On May 2, 1922, the poet Sergei Yesenin and the world famous dancer Isadora Duncan became husband and wife. AiF.ru says tragic story a love in which there were scandals, jealousy, an 18-year age difference, and even assault.

Don't look at those wrists
And silk flowing from her shoulders.
I was looking for happiness in this woman,
And I accidentally found death...
I didn't know that love is an infection
I didn't know that love was a plague.
Came up with a narrowed eye
The bully was driven crazy.

Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan, 1923.

Sergey Yesenin did not recognize any other language other than his native one. Isadora Duncan spoke only English. Her Russian vocabulary was limited to about two dozen words - but this was enough for the poet and dancer to get married and travel around the world.

Tragedy Duncan

Isadora Duncan's style of dancing - without pointe shoes, a tutu or a corset, but barefoot, in a light Greek chiton - made a real revolution in choreography. The dancer was called the “divine sandal” and her movements were adopted, and at fashionable parties girls tried to move like Duncan.

She is considered the founder of modern dance, but few people know that creative life The “divine sandal” turned out much happier than the personal one. A staunch feminist, Duncan vowed never to marry, and by the age of 44 she had several unsuccessful romances under her belt. The dancer gave birth to children out of wedlock three times, but they all died. First there was a terrible car accident: a car in which the eldest boy and girl were, fell from a bridge into the Seine and drowned, burying the children and governess with it. The doors jammed - none of the passengers were able to escape from the death trap. The tragedy shocked all of Paris, but at the trial Duncan interceded for the driver - because he was a family man.

After some time, Isadora decided to become a mother again. She gave birth to a son, but he lived only a few hours. After another tragedy, the dancer never had children again: all her time was now occupied by dancing and teaching - Duncan taught girls choreography. Therefore, when she received a telegram from the People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky with an invitation to come to Soviet Union and establish her own school there, Duncan was surprised, but agreed. Sailing to Moscow, the dancer met a fortune teller on the ship - she promised the red-haired passenger a wedding in a foreign country. Isadora, wise from difficult life experiences, just laughed.

"Za-la-taya ga-la-va"

Sergei Yesenin by that time was already considered a national poet. At just 26, he also had a “turbulent” biography: at the age of 18 he became a father for the first time (the poet was not married at that time), and a few years later he had two more children - already in an official marriage.

According to the recollections of contemporaries, from the very first meeting Yesenin and Duncan behaved as if they had known each other for a long time. When at an artist's party Georges (George) Yakulov a world dance star appeared in a flowing red tunic, Yesenin immediately surrounded her with attention. According to the testimony of one of the journalists, soon Isadora was already imposingly reclining on the sofa, and the poet was kneeling next to her. She stroked his hair and said in broken Russian: “Za-la-taya ga-la-va...”. All her communication with the temperamental stranger that evening was limited to these words: “Patched Galava”, “Angel” and “Tchort”. Then the dancer kissed him for the first time - and soon Yesenin moved to her mansion on Prechistenka. Neither the language barrier nor the significant age difference stopped them.

Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan. 1922

Does hitting you mean loving you?

After some time, Duncan realized that her creative career in the Soviet Union was not developing very successfully. The dancer decided to return home to America. She wanted to take her “golden-headed” lover with her, but there could be problems with a visa for him. And then Isadora (as Yesenin called her) retreated from her main principle: the couple got married. This happened six months after we met.

The newly-made spouses signed at the Khamovnichesky registry office in Moscow. According to Duncan's secretary and translator, on the eve of the ceremony she asked him to slightly correct the date of birth in her passport. “This is for Ezenin,” she replied. “He and I don’t feel the fifteen-year difference, but it’s written here... and tomorrow we’ll give our passports into the wrong hands... It might be unpleasant for him... I won’t need a passport soon.” I'll get another one" ( approx. edit. - the age difference between the spouses was not 15, but 18 years). And the translator agreed. So the poet’s wife became a woman “only” 9 years older.

However family life The Yesenin-Duncan couple (and both spouses took a double surname) was not cloudless. Soon, the poet, who was addicted to alcohol, “awakened” his violent character: he began to be jealous, beat Isadora and leave the house, taking all his things. True, he soon returned - and everything began again. Duncan forgave him every time.

Russian husband of Isadora Duncan.

The couple married on May 2, 1922 and left the Union that same month. Isadora had to go on tour - first in Western Europe, and then to the States. Yesenin accompanied his wife everywhere. However, the trip did not work out: it turned out that everyone abroad perceived the poet only as an “addendum” to the incomparable Duncan, although at home he was almost idolized. Quarrels and scandals arose more and more often - once Isadora called the police to calm down the brawler. Apparently, the poet’s ardent love began to fade away - he allowed himself to speak unflatteringly about his wife, for example, he could complain to friends: “Here she is, she sticks like molasses!”

In 1923, a little more than a year after the wedding, the couple returned to Moscow. By that time, relations had already become very tense, and a month later Isadora left the Union - this time alone. Soon she received a telegram: “I love someone else. Married. Happy. Yesenin." It was about Galina Benislavskaya - the woman with whom he lived before meeting Duncan and with whom he settled immediately after his return. True, Yesenin never married Benislavskaya - but Isadora did not know this.

Thus ended this complex and confusing love story. Isadora Duncan never allowed herself a single bad word about her only husband. Two years after the breakup, Sergei Yesenin hanged himself - but during this time he managed to become a father again and get married again. A year and a half after the poet’s death, Isadora also passed away. She was driving a convertible wearing a long, flowing scarf, the edge of which accidentally got caught in the wheel axle. Like her children, Duncan died as a result of a car accident, and, as in the case of her beloved Yesenin, the cause of death was strangulation.

Sergei Yesenin and dancer Isadora Duncan. 1922

Beloved Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan

Duncan

Oscar Take Care. Isadora's first serious passion was the actor of the Royal National Theater Oscar Bereji, but the romance did not last long - the artist chose a career over his beloved.

Edward Gordon Craig. In 1904, from the modernist theater director, the dancer gave birth to a daughter, Derdre (in another version - Didra). But soon the couple separated and Craig married someone else.

Paris Eugene Singer . From the heir of the Singer sewing machine company, Duncan gave birth to a son, Patrick, in 1910. Life together did not work out, but for many years the dancer and the manufacturer maintained a warm relationship.

Irma Duncan (adoptive daughter of the dancer), Isadora Duncan and Sergei Yesenin, 1922.

Yesenin

Anna Izryadnova. The poet lived with his proofreader Anna Izryadnova for several years, but the couple was not married. In 1914, their son Yuri was born, but the couple soon separated on the initiative of the newly-made father.

Zinaida Reich . Yesenin married an actress of German origin in 1917. The couple had two children: a year after the wedding, daughter Tatyana was born, and two years later, son Konstantin. After another year, the couple divorced.

Galina Benislavskaya. Sergei Yesenin lived with a journalist and literary worker until he met Isadora Duncan. After his divorce from Duncan, the poet moved back to Benislavskaya, but the matter never came to a wedding. Yesenin broke off relations with the journalist twice, and after both times she ended up in a clinic nervous disorders. A year after the poet’s death, Benislavskaya shot herself at his grave.

Sofia Tolstaya. The granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy became Yesenin’s last wife. The writer died a year after the wedding; they had no children.

Http://www.aif.ru/culture/person/1161182

A verse from the spirit of Yesenin. Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan

I met her
On a wonderful spring day,
I stood sobbing
On my knees in front of her.

She was a dream
My depraved life
And with its beauty
It brought me joy.

She danced
Flying around the stage
I took it while drunk
Her for being a ghost.

And from such a life,
what makes you sad,
I went on a binge
And he cried for no reason.

We parted lovingly
There is nothing more painful than separation,
They're still bothering me
Those mental anguish.

Our destinies are intertwined
When lives lived,
We agreed on only one thing:
The two of us were strangled.

Her scarf is like a snake
Spun in a wheel,
And my rope
Curled around the neck.

We're in heaven now
Let's celebrate Easter together,
In incorruptible tears
We remember our lives.

We are not the same halves.
That we found each other
Two pieces of ice touched
Slipped, got away.

And now we're wandering
From star to star
We heal our wounds
We are in the rays of beauty.

Born May 27, 1877 Isadora Duncan. The first and probably the only association with this name among our compatriots is this: “Wife Sergei Yesenin" And although she spent only 4% of her life in this capacity - 2 out of 50 years, from 1922 to 1924. - the memory of her in Russia is alive only for this reason.

True, at the moment they met, everything was exactly the opposite. The stunning world fame of an innovative dancer, the founder of free dance. Big money, brilliant status, dubious past, which only adds to the charm. All in all. "scandals, intrigues, investigations". Isadora's fame was so loud that Soviet Russia Duncan has become a kind of absolute in everything, stunning the imagination. Remember how in "Heart of a Dog" Bulgakov does the house committee come to denounce Professor Preobrazhensky? “No one in Moscow has canteens,” the woman shouted loudly. - Even Isadora Duncan!

Cow eyes

And what about Yesenin? Local fame of the Russian poet, who has not yet completely gotten rid of the somewhat humiliating status of a “peasant nugget”.

The poet spoke roughly about this evil, but in his own way Sergey Gorodetsky, Friend Nikolai Gumilyov and once the patron of Sergei Yesenin: “This was a way out of his shepherding, from a peasant, from a jacket with an accordion. This was his revolution, his liberation. With this mischief, Yesenin raised himself above Klyuev and over other poets of the village."

In general, there was a lot of gossip about this alliance and not always favorably. Everything was amazing. And the 18-year age gap - that’s exactly how much older Duncan was than Yesenin. And the fact that the American left the stage of the leading theaters of the world for the impoverished, but so free and attractive Soviet Russia. And, of course, in all this there was a poorly hidden interest: “What did she find in our Ryazan boy?”

The opposite question - “What did he find in her?” - are asked less often. It is all the more interesting to look at a world celebrity through the eyes of a provincial. Fortunately, there are enough witnesses - the romance and family life of the couple, who after registering at the Khamovnichesky registry office in Moscow took the double surname “Duncan-Yesenin,” took place in plain sight. And there were plenty of people eager to convey details about the scandalous couple to the public.

Sometimes it sounds poignantly touching. Like Irina Odoevtseva, who met them in Berlin. This is what Yesenin says: “When I was ten years old, I had never kissed a single girl. I didn’t know what love was, but when I kissed the cows on the face, I simply trembled with tenderness and excitement. And now, when I like a woman, it seems to me that she has cow eyes. So big, thoughtless, sad... Just like Isadora’s.” Backhanded compliment. Comparing a woman to a cow is borderline foul. But it’s very our way, and, most importantly, effective. Which is confirmed literally a minute later: “We often quarrel with her. A cantankerous woman, and a foreign one at that. She doesn’t understand me, she doesn’t give me a damn... If she gets stiff and turns her face up, give her a more generous compliment on the feminine side. She loves it. It will melt immediately. She’s, in essence, not bad and even very sweet sometimes.”

Mother or witch?

Sometimes assertive and very tough. Under the drunken hand of Yesenin, it seems that Duncan is almost a witch, a spawn of Satan, a devilish obsession. Another woman witness, poet Elizabeth Styrskaya gives an excellent transcript of Yesenin’s not entirely sober revelations: "Don't know. Nothing like what has happened in my life so far. Isadora has a devilish power over me. When I leave, I think that I will never return, but the next day or the day after I return. I often feel like I hate her. She is a stranger! You see, completely alien. What do I need it for? What am I to her? My poems... My name... After all, I am Yesenin... I love Russia, cows, peasants, the village... And she loves Greek vases... ha... ha... ha... My milk will turn sour in Greek vases... She has such empty eyes... Someone else's face... gestures, voice, words - everything is alien!.. All this offends me. I'm cold to everyone! She’s old... well, if you ask me... But I’m interested in living with her, and I like it... You know, she’s sometimes very young, very young. She satisfies me and loves and lives in a young way. After her, young people seem boring to me - you won’t believe it. And how tender she was with me, like a mother. She said that I looked like her dead son. There is generally a lot of tenderness in her. Obsession. She bewitched me...”

Don't understand anything. Either she is Russian at heart, or she is completely alien. Either crazy passion, or barely disguised cynicism with “cow” compliments... Either a witch, or your own mother. And yet, one thing cannot be ignored. Duncan was important to Yesenin. If only for the reason that he saw in her a figure at least equal in size to himself.

Victory of the poet

Imagist poet Nadezhda Volpin, who, to put it mildly, did not like Isadora, still recognized an important thing: “Yes, there was a strong sexual attraction there. But you can't call it love. They often say that he was in love with her surroundings - fading but ready to be resurrected fame, imaginary enormous wealth... That’s all true, but I’ll add - not the least of which was that Yesenin valued Duncan’s bright, strong personality. I can’t help but remember his words: “Where there is no personality, art is impossible.”

It was with this person that Yesenin led brutal war. The glory should have gone only to him, to him alone. Translator Lola Kinel left a transcript of the dialogue between Yesenin and Duncan. And, getting to know him, you can’t even imagine that this is what a husband and wife are saying. Rather, they are irreconcilable opponents.

Here is Yesenin:

- Dancers are like actors: one generation remembers them, the next reads about them, the third knows nothing. You are just a dancer. People can come and admire you, even cry. But when you die, no one will remember you. In a few years your great glory will fade away. And - no Isadora! But poets continue to live. And I, Yesenin, will leave behind poems. Poems also continue to live. Poems like mine will live forever.

And here is Isadora's answer:

- Tell him he's wrong, tell him he's wrong. I gave people beauty. I gave them my soul when I danced. And this beauty does not die. She exists somewhere... - Tears suddenly appeared in her eyes, and she said in her pitiful Russian: - Beauty never die!

It may be cruel, but in a family dispute you will have to admit that your husband is right. And go back to the very beginning. If it weren’t for Yesenin, people in Russia would hardly remember who Isadora Duncan was.

The story of Isadora Duncan and Sergei Yesenin is probably familiar to many. But do you know how their romance began? When Yesenin saw his future muse dancing the famous dance with a scarf, he was captivated by her plasticity, he wanted to shout that he was in love, but Sergei did not know in English... He expressed himself with gestures, made faces, cursed in Russian, but Duncan did not understand what the poet wanted to say.

Then Yesenin said: “Go away, everyone,” took off his shoes and began to dance a wild dance around the goddess, at the end of which he simply fell on his face and hugged her knees. Smiling, Isadora stroked the poet’s flaxen curls and tenderly uttered one of the few Russian words she knew: “Angel,” but after a second, looking into his eyes, she added: “Chiort.” Their crazy, unpredictable, mysterious, full of passion, happy and at the same time tragic story will never cease to interest those who seek to understand the incredible secrets of love.

Chapter 1 - Faithful Galya 1

Chapter 2 - Golden Head 2

Chapter 3 - Isadora 3

Chapter 4 - Taming 4

Chapter 5 - Nadya 5

Chapter 6 - Moving 6

Chapter 7 - Adio, Isadora! 7

Chapter 8 - Jealousy 8

Chapter 9 - Wedding 9

Chapter 10 - Berlin 10

Chapter 11 - Escape 11

Chapter 12 - Longing 12

Chapter 13 - Walk 13

Chapter 14 - America 14

Chapter 15 - Paris 16

Chapter 16 - Love is a Plague 17

Chapter 17 - Funny Couple 18

Chapter 18 - Maison de santé 19

Chapter 19 - And again Moscow 20

Chapter 20 - "My dears! Good!" 21

Chapter 21 - Sergun 22

Chapter 22 - Russian love 24

Chapter 23 - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye!" 26

Chapter 24 - Towards love... 27

Olga Ter-Ghazaryan
Yesenin and Isadora Duncan
One soul for two

Chapter 1
Vernaya Galya

Someone's decisive steps creaked crisply along the snow-cleared paths of the Vagankovskoe cemetery. Blackened and frost-covered crosses, monuments and tombstones dusted with white caps floated past. Near the gloomy cast-iron fence, the steps suddenly stopped. A young woman in a dark, shabby coat and a checkered cap, from under which heavy fluffy black hair spilled out, froze in front of a carved hedge. She stood motionless, with her eyes widened in horror, and only by the steam coming out of her nostrils could one understand that this was not a stone statue, but a living person. Slowly, as if in a fog, she approached the cross and froze again. Her huge gray-green eyes gazed motionlessly at the grave from under her fused sable eyebrows.

The frosty silence was broken by a hysterically cawing crow. Suddenly aroused, the woman nervously pulled her hands out of the cuffs of her coat and reached into her pocket. With trembling fingers, she pulled out a cigarette from a gray-brown patterned box with the inscription “Mosaic” and took a drag. At the tombstone there were still fresh flowers, apparently brought recently by one of the fans. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Not a soul around.

Having smoked one cigarette, the woman immediately began to smoke another. She exhaled the smoke noisily and took a drag. She seemed to be somewhere far away, in her thoughts. One after another, visions flashed before her inner gaze.

Here she is in the Great Hall of the Conservatory. It's cold and they don't heat it. There is clamor, swearing and laughter all around. Shershenevich appears on the stage, followed by the long and important Mariengof in ridiculous top hats with some young, handsome boy of short stature. The "Trial of the Imagists" begins. Speakers come from different groups: neoclassicists, acmeists, symbolists. Then a boy appears, wearing a short, open deerskin jacket, and begins to read poetry, with his hands in his trouser pockets:

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

His impetuous voice flows, captivating listeners with a melodic and clear rhythm. Every sound reverberates with unbridled prowess and pressure. A sheaf of golden hair sways around the thrown back head. Yes, that’s how she saw him for the first time. After reading the poem, the boy fell silent for a moment, and immediately enthusiastic spectators began to ask him to read it again and again. He smiled. Galya had never seen such a smile on anyone else. It seemed as if the lights in the hall had been turned on - it suddenly became light all around. She looked in amazement at the stage from where this radiance was pouring.

Waking up from her thoughts, the woman looked around. It was getting dark. With fingers blue from the cold, she opened the pack of Mosaics and counted the remaining cigarettes. Five. Five more. So she still has time. She nervously lit another cigarette.

Yes, from the moment they met, her whole life turned out to be subordinate to Him. She became his friend, guardian angel, nanny. Her love grew stronger day by day and all his many vicissitudes with women did not affect her in any way. Yes, of course, she suffered painfully, biting her lips and lying for hours in melancholy oblivion when he was with others. However, only she knew what it would take for her to appear before him again as if nothing had happened. Sometimes she wrote him long, hysterical letters, begging him to pay attention to her and not to throw himself away with her love. It seemed to her that such devotion should be appreciated, but he, so frivolous, always had someone more important than her.

“Dear Galya! You are close to me as a friend, but I don’t love you at all as a woman,” he answered her one day. Then she often heard these words from him: “Galya, you are very good, you are the closest, the most best friend me, but I don't love you. You should have been born a man. You male character and male thinking." She listened to him silently with a smile and calmly answered: “Sergei Alexandrovich, I am not encroaching on your freedom, and you have nothing to worry about.”

“So. The last one left,” Galya frantically tapped the paper cigarette holder on the box and put it in her mouth. The December evening darkness enveloped her from all sides. "What time is it? Five? Six? How long has she been here already?" She stared incessantly at the round sign on a black cross, blurring before her eyes, where his name was inscribed in white lifeless letters. Her heart suddenly ached terribly - Galya remembered how he left with his old woman, Duncan, "Dunka", to Berlin, and she, in a fit of cowardice and her painful melancholy, thought that if he died now, his death would be a relief for her. Then she could be free in her actions. Oh, how could she, even for a second, wish for his death?! Her breath caught in her throat and a burning lump rose in her throat. With unseeing eyes she now looked at the marble slab near the cross.

With difficulty unclenching her clenched teeth, the woman took a pencil out of her pocket, tore open the pack of Mosaics and back side with an unsteady hand she wrote:

“I committed suicide here, although I know that after this even more dogs will be blamed on Yesenin. But he and I won’t care. Everything that’s most precious to me is in this grave, so in the end I don’t give a damn about Sosnovsky and public opinion, which Sosnovsky has in mind."

For some time she stood motionless, clutching a piece of gray cardboard in her numb fingers. Then she decided to add: “December 3, 1926,” in case they didn’t find her right away.

Galya took out a revolver and a knife from her coat, with which she often went to Lately through the hectic streets of Moscow. In the darkness, the metal of the weapon gleamed dully. She closed her eyes tightly, painfully, and large tears rolled down from under her long eyelashes. Putting the pistol in her pocket, she hastily wrote on the packet: “If the Finn is stuck in the grave after the shot, it means that even then I didn’t regret it. If it’s a pity, I’ll throw it far away.” She looked at the thin blade of the knife for a few more seconds, and then resolutely grasped it in her left hand. Not knowing where to put the cardboard box with the suicide note, the woman put it in her pocket, which for some reason was now unbearably heavy and pulling her to the ground. The right hand slid for the revolver. The little “bulldog” burned his palm with icy cold. Galya took a deep breath and put the gun to her chest. Without a second's hesitation, she pulled the trigger. Only a few moments later did a slight click reach her consciousness. Misfire! Everything went cold inside. Her breathing stole, and the woman helplessly gasped at the frosty air. A strong trembling ran through her body. Galya pulled out a piece of paper and for some reason scrawled almost by touch: “1 misfire.”

“And some woman in her forties extra years called him a bad girl and his sweetheart..." - so Sergey Yesenin wrote about his wife, Isadora Duncan. Their union lasted only three years. Constant scandals and stormy showdowns, however, were fruitful for creativity. A lot separated them: a language barrier (he did not speak English, she knew a few words in Russian), an 18-year difference in age and mentality. What they had in common was that they were equal in terms of talent and popularity. She was a world famous American dancer; he became a world famous Russian poet.

Isadora Duncan's romance with Yesenin was as short-lived as her romance with the Soviet regime. She enthusiastically accepted the 1917 revolution and expected great changes from it. She herself was called a revolutionary, but in a different element - choreography. Isadora Duncan danced without pointe shoes or a corset, in light chitons, barefoot. She was called "the living embodiment of the soul of dance" and was later recognized as the founder of modern dance.

However, Duncan’s choreography was assessed ambiguously: her dance vocabulary was often called meager, they said that she was too old and heavy to dance and was more involved in pantomime.

In 1921, she wrote to the People's Commissar of Education of the USSR, Lunacharsky: “I am tired of bourgeois, commercial art. I want to dance for the masses, for working people who need my art and who never had the money to watch me.” In response, Lunacharsky invited Duncan to Moscow with a proposal to open a dance school.

When Isadora went to Russia, she expected anything but what the fortune teller predicted for her: she would get married in a new country. She was 44 years old and had never been married. On the evening when 26-year-old Yesenin first saw Isadora Duncan, she was dancing to “The Internationale” in a red chiton, symbolizing the victory of the revolution. They met and communicated specifically: all she said to him in Russian was “golden head”, “angel” and “tschort”.

Duncan and Yesenin got married in the USSR in 1922. Soon after that they went abroad - the dancer went on tour in America and Europe. But Yesenin was presented there exclusively as the husband of the famous Duncan; he drank a lot and found no use for himself. About America he wrote: “The Americans are a very primitive people in terms of their internal culture. The dominion of the dollar has consumed in them all aspirations for any complex issues.”

The union of the poet and dancer was often ridiculed; in Moscow Isadora was nicknamed “Dunka the Communist,” and in angry epigrams they wrote: “Where did the airplane take Yesenin? To ancient Athens, to the ruins of Duncan."

In 1923 they separated. Both died tragically soon after the separation. Yesenin was found hanged in the Angleterre Hotel, Isadora Duncan also died from suffocation - a long scarf got tangled in the wheel of a convertible.

The name of Isadora Duncan will forever go down in the history of dance, although she was not the only dancer who destroyed traditional ideas about classical choreography - at the beginning of the twentieth century she could compete with her in popularity

It is difficult to say which of them was more famous - the American dancer Isadora Duncan or the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. They had almost nothing in common, they didn’t even speak the same language - and yet, from the first meeting they were drawn to each other. Their relationship was stormy and uneven. As usual, the passion of two extraordinary people turned into drama...

In July 1921, a fortune teller predicted to Isadora: “You are going to make a long journey to a country under a pale blue sky. You will be rich, very rich. You will get married...” The dancer just laughed. After many unsuccessful romances and marriages, she did not even think about a new relationship. Especially in Russia, where she went at the invitation of People’s Commissar Lunacharsky to open a dance school.

At one of the receptions in the studio of artist Georgy Yakulov, Duncan performed her signature number, a dance with a scarf, to the accompaniment of the Internationale. 26-year-old Sergei Yesenin, who was dragged here by his best friend, imagist Anatoly Mariengof, kept looking at a plump, blue-eyed woman with red-dyed hair, spinning on the parquet floor in a red translucent chiton. "Goddess!" - he exhaled.

Anatoly Mariengof recalls the first meeting of the poet and dancer: “Duncan arrived at one o’clock in the morning... Isadora lay down on the sofa, and Yesenin at her feet. She dipped her hand into his curls and said:

- Solotaia golova!

It was unexpected that she, who knew no more than a dozen Russian words, knew exactly these two. Then she kissed him on the lips. And again her mouth, small and red, like a wound from a bullet, pleasantly broke the Russian letters: - Anguel!

She kissed me again and said:

- Tshort! At four o'clock in the morning Isadora Duncan and Yesenin left..."

Duncan knew nothing about the poetic fame of her chosen one. But she very soon realized that she was in love just as much as he was. The lovers were not stopped either by the age difference, which was almost 18 years, or by the fact that she practically did not speak Russian, and he spoke no English. Soon Yesenin moved to Isadora’s mansion on Prechistenka.

Gradually, Isadora learned several dozen Russian words. She called her lover “Sergei Alexandrovich,” but even more often “Angel,” while Yesenin called her “Isadora.” The couple attended receptions and literary evenings, where Duncan danced and Yesenin read poetry. They usually returned home in the morning.

Isadora's fiery dances and her spontaneity drove Yesenin crazy. She treated the poet with reverent tenderness; he seemed to her a weak, unprotected child... Without a doubt, they were connected by a real feeling!

However, Duncan’s Russian career did not work out—or rather, Soviet authorities did not provide her with such a wide field for activity as she had expected. After Isadora’s mother died in Paris in April 1922, the dancer decided to leave Russia for a while. But she didn’t want to part with Yesenin, and so that he could get a visa to travel with her, they had to register their marriage. The newly-made spouses wished to have a double surname - Duncan-Yesenin.

After spending two happy months in Paris, the couple went to America. However, the love idyll did not last long. Although Duncan tried in every possible way to create PR for her husband - she organized the translation and publication of his poems, organized poetry evenings, abroad he was perceived exclusively as an “appendix” to the famous dancer. He felt useless, was sad, and became depressed...

Yesenin began to drink, heartbreaking scenes with quarrels, departures and subsequent reconciliations played out between him and Isadora... At one of Isadora’s concerts, the poet in Once again got drunk and started getting rowdy. Duncan herself called the police, and Sergei was sent to a psychiatric hospital. True, three days later he was discharged from there. Returning home, he looked at his wife with different eyes for the first time: he saw in her not his beloved, but an aging woman, no longer very attractive...

In August 1923, the couple returned to Russia. But Yesenin’s attitude towards his wife had changed a lot by that time. If earlier he admired her, now he complained to his friends: “It’s stuck, it sticks like molasses!” When he got drunk, he made scandals and sometimes beat Isadora. Tired of all this, she said: “Sergei Alexandrovich, I’m leaving for Paris.”

She left alone. And soon she received a telegram from Yesenin: “I love someone else, dot, married, dot, happy, dot.” So he tried to throw her out of his life.

Mariengof recalls: “Yesenin left Prechistenka - broken. And from his fateful honeymoon trip to Europe and two Americas (damn it, this is a honeymoon!) In 1923 he returned to Moscow - broken...”

Their relationship was complex; whether it was love and what it meant for Sergei Yesenin is not for us to judge. Someone believed that Yesenin was flattered by the attention of the famous American and the opportunity to discover world horizons. Maybe there is some truth in this. But there is no doubt that the feelings were short-lived, but sincere.

Thus, Mariengof states: “Yesenin fell in love not with Isadora Duncan, but with her fame, with her world fame. He married her fame, and not her - not an elderly, somewhat heavier, but still beautiful woman with dyed hair... Isadora was a woman with a subtle mind: graceful, sharp and courageous... Yesenin was never in love with this fifty-year-old woman..."