The Revolutionary Poetry of Sergei Esenin in the Years 1917 and 1918

Abstract

The poems written in 19l7 and 1918, the early years of the Russian revolution, form an important stage in the development of the literary career of the poet Sergei Esenin. They express the strongest confidence in the future of his country and strike an unusually joyful note in the work of a poet who is otherwise considered melancholy and somber. A product of an unusual and intense religious background and an agrarian upbringing, Esenin saw in the revolution the emergence of both a new Zion and modern Arcadia, bringing a Christian peace, pastoral happiness, and utopian justice to men of good will –Russia's rural peasantry.