In 1926, in the December issue of the newspaper "Russian vote" in New York was published an essay by Boris Gigoreva "My meeting with Sergei Yesenin":
Sergei Alexandrovich Esenina I've never met before, in March 1923 I heard that the poet and his wife Aysadoroy Duncan arrived in Paris from a trip to America.
Just at this time and took my first meeting with SAEsenin.
In Paris, while his brother lived sandals Duncan; little different quirks - wore a tunic of the Greek-cut and often the streets barefoot шпарил.
That a brother of the famous dancer in his theaters (he had any) to arrange an evening in honor of their relatives.
I was among those invited. The people there at all was a mass - even Milyukova saw the crowd around Esenina and Aysadory Duncan, which was unchanged, as was said, his red tunic turns all drove in a corner and regaled a good French wine.
The evening ended. Center it was - of course, reading SAEsenin his poems.
He read them a unique and inimitable.
After the theater Aysadora Duncan drove for a few invited to the house. Among them was myself.
Dear suggested SA a portrait of him.
- Tomorrow will start, come at 11 o'clock.
The next day at 11 am. Duncan arrived at the palace.
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Sergei was in the bath. Soon he came out of it on her naked body was wearing a blue robe. In it, he posed for me, but I always saw SAEsenin - in red, and painted him in a red gown, although the model posed for me in a bright blue.
Expressive!
SA Yesenin sat in front of me. His face was very pale, had bruises under his eyes - he was very drunk, and the bath did not help ...
But he did not want to show me that he was drunk.
For me it was not important merely appearance, I wanted to write SAEsenin the way I felt it, and not what he was before me, in kind.
By SAEsenin I traveled seven days. A week later, the portrait was finished.
I wrote Esenina - bread, rye. Like a ripe ear of a worn out late in the summer sky, in which somewhere already wringing their hands a terrible storm ...
Hair I SAEsenin wrote a light straw color, they are with him and in fact were.
In SAEsenin I saw so many, plenty, from old Russian icons - and writing.
Special audacity noted in Burn, a little from a fallen angel (!), A smile, that bent his eyelids blue, cornflower blue eyes.
During sessions SA talked a lot, read poems.
And then I heard that he was put in a lunatic asylum in Paris ...
I loudly said:
- Esenina are not in a mental hospital must send, and in Russia ...
Then I heard about his terrible punishment on himself ...
I thought: Yesenin died because he could neither understand nor accept Europe.
All who are not able to do so - die.
* * *
Remembered the last sentence, when parted ...
I said SAEsenin:
- You've been in Europe, now you will be hard to live without her ...
I was told later that the SA Yesenin in conversation with friends in the Soviet Union - then remembered my sentence.
Yesenin said:
- I do not want Europe, do not understand it ... you are all wrong! ..
Rejoiced that he was returning to his native country, homeland.
Loss of all of us SAEsenin - fresh, oppressive loss.
Today, a year that SAEsenin, a gifted poet - was no more.
New York, December 27, 1926.
P.S.
Naturally, the first artist invited to buy a portrait of the poet himself, but he refused ...
Then the work was exhibited at the exhibition Boris Grigoriev to the New Gallery in New York in 1924. I sold ...
In a letter Zamyatin in July 1924, Boris Grigoriev wrote: "Incidentally Esenina portrait sold for $ 1,000 in New York Osborn in good hands, but he did not want to buy it for 3000 fr all, when I was a pauper. Of course, all the case and nonsense! "
And then history becomes a riddle with many unknowns:
Boris Grigoriev calls himself a member of the New Gallery buyer Sidney Osborne (Sydney G. Osborn). But David Burliuk, often helps the artist to sell his work in America in 1929, reported in a letter to SA Tolstoy Yesenina that the portrait Esenina acquired American millionaire Adolph Levison (Adolf Lewisohn).
Since that memorable exhibition portrait is nowhere on display and never published. Only the exhibition of his photography. And now, as they say, the location of the unknown.