Happy That I Breathed and Lived

To mark the 120th anniversary of Sergei Yesenin's birth, Radio Kultura presents a ten-part documentary project dedicated to the poet's brilliant and tragic fate.

Many pages of Sergei Yesenin's life and work remain little known, or even entirely unread. Who was he? "The last poet of the village" or an Imaginist "in a top hat and patent-leather shoes," a "prophet" of a new peasant Bible or a "hooligan" who "deliberately goes about unkempt"? Listeners will have the opportunity to form a new image of this celebrated poet for themselves.

The programme features excerpts from the memoirs of his contemporaries, from Yesenin's letters and autobiography, his poetry, as well as unique recordings of the poet's voice made in the 1920s.