The first time I saw him he was dressed in a shirt embroidered with some crosses and had bast moccasins on his feet. Knowing how eagerly a genuine - as opposed to a theatrical - peasant changes his attire to town jackets and shoes, I did not believe Yesenin. He seemed to me put-on and showy. All the more so because he was already writing successful poetry and could certainly afford shoes.

There is no question of trying to "please"; one must simply pull one's boots up as high as possible and wade into the pond as deep as one can, and stir, stir, until the fishes pop their noses up and notice you, notice that you are "you".

When I saw Yesenin for the first time, I disliked him. Twenty-four years old, he mixed with the women, ruffians, and ragamuffins from the dark corners of Moscow. A drinker, his voice was hoarse, his eyes worn, his handsome young face puffed and polished, his golden-blond hair flowing in waves around his temples.

Dressed in a white silk smock, he would mount the stage and begin to declaim. The affectation, the calculated elegance, the alcoholic's voice, the puffy face, everything prejudiced me against him; and the atmosphere of a decomposing Bohemianism, entangling its homosexuals and exotics with our militants, all but disgusted me. Yet, like everyone else, I yielded in a single instant to the positive sorcery of that ruined voice, of a poetry which came from the inmost depths of the man and the age.

My last meeting with him made a depressing but great impression on me. By the Gosizdat cashier's office a man with a swollen face, twisted tie, and cap only by a miracle holding onto his head, caught by a fair lock of hair, threw himself at me. He and his two horrid (to me at least) companions smelled from alcohol. With the greatest difficulty I recognized Yesenin. With difficulty, too, I rejected the persistent demands that we go for a drink, demands accompanied by the waving of a fat bunch of banknotes. All day long I had his depressing image before me, and in the evening, of course, I discussed with my colleagues what could be done about Yesenin. Unfortunately, in such a situation everyone always limits oneself to talk.

Yesenin was always surrounded by satellites. The saddest thing of all was to see, next to Yesenin, a random group of men who had nothing to do with literature, but simply liked (as they still do) to drink somebody else's vodka, bask in someone else's fame, and hide behind someone else's authority. It was not through this black swarm, however, that he perished, he drew them to himself. He knew what they were worth; but in his state he found it easier to be with people he despised.

They found him hanging with a suitcase-strap around his neck, his forehead bruised by falling, as he died, against a heating-pipe. Lying there washed and combed on his death-bed, his face was less soft than in like, his hair brown rather than golden; he had an expression of cold, distant harshness.

Thirty years old, at his peak of glory, eight times married. He was our greatest lyrical poet, the poet of the Russian campaigns, of the Moscow taverns, of the Revolution's singing Bohemians. He spawned lines full of dazzling images, yet simple as the language of the villages.

He plumbed his own descent into the abyss: 'Where have you led me, you, my reckless head?' and 'I have been loathsome, I have been wicked - and all so that I could blaze more brilliantly.'

He had tried to be in tune with the times, and with our official literature. 'I am a stranger in my own land'; 'My poems are no longer needed now, and myself I am unwanted'.

Good-by, my dear, good-by.

Friend, you are sticking in my breast.

The promised destinies are weaving

the thread from parting to a meeting.

Good-by, my dear, no hand or word,

Do not be sad, don't cloud your brow,

To die - in life is nothing new,

But nor is new, of course - to live.