like this...

Irina Kakhovskaya Kalitina

On the afternoon of December 3, 1926, at the deserted Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow, near the grave of the outstanding poet Sergei Yesenin, a young woman stood. A year ago, the life of a 30-year-old poet was tragically cut short in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad, and he was buried here. She was not at the funeral. The woman nervously smoked cigarette after cigarette. She is so young, and life, despite the difficulties and misfortunes, is so beautiful ... Finally, she made up her mind. She took out a piece of paper, quickly, so as not to think, sketched out a few lines: “She committed suicide” here, although I know that after that even more dogs will be hung on Yesenin. But for him, and for me, it doesn't matter. In this grave, everything is dear to me, so in the end, I don’t give a damn about Sosnovsky and public opinion, which Sosnovsky is on about.

Galya's suicide note.

For a while she stood motionless. Then she wrote on the box of cigarettes: "If the finca is stuck after a shot in the grave, then even then I did not regret it. If it's a pity, I'll throw it far away..." hearts will be conscious and will be able at the last mortal minute to once again prove his unearthly love for Sergei Yesenin. After some time, she was able to somehow add on a box of cigarettes: "1 misfire." In Moscow, they will later say that there were several misfires. But the subsequent shot was accurate. The woman fell unconscious. The gun and the finca fell out of her hands...

The shot was heard at the gatehouse. To the scene, timidly hiding behind monuments and fences, the cemetery watchman was the first to arrive in time. A mortally wounded woman in a checkered cap and a dark shabby coat lay in the snow and groaned inaudibly. The watchman ran to the church to sound the alarm. Soon the police came, the ambulance arrived. The dying woman was sent to the Botkin hospital, but she was no longer breathing. The cart turned around and took the body of the deceased to Pirogovka, to the anatomical theater. So tragically ended the life of 29-year-old Galina Benislavskaya, whose love and devotion to the poet was boundless.

June 1912 Galya Benislavskaya with her aunt in a boat. Rykopol estate. 1909-1910

Galina was born as a result of a casual relationship between a young foreigner Arthur Karier and a Georgian woman. After the birth of the girl, the quarry disappeared in an unknown direction, and her mother, due to a serious mental illness, ended up in a closed hospital. From childhood, she was brought up by her mother's sister Nina Polikarpovna Zubova (by the name of her first husband), a doctor by profession, who adopted Galina, since her own mother was a seriously ill person. The husband of Nina Polikarpovna, also a doctor, Arthur Kazimirovich Benislavsky became the adoptive father of Galya and gave her his last name. Galina spent her childhood in a wealthy family in the Latvian city of Rezekne. Before the revolution, she graduated from the women's gymnasium in St. Petersburg with a gold medal.

Galya, Antak Urbanovich, Voronushkin foal and medor. June 1912

During the civil war, Benislavskaya sympathized with the Bolsheviks, near Kharkov she was almost accidentally shot by whites. She managed to get to Moscow. Here she became friends with Yana Kozlovskaya, whose father was Lenin's confidant and one of the then main leaders of the Bolsheviks. He arranged for Galina in the bodies of the Cheka, contributed to her entry into the Communist Party, helped to get a room. For some time, Benislavskaya lived in the Kremlin next to the communist leaders, including the aforementioned Leiba Sosnovsky ...

For the first time, Benislavskaya saw Yesenin on September 19, 1920, at an evening at the Polytechnic Museum, at which the poet read his poems. This is how she described this meeting: “... Suddenly the same boy comes out (the poet was 24 years old.): A short open jacket, hands in the pockets of his trousers, completely golden hair, as if alive. Slightly throwing back his head and body, he begins to read:

Spit, wind, armfuls of leaves,
I'm just like you, bully."

What happened after reading it is hard to convey. Everyone suddenly jumped up from their seats and rushed to the stage, to him. They not only shouted at him, they begged him: "Read something else!" And a few minutes later, coming up already in a fur hat with a sable trim, childishly read again "Spit, wind ..." Recovering myself, I saw that I was also at the stage itself. How I got there, I don't know, I don't remember. Obviously, this wind picked up and spun me too ... "

Fate wanted to bring together completely different people, the 25-year-old poet Yesenin and the employee of the sinister Cheka, 23-year-old Benislavskaya. Among individual researchers of the poet's work and biography, there is a version that the Chekists specially sent Benislavskaya to Yesenin in order to be in the circle of his friends, to report on their conversations and plans. We know that she worked alongside Nikolai Krylenko, one of the most important executioners of those years, who was the prosecutor in a number of falsified VChK-GPU criminal trials, and, of course, knew a lot about the secret plans of her leaders. But there is no evidence confirming Benislavskaya's surveillance of Yesenin on the instructions of the Chekists, although in a fit of jealousy she could do a lot. If Galina received the task of the Chekists, she hardly fulfilled it, because from the very first meeting with the poet she fell in love with him with that unrequited love that borders on mental illness.

She and her friends visited each of his public performances, found out that he had children, that he divorced Zinaida Reich. She wrote about her feelings in her diary: “... So love, love so selflessly, but does it really happen? But I love, and I can’t do otherwise; it’s stronger than me, my life. , and if at the same time you know that he will at least smile affectionately upon learning about me, death would become a joy ... "

Ksenia Rappoport, who played the role of Galina Benislavskaya in the film Yesenin.

Soon Yesenin and Benislavskaya became close. Galina forgot that outstanding poets have loving hearts. On October 3, 1921, on Yesenin's birthday, a company gathered in the studio of the artist Yakulov. After performing in a concert, the world-famous American dancer Duncan was brought to Yakulov. 45-year-old Isadora, knowing only 20-30 Russian words, having heard Yesenin's poems, immediately understood the extraordinary talent of the young poet and was the first to call him a great Russian poet. Without a moment's hesitation, she took Yesenin to her mansion. He did not come to Benislavskaya's room, she ended up in a clinic for nervous diseases.

Yesenin and Duncan.

After almost a year and a half traveling abroad, Yesenin returned to his homeland, but he did not begin to live with an aging and jealous dancer. Two great artists cannot live side by side all the time. The poet from the fashionable mansion again came to the room of the Benislava multi-occupied communal apartment. In the summer of 1925, before marrying S. A. Tolstaya, Yesenin broke off relations with G. A. Benislavskaya.

Yesenin with Chagin in Baku, 1924

Provocations began: unknown persons began to grab Yesenin, drag him to the police or the OGPU. Some miracle saved the poet from a bandit's knife or a bullet in the back of the head. Yesenin's nerves are on edge, he is armed with a metal stick for self-defense, reads his poems, shedding tears. Every day, on the orders of Sosnovsky (in her suicide note, Benislavskaya first named one of the main stranglers of Yesenin, the ideological leader of the Bolsheviks of those years, but for decades his last name was deliberately withdrawn when this note was published.) Moscow newspapers published articles on behalf of the workers demanding reprisals against " kulak" poet.

Ekaterina Yesenina, Wolf Erlich and Galina Benislavskaya. January 1926.

Yesenin fled from Moscow, hid in the Caucasus, tried to escape from the USSR to Iran or Turkey. All these months, Benislavskaya was his faithful assistant, but not his faithful wife. Her mental imbalance threw her from one extreme to another. She began to "act out of spite" for Yesenin, cheat with his friends, she "unbridled" a feeling "for Leo" (in her notes she does not name the name "Lion"; according to some researchers, she had a short affair with Leo Sedov's son Trotsky, according to others with Lev Povitsky.).

Yesenin found out and broke off relations with her. Galina hated Yesenin's new environment: the poets Nikolai Klyuev, Alexei Ganin, Ivan Pribludny, who were eventually shot by the authorities. And, nevertheless, Yesenin occasionally continued to call Galina. G. A. Benislavskaya knew Yesenin for five years, but she really occupied a prominent place in his life, in the life of his family in 1924 and the first half of 1925. “Dear Galya!” Yesenin wrote to her on April 15, 1924 - I repeat to you that you are very, very dear to me. And you yourself know that without your participation in my fate there would be a lot of deplorable "(VI, 143). During this period, she was actively engaged in Yesenin's literary affairs. He trusted her to negotiate with the editors, to conclude contracts for publications. Yesenin's letters to G. A. Benislavskaya are full of instructions and all sorts of requests: to select poems for various publications, to report literary news.

On December 27, 1925, Yesenin's life ended. Benislavskaya ended up in a psychiatric clinic. Life has lost its meaning for her. ... In the room of the deceased Benislavskaya, there were numerous manuscripts of the poet's works, his letters to the deceased, various notes, diaries and "Memories of Yesenin" typed on a typewriter. Undoubtedly, these and other documents of great value fell into unscrupulous hands.

Benislavskaya's diary was sold abroad, as was the rope on which the poet's life ended a year earlier. More recently, it became known that enterprising people secretly took this rope to the USA, cut it into pieces and sold it at an auction (an American gave a fragment of the rope to a collector in Tambov as a very valuable gift). The suicide of Galina Benislavskaya shocked the public. It was decided to bury her next to Yesenin. The funeral took place on December 7th.

Text - esenin.niv.ru/esenin/benislavskaya/smert-na-kladbische