Sergei Yesenin in an Encyclopedic Format. Article 2. The Yesenin Encyclopedia. Works. Composition and Сommentary Issues

The article is devoted to the work “Yesenin Encyclopedia. Works,” carried out at the IWL RAS, being prepared for publication at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which will significantly expand the composition and commentary of the Complete Works of S.A. Yesenin in 7 volumes (9 books) (1995–2001) by including previously unknown works, manuscripts, and documents. The article focuses on the methodology of the Yesenin Encyclopedia, which is based on a textual approach to revealing the author’s intentions and Yesenin’s mythopoetics. The article discusses the manuscripts of the poet that have been discovered in recent years and are not included in the Complete Works: the London white-letter autograph of Pugachev (1921), which was kept by the English journalist and translator K.-E. Bechhofer, the handwritten notebook of S.A. Esenin containing 12 white-letter autographs of the poet from 1910, and others. The article also provides examples of the dating of the poet’s works based on newly discovered documents (“The Old Robber’s Song”). It also discusses the issue of cyclization in the manuscript books “Sick Thoughts” (1911–1912) and “Zaryanka: Poems for Children” (1916), “Poems About Her” (1925), “Form” (1924), and “The Love of a Hooligan” (1923). The commentary is supplemented with an example of the little-known creative history of the cycle “Moscow of the Taverns,” which has been expanded based on the study of the circumstances surrounding Yesenin’s and Duncan’s trip abroad, as well as the emigrant critics and the publication history of the books “Poems of a Scandalist” (Berlin, 1923) and “Moscow of the Taverns” (Paris, 1923, not published).