The Academic Esenin. To the 125th Anniversary of the Poet’s Birth

This article is a survey of the experience and the results of the research on the lifeand work of Sergey A. Esenin (1895–1925) at the A.M. Gorky Institute of WorldLiterature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Within the framework of this researchprogram, from the 1990s to the present, two fundamental works have been published:the Complete Works in 7 volumes (9 books) (1995–2002; edited by Yu. L. Prokushev)and the Chronicle of Esenin’s Life and Work in 5 volumes (7 books) (2003–2018).The Esenin Encyclopedia is currently a work in progress. The article discusses specificcases that demonstrate how complex textological, historical, and literary issuesrelated to Esenin have been addressed in the course of the research. These issuesinclude: publication of the original texts exempt from various types of distortions andcensorship exemptions, developing the structure and the content of the volumes ofEsenin’s Complete Works, the issue of dating, and the problems of commenting. Thearticle examines methodological and methodical principles of the Chronicle of Esenin’sLife and Work. It shows, for example, how the hitherto understudied facts and episodesof Esenin’s biography have got coverage in the volume: his military service in TsarskoyeSelo, initiation into the world literature (translations and reception), the history ofthe publication of Collected poems (1926) prepared by the poet himself in the secondhalf of 1925. The article emphasizes the continuity of this work with Esenin’s CompleteCollection of Works. The author comes to the conclusion that the Complete Worksof Esenin and the Chronicle of Esenin’s Life and Work form the basis for a holistic andsystematic study of the entire complex of his life and work in the Esenin encyclopedia.